Loverboy “Unfinished Business”
Two songs into their debut, Loverboy are the greatest Rock band on the planet. They’re not the most important — that would have been The Clash. And they’re not the most popular — that would have been either The Eagles or AC/DC. But for nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds, from the beginning of “The Kid is Hot Tonite” through the end of “Turn Me Loose,” they were perfect. Heavier than Foreigner. More punk than REO. Tighter than Styx. They weren’t exactly New Wave, but they were synth forward. They certainly weren’t Punk, but they sounded kind of angry. And they weren’t Heavy Metal, but they wore leather pants. For half a decade, they were multi-platinum mainstays, good for exactly two radio hits and seven slabs of fist-pumping filler per album. If they were formulaic, it was a great formula. They sounded a little bit like a million other bands, but there really was only one Loverboy.
At least, until Bon Jovi came along. “Runaway,” from 1984, sounded more than a little like Loverboy. The synths. The hard charging pace. A dash of danger and a dollop of sex. That crazy high note that Jon hits towards the end. But “Runaway” was just a harbinger of things to come. Two years later, on “Slippery When Wet,” the band went full Loverboy. Past Loverboy. Bigger hair. Brighter colors. More killer, less filler. Loverboy were a Platinum band but Bon Jovi were a Diamond band. Loverboy was Canadian while Bon Jovi were Red, White and Blue. And if they were unmistakably similar, it was for very good reason. Loverboy’s first three albums were produced and engineered by the same men who produced and engineered Bon Jovi’s third and fourth records — Bruce Fairbairn and Bob Rock.
Peak Loverboy is the sound of Fairbairn and Rock. So is peak Bon Jovi. So is second peak Aerosmith and fourth peak AC/DC. It’s a big sound — heavy but not pummeling, bombastic but not ridiculous. It’s a clean sound — every instrument has its place. It has its foot on the accelerator and presses down during the choruses. It was Fairbairn and Rock’s knob turning that made Bon Jovi sound like making out, AC/DC like getting off and Loverboy like dry humping. As good as Loverboy were, their unfathomable greatness was really that of their producer and engineer.
Which is why, by 1987, Loverboy were done. Not permanently. And certainly not on account of Grunge and Alt Rock, as Mike Reno once suggested. No, Loverboy buckled when Bruce Fairbairn and Bob Rock met Bon Jovi, and then AC/DC. And then, in the case of Fairbairn, Poison and Van Halen. And in the case of Rock, Mötley Crüe and Metallica. But ultimately it was Bon Jovi who market corrected Loverboy. Compared to Jon and Richie, Mike Reno and Paul Dean looked Canadian and sounded redundant.
And yet, Loverboy came first. And, once upon a time, they were positively huge. And they had “Turn Me Loose,” which never hit number one but which did something that Bon Jovi songs never did — it grooved. Reno might have lacked Jon’s charisma, but he was easily the better singer. And while Dean’s playing was less muscular than Richie’s, it was sharper. You can keep your “Livin’ On a Prayer” and “Wanted Dead or Alive.” I’ll stick with “Turn Me Loose.”
After “Turn Me Loose,” Loverboy went on to have eight more top forty singles. Each of their first four albums were certified platinum in America and in Canada (where the band is from). But, all these years later, they survive merely as a “Totally Eighties” band — a band that you are more likely to hear at state fairs or nostalgia cruises than you are on Classic Rock radio. They’re the guys who still squeeze themselves into leather pants for a hundred gigs a year. Every night, Reno still rolls up his bandana and ties it around his forehead. His voice is surprisingly intact. Dean’s solos are completely loyal. Their sets are unerringly consistent. Loverboy show up and plays the “Big Ones” (as their greatest hits compilation was named), in part because that is what the fans expect, but also because their discography is so thin. They put out five records between 1980 and 1987, but released just four more over the next four decades (three if you remove the one that is mostly them covering their old songs). But year after year, night after night, Loverboy plays the hits for barely still middle-aged North Americans who probably couldn’t get tickets to Bon Jovi.
As much as any band from their generation, Loverboy signifies “The Eighties.” In 1984, Reno had a minor hit with Nancy Wilson (Heart) on the “Footloose” soundtrack. And, two years later, they made “Heaven In Your Eyes,” from the “Top Gun” soundtrack. Iconic Eighties parody, “Wet Hot American Summer” used not one, but two Loverboy songs for the simple reason that no band sounds so era appropriate as the quintet from Calgary. They wear red leather pants and like hot girls and electric guitars and hate authority but work hard for the weekend. Loverboy doesn’t sound like early or late Eighties. They just sound “Eighties.”
In “The Me Decade” Loverboy made complete sense — in the same way that a guy in sequined gloves, doing the moonwalk to a song about a paternity suit made sense. In the same way that an out of shape balding ex-drummer with a mullet looking impossibly cool while singing “Sussudio” made sense. Which is to say that Loverboy made sense in that they made absolutely no sense. In “Turn Me Loose,” Reno sings:
And I was here to please
I'm even on knees
Makin' love to whoever I please
I gotta do it my way
Or no way at all
And then you came around
Tried to tie me down
I was such a clown
You had to have it your way
Or no way at all
Well I've had all I can take
I can't take it no more
I'm gonna pack my bags and fly, baby
Or no way at all
So why don't you turn me lose
Turn me loose
Turn me loose
I gotta do it my way
Or no way at all
Maybe read those three verses and then the chorus again. Now see if you follow and tell me if I have things right: Reno begins by saying that he (or his character) was put on this earth to please. Now, I’m not sure if he’s on his knees begging for his freedom or if he’s on his knees making love, but he is very clear that he was making love to whoever he pleased. Unfortunately, then she came around and he couldn’t get on his knees and perform his duty or exercise his right to promiscuity. She’s keeping him down and he’s furious. He can’t — he won’t — be restrained. He threatens her — let him have his flings and his orgies or else he’s going to leave her. But then, he asks — really, he begs — for his freedom. She’s the villain. He’s the victim.
