http://www.ifmagazine.com...ticle=2495


By A.C. FERRANTE, Editor in Chief
Published 11/29/2007

While the ‘80s were certainly good to the Canadian rock outfit Loverboy, as they rocked the charts with one memorable hit after another (“Turn Me Loose,” “Working for the Weekend,” “Hot Girls in Love,” “Heaven in Your Eyes” and many others), the band proves with their first studio album in more than a decade that its title JUST GETTING STARTED says it all. As the rock purity that Loverboy was known for throughout the ‘90s and into the 2000's was supplanted by grunge and boy bands, their new release puts them back at the top of their game with a super-charged ten-song disc that won’t disappoint old fans and will likely earn them brand new one’s as well, something that was intentional according to the band’s lead singer Mike Reno (who co-penned nine of the ten tracks).

“We took a lot of time writing the songs and once the songs are written properly, as soon as Loverboy starts playing, it sounds like Loverboy,” explains Reno. “One of the smart moves we did, we got a group of younger people involved to give it that great sound. We had a guy mixing it, who is a lot younger than us, gave it a nice feel for radio. We turned the guitars way up, turned the keyboards down a bit and made the vocals right in your face and the drums are pounding. I know it has a 2007 sound, but with a classic feel.”

While record reviewers tend to champion the old guard when it fits and is even sometimes unwarranted (think of how many recent Bob Dylan releases are heralded a work of genius when casual music fans would be hard-pressed to get through it once), the praised lavished on JUST GETTING STARTED is definitely earned and it's even come as a pleasant surprise to Reno himself.

“What’s the amazing thing and I’m not saying this out of school I hope, we're getting five stars out of five on this,” says Reno. “I worked really hard on it, but I didn’t think we’d get five stars out of five.”

Yet the hard work has paid off and the band is even embracing the new formula for putting out music. Eschewing a major record label, JUST GETTING STARTED is as indie as they come and like The Eagles latest disc, physical copies of Loverboy’s new disc is only available through WAL-MART and SAM’S CLUB while you can digitally download it from iTunes and Amazon.com for under $10.00

“Half the record companies are worse than loan sharks,” says Reno. “Luckily, when we were putting records out [in the ‘80s], people were buying them and everyone did pretty well. Nowadays, if they don’t do it right, it’s going to go nowhere. So we thought, we’ll just give the record away for $8.82 available only at Wal-Mart and you can download it from various download services. I tell people it’s cheaper than a Happy Meal and twice as good for you.”

Satisfying both his musical muse and the fans, Reno feels invigorated by the second coming of Loverboy and spoke with iF Magazine in Part 1 of this exclusive interview about the creation of their new disc and the fall of the record industry as we know it.

iF MAGAZINE: The one song on the new disc that sounds the most modern to me overall is “Fade to Black.”

RENO: Adult contemporary radio is jumping on that one, because they’re considering it a power ballad. I never saw it as a ballad, and it’s perfect for A.C.. And rock stations are playing “One of them Days” because it’s just a classic Loverboy guitar riff and a lot of the stations are trying to jump on “Just Getting Started” because it’s like an updated “Working for the Weekend.”

iF: We all know the record industry is in big trouble, but it seems all the acts that made an impact in the ‘70s and ‘80s, it’s more beneficial for them to go on their own and find a smaller label or something they can control, because they benefit more because the overhead is low and they have a built-in fan base. With new artists, they don’t really seem to know how to market anymore, they don’t know how to build a fan base and they take all the artists money.

RENO: The major labels are just destroying themselves by not getting hip and getting into the digital world. So we decided to work with a group of people that I knew in Vancouver that had put out five artists and made them hugely successful in Canada. I was writing some songs for some of his acts, and they said “these songs sound a lot like Loverboy songs,” and I said, “you asked me to help you to write and that’s how I write.” Then they said, “why don’t we do a record, you have such a fan base, we can go international with it.” The other bands they were working with were mostly for Canada. So what they did, we turned the heat up on the whole project and went international with it.

iF: It was a smart move, because you have ten perfect songs on the disc, which is more than you can say for so many acts nowadays.

RENO: What we did too on this record, we had 35 songs on this record and we cut it down to ten songs. The criteria was, if it wasn’t going to be a Top Ten hit or playable on the radio, then it wasn’t going to make it on that new Loverboy album. We were really hard on ourselves making that decision, I think that if you decide to buy the record as a fan, you’re going to like all ten songs.

iF: The whole experience of a record store seems dead and it’s shame. There’s none of that tactile discovery anymore. It’s nice to have the immediacy of finding something online, but otherwise, the death knell for the record stores seems to have become a self-fulfilled prophecy.

RENO: Wal-Mart actually sells more music than all the other stores together. They only have 100 artists and they do really good job with them. It was their suggestion and ours, that it’s priced so cheap, why not buy it. And if you go to the website, after you bought the record, you get another song for free on to your computer.

iF: For this new generation, digital downloads are all they know.

RENO: I went to my son’s room the other day and said “do you have any CD’s,” and he said “no,” and I looked around and he had one CD, and he said “check this out,” and he had 39,000 songs on his iTunes. He downloaded them one at a time.

iF: I think the positive part of the digital revolution, it has forced bands to really re-evaluate not hacking out an album. Throughout the ‘90s and the early 2000’s, you couldn’t buy a “single” in a store. You had to buy a whole album to get a whole song and many times the rest of the album wasn’t as good. Now, you can go, “I like that one song, I’ll go and download it” and if you like the whole album, maybe you’ll get the whole album. I think because the labels were so idiotic killing the concept of being able to buy a “single” so they can force someone to buy a whole album that wasn’t very good and that made many artists and band’s a bit lazy.

RENO: I think it’s also nice that the music is back in the hands of the people. It has nothing much to do what the record companies trying to shove something down your throats. You have total control of the music. With digital downloads, you can offer it to people on You Tube or My Space. It’s all about accessibility and speed nowadays. Everyone wants everything “right now.” It’s a fun time for music and musicians. And anyone can record a whole album nowadays on a laptop.

iF: I think it’s great, because artists make more music and put it out there instead of the label going, “you can’t release an album six months apart,” and on top of that, they don’t have to be broke to do it, because they’re seeing most of the proceeds.

RENO: You know what I think is going to happen next. I think in the near future, band’s are just going to record constantly and offer new songs every month. Here’s a new song this month, and a new song next month [as downloads].

iF: I think it’s harder for emerging artists. There’s still a lot more work for them to do get the general public to know about them. At least with the internet it gets them a wider audience, but I think for established artists it’s made it easier to get their music out there and own. In a way, it’s payback for all the greed labels showed to their artists in the past.

RENO: You’re totally right. That’s what makes me happy. The big guys who refused to change, and they said “no, it’s not going to do that,” and they’re still saying that. They don’t see the writing on the wall. I was tired of it. Independent was the way to go and was the way for me and pricing it so cheap. You want to buy it. $8.00 and change for the whole thing.

I used to love "Hot Girls In Love" back in the day!