Paul Dean

Loverboy lead guitarist, key songwriter and co-producer.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Set's podcast.
My guest today is Paul Dean of lover Boy. Paul,
do you have a new lover Boy movie?

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Tell me about it. You know, we recorded this back
in eighty eighty one, I guess eighty two, yeah, because
it's called Live in eighty two. So yeah, it was
eighty two in Vancouver where I am right now, and
we recorded it on film. I think that probably the
only thing that we've ever recorded on film, other than

(00:41):
maybe a local thing boy back, but nothing that I
had had access to. And it was it was released
back in the day on super low Deth. You know
what it was like back back in eighty two. It
was one dot per inch kind of definition of pretty low.
And I somehow got hold of the film. There was

(01:04):
something like fifteen cans of film, and I can't remember
how I got them. And I carried them around and
I lived in I lived in Calgary, and I lived it,
I lived everywhere, and I carried these things around with me.
Moved four or five houses. And what am I carrying?
These big can It was like three big cans, like

(01:27):
massive cans with all these little guys inside I don't
even think I looked inside them all. I thought I
had three majrou you know, two inch. I didn't know
what was in them. So anyway, I opened them up
and I went, oh, that's cool. And I didn't really
know what to do with it, but you know, I
was keeping kept getting these messages on Facebook going, how

(01:50):
come you guys don't have a you never released a
live DVD or and I it was just that was
a great idea. I don't know why. So I took
the film out and I found a place here in
Vancouver and they transferred it. It took me two or

(02:11):
three places to find the right place, and they took
it and they transferred it. This is to It was
sixteen milimeter film to digital, and that was great. And
the beauty of it was we recorded twenty four track
at the same time and for the original recording, so

(02:34):
and somehow I had that tape too, and I had
that transferred to digital when I was in Calgary, not
knowing what I was going to do it along with
my other two hundred and thirty two inch tapes from
the Lover, but I had the whole archive that I
once again carried it around with these three tape cans

(02:55):
from town to town, and so yeah, I found a
studio they gave me a great rate in Calgary and
we bounced it or recorded it on the digital. So
I had forty years of music, including fairly relative you know,
the last what do you call it? The analog recordings
I did on two track or two inches, and that

(03:18):
was what year would I don't know, eighty something. So
I had all those and I put them on one
hard drive. So from two hundred and thirty tapes to
one little hard drive. It's like insane and super high
deft as well. So I had that and I just

(03:39):
had this idea says, you know, this is let me
see what it looks like. I didn't even I had
no idea what ook. I knew what was on it
because I'd seen it before. Obviously it was I've seen
the laser disc and it's pretty low deaf, and of
course there was on It's still on YouTube and it's
super low deaf. So I figured, let me see what
I can do with this, and so I got brought

(04:04):
it all home. I learned how to edit it. And
the kicker was, there was no this is getting a
little high tech stuff. But there was no timecode on
any of the songs, so I had to read Reno's
lips to find out even what song we were in
little you know, and then what section? And okay, there's

(04:25):
a solo? What am I playing? What song is this?
And there's Matt doing this amazing drum fill and I
think that might be you know, it's your life or something.
So that was a real that was a big job.
It was during the pandemic, so by nothing but time anyway,
So that was cool, but it was it was a

(04:45):
real mind burner. You know. I'd work on it for
like twenty minutes at a time and I'd just get
I'd get brainedd for it after twenty minutes agoing, Okay,
what song is this? Where's it going? Nudget a little bit,
get it in time with it with the try and
it's a little bit slower. Now I got to just
move it a little bit. And it was, it was,

(05:06):
it was. It was a great learning experience, but man,
it was a it was a brain frier. But it
took me a long time to do it. It took me.
I don't know how many hours I put in it.
But once again, like I said, I was the pandemic
and I wasn't playing live, and I wasn't seeing any
of my friends. We're homebound, house bound for like whatever.
It was two years unreal. So I learned how to

(05:28):
edit it in Da vinci uh and I uh also
learned how to do a surround sound mix with in logic,
So it was like a I was self taught. I
went back. I went back to school for a couple
of years and learned all this high tech stuff how
to do it, and I finally got it to where

(05:51):
I thought it worked well. I got all the edits
and give everybody in the band equal time as much
as I could and uh uh. Then I found a
couple of places here in town in Vancouver, one that that,
like as I say, did the transfer. And then I
took it to this studio and they did a thing
what they call color correction. They make the blacks black

(06:12):
instead of gray, and the reds like everything really bright
and and uh vibrants. So they did that and uh
the same place they did the h I gave him
my what they call stamps. I gave him the six stamps,
two surround tracks and the left right and then the

(06:32):
center for Reno and me singing, and and then the
sub for the kick drum, a little bit of bass,
a little bit of synthesizer, and they they took all that,
all the elements, all the the place called it is
called the elemental Posts. It's a funny thing to be
coincidentally called that. So I took all the elements there,
and they put it together and gave me a reference.

(06:56):
Try a reference. Blu Ray finally had a blue ray,
not just a DVD, but a blue ray, so full Death,
and I just thought it was time to do it,
and that we shopped it around and ear music out
of Germany loves it. Then we're putting it out in June.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
Okay, so you have a band. A lot of this
you did at home, but how do you agree to
get the band to pay for it? And how does
the band ultimately approve it.

Speaker 2 (07:33):
I started to Reno that I paid for it. It
was it wasn't that much money. It was like two sessions,
one session to do the transfer, and then a couple
of sessions, and then I went back and we retouched
it and I played it for Reno and he blew
him away, and that's it.

Speaker 1 (07:52):
Okay, So you talk about Facebook. How active are you
on social media and how active are the over Boy fans? Well,
pretty active. I have my own my own Facebook page.
I'm very rarely on it, but I got a couple
of things to talk about, so I'm going to probably

(08:14):
get back on it again shortly. When you say you
have a couple of things, talk about the movie, what else.

Speaker 2 (08:24):
I'm working on a instrumental album myself. It's it's going
to be we're going to call it lover Boy Instrumental,
which is it's kind of these songs are instrumental to
my success, and I wanted to record them soundtracks see
if anybody wanted to use it, because you know, a

(08:46):
lot of times when you have a like if you
have working for the weekend or something on a movie
they want they got to turn it way down because
they don't want it to interfere with the dialogue. So
I figured, let me see if anybody's interested, and and
it plus, it's for our fans. It's all lover boys
playing on it. The only one who's not on it,

(09:06):
ironically is Reno, and he's totally he's done with it.
He's totally cool with it. With their concept and some
that's that's in the works. That's been in the works
for a while. I started recording it on the road
last summer with Foreigner in my hotel room and I
once again, it's took a lot of those tracks off
that one hard drive from from a lot from our

(09:30):
archives from way back. There's two or three tracks with
Scott Smith playing bass on it, and uh so I'm
doing that and I have a I have another band
that I that.

Speaker 1 (09:40):
Were wait before we get to the other band. Yeah, yeah,
this is an instrumental version of lover boy music. Is
it stuff that was all previously recorded or you re
recording it?

Speaker 2 (09:53):
It's all been it was all it was all recorded.
It was it's all live recordings that I've recorded over
the years.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
Okay, but they're without vocals, correct. And you say there's
a demand for this with stinks, with movies, et cetera.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
I'm hoping. I mean, we've working for the weekend and
Jemy Lucy has been a lot of movies and a
lot of commercials and stuff like that, and it's just
something once again that you know, when I'm not touring
or even what I am to and it's just something
I like to do. I like to really like to
keep busy. I'm a bit of a I guess you
could call me a workaholic perhaps.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
Okay, since you're a workaholic. Are you married?

Speaker 2 (10:40):
Oh? I am, and I have a son, and yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:43):
How many times you've been married?

Speaker 2 (10:46):
Well, you know what, I got to admit it, we're
not really married. We've been living together for fifty one years.

Speaker 1 (10:56):
Okay, So just to stop here for a second, as
your has your partner ever been married before she was
with you?

Speaker 2 (11:04):
Nope?

Speaker 1 (11:05):
Have you ever been married before you were with her?

Speaker 2 (11:08):
Nope?

Speaker 1 (11:10):
And you choose not to get married because.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
I don't want to be rude here, but none of
your goddamn business, Bob, No, that's not Wait.

Speaker 1 (11:21):
If you don't have to answer anything, you don't want
to answer them. I have been married, and I am divorced,
and my girlfriend is has been divorced twice. We lived together,
it's been nineteen years, and we're not married.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
There you go.

Speaker 1 (11:36):
So on some level, I don't want to go through
another divorce. On another level, I come from the Joni
Mitchell school. If we don't need no piece of paper
from the upstairs choir keeping his tide and true.

Speaker 2 (11:50):
So I was just asking.

Speaker 1 (11:54):
Okay, that's why I was asking. I'm not probing for
any dirty.

Speaker 2 (11:57):
I know, I'm just giving you a hard time, but
the exactly how I feel it's really it's it's between
Denise and me. It's got nothing to do with anybody else,
you know. And I don't need to go and take
a bow, and I make my bow to her. I
don't make it to anybody else.

Speaker 1 (12:12):
Well, the reason I bring up marriage, you say you're
a workaholic, You're a touring musician that is hard on relationships.
So how does it end up working in your relationship
which obviously works for fifty one years?

Speaker 2 (12:28):
Hey, Denise, no, wow. I like to think that we're
pretty reasonable people. And she is really Denise is really giving,
and she understands and she wants she's a fan. She
wants me to succeed she and she supports me in
whatever I do. And I call her level one. She's

(12:52):
she's kind of you know, what do you think about
this idea? And she'll just she'll either love it or
she'll luke warm it or she'll hate it. And I
really lean on that on those those decisions, you know
those She's pretty smart cookie.

