Gary James' Interview With Mike Reno Of
Loverboy



They've sold more than ten million albums. Their songs are the stuff Classic Rock is made of; songs like "Lovin' Every Minute Of It" (#9), "Hot Girls In Love" (#11), "Turn Me Loose" (#35), "This Could Be The Night" (#10) and of course, "Working For The Weekend" (#29). They were one of the top five grossing acts in the world! They were the first Canadian group to ever win Columbia Records' Crystal Globe Award celebrating the sale of over five million albums outside their native country. They would go on to win six Juno Awards in 1982, an all time record that still stands. Their success took them on the road with Journey, Bob Seger, Cheap Trick, ZZ Top, Kansas, Def Leppard and so many more. In 2009 they were inducted into the Canadian Music Hall Of Fame. The group we are talking about is Loverboy. Guitarist Mike Reno spoke with us about his group's history and what's ahead.

Q - I see Loverboy will be releasing a single this year (2022) and you will be going on tour with REO Speedwagon. When is all this going to happen?

A - Well, March 31st, (2022) we're in Grand Rapids, Michigan. That's the start. Then June 1st we're in Cleveland. I think June 2nd we're in St. Louis. The list goes on. It's like forty shows in a row. And that is just after our regular touring season comes to a close. But we've had some trouble with some of these venues closing up shop because of the dreaded bug that's going around. Our show last weekend got postponed 'til April. I was going to play just a little north of the Portland area, Southwestern Washington State, and it jut got postponed. Some of the roadies got sick. Some of the backstage hands got sick. I don't know if any of the band members got sick. It just keeps happening. Now, this is going into the third year. I think we've had just about enough of that, don't you?

Q - I echo that thought. This whole thing can't be over soon enough for me.

A - You know this REO Speedwagon thing is actually with Styx and Loverboy. It's all three bands from the '80s. Can you imagine the hits on that stage? I'm saying this I hope humbly. I know we've got a few and I know those other bands have more than a few. So it looks like the summer of '80s Rock 'n' Roll, which is my favorite era of music. So, it's going to be fun for not only the crowd, but for all of us onstage as well. Isn't that a nice thing to say?

Q - It is! One thing that worked to your advantage, and to the other bands you mentioned, was radio. Your songs got radio air play. If you released new songs, they got played. Trying to do that today must be near impossible.

A - Well, thanks to Classic Rock, they're still spinning the old stuff. Now getting new stuff played is impossible. You're right Gary. But it doesn't matter to me. I was in the era of selling lots of records. I'm a happy guy. I'm not the kind of guy who's trying to collect more than everybody else. I've got enough to go around for awhile. I got a band with lots of songs and I got a place to go. I got a job. (laughs) I'm happy.

Q - Royalties coming in.

A - I know. You know what? It is going to be insane and I really look forward to it (the upcoming tour).

Q - How about this single? When is that coming out? And why a single? Why not an album?

A - The single has been out one week. If you go on to www.LoverboyBand.com you can have a listen and watch the video we put together. Now, this is the first time we've recorded Gary in a situation where the only people in the room at the time to start this whole thing were Paul (Dean) and I. He felt good enough to come over. He said, "I'm fine if you're fine." So, we said okay, let's do it. We set up in my music room. The song that Paul and I had written was sung in my music room and then we sent it over to the keyboard player's house. This is all via the internet. As you know, this is the way they're doing it nowadays. And then he put on this fantastic array of keyboards which we got to pick and choose from. Paul did, 'cause he was mixing it. We sent it to North Caroline for our drummer, Matt. He put his drums on. That was kind of cool. It was pretty technical for him, but he found a guy who knew what he was doing, so they did it. Then we sent it up to Winnipeg where our bassist, Kenny "Spider" Sinnaeve threw the bass down. It all got thrown back to Paul Dean and he put some vocals down, background vocals, mixed it, and made it sound great. And then because he's a guy that likes to work all the time; if it wasn't for Paul I don't think we'd have all this great stuff to offer people on the internet, but he put together a video of old clips of Loverboy playing everywhere and it was pretty cool, because we couldn't get together and do it right now. So, what we did is the best we could and we put together a new song, mixed, recorded, and mastered a song written for the audience about our audience as a matter of fact. If you listen to it you'll hear the lyrics tend to celebrate the fact that they're in the audience and we're onstage, standing behind our big stacks in black. It's kind of one of those kind of songs. It's Rock 'n' Roll all the way. And we're getting a lot of good response from it. And then we put the video out and the song out on LoverboyBand.com.