None of it makes any sense and all of it obscures the most basic question: what’s stopping Reno from just leaving? From packing his bags and flying? Does she have him locked in a room? Are they married, but unable to divorce on religious grounds? His lovemaking history doesn’t sound particularly Catholic. I’ve spent forty years unsuccessfully trying to figure this song out. I’m almost fifty years old and I still have no idea what’s going on. But also, I don’t know if I’ve ever loved a song so much that also so deeply confounded me. Why Mike Reno needed permission to be free?
But that was Loverboy, a band that made perfect sense between 1980 and 1985, and almost zero sense in any other context. What totally squares, however, is Loverboy’s sustained commitment to the act. Despite the sigh that greeted their sixth studio album — which was released in 1997, a full ten years after their fifth. Despite the tragic death of their bassist, Scott Smith, who was swept overboard and lost at sea in 2000. Despite the passage of time — their expanding waistlines and thinning hairlines. Despite their dwindling album sales and nonexistent airplay, the great thing about Loverboy is that they never went away and (musically, at least) they never really changed. They embraced their “Where Are They Now” phase and their “Totally 80s” phase. They embraced the state fairs and the last minute invitations to open for Styx minus Dennis DeYoung. They persevered through all of it, without worrying too much about evolving or changing — or recording new music, for that matter.
Which is why I was surprised to learn that, between 2007 and 2014, Loverboy released a trio of albums. The first, cheekily titled “Just Getting Started,” contained zero hits and sold poorly, but was warmly received by fans. The next, “Rock 'n' Roll Revival,” (mostly) featured new takes on old hits. But it was the last of the lot, “Unfinished Business,” that caught my attention. Released when Reno was nearing sixty and Dean was inching towards seventy, Loverboy’s ninth studio album sounded more like a postscript than a coda. The idea of a final revelation intrigued me. I wondered what was left unsaid. What secrets would be revealed on “Unfinished Business”?
Well, after several close listens, I’m pleased to report that the answers to those questions are, respectively, nothing and none. To be clear, those conclusions do not amount to a review or a critique. “Unfinished Business” is exceptional for how little it strays from Loverboy’s tried and true formula and how much it sounds like it came from The Eighties. Because Reno can no longer hit or hold the highest high notes, there is some compression in the vocals. And because Fairbairn died in 1999, the album sounds more county fair sized than arena sized. There’s no “Turn Me Loose” on their ninth album, but there are no real clunkers either. No rapping or record scratching. No Punk or Emo. No stripped down acoustic ballad or Meat Loaf sized power ballad. Nope — pretty much everything on “Unfinished Business” sounds exactly like classic Loverboy — Mike Reno on vocals, Paul Dean on guitar, Matt Frenette on drums, Doug Johnson on keyboards, and, in place of Scott Smith, Ken "Spider" Sinnaeve on bass.
“Fire Me Up,” which opens the record, exists seemingly to reclaim lost ground — its unexciting verses (“I want to touch you / I know you want to”) saved by its shout-along chorus. This is the “Lovin’ Every Minute of It” version of Loverboy, but acutely aware of what Def Leppard did on “Pour Some Sugar On Me.” “Countin’ The Nights” — with its heavy Roots Rock plus middle finger energy — sounds a good deal like mid-period Bon Jovi. Of course, neither song is as successful as their forebears (who were actually their progeny). But that is less a matter of composition or performance and more due to the limitations of production. In 2014, Loverboy were producing themselves and releasing music on a budget, for their own label. Neither of these songs would have been hits, but both succeed in reminding us that before Bon Jovi and Def Leppard colonized the planet, Loverboy had already planted their flag.
No matter how hard they try to play things straight, though, Loverboy’s greatness was always their weirdness. Reno’s scream in “Turn Me Loose.” The red leather pants. The bandanas. Their overuse of the word “hot.” These were tells that they were from Calgary and not California. And, even in 2014, they remain true to form. The “tell” on “Unfinished Business” is “War Bride,” a song that melds the theme to “Top Gun” with a wedding processional and is about (as best I can tell) a woman who was conscripted into the military, ascended the ranks and eventually married her sub colleague. Reno sings: “I met her working at the generals quarters / All I wanted was my orders.” It’s a song so ridiculous that if it were credited to Spinal Tap no one would blink an eye. But it’s not parody. Or at least it’s mostly not parody. In fact, it might be the highlight of the record — a six minute confirmation that Loverboy are the most Totally 80s of all Eighties Rock bands. It’s strange. Bombastic. Unintentionally slightly sexist. Intentionally slightly sexy. But also infectious, loud and fun. It’s a great reminder of why, in 1985, if you needed a song to make your movie sound young and vital, you called Kenny Loggins. But, if Loggins wasn’t available, you almost definitely called Loverboy.