Speaker 1 (13:07):
And what is your son up to.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
He's right now. He's working on getting a making a
board game. He's written that board game and he's a
he said, he said artist as well, and he's worked.
That's what he's working on. So we'll see where that comes.
I support him on that. I think it would be
pretty cool. He bought a Dungeons and Dragons game I

(13:33):
think it was, AND's this massive box in all this
friends play it and everybody has fun. And this you know,
it comes with three hundred pieces of men and and
maps and a rule book like like like the Bible.
And he's basically he's written the rule book. And I'm
you know, supporting them. And I'm saying, come on, if this,
if these guys can put this box out, I look,

(13:56):
I tell him. He says, you know, I started as
a as a guitar player, but I started as a songwriter.
I didn't have anything. I didn't know what I was doing.
I just started doing it. Eventually I figured it out,
and this is a really good start. I said, I
support this creative thing because either or do you know
you want to work a Best Buy again? And no, Dad,

(14:17):
So that's what he's doing.

Speaker 1 (14:20):
Okay, let's go back to the sync your songs? Do
you own your rights in your songs?

Speaker 2 (14:29):
I own all the rights to the live recordings.

Speaker 1 (14:35):
I guess, so, I guess what I'm saying is the
songs themselves turn it loose, working for the weekend, etc.
There's a right in the song. Sometimes people have publishing
deals so they just have the writers share. There could
be in America there's a reversion.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
Right.

Speaker 1 (14:52):
Then there are people who sell the rights. So at
this point in time those songs, who owns those songs?

Speaker 2 (15:02):
Sony owns the masters, the original masters that we recorded
in up until eighty what was eighty five? I guess
Love and Every Minute of It, or maybe maybe a
couple albums after that, they owned the rights of those
because we were under contract with them. But since then
we own everything. We own all the all the rights,
all the publishing, all the masters, all everything.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
Well, the songs are a separate right from the albums.

Speaker 2 (15:27):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (15:27):
Does Sony own the songs or do you own the songs?

Speaker 2 (15:31):
We have? We share them with Sony? Okay, but I
think maybe you're you might be getting at Do I
want to sell my catalog? How come I haven't sold
my cattle? I don't know if you wanted to go
there or not, but.

Speaker 1 (15:44):
Well I wanted to go there. That was not where
they You know, I was asking earlier because a lot
of people have been through twists and turns. They've given
up things they didn't want to give, et cetera. But
since you brought it up, would you sell your rights?

Speaker 2 (15:58):
I don't think it's worth it, really, to be honest. Plus,
the way I look at it, my son he's young enough,
and he would he can benefit from this fifteen, eighteen,
twenty years old. Whatever is the going rate, and they're
not from my experience or from what I've looked into,
is you're going to get what you make times those years.

(16:21):
And then in other words, if you make I won't
throw any figures out, but whatever you make, if you
multiply that times twenty or fifteen or whatever, that's the
size of your check, and then you give a big
chunk of that to the government, then well you do
that anyway, that's no big deal. But in twenty years
from now, when my son is, you know, still going

(16:42):
he's going to you're twenty one, he's still going to
be making the same amount of money tax wise, it's
a little different, but there's still going to be an
income coming from that. So that's that's kind of how
I look at it.

Speaker 1 (16:55):
I don't believe in selling either. Are your songs lucrative
enough that you don't have to have other sources of income?

Speaker 2 (17:06):
Yeah? I make a really good living off my publishing
for sure, off of my song working for the Weekend
in particular, it's ridiculous how much a song that's forty
years old can still generate. It's really great, amazing.

Speaker 1 (17:20):
Okay, talking about record royalties, you know, people are bitching
about Spotify payments and in truth, a lot of people
never even made it into royalties in the old days.
Do you still get royalties on the records that Sony
owns or do they say you're still in a negative position.

Speaker 2 (17:38):
No. I think the negative position would be you haven't
recouped yet, you haven't paid back what invest And that
was long ago, like that was the first six months
the way they were recouped. And so yeah, we get
paid from Sony and from all these different collection agencies
for sure.

Speaker 1 (17:58):
And now that COVID is over, when or how frequently
might people be able to see lover Boy?

Speaker 2 (18:07):
We have right now, we're sitting at close to fifty
shows coming up, and we typically in non COVID years
will play fifty shows. Fifties pretty comfy. Sixties Still okay,
we did. We did a tour, We did eighty shows,
and I really didn't want to play Turn Me Loose
again that year. By the end of the hour, I

(18:29):
was pretty much done, for example. But fifty or sixty
plus it. You know, if you're on the if you've
got eighty shows, that means you're and getting back to
marriage and everything. That means you're on the road for
more than half the year. And if it's if it's
in the States, then then immigration doesn't smile too kindly

(18:51):
if you're If you're more than half a year in
the US, there it's not a good thing.

Speaker 1 (18:55):
So at this point, how do the members of the
band get along? There are a lot of bands where
they hate each other, but they do it for the money.
How about Lover Boy.

Speaker 2 (19:12):
I'm sure the money is a factor, there's no question
about it. But I can only speak for myself. I
just love to play, and I'm not real crazy about
the hours in spent flying around and busting around, but
that's the price should pay for the joy of playing music.

(19:33):
I love to play guitar, and I love to play.
My songs are songs, I should say, and I love
to play with these guys. I mean, it's a hell
of a band. It's a really good band. And I
make sure it's different every night. For me, it's different
every night, even though we play basically the same songs forever,
you know, but there's little things and different different crowds

(19:59):
and different mixes, and but I try to play it
slightly different every day. There's certain things that you don't
want to mess with, you know, don down down, down
down down. You don't you know, you got to play
the theme. But the rest of it it's pretty much open,
open season, you know.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
And do you rehearse when you're not on the road.
Do you play the guitar?

Speaker 2 (20:22):
I practice at home. I working on new songs, griffs,
physically working on my guitar. I'm a I'm a tinkerer.
I guess I'm called. I built my first guitar in
the twelfth grade and the teacher said, if it works,
you pass, and I passed. So that was but I'd

(20:44):
already been playing guitar. I remember I bought a Fender
jazz Master was five hundred and forty bucks, and this
is in nineteen sixty two. I bought a brand new,
brand new jazz Master. I was. I was raised in
the in the in the mountains of British Columbia, and
we used to go into Calgary twice a year and

(21:04):
one of those times I went, I was looking for
a strat like the I wanted to get a salmon
colored strat like the Shadows played. At the time. I
was ah still ambit was a huge Shadows fan, but
they didn't have any so they had a jazz Matter
which was kind of a Ventures guitar, and I was
a big fan of the Adventures too, so I brought
bought that guitar with my I the way I got

(21:26):
paid working for my parents at this twenty two acre
resort that they bought for forty thousand dollars in nineteen
fifty three on the on the lake front, if you
can imagine that forty grand but anyway, and we had
we had sixteen cabins and a campground and my job

(21:48):
was to deliver They all had wood stove, so my
job was to deliver paper and kindling and a little bit
of wood and take the garbage out every day. That
would be the thing. And I had this cart that
I would carry around shard, I should say. And the
and the way I got paid was I would collect
all the beer bottles. And my dad said, you can
have all the money from the beer bottles. And so

(22:10):
I was making, you know, through four hundred dollars a summer,
just a kid, a kid, A seventeen year old kid,
sixteen year old kid, you know, uh, throw out of
money back then. Plus I was living at home or whatever.
And I remember I brought that I had the jazz Master.
Man I wanted to figure out how it worked, so
I took it all apart complete.

Speaker 1 (22:33):
Since since we're on the jazz Master, what were you
doing for an amp if you had what.

Speaker 2 (22:38):
I started out with a with a silver tone amp
that I got from the catalog the Eating series. It
was just actually it was called I think it's either
Sears or Eating. So I can't remember, but we'll say
serious because it's a everybody can relate to what that is.
So I had a harmony guitar, a two pickup harmony
guitar like a guitar, and uh, this this amplifier, and

(23:03):
so I graduated to this this jazz master, and I
brought it home and I took it all apart, and
my mom and dad came in, and my mom and
she was freaking, what have you done. You've taken this
five hundred and forty dollars guitar and you're completely apart?
Are you insane? Well? And then I, I was working
in an industrial arts and I painted it. I repainted it,

(23:24):
I painted it. I don't know. I painted a baby
blue to start with, and I went and I put
it back together. I went, oh, that sucks. And then
I painted it red and I went, yeah, that's the
that's that's me, that's a that's a good good color
for me. So and that I had that guitar for
for a long time.

Speaker 1 (23:43):
Okay, you brought the guitar home, you stripped it all down.
There was no fear, no hesitation in the process, no
worry that you might have screwed it up.

Speaker 2 (23:56):
No, And that's what That's exactly what my mom was saying.
I'm sure is what have you done? You idiot? And
she didn't say that, but she was cool if you
never said that. But yeah, I wasn't worried about it.
So on the strength of that knowing how the mechanics work.
I was confident in building a guitar and industrial arts
in grade twelve.

Speaker 1 (24:17):
Okay, let's go back to the beginning. Did your parents
bought this resort at age seven? Where did you live
before that?

Speaker 2 (24:26):
Born in Vancouver, lived here for two years, for two
or four years, I don't know, and then we moved
to Calgary. My dad was a salesman for Johnson's Wax.
He was a traveling salesman. He would take the train
from Calgary to Edmonton and Regina and Saskatoon, and I
don't know if you got as far as Winnipeg. But
that was his gig. And he was like me, except

(24:47):
him I work on the weekends. He would be working
for the weekend. He would be out selling this Johnson's
wax and he would come home every weekend and he
went Eventually, I guess we're speaking to continuing the marriage thing.
I don't know whether my mom and he had a
serious talk and my mom took him to task and say, look, look, pal,

(25:10):
it's either you start staying home with the family or
we're out of here. I really doubt it, but who knows.
But they had this discussion unbeknownst to me, but they
must have had it because we stayed at this resort.
We had two weeks. So we stayed at this resort
in I think in fifty two and fifty three, and
then I guess it was in fifty four. Maybe I

(25:30):
can't remember. It was fifty three or fifty four that
they said, let's see if this place is for sale
where we always stayed these cabins. Let me let's see
if we can if the guys would sell it, and
they the guy says forty K and my dad somehow
raised the down payment and made pay You know, I
what did I know. I was just a kid. I

(25:51):
wasn't tuned into that stuff at all, So I just
I had my daily chores of delivering kindling.