Q - That means you're on your own label.

A - Basically. We were in the era where the record company would help or actually make it possible for us to go into a recording studio and spend $250,000 and get a great album together. That's all past. That's history. It's actually ancient history. What happens now is, for bands like us, we just record 'em on our own and put 'em out on our own. I know that Styx and REO do the same thing. There's a company in Europe that likes to send you a few bucks, but it doesn't really amount to much, and they can run it through their company. But I think most people are doing what we're doing. We're just supplying it on the internet. We're really looking forward to this summer tour because after being off for over two years, you can imagine how we feel about getting back at it. It's kind of a risky time to be doing stuff like that, especially when you get up to the age where we are. We're in our sixties. We gotta be careful where we go and what we do.

Q - Have you ever heard of a Loverboy tribute act? Maybe when you get off the road someday you can have a hand in their production.

A - I'm sure they're out there. I've never heard of one. We've seen some stuff on the internet lately that is complete Loverboy songs done. They sound almost just like Loverboy. I can't remember the name of the band. A friend of ours sent a copy of it to me one time a while back. I watched it. It was a video and a recording of Loverboy's "Turn Me Loose". Man, it was good! I was going to say maybe they should go on the road and I'll just hang out and watch football. (laughs)

Q - Or maybe you could serve as their manger. They may be what your future holds.

A - Yeah, maybe.

Q - This band was formed in Calgary, but you do live part of the year in Vancouver. Why Vancouver?

A - Well, Paul and I met in Calgary. We kind of wrote a bunch of songs that we thought would be the nucleus of a good band, which we ended up calling Loverboy, believe it or not. I thought I was going to get the crap kicked out of me for that name. It turned out okay. So far, so good. The whole thing for me is, Calgary was great, but it had been recommended if we really want to do something and get somewhere we got to get a hold of Bruce Allen, who just finished a ten year stint with Bachman-Turner Overdrive. He was the manager who would get things done. He was recommended to us by Lou Blain who was handling us in Calgary and ended up partially handling us for the rest of our career. He told us if we really want to be serious about this and get it off the ground we have to get a hold of Bruce Allen, who was in Vancouver. So, we packed up and we moved to Beverly, so to speak. (laughs) And then, Vancouver was pretty good to us. We got a rehearsal hall. We cut some demos. It was just the start of something. It was forty years ago, so I'm trying to think back, or forty or more years ago. But you know what? It was an exciting time for us. We were in our early twenties, just chomping at the bit to get something done. We were eager and ready to do something, and boy, did that something happen.

Q - When you and Paul met, you met in a nightclub. Was he playing in a band that night or was he at the bar when you started talking to him?

A - Well, in this particular case he was in a warehouse. Picture an old warehouse like On The Waterfront kind of vibe, black and white. It was night time. I came out of a concert with Johnny Rivers of all people. I come out of this Johnny Rivers concert and it was in this awesome concert place where they served you dinner and you had some drinks. It reminded me of the Copacabana. It was called the Refinery in Calgary. On the way back to my car, I went out the back door and I could hear somebody plunking away on the guitar. I poked my head in the door of this little warehouse. It was just a little half-door that opened if you can imagine these little half-doors in old warehouses. Paul Dean, whom I didn't know at the time; I just saw this guy sitting in a chair, a regular folding chair with his guitar and a little amplifier and a little ghetto blaster. He's recording grooves into this ghetto blaster. I was just going to leave him alone and close the doors a couple of inches and go back to my house. He says, "Come on in," and we ended up sitting around that night, writing two songs. And I just thought, "Wow! That's chemistry right there my friend. Very, very good chemistry."

