First of all, Mike, Eagle Pass is all about baseball. We used to play baseball every day and one day I left the game early and my friends asked me where I was going and I said, "I'm going home to watch Loverboy on American Bandstand.
M: We go way back then.
Yes we do. How was Mississippi?
M: Last night I got a phone call and the show got cancelled. I was in Palm Springs playing a round of golf or two so they called us to re-schedule the show, so I'm a bit sad about that because a bunch of my friends like Jamie Jameson of Survivor and his family were going to come by and see us, so I'm a little sad.
That's a flash from the past, Survivor.
M: I know they've become good friends over the years.
One of my friends, who are all rock fans and definitely Loverboy fans asked how did you come up with the name Loverboy?
M: That's a funny story really. That's gonna go back to 1978. Paul and I were writing songs and we decided if we're gonna do this, we should come up with a band name other than Reno-Dean or something like that which would've been like Brooks and Dunn or something like that and we noticed that our girlfriends all read Comsopolitan and Vogue magazines and Paul looks at me and says "Maybe we should call ourselves Coverboy. Instead of being a Covergirl, we'd be the opposite and we'd maybe be paying attention to what we're wearing. When we hit the sack that night it was Coverboy. The next day, Paul said, "What if we call ourselves Loverboy? I said "Yeah and if we don't get our kicked for being so presumptuous, at least people will notice and remember the name. It is a little presumptuous to call yourselves Loverboy. So it went from Reno & Dean to Coverboy to Loverboy.
That's awesome. You had to have influenced Springsteeen, but that is you on the cover of the Get Lucky album cover.
M: That was before Bruce Springsteen by the way.
It was before Springsteen, that's why I'm telling you you probably influenced him.
M: I've got a good Springsteen story. I was staying at a hotel, the Sunset Marquis in Hollywood, California back in the early days and I was getting ready to go and there was this little bar in the front of the hotel and I was having a bee waiting for my friends. Springsteen walks in and he sits at the little bar table besides me and I kind of got nervous. I didn't say anything. I didn't want to be the guy to say "Oh my God, it's Bruce Springsteen," then he comes over to me and says, "Hey your Mike Reno from Loverboy," and shakes my hand. I said, "Yeah, thank you for noticing," like wow!
Your an icon though. Your picture is an iconic one.
M: You know what Loverboy's been a real pleasant story. We've had one major tragedy in the band and other than that it's been pretty swift. You know when we lost Scott Smith in 2000 while he was out doing what he loved,boating, that was a real step back. I didn't know if I could get back on that horse. He was not only our bass player, over the years he had become my best friend.
I'm so sorry, Mike. He was one of the faces of Loverboy. It truly was a tragedy.
M: Other than that it's been a great experience for us. A lot of great fans everywhere we go.
I feel that Loverboy was the blue print for a lot of bands in the 80's. I've been listening to Get Lucky on cassette. A friend of mine said, "What, cassette, what is that?"
M: I've signed a few eight-tracks in my time.
You guys are a working man's Bon Jovi. Those guys owe a lot to you, I think.
M: In the beginning, we were very successful and they had done a few records and they were searching for something. They ended up asking who are producer was and where we recorded. So for their great album Slippery When Wet, they used our engineer, they recorded in our recording studio. It was quite a compliment. Little did we know it would go off to sell 20,000 copies. When they came to town, they'd given a song to our producer they said we could do and the song was called You Give Love a Bad Name. They thought it was a tongue in cheek song for Loverboy. The producer said "You can't give that song away, that's going to be a number one song!" and we go "Really?'
Reno had the opportunity to grant us these few minutes before jetting back home to prepare to deliver what is surely going to be the greatest rock show in the history of Eagle Pass.
For the rest of this insightful interview with Mike, go to thenewsgramonline.net .