Speaker 1 (25:58):
Okay, not everybody south of the border is super sophisticated
about Canada in general, never mind the geography. So from
this camp, how far to the nearest town, how far
to the next major town?

Speaker 2 (26:15):
Calgary was a major town, three hour drive, and that's
where we went. We would we would go into Calgary,
or in Spokane, we would go down to Spokane. It
was pretty much the same distance. So if you could
kind of triangulate that it's on the It's in the
Columbia River Valley on the Columbia River in British Columbia,
in between the Selkirk and Rocky Mountains.

Speaker 1 (26:36):
Okay, so you're living there. Is there a community? What
about school, et cetera. Yeah, we had a school. We
had a school bus that I would walk up the
hill fifty five below fahrenheit one morning, I remember the
coldest day I have every experienced walking up the hill.
It was a quarter mile walk from the lake where
we lived up to the highway and I would catch
the school bus and I would do that except on

(27:00):
my fourteenth birthday. I missed the Boss because on my
fourteenth birthday was my parents gave me an acoustic guitar,
and I'm probably, I'm sure I missed the Boss that day.
I was over the moon on this finally got a guitar.
And Okay, well, let's let's stay on that topic. So

(27:22):
was there music in the house. When did you become
enamored of music?

Speaker 2 (27:27):
My mom got her singing voice from her dad, my grandpa,
and she's a pretty good, really nice voice, and could
play the piano a little bit. And my sister could
play the piano a little bit. She could do a
little bit of the left hand, do it that kind
of rock and thing, you know, And she and I

(27:49):
would play some tunes soil. We'd play these old folk
songs and so that that's kind of how I got
my feet got started in you know, playing with other people.
But before that, I was just playing the records like
the aforementioned Shadows and Ventures and Johnny the Hurricanes.

Speaker 1 (28:06):
And okay, you're in the hinter lands. Most people in
that era learnt about music from the radio. What was
the radio situation.

Speaker 2 (28:15):
K x l Y Spokane was a country station and
the only station we could get, and that was only
on a clear night, and you know, it would fade
out during the day. So that was that was my
That was my first real you know, Johnny Cash and
uh Don't take your Guns to Town and and uh

(28:36):
walk the Line and those those two. I learned how
to play all those instrumentally. It wasn't it wasn't any
singing at the time. I just was into learning how
to play guitar boogyrself down and and probably a lot
slower than that. But that's that's how where I started playing,
and and then I then then on one of those

(28:59):
trips to Calgary, I would I hit one of the
music stores and I discovered the Ventures and the Shadows
and the what was that other band? Oh man, it'll
come to me there was an another band from I
think sata Fe someplace. Anyway, it'll it'll spring into spring

(29:21):
to mind, hopefully. And I just learned learned all those twos.
I learned all the parts. I had a set of
drums set up. I learned how to how to play drums.
Much to my parents' chagrin. They moved me out out
of the house into the shed in the back. But
at least I got the Actually I ended up playing
one gig on drums. I only had one gig on

(29:42):
drums as a drummer when I moved to Vancouver years later.
But so I you know, I dissected these instrumental albums.
There are two guitars, bass and drums, all of them,
and maybe they one of them would have a sax,
and one of them and they might have an organ.
But mainly my favorite get our favorite, I should say,
bands two guitarist, bas and drums. And of course the

(30:04):
Beatles said the same thing, and I learned the Beatles songs.

Speaker 1 (30:07):
Oh okay, so you didn't play an instrument until you
were fourteen.

Speaker 2 (30:12):
I got a I gotta wind up ukulele, I think
for my thirteenth Christmas, I'm guessing, which is two months
before my birthday. It was the weirdest thing. It had
a little crank on it. It would you turn and
god that it was, and it had a cowboy motif
on it. It was the crazy. But at least they played.
They had nylon strings, and I learned how to play

(30:36):
oh my dar and oh my d like these two
chord songs, learned how to pick those out. It kind
of went from there.

Speaker 1 (30:45):
So you didn't play any bands in high school?

Speaker 2 (30:47):
I did. I was in two bands.

Speaker 1 (30:50):
Okay. How many people lived in this community? About a
thousand maybe, Okay, so people from the community, you put
together a band of music. We're playing instrumentals, surf music,
it's all all. We didn't have a bass player. We
had two guitars and drums. But the first man I
was in we were called Chicks Country Gentleman, and he

(31:12):
was the guitar player, a guitar that he built and
he played through an amplifier that he built. So that
was a real inspiration to me.

Speaker 2 (31:21):
And I was playing excuse me, I was playing a
bass that he built through and once again an amplifier
that he built. And he took what he did. He
took a he took a juke box apart to build
to make the bass app and then build a little
box of the speaker and used to use the app
for the from the from the jukebox. So I played
bass and when he would he would play trumpet on

(31:43):
one tun and then I would move over to guitar
and we would do it was called we would play
the twist or something like that. It's we're talking the
Chubby Checker era. And uh so I played bass and
I think I played sacks in one track on one
cut too one one song, and that was that was
And then then then we rebelled that the drummer was

(32:06):
his son, and he we rebelled. We got we hired
another guitar, got a whole of another guitar player, so
we had two guitars and drums, and we started another
band called the Twilighters because we wanted to do something
a little more current. Back in Chicks Kunter Gentlemen, we
were playing red sales in the sun set that sleepy time.

(32:29):
But we wanted a rock out, so we we got
the two guitars and drums.

Speaker 1 (32:33):
So how did you first hear the Beatles?

Speaker 2 (32:40):
Had to be radio. But that's a really good question. Wow.
I just remember hearing I Want to Hold Your Hand
and being blown away by the rhythm track. I guess
it was Lennon playing rhythm. It was so cooking. We
we had we used to have saw cops at the

(33:02):
school and I was the I was the empty I would,
I was I would, that was the jock jockey, and
we had the we had the house PA set the
gym PA, and we had a little turntable on I
remember where it was a saw cop at noon. We'd
have them every Thursday or every Friday in the gym
for an hour and at noon. And so I remember,

(33:24):
I can't remember what tune it was, but I remember
playing the Beatles and I couldn't believe it. You know,
you know how the Beatles would be playing along you
you you'd be watching a video today, you watch a
video and they'd be playing a long and then this
this tension would build up with the girls and it
would build and build and building. Then it was the
explode into a scream. Everybody would scream at the same time,

(33:45):
and then I would kind of die die down on it.
Then it would slowly build up again. So three or
four times during the tune, whether it was Paul McCartney
doing the high falsetto scream or or they can imagine,
well I don't. I don't even know if they must
have been on Ed Sullivan, so maybe they imagine it
was Ringo shaking his head in this part. But so

(34:07):
I'm playing the record and there's no other reference. It's
not live, there's no video to go by, and the
tension is building, and I swear to god, all the
girls screaming at the same time. I want what is
going on here? And it's just just an observation. I
just it was just blew me away. The psychology, I

(34:28):
guess of it. How that can how how does that happen?
You know?

Speaker 1 (34:33):
And Okay, so you graduate from high school, what's your
next move?

Speaker 2 (34:39):
Or do UBC said goodbye to my mom, got on
the my mom and dad. My mom was had tears,
you know, because her little boy was leaving forever, as
it turns out, And so I I got to got
to my staying at a friend's place, and I went

(35:00):
to a I guess they call it a mixer where
it's like a frost week of freshman week. I don't
know what what do you guys call it, but call
it Frost week. So the big big community, the big
hall at the UBC, and I'm there and uh, there's
a band play and then they're you know, there are
me band And I have no idea what rhythm and

(35:21):
blues is. I don't have a clue about that. I'm
a surf guy. I've been playing surf for three four
years something like that. And uh, and I knew the
sax player. He was a friend of the family of
Brian Tansley, and he, you know, we started talking to me.
He said, he says, you know, I play guitar. Now
he says, really, he says, we're actually looking for a

(35:43):
guitar player or this guitar player. Our guitar players quitting
next week. Would you want to check it out? So
I joined that band, the band with the three Bryan's
and and me and me and the drummer, and did
that end try to figure out what R and B was,
what that groove was, and how to play rhythm guitar.

(36:06):
I didn't really have a clue. I was into playing lead,
you know, and just soul look, but I didn't know
how to play a hold on a rhythm. But I
figured it out, you know, and they were really patient
with me. And we did that for a while, and
then we got a singer, Kenny Steele, so we were
called Kenny Steele and the Chantells. Jamaican guy. He funny,

(36:28):
hilarious guy and a great He was a James Brown
fan and he would do all James Brown steps and
the splits and I'm sure he split his fans more
than once doing that on stage. And we were part
of the R and B scene in Vancouver. There was
probably eight of us or something eight of these bands,

(36:48):
and we'd do the circuit. We'd play, we'd play at
the UBC, at the frats and those were a blast.
You'd get just ship faced at those. There was a
lot of fun and and we played we played the arenas,
uh with multi band things. I promoted one when I

(37:09):
was in with Candy Steel. I promoted it Kendy Soon
I promoted it and we hired the other bands and
we hired a hall and it's called Land of a
Thousand Dances or something after the after the Wilson Pickett song.
I can't remember what what they what they gig was called,
but it caught on, and I think we might have
even got a bet of radio radio stuff. And we

(37:31):
hired it. Like I said, we hired this hall and
we there was like four or five R and B bands,
and we probably I'm pretty sure we headlined it. I mean,
why wouldn't we. We took a big chance. But and
it worked out great. Yeah, So that was that was
a fun thing to do. I've ember doing that.

Speaker 1 (37:47):
And what about school? Were you going to school?