Q - Did you and Paul both co-write the songs or did you write one song and he'd write another?

A - We wrote 'em together.

Q - I've heard people say "Waiting For The Weekend", but I've never heard anyone say "Working For The Weekend". So, where did "Working For The Weekend" come from?

A - Well, "Working For The Weekend" came because I changed it. (laughs) And the reason I changed it was I'm just sitting there, singing away "Working For The Weekend" while I was in the studio and the guys looked over at me and said, "Holly shit! That sounds so much better." It just had something. You could envision working for the weekend. All week you work, work, work. Then at five o'clock it's done and you get a case of beer and pick up your dry cleaning and get ready for the weekend.

Q - A lot of people connect with that thought. You must listen to phrases that people use every day and say, "Can we put a song together about that?"

A - Exactly. This is kind of what we do, what all the bands do. You work hard and you write riffs on guitar and you come up with an arrangement. Basically, if you come up with a good title, you have to work the rest of the lyrics around that title. That's kind of what everybody does, I'm sure. You get the riff going and once that riff is going something pops into your head. You just think of something. It happens all the time and everybody who writes songs probably writes songs that way.

Q - Loverboy was rejected by every American record label until Columbia picked you up. Did your demo tape have the song "Working For The Weekend" on it?

A - I don't think so. It had the song "The Kid Is Hot Tonight", "Lucky Ones", "Turn Me Loose". I think "Turn Me Loose" is probably the one that brought it home. They heard that, but that was demo style. Then we had a chance to record it in a studio and that's where we met all these great, famous producers and engineers, which also helped. Big time.

Q - I guess it did. All of the guys in Loverboy were hand picked. You weren't just looking for musicianship. You were looking for the right look and guys that were team players. How did you know everyone would get along on the road?

A - Well, we kind of took our time picking the people that we thought would go the distance, to be honest with you. And at the time, Paul and I decided it would be great to put everyone on the same pay scale. Everybody made the same money. Everybody worked hard. You were only as strong as the weakest link. I know that's a thing that people say and talk about, but in our case the reality was let's make sure everybody got the same interest. You got something in the game. You have to work as hard as the next guy. You can't let anybody down.

Q - Did you split the songwriting royalties four ways?

A - Songwriting was for songwriters. Whoever wrote the song got that. It was a lot of road touring, merchandise, record sales, that would bring income in. And we would share that equally. We thought that was the best way to go, sharing something equally like that makes everybody responsible. You're in the game.

Q - Your first gig was opening for KISS in Vancouver in November of 1979. How was the group received by KISS fans?

A - Well, we were actually surprised we didn't get booed off the stage, which a lot of bands who warm up for KISS do. (laughs) We had not had a record out. Nobody had ever heard of us, especially KISS fans, holding children on their shoulders. That's kind of what the KISS concert was like back then. People wanted to see those guys. It was kind of like going to the circus. And they're a great band, don't get me wrong, but they had this thing where you had to see it and the kids all wanted to see it. So, we walked up there and we banged out a bunch of songs. To be hones with you, we hadn't played live before. It was our first show. We had been rehearsing and looking for a bass player. A friend of ours, the bass player for April Wine, filled in for us and he didn't even know the songs. We basically had to shout in his ear while we were onstage, "This is what I want you to do." It was pretty nerve wracking. To be honest with you, when I walked off stage I barely remembered anything. "What was that?" You know?

Q - You told VH-1 something that I don't understand. You said Loverboy really suffered because of the popularity of Grunge, the Seattle sound. When I hear people saying that I think of the Hair bands, the Glam bands. Loverboy wasn't in that category. You were a hard rocking, Pop band. You weren't a Glam band.

