Billboard Canada FYI Bulletin: Loverboy Hits 15 Million Worldwide Album Sales

When Paul Dean and Matt Frenette jumped ship, abandoning Streetheart to create Loverboy, few would have guessed that 40+ years later the band would still be playing arena shows attracting 20K a night when on tour and cumulative album sales would almost double since their peak successful years in the ‘80s and ’90s.

The latter was authenticated last week by Music Canada and Sony Music Canada with a unique award acknowledging the west-coast band’s continuing success that started with the self-titled debut album released in 1980 that included two enduring North American hit singles: “The Kid Is Hot Tonite” and “Turn Me Loose.”

But it was a strange set of events that helped to launch the band that started with ex-Moxy lead singer Mike Reno, keyboardist Doug Johnson and bassist Scott Smith. First, Dean and Reno found themselves separately down on luck and temporarily living in Calgary where the former’s friend and former manager Lou Blair co-owned The Refinery, a successful roadhouse music hall.

Based on a two-track demo the two recorded in the back of the club, Blair took them on as co-manager and sensing he had something, pitched Vancouver manager, Bruce Allen, then winding up a wild ride with Bachman-Turner Overdrive and building a career for new client Bryan Adams, and producer Bruce Fairbairn who was fast making a name for himself at Little Mountain Sound studios with engineers Mike Fraser and Bob Rock. All would go on to great fame and, oh, by the way, “Turn Me Loose” was one of the two songs on that demo.

At this point, Loverboy had a name, a demo and some supporters and the demo was sent to various record companies in Canada and the U.S. and returned minimal responses. One major label in Canada pitched a lowball offer, but fast of the mark was CBS Canada A&R VP Jeff Burns who heard magic and flew from Toronto to Vancouver to meet with the band and the team. Today, Dean doesn’t hesitate to say “We owe a lot to Jeff for having the faith. He came in with a good offer that afforded us a budget to go and work with Bruce Fairburn and Bob Rock in a professional studio and included in the package some cash for us to operate with.”

Burns’ enthusiasm for the band and the project wasn’t halfhearted and he won support from Micky Eisner who was then heading A&R at Columbia in the U.S. But that was half the battle, and Bruce Allen gives Burns high credit for “going to the wall” to win support for Loverboy with the regional branches across the U.S. when the album was released in the summer of 1980.

Allen hit the road running, negotiating over 200 tour dates for this newfound band with headlining draws that included Trick, ZZ Top, Kansas and Def Leppard. Except for Rush, there hadn’t been a Canadian act signed in Canada that had been successful in breaking into the U.S. market. BTO was signed by the head of Mercury Records in Chicago, and the Guess Who had a direct deal with RCA America.

So, 44 years later, Loverboy is drawing crowds, earning streams,and airplay, generating catalogue record sales and the merch business hasn’t collapsed. It’s been a long and successful career, and 15 million album sales say the band still has a lot of fans.