Speaker 2 (37:50):
Yeah? Kind of, you know, I want to you. I
went to UBC. You know, I figured since I'm a writer,
I was. I figured I was pretty literate kind of
guy at the time, so I didn't really pay much
attention to English, but I aced everything else. I'd ace it.
I passed everything else at physics and history and all
this other stuff. But I didn't pay attention to English,

(38:12):
so I flunked English, so I couldn't go on the
second year. So I went. So I I think it
was it was something like that's a long time ago
about it's a really long time ago. But so I
I did that, but it wasn't it wasn't happening. I
my heart wasn't it. I just wanted to play music.
And from there I went to UH. I went to

(38:35):
b C i T, and I was I wanted to
get into I wanted to get into into it's a
British Columbia Institute Technology. I wanted to be a cameraman,
like in a TV studio. That's kind of what I
thought would be a really cool, cool show, cool gig dab.
But I couldn't. I couldn't get into b C I
T because my marks weren't good enough in high school.

(38:56):
I guess that's yeah. That was after after UBC, so
I enrolled in a night class. Of the task was
create a campaign to sell craft peanut butter and jel jam.
So that was you know, me and my three partners.
We came up with this this this I don't know

(39:18):
thing to do, not a great story.

Speaker 1 (39:28):
So you wanted to become a cameraman. You were playing
this R and B band. At what point do you say, no,
I'm just going to focus on the music.

Speaker 2 (39:37):
You know. I had a lot of a lot of
jobs I I went. I had my last job. I
was working on a bunch of warehouses. My last job,
I was working for the Coca Cola company. Were delivering
I was the delivery guy and six o'clock wake up
and seven o'clock start and we would drive her on

(39:57):
in the truck and you know, all these cases of
Fanta and whatever and take him into the local stores.
And I, because I was playing at night, I would
had had a gig. I don't think it was with
the Chantellas, there was. It was a splinter group from that,
and I was playing. I got a gig playing six
nights a week in a club in Vancouver, well Ken Harry's.

(40:21):
We had a we had a trio, guitar, bass and drums,
really great band. And I was doing that every night.
And then I was driving home, uh, staying with my
aunt uncles, and that was like a half hour drive
or whatever. Get into bed at three, up at six.
You know how long that lasted. So I fell asleep

(40:42):
in the cab and then the guy they fired me
right there on the spot and I'm you're useless, get
out here. That was my last gig. I went, you
know what, I'm just gonna I'll be okay, I'm just
going to play this, play these six nights a week,
having a blast loving it. What do I want to
have a street gig for? Okay, So what's the next band?

(41:07):
Well I got I got a job playing bass again
in a in a band called Glasshouse, and we were
playing the what was the name of it, I can't
remember the name of the club, and six nights a
week we had. There's no shortage of work in Vancouver
at the time. There were so many clubs playing six
nights a week, three sets. It was fantastic never you know,

(41:28):
and then Sunday off and then back at it. And
so this this trio that I had it, uh, I
don't really I can't remember the timeline if if the
trio was before it, or I suspect it was probably after.
But anyway, I had this gig, and now it's coming
to me. I had this gig with the drummer and

(41:50):
I was playing bass with the guitar player. There's probably
a key opener or something, and the guitar player wanted
to go on holidays, so we went on holidays per
week and I moved over to guitar and somebody else
played bass and the guitar player came back, and unfortunately
he didn't have a gig anymore, and it was his gig.
So I feel a little bit bad about that, but

(42:12):
that's kind of how it works, you know. And I
hooked up with the drummer, and so the drummer and
I we moved from from that club to All Kind
Harry's and we were we had a band called Fat Soul,
and we had two big guys sitting up singing out front,

(42:33):
and so we call ourselves Fat Soul. And then that
didn't work out for whatever reason. I think one of
the guys maybe went to jail and got deported or something,
and so it's kind of it's a little bit gray
for me in that how that all came about. But

(42:56):
suffice to say that, and this is going to lead
me up to my original co about that other band.
So we we were building back, the drummer and I
were playing together, and then I guess for somehow Brian
Newcomb came onto the scene. He was the bass player
and we had a different keyboard player, and then that

(43:16):
keyboard player went away and we got we got this
dude from Tacoma, Clyde Harvey, playing keyboards and singing, and
all of a sudden we were doing we were really
doing it. We started doing all original tunes we do.
We did a couple of covers. We did a really
cool combination of of day Tripper into Lickingstick James Brown song,

(43:37):
and we did a we did a cover of sing
a simple song. But we had an albums with the stuff,
so we rehearsed it and we ended up got together Maca.
We ended up we toured across Canada. We played in
calg We opened for Steppenwolf and we and we opened

(43:59):
for the Get Sue, who were humongous at the time,
and UH in Edmonton and UH we played the what's
called the Festival Express in Calgary with Janis Joppelin and
Grateful Dad. That was unreal, and then UH we we
moved to Toronto and we started playing around there. We

(44:20):
had I was in charge of accommodations, so somehow I
had a knack for finding houses that were either free
or two hundred bucks a month or three hundred bucks
a month. And we're there's five guys in the band.
We had two ladies living with our manager Lou Blair,
so we had to it had to be a pretty
big house. But I found I found a condemned house

(44:42):
that we all lived in. It was in Toronto, and
uh so we're you know, we used to practice. We
set up in there and we'd played. We had a
few gigs. We then one time we got a gig
in in Ottawa. It was it was playing at the
at the university there, and so we went up there.
It was two nights, so we went up there and

(45:03):
stayed overnight and did the two nights and we came
back to our house that was free. And the reason
it was free was because there was no plumbing, but
it had electricity for some reason. So we had a
hot we had a hot plate, and we had a
milk cooler you know where they put the big jugs
and milk in for in a restaurant. That was our fridge.
I don't know how we got that. And there was

(45:24):
a this is pretty yeah, this this is really down.
But yeah, I mean we were, we were. We didn't care.
We really had no pride. We didn't care. And the
only running water was at the gas station on the corner.
And we used to go down there every morning a
night or whatever and get our get our water for

(45:44):
our our coffee and stuff and so, and we would
we would practice in there, and we would jam. We
would jam for hours. And so we finally got this
gig up and up and in Ottawa and Carl to
the university. So we're up there and we come back
and our house free house that we're not paying any rents,

(46:05):
so we have absolutely no claim to has been taken
over by four or five speed dealers and fetamine dealers.
And I was a little freaky if they'd taken all
our stuff and moved it into one of the bedrooms
and set up their their place. And Lou Blair, if
if anybody knows Lou Blair, Lou is a wass his

(46:28):
bless his heart. He's a big guy. He's like six
three and he's a big guy and you don't mess
with Lou and a real he could bust balls. So anyway,
I just remember him taking a mic stand, because we
had everything in our in our van, taking a mic
stand into the into the house, and that kind of

(46:49):
solved the problem for us and we were able to
move back in the house again. So and of course
the irony is that we ended up driving these guys
to their next house. They found another dilapidated place where
they could take over. So we ended up driving them
and their gear back and then we were back in
our free house.

Speaker 1 (47:11):
Okay, And how does this eventually turn into lover Boy?

Speaker 2 (47:15):
Just just let me let me say so. We we
were lucky enough to get a recording deal with Louis
lou Blair as well, and we recorded an album and
that album is going to be released shortly if I
did a complete restoration on it, like over the Pandemic,
like I did on the Live in eighty two, and
that's that's going to come out shortly. So from there

(47:37):
I joined a band called Scrubble Okaine and it was
in that band for three years and we played Toronto
in Winnipeg and that and also recorded an album for
the same company RCA, which became Sony, And from that
I then I moved to Then that band sort of
fell apart, and then I met Matt for Nat Loveboy drummer.

(48:03):
He's playing in a band called Great Canadian River Race
in Edmonton. And I had no no gigs. I was
I was phoning all the agents around Canada wondering if
any if they knew anybody that was looking for a
guitar player, and they they said, the Great Canadian River
it is is looking for guitar players. So I went
and auditioned them as they auditioned me, and uh it was.

(48:25):
The music was a bit of a stretch. There was
a couple of the originals and was Stevie Wonder, which
I'd never done to Steely Dan, which I'd never played
that kind of a little more jazzy. But I was
up for the challenge. But the main thing is I
wanted to play with Matt, because Matt. When I played
with Matt, it was like an automatic thing. It was
we locked into the groove, no question, like no other

(48:49):
drummer I'd never played with. So I went, well, you know,
let's see where it goes. So we rolled that for
a couple of years and then I got a call
late night from the Streetheart Guys and Matt and I
joined that band for I guess a couple of years.
So I was fired from that band, but I was
still working with Lou Blair, the manager. He was he

(49:12):
was a huge support of me all through my whole
career and he had this nightclub called the Refinery Club
in Calgary, and behind it was a body an old
body shop was It wasn't a body shopping, but it
was a shell of a body shop. And he said,
I was working on a solo album at the time.
To be honest, I had been fed up with working

(49:33):
the lead singers and have him quit or fire me
or do something, you know. So I said, you know what,
I'm going to beat the singer hell with it. So
I started working on tunes and singing them and doing
demos for them. I got a hold of a four
track in this warehouse, and then I got I had
this gig once again, a bass player working for the

(49:54):
a CDC cover band. And we were rehearsing one night
in this warehouse in the monkst you know, in between
me working on my own stuff, and Mike Reno came
by and he used to work with the guitar player
and yeah, because he just left his band Moxie in Toronto,
just just right right then, so he was he was

(50:17):
at odds and so was I. We didn't have anything
going on really, so he would he and uh. Then
the guitar player were in the in the second room.
They were jamming, and I heard Mike sing and I
said to myself, you know, this guy has got an
amazing voice. Wow. I was like, he blew me away.
It's kind of like when I played with Matt. It

(50:37):
was like an automatic. This is amazing, This is like,
this is where I'm at. And I heard him sing
and I approached him and I says, you know, blah
blah blah, you're what an amazing singer. We shouldn't you
want to get together and see if we can you know,
do something. He says, yeah, sir, he says, I'll come
back tomorrow. So he came back tomorrow the next day,

(50:59):
I should say, and we wrote two songs together on
the first night, and that was That was the beginning
of That was it. It's never never turned back and
never looked back.