A - Let me just tell you why I said that: At the time, our record company decided that they didn't want records from groups like us, Styx, ZZ Top, REO, Cheap Trick. They just said, "We don't want this anymore. We're going with this whole new sound, the Seattle sound." So, we all just kind of looked at each other and went, "You don't want another record? They're taking this whole Seattle sound a little too seriously, aren't they?" There's room for everybody I thought. The record company didn't want anything. So, we just thought we'll take a little break here. Radio at the same time decided to stop playing all that stuff. "We'll just go with Grunge and Country music." So, Country music flourished. Rock music got pushed down. But what came out of it was Classic Rock radio and Classic Rock tours. Back to the basics. Tour, play, tour, play. Just have fun. It was the old fashion way of doing it.

Q - What were you and the guys doing when the band briefly broke up?

A - Well, that's just it. We didn't really break up. We just took some time off. And we took time off because of that.

Q - Obviously you were able to survive and pay the bills.

A - We've done pretty well. It was time for a break. Our children were young. We just said, "Let's just teach the kids how to fish for cryin' out loud. Why make this such a big deal?

Q - You're a self-taught guitarist, aren't you?

A - Yeah. I play guitar. I started on drums. I play drums even now. I'm not a drummer in this band, but I love to play the drums. I actually wrote "Turn Me Loose" on the bass. I mean, I can play a little bit on everything. I'm not great at any of them, but I can play a little bit of everything and come up with tunes and ideas.

Q - Before Loverboy you were in Moxy and Hammersmith. Hammersmith sounds like a Heavy Metal group. What kind of a group was Moxy?

A - Actually, Moxy was a great group out of Toronto. They used to tour all over Canada and Texas. They did a bunch of albums. I did one album with them when I think their singer was killed in a motorcycle accident. They had to replace him and they came looking for me. And that's back when I lived in Calgary. So, I went from Calgary to Toronto. When I was in Calgary, the group Hammersmith was playing. They asked me to join the band if I wanted (to), but I didn't really do it. I just went in and sang some songs with them and practiced with them, but I never really jumped in. But Moxy I jumped right in and started writing songs. I wrote songs for the whole album with one or two of the other guys, and put the album out and played with them for three years. I was trying to make it work, but I didn't think they had the same work ethic as me. I wanted to work a little harder than they did. So, I ended up packing up and that's when I ran into Paul Dean. I can almost see it as a Rock 'n' Roll movie. (laughs)

Q - Loverboy is a Classic Band!

A - I appreciate that. We feel like a hard working band. That's what we are. We play live. We do records once in awhile. We kind of do singles. We didn't feel like a whole album. People seem to want something immediately now. They have the attention span of about six minutes. So, I say to myself, "Why don't we throw in a single every once in awhile to keep the band current. Probably when we go in concert, who knows what we'll play 'cause people really come to hear the hits. The hits have been established since 1980. So, we definitely have t give 'em the hits and that's what we're going to give 'em. We're going to give 'em the hits. We're going to have fun. We're going to travel and hopefully nobody has a heart attack. (laughs)

Q - In the band or in the audience?

A - Either way. (laughs) I just can see it happening, the band and the audience having heart attacks.

Q - Let's not forget, it was tough for a Canadian band to break through when Loverboy was coming up.

A - Man, I'll tell you what. We never really knew what would happen. We just cut a record. We didn't know it was going to sell a million records right off the bat. And then the next thing you know it's time for us to go on tour with ZZ Top. Are you kidding? This is cool stuff! And we're playing every night and people are rockin' to the stuff. People are really digging it. So, we kind of knew something was happening. And then it was time to do a second album. And then it was time to do another tour and basically that's what happened. We just kept doing records, kept touring, did a record, kept touring, did a record. And before you knew it, we had something going on.

Official Website: LoverboyBand.com

© Gary James. All rights reserved.

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