The Really Wild Side of Loverboy
(Rip Magazine, April 1988)
It's the day after RIP's first anniversary bash, and I'm feeling a bit worse for the wear. Loverboy, however, appear full of vim and vigor--lead singer Mike Reno is full of Ethel Merman and Johnny Mathis impressions, bassist Scott Smith is talking about my bra size and necrophilia, and all are watching the remnants of a satellite explosion out the hotel window. Next year will mark this Canadian quintet's tenth anniversary as musical comrades, and the release of Wildside, their fifth album, makes one record every other year since 1980. Though Loverboy has had a fairly steady climb to success, with anthems like "Working For the Weekend" and the catchy "Hot Girls in Love," the band is hardly musically predictable, and they try to tell me they're not the nice-with-a-capital-N guys people always peg them as. (They are nice, but wacky too. "Feel free to take off your blouse, relax," offers Reno magnanimously at the start of our interview.) Reno, who tends to sound like Bob and Doug McKenzie (those nutty Canadian hosers), notes that the band's musical tastes have evolved over the years. "Our first record had reggae and straight-ahead pop stuff like the Cars, and then 'Prissy, Prissy,' which was a heavy funk groove." Since that self-titled debut, Loverboy has tried to tone down their musical schizophrenia. "We don't go all over the map anymore," Reno explains.
But does that leave any room for experimentation? "We do it more with songs than with style," chimes in lead guitarist Paul Dean. "Now we're into overdub city-more keyboards, backing vocals and percussion."
While the last album, Lovin' Every Minute of It, was produced by noted heavy metal producer Tom Allom (of Judas Priest fame), on Wildside the band returned to production wiz Bruce Fairbairn, who did the first three records. But Loverboy is a band that appears to get along well, and they know where they're headed musically--why not produce themselves? "Cuz we're lazy pieces of shit," Reno says with a laugh.
"Useless, I might add as well," supplies Dean, Reno's straight man. In all seriousness, however, "We need a referee in there; someone looking in from the outside, sort of a babysitter," the band believes.
"It's really because we don't want to say to one guy in the band, 'We don't think you're making the right calls.' We want to have somebody else say it," Reno confides with a straight face.
While making a record, these energetic performers try to capture a live sound on tape. Drummer Matt Frenette compares the lasting power of vinyl to sex: "Live--one night, and it's over--you've spent yourself. It's like making love with someone, and then you're gone, on to the next town." I guess that makes a record kind of like safe sex you can have every night, huh? Dean calls a producer "an uncalled-for-expense," and admits that it's not recording the record that's the hardest; it's writing the damn thing. "You start to repeat yourself, and that's a bore," he explains. Reno believes that "when you create a style, and you do that style for the next album, people go, 'Why don't you change?' And other people go, 'It doesn't sound like you!' You can't win for losing," Reno laments. "We've tried to experiment, and people go, 'We really like your old style,' and then we go back to that, and they go, 'Why do you always sound the same?' " Reno sighs. "So now we don't give a shit," he says with a laugh, "and we work with other writers on the writing end of it." He's written with Bryan Adams, Nashville-based Todd Cerney and Taylor Rhodes, and has sung a chart-topping duet with Heart's Ann Wilson ("Almost Paradise," from 1984's Footloose). Reno would like to write with Mick Jones of Foreigner, but when Frenette suggests writing with Aerosmith's Joe Perry and Steven Tyler, it immediately sends Reno into a quite accurate Tyler imitation. Probably the most well-known co-writer the band has worked with got his two cents in on Wildside. What was his name again? "Jovi, Jolly, Bon Jolly, Jon Bovi, John Bon Anchovie?" the band questions, grinning. Yup, it's that heart-stopper from New Joisey, Jon Bon Jovi, who helped, with his guitarist, Richie Sambora, pen the debut single, "Notorious." The singer from the Great White North got together with the Jersey kid via producer Fairbairn. When Loverboy went with Allom for their last record, Fairbairn "settled for that group form Jersey," as they laughingly refer to Bon what's-their-name. "I hear they sold a few records," notes Dean wryly. "Notorious," which was inspired when Dean saw a T-shirt proclaiming "Every Mother's Nightmare--Every Schoolboy's Dream," contains Jon's "na, na, na," and Richie's chord changes," says Reno.
Loverboy calls Lovin' Every Minute of It their "guitar record," and Keep It Up their keyboard album, but explain that on Wildside, vocals came first and foremost. The title track comes complete with an interesting story. "Wildside" was discovered when a girl managed to get backstage to hand Dean a demo tape. And smack in the middle of the tape was "Wildside." But then Dean knows what it's like to be starting out, making demo tapes and showcasing tunes. In that respect, the Canadian record industry is much like the States'. "There are unemployed metal bands, just like here.," clarifies Reno. In fact, Loverboy was one of them--for a very short time. Reno recalls that, back when the band was just starting out, playing all original songs at small clubs, "We got fired the first week for not playing top 40, and our manager bought the club and rehired us." The band went on to bigger and better things. In 1982, their Get Lucky album did just that, garnering Loverboy Juno Awards (Canadian Grammys) in six categories. The lineup, rounded out by quiet keyboardist Doug Johnson, credits their longevity and lack of personnel changes to "taking time in the early days." Reno, thumbing through a magazine across the room from the tape recorder, issues his one-word explanation for the band's long life so quietly, the tape recorder doesn't pick it up. "Homosexuality," he whispers never looking up from his magazine. The rest of the band sputters in laughing indignation, and Reno the ham looks up with a twisted grin. They've had only one personnel change--their original bassist was into "beards and polyester," and lasted a mere two months before the clean-shaven and musically compatible Smith joined the infant project. Although Loverboy appears to be a unified bunch, Dean is nearly finished with his solo album. Look what happened to the Rolling Stones--will Loverboy fall prey to such infighting? It's doubtful. When I ask what the big thing to come out of Canada will be., it's Reno who answers, "the Paul Dean band." In fact, various members of Loverboy are on the record!
Dean admits to being a "workaholic," and while his nearly completed solo effort is "not quite like Stevie Wonder or Prince" in terms of playing all the instruments, Dean has done most of the work himself. It's been something he'd been wanting to do "since before I met Mike," but he got sidetracked--for about seven years. Loverboy seems to have a few internal problems--but aren't most musicians know for tremendous egos and feuding among themselves and with other bands? (Mick and Keith, Poison and Guns 'N' Roses to name a couple.)
Well, they admit they're not total angels. "Quiet Riot put us down in the press; so we sent a black wreath to their dressing room the night 1500 people showed up in a 20000 seat hall." In other words, Quiet Riot, welcome to Loverboy country. And Loverboy country it is. These homeboys like their native turf for living and recording--down the road from Bryan Adams--and assure me that, up in the wild Northern Wilderness, they don't run their studio off a battery pack. But touring is inevitable, and Loverboy has ventured away from Vancouver to do time playing with the Who, ZZ Top and Journey. As for the next Loverboy tour, plans aren't finalized as to who will open up for them, but they laugh that they'll be warming up for Julio Iglesias.
Does Loverboy ever take a walk on the wild side and let loose with some rollickin' cover tunes? "Stick to the f?!ckin' tunes-the format, "insists Smith with mock severity. "We're in it to sell the record, not somebody else's f?!kin' old material." I guess that's a no, huh? But don't be surprised if, at the next Loverboy show you see, Reno breaks into Ethel Merman instead of "Working For the Weekend."