Speaker 1 (51:11):
Okay, prior to this, how do you view yourself as
an itinerant musician or are you still looking for your
one big break to become famous?

Speaker 2 (51:23):
Well you mean at that point, yeah, I would. I
had this naive thing that every band I was in
right from the get go, well maybe not the first
of the three I was in and WHINEVERBC. But when
I moved to Vancouver, you know, we did some recording there.
I figured this is great. We got all the elements.
You know, we got good songs, good players, decent image,

(51:45):
this is this is going to be great. And then
that was in every band I was in. I was
always that belief that I'm gonna this, this band is
going to take me over the dog. And I typically
I would give a band three years to arvich like
the time, and if it didn't happen for whatever reason,
because there's conflicts or we just couldn't get up, people

(52:07):
didn't like it enough, they weren't really responding to it,
or you know, and I would move on. And uh,
and I was I guess I was probably thinking the
same thing with working with Mike. We'll give it see
where it goes. And we we just we started playing

(52:28):
together and we auditioning drummers, and uh, Doug Johnson was
already I'd already done some of those demos before I
met Mike. He and I Doug Johnson, the loved Boy
keyboard player. He and I did some demos together, so
I knew Doug and it was the same thing. Doug
was it is It wasn't is the most amazing creator.

(52:48):
It's so creative and a great technician and great sounds
and really good player, so you know, and then we
we auditioned Mike and I. We auditioned a bunch of
bass players, a bunch of drummers, and finally, just you know,
Matt left Streetheart after I got the boot from it.

(53:09):
He stayed around for a year, a year or two,
and I guess he finally got disillusioned. Then he moved
back to Vancouver, where he was from and where Mike
and I and Doug had moved to. We moved to
be near Bruce Allen, who I think you might know who.
He is pretty famous dude manager Michael Buble and Exit

(53:32):
Bran Adams, and he was managing us, so we wanted
to be near him, so we moved.

Speaker 1 (53:37):
Wa wa wa. Believe me, I know Bruce a little
bit slower. Lou Blair is working with you. How do
you end up working with Bruce?

Speaker 2 (53:48):
Bruce and Lou knew each other from the clubs in Vancouver.
I know that we were working one club called the
Cave and Lou was a bounce there. That's when I
met him. Yeah, this is way back. They knew each
other forever, and uh so we were we put the

(54:08):
band together. We had Doug and Mike and me and
then we had a phil and bass player who later
quit what he wanted to be a stockbroker and said,
which is cool, but we never really had a drummer.
But Lou in his wish and said, you know, I
got a lot of connections, but I don't have Bruce
Allen's connections. I want to bring Bruce Allen in on

(54:30):
this and co manage you guys. If you're cool with that, well,
I don't know. You're the manager, dude, You need you
think you should do?

Speaker 1 (54:37):
You know?

Speaker 2 (54:39):
So I didn't know Bruce and Lou suggested that we
moved to Vancouver so that we could be available should
something happen. Plus, It's was much more of a center
for musicians and studios and everything. It was a center
of Western Canada still is. So we moved there and Uh,
then we we got to play, used to rehearse. Uh

(55:02):
we had. We had the most amazing drummer before Matt
left Streetheart, Brian to Loud McLeod. He was the guitar player,
drummer from Chilliwac uh and incredibly talented guy. He produced
my first solo album, Actually Hardcore with and Uh taught

(55:24):
me a lot of stuff. He had, he had a
he had a great boat. He used to record on
his boat, and he used to live on his boat,
and he had his amplifier, his marshall amp in the
hold of the boat with the with the cover over it,
and he would record on this boat. Can't imagine his
neighbors at the you know, at the marina. McCleod shut up,

(55:45):
you know, but so he was anyway, he decided, Brian
decided that he didn't want to be a drummer. He
didn't want to be our drummer. Or he didn't want
to be a drummer, and he gave us his notice.
But we weren't playing. We were just learning. Still, we
were writing songs. I think we're probably up to maybe

(56:05):
ten songs by then, and Brian Brian walked, so we
didn't have a drummer. But right at that point, Matt
moved back to Vancouver. So Mike and I went and
we wooed him back into you know, well let's try it.
Come on, man, try it. You might try it, you
might like it. And he was really, really reticent. He

(56:27):
was like, I don't want to I don't know if
I want to be in a band again. And I
just got went through this street yard thing and it
was a nightmare. I don't want but anyway, we well
what he got to lose. Plus he had a house
that we could rehearse in, so that was a that's
a real bonus force and uh we but before that,

(56:47):
before we moved into his house to we had this
rehearsal place in North Vancouver somewhere. And the bass player
at the time, Vern Wills. He amazing singer and amazing
bass player, but he wanted to be a guitar player
and he wanted to front his own band, which he's
totally capable of doing. So that fell apart. So we

(57:10):
didn't have a bass player or a drummer, but we
still let the core, the writing core, Doug and Mike
and me, and we wrote basically all the songs. We've
done a couple of covers in our career, but mainly
it's the three of us would do all the rating.

Speaker 1 (57:24):
Okay, you're living in Vancouver, Blue hooks you up with Bruce.
What happens after that career wise.

Speaker 2 (57:33):
Well, just to cut the shory, start Matt. Now we
had Matt, and then we needed a drummer, and Mike
and I went to we heard about this great funky
bass player played with it, an act got a tronic
called Lisa DelBello, and I think this is way back.
We were still living in Calgary at the time, because
it was in Red Deer, which is just about I
don't know, sixty miles or something north of Calgary. So

(57:55):
we drove up there and we were blown away by
this guy. And we didn't meet him. Wait, I think
we just watched him. Yeah, this guy's cool. So we
we called him up afterwards and invited him to come
out to Calgary, and I just remember when I picked
him up at the airport, and I remember meeting Scott
uh dearly departed Scott Smith, and it was like a

(58:17):
long lost brother meeting him with the right off the bat.
It was like instant ease. Just couldn't have a better
rapport with the guy. It was just magic. Same with
all the other guys. It was just just magic, totally
on the same pH musically. So then we started rehearsing
for real once we had We're all in Vancouver by
this time, and we had some of that. We had

(58:41):
every record company come up and come to our rehearsals.
I remember a couple of guys that come up and
they're in they're New York big for coats, and they're
standing around and looking all ritzy and and stuck up
and holier than now. And it passed and you know,
they don't have any attitude. They suck or I don't know,

(59:02):
we don't get it. So that was that we we
just we decided though, that we we figured we had
what it. We had enough songs, we had definitely had
the band. We had had had the songs. We had
an offer from Capitol Records, and they said, here's X

(59:26):
number of dollars, which was really not very much money,
not enough to finish the album. Here's X number of dollars.
And we figured it three albums, you'll probably be you know,
you might get a hit, you might hopefully you'll have
a hit by three. And we said, excuse me, no,

(59:46):
we were we were pretty cocky. You know, we figured
we weren't going to wait on for three. So Columbia
came to the party with some decent money, and but
we hadn't signed the deal yet, and we were talking
about we're going through negotiations back and forth, lawyer to
lawyer or whatever, I don't know, or manager to lawyer,
I have no idea, but we booked the studio and

(01:00:08):
we started recording before we had a contract. That's how
cocky we were, how sure we were that we were
had something going on. So that was the first album
we recorded.

Speaker 1 (01:00:20):
Well, okay, wait, wait, wait, you meet Mike Reno. How
long after that do you go into the studio that
you're just talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:00:30):
Well, it's probably a year and a half. It seems
longer than that, but when I'm trying to do the math,
you know, I met him in seventy eight, and we
recorded in seventy nine and it came out in eighty
you know, so somewhere on there.

Speaker 1 (01:00:43):
Okay, was the band ever playing live or were you
just wood shedding writing songs and rehearse.

Speaker 2 (01:00:51):
We were playing live. Our very first show, we opened
for Kiss at the coliseum or one of the big
rooms in back in those days in Vancouver, opened for Kiss,
and I guess their opening act got busted at the
border or couldn't get across the border or something like that.
And Bruce Allen being tied in the way he is

(01:01:13):
and was at the time, I mean he was he
had just come off off of bto so huge, humongous
talk about contacts. He knew everybody, every promoter in every
room to play, and he knew the promoter and he says,
I got the perfect thing for it. We love her, boy?
What okay? Whatever do you say? So Bruce and we

(01:01:35):
that was our first show and after so that opened
the door for us. It's like, here they are the
band that opened for Kiss, playing at your local bar
six nights a week. How can you how can you know?
How can you miss this? You know? So that was
then we started playing. We played in a bunch of
club shows, club dates. The night that we were auditioning

(01:01:57):
for columb be A, the A and R guy Jeff
Burns came out to see us in the he work
he worked for Columbia Records in Toronto. He came out
to see us, and he loved it. He basically signed us.
And then, as I say, we had to work out

(01:02:18):
the details. But I remember at that same show, or
maybe the next night or something, I pulled all our fans.
I said, here's the list of the songs we just played.
Pick your favorite ten and I gave it to everybody,
I don't know, maybe thirty people and just random like
and everybody was cool with it, and they ticked it
off and I went, okay, well then this one, this one,

(01:02:40):
there's our ten right there, and we that's the songs
that we recorded.

Speaker 1 (01:02:52):
Okay, there's a lot going on here in the background. Bruce.

Speaker 2 (01:02:56):
Now, Bruce.

Speaker 1 (01:03:00):
Being to the Canadian label.

Speaker 2 (01:03:02):
If you remember, we auditioned, as I were saying, we
auditioned for every label either it was sending them tapes,
showing up in their office. Me and Mike we did
a thing at Capitol Records. Uh, just the two of
us with Lou and we we uh we used to
record on this little ghetto blaster, just the guitar and vocals,

(01:03:24):
and we took that in and we played it for Capital.
The guy at Capitol us and he passed. He says,
there's no attitude. I don't hear it. Whis fair enough?
I mean it was, you know, it was a live
to guys singing and a little an electric guitar.

