Maybe no band was more definitionally ’80s than Calgary, Canada’s Loverboy. With primped hair, pleather pants and a spangly rock sound, these vaguely heart-throbby, regular-guy rockers from the Great White North were turned loose by a record deal upon an entire continent of teens — the same cohort that would, within a year of the band’s U.S. arrival, become the first MTV viewers.
You can guess what happened next. With the emergent radio-video colossus in their corner (Loverboy had previously been turned down by seemingly every record label in the Western world), there was no stopping the Loverboy advance, at least not until ’80s kids aged out of their band crushes and a decade of make-out rock gave way to grunge.
Until that reckoning, though, Loverboy’s hooky pop-rock heatseekers — sung with sheer belief by a kerchief-wearing tenor frontman, Mike Reno — spread like Canadian wildfire. With so much glammy excitement emptying bins and filling seats, America soon responded in kind, producing New Jersey’s own Bon Jovi.
“Working for the Weekend” and “Turn Me Loose” were the party yin and break-up yang of the Loverboy songbook. And there was more going on in those two tracks than you might have expected, coming from people who would sign off on “Get Lucky” and “Keep It Up” as album titles. “Turn Me Loose,” their very first single, was a minor-key burst of rock-operatic melodrama, with Reno topping out thrillingly on his promise to “fly.” For all its populist party energy, “Working for the Weekend” also contained a bit of empathetic musing about people’s need to be wanted: “Everyone’s trying to get it right.”
“The Kid Is Hot Tonite,” their second single, signaled that Loverboy pretty well knew what they were in for: “We heard he opened up a brand new door/Well you know that’s what I’m lookin’ for/We’ll have to wait and see if it makes you scream for more.” They weren’t so cursed with self-awareness, however, that they didn’t sieze their moment. Alongside the platinum records they landed a hit single, “Heaven in Your Eyes,” on the original “Top Gun” soundtrack. Reno and Ann Wilson sang “Almost Paradise,” the power ballad heart of the “Footloose” soundtrack. Two more thoroughly ’80s movie-music touchstones would be tough to choose.
In a scene from Richard Linklater’s 2016 film “Everybody Wants Some!!” a group of college baseball teammates are getting ready for a night on the town: It is 1980 and we see these coiffed studs slapping on cologne and combing their mustaches to the slick opening guitar chords of “Urgent” by Foreigner.
Kudos to the filmmakers for picking the right band to represent dudes stepping through the doorway of ’80s America. A multi-platinum rock act that basically owned FM radio for parts of two decades, Foreigner are on a farewell tour with their old stadium mates Loverboy and with only one original member, British guitarist Mick Jones, still available for callbacks to the rock era.
Jones’ key partner was Lou Gramm, a versatile American singer who could purr, plead or belt out rock phrases with conviction. As collaborators they stormed the charts and the airwaves with a self-titled 1977 debut and went on a seven-year, five-album roll. Foreigner racked up hits and reigned supreme no matter what was happening in punk, disco, new wave, rap and metal. They rocked hard enough to pack stadiums yet also wrote full-hearted confessionals. Lines from their immortal ballad “I Want to Know What Love Is” — “I’ve got nowhere left to hide / Looks like love has finally found me” — wouldn’t be out of place in a Supremes or Four Tops song.
At their best, Jones and Gramm (later replaced on vocals by Kelly Hansen) turned great pop tropes into contemporary rock. And with catchy tunes for every phase of romantic life — “Feels Like The First Time,” “Waiting for a Girl Like You,” “Hot Blooded,” Cold As Ice” — making love songs cool for people raised on Van Halen was a feat they soundly achieved. Between Foreigner and Loverboy you will surely be ushered back into the era that awaited Linklater’s eager lads.
Loverboy and Foreigner perform at 7pm Saturday, July 8 at iTHINK Financial Amphitheatre in West Palm Beach. GET TICKETS! ~ Olivia Feldman and Sean Piccoli