Speaker 1 (01:03:37):
Let's go to the recording. You end up working with
a murderer's row of talent behind the board. You are
the first band that works with all these people. Bruce Fairbairn,
Bob Rock, Mike Frasier, bit around how did that all
come together?

Speaker 2 (01:03:55):
We actually, we weren't the first we were. We followed
prism Oh right, yeah, and I and Bruce laid that
album on. He says, check out this album. It sounds
pretty good. And I know the team. You know, I'm
I'm I'm tied into the team. What do you think?
And Mike and I listen and we went, yeah, this
is amazing, uh, song wise whatever, But technically it sounded great.

(01:04:18):
You know, the drums, all the instruments sounded really killer.
So we said, let's go. That was that and they
were you know, so they were, they were. Everybody was
on board. Those three guys that you mentioned were we
recorded the album with, and then we recorded the second
album with him as well.

Speaker 1 (01:04:37):
Okay, let's start with the first album. What was the process?
What did Bruce and Bob ad if anything? At the time,
Bruce is a he is a uh his real love,
I think besides being a producer of US infantile rock

(01:05:01):
and Rollers, he his gig was it was a soccer
coach for kids, so he knew how to manipulate kids.
And we weren't far from that. Even though I was
thirty three at the time, it still had that fourteen
year old mentality, you know, and all of us were
like that, cocky and disrespectful and just rock and roll

(01:05:24):
guys and didn't want to hear from me, hear anything.
But Bruce had this way of getting the best out
of Matt. That was his main thing, you know. He
would I don't know what he said to him, but
he would go out and he would he would crank
him out, just like he would crank up the forward
and the soccer team or whatever. I don't even know
what if there are forwards in a soccer team, but

(01:05:46):
he would. He would use that psychology, his his child psychology, honestly,
and it worked great, and we would once we had
the drums down, then it was it was and usually
typically I would I would guess that Matt probably spent
two days in the studio maybe three to get all
that the nine tracks down, and of course I being

(01:06:08):
a co producer, I would be in there for the
next two months every day, you know. But Matt did
his three days and see you thanks suckers, and he'd
be gone, which is fine because we had it down,
and then we would then we would go and we
would you know, patch up everything that if we screwed up.
And to what degree did Bruce work with or change
the material?

Speaker 2 (01:06:30):
I think the main thing, the coolest, one of the
coolest things he did was he said, the kid is
hot tonight is too fast. It needs to be slower,
and we're going, oh, come on, man, really no, he says,
no here and I'd probably click it on the mic.
He says, doubt dun dun dun dun dun dun dun
da da da da dun dun da and we're going
dun dun dun dun dun dwn. I rock on around
and frantic, you know, and he says, you gotta sit back.

(01:06:51):
It's gotta be rent dun da da da dun dun.
So we recorded it like like Bruce said, basically the
that was that was a huge contribution.

Speaker 1 (01:07:05):
Okay, what about turn me loose? That sounds like to
a degree a studio creation with the synth intro. When
you went into the studio, how much of that track
was already established.

Speaker 2 (01:07:18):
Hundred percent because we had played it live, we'd already
demoed it with a different drummer. We demoed it on
an eight track exactly like that, Exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:07:27):
Like that with the synth intro and everything.

Speaker 2 (01:07:30):
Synth intro, dun Da Dunda on the bass, and with
Verne playing bass and another drummer uh playing drums who
I forgot Bernie Auvin. He plays with the headbins now
and a real good friend. He was our drummer for
a while and he so we cut that demo. And
the funny thing is that Reno did that flame anyway,

(01:07:51):
that really high fly with my way. He did it
off the cuff. It's like, okay, what wasn't thinking about it?
He just came out and then he had to reproduce it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:04):
Okay. So how long did it take to do the
album from start to finish?

Speaker 2 (01:08:09):
I don't know, probably a month, it wasn't that long.

Speaker 1 (01:08:14):
How long after that month was it released.

Speaker 2 (01:08:18):
It wasn't very long because it was only released in Canada.
That's getting back to an earlier question. We auditioned all
these US labels and they all passed, so we said, well,
screw it, we'll release it in Canada. We'll do so
much damage in Canada they don't they won't be able

(01:08:38):
to refuse us. That was our cock sure method, you know,
that's how we felt. That's truly how we felt, we're
not going to wait around. We want to get this
out now, get it out while it's fresh, and get
and then on to the next one, you know. And
if it's not going to be in the States, so
be it. But we wanted to get it out. But
we figured it's got to get it released in the

(01:09:00):
States because Mike and I went to this the same
the day before we went to Capitol Records with our
little ghetto blass or cassette demo. We went to this
big thing in La It was with Van Halen and
and uh Oh Cheap Trick and Oh Addy Money, all
these great bands at the coliseum I think it's called

(01:09:22):
with that big huge outdoor. M is it still called that? Yeah, okay,
And we looked at each other half with you and she's, yeah, well,
this is what we do. We're right in there with
these guys. I mean, we have our own unique slant
on it, but we're not We're not like a country band,

(01:09:45):
We're not a we're not a ballad band. We're not
an R and B band or a rock band. This
is what we do. We could open play with these
guys any day. When turns out we actually had but
over the years.

Speaker 1 (01:09:57):
But okay, the album is done before where it's released.
All I remember is that summer of nineteen eighty, Turn
Me Loose is like a one list in Smash. You
only have to hear it once. Did you guys know
that hearing the track before it was released?

Speaker 2 (01:10:19):
Well, we put it it opened. It opened the album,
so I think it opened out.

Speaker 1 (01:10:27):
No, the kid is hot, the kid is hot today.

Speaker 2 (01:10:29):
That opened the album. Oh, you're right, You're right. Because
we had that, we had to pace it fast slow, fast,
low fast slow. Yeah, like we still do, like we
do live still, fast, slow, fast, slow. I don't know.
I mean, I guess we're pretty happy with it. And
everybody we played it for we're like, yeah, you know what.

(01:10:50):
What really gave me an indication that we were doing
something right. There's a record store called it, I think
A and A Records here in Vancouver down on Seymour
and or Gramble and something long gone. Somebody painted the
album cover on the outside wall. I went, what are
they doing? This is what a huge honor for somebody

(01:11:13):
to do this. And I don't know whether it was
the record got the record promotion guys said let's do this,
or if it's just some fan or the owner. They
just they you know. So not only did we get
front Rock, but we had a freaking album cover on
the side of the like a billboard that somebody painted
on the side of their building. That blew me away.

Speaker 1 (01:11:35):
Okay, what about the video that was one of the
first videos before MTV.

Speaker 2 (01:11:43):
Well, you know, it was just just when MTV came out.
We had a gig in Wichita, opening for probably opening
for Kansas, and we hadn't done any videos. What's a video?
What do you do? You know, there's no shindig or
anything like that, or you know, to do a video
for So I remember flicking around board out of my

(01:12:07):
brains on a day off and stumbling across MTV. I
couldn't believe it. I probably watched it all day. I
was just blown away. And I swear probably the next week,
Columbia was calling us up saying, we want you guys
to do a video. We've got a storyline for it.
We want you to come to New York. I think
it was a Beacon theater. We want you to come

(01:12:30):
to the theater and we're gonna shoot the video. So
we we just we got the video and we got
a lot of flak for the slapstick of it, but
we didn't care. This this is our big chance. And
I knew who We all knew who MTV was. They'd
all been out maybe for I don't know, maybe a

(01:12:50):
month or something, but we were we were ready. I mean,
we're crank to do that. So we were happy.

Speaker 1 (01:13:00):
Okay, from the outside it looks like overnight success. What
was it like?

Speaker 2 (01:13:05):
From the inside, it was overnight success. It really was
another indication of our early you know, something was really happening.
Was We're playing a club in Lethbridge, Alberta. And we
had a gig opening for Toronto in Edmonton. So it
was like a four hour driver or whatever it was.

(01:13:27):
It was a long ass drive to get and I
remember pulling into Edmonton on the day of the show
and they were playing the Kid Is Hot Tonight on
the radio. I've never heard any of my songs ever,
and I've been in the business. I was thirty three
at the time, and I'd done so many recordings with
different bands. I might have heard on a special show.

(01:13:51):
I think they had a streetheart. They played a couple
of days, but this was the first thing, the first
lover by we'd heard and I was, this is it, baby,
we're there, you know, And then we do and did
our show and whatever. But that it was a great thing,
no real landmark, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:14:10):
Okay, the first album comes out, it's gigantic. Do you
have to sit down and write the songs for the
second album? Where do you get these songs for the
second album?

Speaker 2 (01:14:20):
We had a lot of them written, and we were
we were playing the clubs and we would try them out.
I remember one day we were playing I don't know
if we were warming up, but we were playing in
a fairly big room in Vancouver, and we were working
on trying to work out the bugs and working for
the weekend. And we were doing it at sound check

(01:14:41):
and I remember Lou standing there listening and he came
up to me and he was rating about it, said
this is this is great. So he got it right away.
But we were writing on the road. We were we
were rehearsing as we're opening for probably opening for Easy Top,
we're playing the arenas. I can remember setting up getting

(01:15:04):
the crew accept all the drums and keyboards and guitars
and amps and everything in the shower of the gig.
The shower room. You know, it's where the where the
basketball players or whatever would would get chased, and we
were rehearsing Lucky Ones and the Lucky Ones that the
intro came from a jam on stage in Montreal when before,

(01:15:28):
you know, when we were touring on the first album,
so we were writing on the road. We knew what
we had to do and we were we had it
down though, but you know, by the time we went
in to the studio, we had three weeks to mix it,
to record it, and mix it three weeks complete because
we had a gig opening for Journey and we wanted it.

(01:15:51):
We had to make that deadline. I mean, who wouldn't
pass up a gig opening for Journey?

Speaker 1 (01:15:57):
So what's the backstory? How did you I'm up with
working for the weekend.

Speaker 2 (01:16:04):
I was walking down to the beach where I lived. Uh,
it was a Wednesday, and I'm walking along and I'm
what the hell is everybody? This place is usually packed
and there's nobody on the beach, nice decent day, no
one on the streets. Well, I guess everybody's waiting for
the weekend. Oh hello, that's kind of a cool line.
So I've you know, packed that away. In my p

(01:16:25):
brain and uh so that was the start of it.
And uh then I took it and I was working
at in my in my house on my ghetto blaster
once again, and my I used a metronome for the drums,
and I left to guitar through a tiny little lamp,
and I would just sing the song, and I had

(01:16:46):
dad they call the chords and the melody and and
the and the and then the beast the beepart waiting
for the weekend. And then, uh, I didn't know what
the words were dead, and I had h and I
had a kind of roughed out. I had all the
all the bits and pieces, but that I didn't have
him in the proper order. And just speaking about that

(01:17:10):
time in Montreal when I wrote that that the intro
the Lucky Ones on stage, and remember of going to
Doug and saying, what are these notes? I don't have
my recorder, Dan, what are these notes? So he wrote
it out on a napkin for my reference down the road.
So I had that part. But so it's either later

(01:17:32):
that night or maybe the next night in Montreal, and
I had I had my ghetto blaster around my guitar,
my whatever, and I remember finally putting it together, the
puzzle together, all the parts, all the key changes and
the breakdowns and the little the little wah wah part
in the in the middle, and all the parts Kiss

(01:17:54):
came together. I still didn't have the lyrics, but I
had all the music and most of the lyrics done.
It's so at that point I'd spring it on Reno.
Then he goes, well, what about working for the weekend?
And I went okay, not knowing, not thinking, what a
brilliant line that was, what a great although I still

(01:18:17):
think everybody's waiting for the weekend, which is also true,
but working gives it a different, completely different slant. So uh,
thank you, Reno. Good good one. And then we needed
we needed We were recording it actually, and we had
all the lyrics and we needed one more line. And
I remember sitting here at Mushroom Studios. I know earlier

(01:18:37):
I said we recorded the second album at Little Mountain,
But we recorded the album at Mushroom and mixed it
at Little Mountain with that same team.

Speaker 1 (01:18:47):
Okay, you do three albums with that same team. Their
biggest successful. There are a lot of bands. They're working
so hard on the road, they're recording songs. They really
don't know what the hell is going going on. They
don't know if they're being ripped off, they're making any money.
What was your experience?

Speaker 2 (01:19:07):
We had and still have total trust in Low and
Bruce that they would take care of us. They invested
twenty thousand dollars into us before we were working. They
were I was making like, not a whole lot, but
I was making subsistence. I was making They were paying
everybody in the band like a hundred bucks or two
hundred bucks a week. I can't remember what. It was

(01:19:28):
enough to pay the rent and you know, help out
out of their pockets, out of their faith. And they
we did that for over a year of writing the
first and part of the second album, and and then
they you know, they made they took care of us.
They made sure that that we got paid and they
and Bruce already knew all the promoters and he wasn't

(01:19:49):
going to work with anybody shady. That said, we have
had a couple of promoters bail on us, but in
you know, not that many considering the thousands of shows
we done. I can remember two instances where the promoter
was this, you know crook.

Speaker 1 (01:20:06):
So When did you finally see some money.

Speaker 2 (01:20:13):
I guess it was probably after Get Lucky, because we'd
sold We sold five hundred thousand albums of the first
album in Canada alone, which is five times platinum. Maybe
it's six times plat. I don't know what it is now,
but pretty amazing. And we'd been so we were touring,

(01:20:33):
but you know, it was really expensive because we were
as a warm up situation. But we started getting a
bit of relative money. And I remember the first thing
I bought about a Harley and paid cash for and
I was so proud of that. It was like thirteen
thirteen thousand dollars on the barrel and I was like wow.
And I think Reno bought the two of us bought

(01:20:54):
Harley's on the same day from the same dealer cash.

Speaker 1 (01:20:58):
Okay, okay. If I don't know anybody who's on the motors,
likely luas and dumped it, whether it be their fault
or somebody else's.

Speaker 2 (01:21:05):
What was your experience, I'm alive and kicking, still here
to tell the tale. No, I never one time, one
time I had a bagger. It's kind of the big
extra faring on the front and the big bags on
the back. And the humongous seat, and my wife Denise
was on the back, and we were going to one

(01:21:27):
of the dealerships here in Vancouver just to check out
the new bikes. It was like, I don't know, demo
day at their local Harley dealer. I remember pulling up
around the corner and we kind of had to hurry
because there was a bus coming up the lane. So
we had a scooter around the corner and we got
caught in a kind of a groove for somehow, and

(01:21:48):
of course everybody, all the bikers are lined up waiting
for their turn. They're all standing outside the store watching
me dump the bike with my wife on the back.
That that was pretty pretty humiliating, but whatever, you know,
at least we didn't we didn't get hurt. I mean,
we got hurt, but I wasn't bad. You know, It's
not like we broke anything that we had Bruce's and
egos mainly, but that's really touchwood. That's the only time

(01:22:13):
I've really, you know, dumped the bike a motor tircle.

Speaker 1 (01:22:25):
Okay, the fourth album, you switch it up, you don't
work with Bruce and Bob anymore, and you have a
song written by Butt laying so what's the backstory there?

Speaker 2 (01:22:36):
Personally I wanted and I don't know how it happened,
but I really wanted to do and this is this
goes back to a night that I spent with Billy
Gibbons when he got me my first guitar deal and
he arranged that. But we were we were talking about
his album and he was saying, I just wanted to
have more guitar man, more guitar. Of course, what else

(01:22:57):
is he gonna have. He's a guitar band. There's no
keyboards in that. So I just took that to heart
and I went, yeah, I like that content. I'd like
to make a more of a guitar album, more of
a guitar riff album as opposed to do Do Do
Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do,
some kind of guitar riff based album. And so we

(01:23:19):
we started doing that and we figured who's the guy,
who's the who's the guitar producer? Who would who could?
Actually this came it was Tom album, of course, but
before that we wanted to do we still want to
do a guitar album, and we wanted to who can

(01:23:40):
we get to produce and engineer this album that is
from that school, and we thought, why don't we see
if we can get Mutt Lang And Mutt Lange went, no,
I'm busy or whatnot interested not whatever reason, you know,
but he somehow he said, but you could, you could

(01:24:00):
use my engineer, Mike Shipley, who's also a producer in
his own right and an amazing engineer. And I went
close enough, it's really really great. So we worked with
Mike and we worked at the studio in Montreal, and
we worked there for a month and it didn't work out.

(01:24:21):
I won't get into any further, but it didn't have
the groove, it didn't have the production. It had the sound,
but we just couldn't get the groove going. There was
something to do with the sampling of the dramas and
it was too weird. So we took those demos as
it turned out to be demos, back to Vancouver. So

(01:24:43):
we had all a bunch of the tunes ready to
go written well at least, and then we went, okay, well,
let's let's go here in Vancouver. Let's try somebody else.
So we called up Tom l and he came and
produce go produce the album and that's that's what happened there.

Speaker 1 (01:25:07):
And where did the butt laning song come from?

Speaker 2 (01:25:09):
Ah? From Mike Shipley. Mike, in his wisdom, said, you
don't have it. You don't have the single. Guys, you
got a lot of really good songs, I guess, but
you don't have the single. He says, let me call
Mutt and see what he can come up with. So
Mutt does his absolute total magic and he calls us

(01:25:33):
in the studio. So I'm on the phone and he says,
check it out, and he plays, and I went, holy crap,
this is amazing. Can you can you phone me back
in ten minutes? I want to set up a recording
for it with it throughout the tech here at the studio.
So they set up and they could record off the
phone onto a I don't know, some cassette player or something.
So he did that. He called us back and so

(01:25:56):
but it was a real crap because the telephone only
goes down, so you don't get any low, low and low,
and we couldn't hear what the base was doing. So
we went all right, but at least we can cut it.
So we took that track that cassette and Matt and
what we all we played along to that and cut
the track playing along the Mutts demo. That was kind

(01:26:19):
of our click track, just played along to that, but
we still couldn't hear the bottom, so we waited. We
put it in a request of Mike, can you please
send us a quarter into the real tape, full frequency
tape so we can hear what the hell's on the track,
so we can duplicate it. And he was very gracious
and send it to us, And so that was one

(01:26:39):
track we ended up re recording it, but at least
we had we had the anchor for that album.

Speaker 1 (01:26:48):
Okay, So then the next album you go back to
Bruce and Fairburn, and this time John bon Jovi and
Richie Sambora help you write. Note Warrius was the hit track.
How does that come together?

Speaker 2 (01:27:06):
I don't know how I got John's phone number, probably
through maybe through Bruce. I don't know. It was slipper
slippery when we out then, I don't think so I
can't you know, I don't slippery when Wet was already
out by that point. Yeah, okay, so through through Bruce,

(01:27:27):
Bruce Fairburn's connection through with Slippery when wet, Uh, he
gave me John summer and I call up John and
he said, yeah, come on out. So I I think
I stayed at his place and where I was there
for two or three days and we wrote Notorious and
a couple other things didn't make the grade, but we
we wrote it with Richie and Desmond Child came in

(01:27:48):
on the second day. If you could imagine that being
in the room with Desmond Child. That guy is a monster.
He's had so many well, so it's towards John and
Richie obviously, so you know, I was in a really
good company with those guys. But that's funny because Desmond
gave me sword and Stone. He says, you should you

(01:28:12):
should take this to the guys see if Brino wants
to sing that. And I didn't know that Kiss had
written it, or or that it had all been already
been released, but didn't matter. I thought it was a
great song. And I took it to Mic and he
went out, it's too something. I can't remember what he said,
but it just wasn't it wasn't up his up his alley,
you know. So anyway, I've recorded it myself on hardcore.

Speaker 1 (01:28:35):
But okay, so how do you decide to go back
to Bruce after Tom.

Speaker 2 (01:28:42):
I have no idea. That's a really good question. I
don't know. Maybe maybe because we thought he could connect
with Matt or he was a he was a he
he you could get it done on budget. That was

(01:29:02):
probably it because they're they're loving every minute of an album.
Cost us a ton of money because we did that
whole session a month at the studio and didn't get
anything out of it, so that was really expensive. And
I'm sure that's what I was. So probably Bruce and Lou, Bruce,
Allen and Lou are going, We're not going to spend

(01:29:24):
that kind of money, are we please? And yeah, okay,
So I'm sure that's why we went because we knew
that Bruce could do it on time and on budget,
and Bruce agreed. But the one cavity he says, you
don't have the songs, but once again, you don't have
the anchor, So come up with one more song. So

(01:29:47):
I wrote Hometown Hero and that was that was enough
for Bruce to commit.

Speaker 1 (01:29:56):
Okay, so you make five albums with Columbia, they all
have status gold better then for ten years you don't
make another record. What happened with the band.

Speaker 2 (01:30:10):
Just got other interests. I guess got some just other interests,
who knows. I mean, I kept writing, but I don't know,
just distractions. Living just didn't have that that that desire for.

Speaker 1 (01:30:29):
Well, well, did the band have a meeting and break up?

Speaker 2 (01:30:35):
We had a meeting with Bruce when when uh Nirvana
hit and he said, we were we were in the
throws of planning of our biggest tour ever for us.
It was gonna we were gonna have moving stages and
I mean the whole not the big production, and Nirvana

(01:30:58):
came out and completely stole our thumb and everybody else
who had big hair basically, and so that was that
was pretty much that and we and Bruce said, you know,
radio stations aren't going to play your ship. They're they're
not into that. They're into there in the grunge you

(01:31:18):
guys are You don't. They're not going to play your stuff,
So why why bother? I guess it's like you're wasting
your time. You're not going to get any airplay. I
kept writing in that, but we never it just kind
of I'm trying to think of the timeline on that.

(01:31:39):
If we stopped touring, if we just I guess we
did I guess we just it took the win out
of completely out of ourselves. Oh well, I guess we'll
hang it up then. And that's and then I went.
Mike did a couple of solo albums. I did, uh
some solo stuff. I put a band together, played around
Western Canada, Matt and played with Tom cochran and Kim

(01:32:05):
Mitchell and Doug who is an amazing He does soundtracks,
he always has done and still is. So he just
did that. He didn't care. So we were basically finished.
You know, we're all kind of like. It's not like
we hate each other or we were broken heart at
It was just like, okay, well that was a fantastic run.

(01:32:28):
And then Brian Adams called us up and he said,
you know, Brian McLeod has cancer and he can't he
needs some funds. He needs some help financially so he
can get the treatment. And I want to throw a
fundraiser for him at eighty six Street here in Vancouver,

(01:32:49):
and would you guys play? And one time we hadn't
played together in more than two years or three years,
can't remember, and of course what a great idea. So
we put it back together again. I remember we didn't
actually rehearse, but I got together with Doug to figure
out just to kind of brush up on our parts,

(01:33:11):
the guitar versus keyboards, what we were doing, what we
did live, because it was a little bit different on
the record. And that wait, so that was one after
and I think we did maybe four songs and Bto
was there. I mean, I mean a member standing on
stage with Fred Turner, who was one of my all
time idols, and hearing him sing the hot those screaming

(01:33:31):
ie notes and me standing right beside him and probably
no louder than what I'm talking right now, and this
blood curdling scream is coming out of him, and I went, Wow,
such a great singer. And we raised a bunch of money.
But the thing is, we had such a good time
doing it. We went, well, that was dumb. What the

(01:33:53):
hell did we hang it? This is too much fun.
We forgot it. We forgot about that aspect. Guys, this
is really fun to do. What a great thing to
go out and play music. Why don't we test the waters.
Let's get a little tour. We'll play the interior of
which is a Canadian way of saying what I don't know. Well,

(01:34:14):
maybe you say it. Every time I say it, people
go the interior. Yeah, the interior British Columbia. That's Kamloops
and Cologna and there's small towns and just you know,
not make it, keep it low key and just feel
it out. See how we feel about it, See if
we enjoy it as much as we think we might.
And we had a blast, and that was in ninety
two and we never stopped. We just kept going, never stopped. Well, pandemic,

(01:34:39):
we stopped.

Speaker 1 (01:34:41):
Do you think if Lover Boy was an American band,
people's attitudes towards it and its legacy would be different.

Speaker 2 (01:34:52):
I don't think so, because haters are going to hate
and fans are going to love you no matter what.
I don't know we got. I don't I think so
because people that come to our shows are the same everywhere,
everywhere in Canada or you know, it's still they respond
the same way. So it's we communicate to them and

(01:35:14):
they communicate back. It's the same thing. And they're limited
tours in Europe. Same thing.

Speaker 1 (01:35:21):
Okay, at the end of the day, decades later, lover
Boy the name plus minus or irrelevant.

Speaker 2 (01:35:32):
You know, I thought the Beatles was a weird name,
Rolling Stones? What what is what kind of name for
a band is that? You know, we're back in my
day everybody who had named a for cars Chevelle's and
whatever and surf names, and the Beatles came out. I
want that sowhere. But you know, first first gig we had,

(01:35:53):
we were called lover Boy. We're playing all original music
and the people in the audience were pelting us with
whatever they had, mainly ice cubes. They hated it. But
it just becomes it's like Kleenex, you know what, You
got to know what the product is. Kleenex by itself
is what is that? You've scrubbed your house with it?

(01:36:16):
You know? And so it's it's just a brand. It's
a pretty cool brand. It's because it does elicit you know,
either they hate it or they love it, or they
don't care. They just they just remember the music and
they don't associate the name just with anything else.

Speaker 1 (01:36:32):
Okay, coming up with the band name is not easy.
Usually come up with list and people say yes, and
people say no, how did you come up with lover Boy?
And how hard was it to get the band to
agree on it?

Speaker 2 (01:36:45):
Well, it's just Mike Mike and Doug. I mean, so
it wasn't really a band. We were thinking of calling
a Dean Renal band or a Renal Dean band, because
it was just Mike and me. And Doug was kind
of he was working with another band. He wasn't really committed,
but he had helped me out on so he was
in our minds he was part of the band, but
in his mind he wasn't really part of the band yet.
So it's just Mike and I had to make all

(01:37:07):
the decisions. And I tried it out on Denise's my wife,
Denise's younger brother. He was, I don't know, fifteen or whatever,
and I said, so with your back off, and I
went Dean Ring. Nobody went okay, complete like over whatever
kind of name. I went, well, that ain't gonna fly.

(01:37:28):
So I'm looking at my at at Denise's magazines, and
she's got Chateolaine and all these Vogue and all these
Girl Lady magazines. And on the back cover is a
ad for cover girl. I want cover girl, cover cover boy,

(01:37:49):
cover boy. Oh that's a great wait cover we don't
want to be doing Wait, obviously, what the next step
is the lover boy? So I went, this is a
good name. This is what my mommy used to tease
me with when I was a kid. Hey, lover boy,
let's go. I don't know why, but that's stuck in
my head. And I sprung it on a Reno and
Lou and everybody went, fine, now we know who we are.

Speaker 1 (01:38:14):
Okay to what the degree did being Canadian in the
Canadian scene contribute to the success of the band or
the success of your career you personally?

Speaker 2 (01:38:33):
Well, I've always said that it's just a line on
a map. We're so close musically. I don't know political whatever,
but musically we're so close to people in every place.
Why is this border here? Why don't have to be
Canadian and you guys have to be American? And I
got to jump through all these hoops to come down

(01:38:53):
and play for you and try and get all the
business done, and that it was just it was. It
was frustrating, but at the time, but I wasn't worthy,
you know, all the other stuff I'd done wasn't worthy
of of. We could barely get a recording deal in Canada,
let alone breach the Great Divide and get into into

(01:39:14):
the States or UK or wherever else. So I just
remember our first show in the States was at the
Tacoma Dome, opening for Sammy Hagar. It's funny, and here
we are. We're back playing with him again this summer,
but opening for Sammy and Mike and me getting dressed

(01:39:35):
and we're in the shower because they all they have
this the best sound and we're singing, we're singing your
national anthem. I mean, we probably didn't know the words
for it. I still don't, but we're singing, we're singing
your national anthem in the soul blown away that we're
finally here, we are, we made it. We're playing the USA. Man. Wow,

(01:39:57):
it was a big deal for us. It really was,
because we'd been stuck and not stuck. We were always
doing what we wanted to do, and we're never tied
down by being Canadian. There was always acceptance. Not I
mean if we suck, we suck, but any of the
good stuff we did, there was always acceptance. Far it.

Speaker 1 (01:40:17):
Well, you certainly have success. And it's funny because from
bands of that era, you know a number of your
songs have lived on where those have died. So Paul,
I want to thank you so much for taking this
time to speak with my audience.

Speaker 2 (01:40:31):
Well, it's been an honor and I've I've been following
your days in Aspen. And let me tell you one
thing that you taught me, Bob. The best thing I
think you taught me. People don't want albums, they would
just want singles. And that's been my mantra for ten years.
That's why we don't have hardly any albums. We just
keep throwing singles out when we get around to it,

(01:40:52):
you know, so thank you for It's made so much
sense to me. I mean, i'll score, I'll look for
an album, i'll play, I'll whip through bam bam, bam
bam bam. Oh there's one song that like and get
rid of the rest of the playlist, you know. So
it's really if you can get put out one song.
What a great song. Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:41:13):
I think I'll leave it at that. Thanks so much
for any event. Until next time. This is Bob left
Sets