Loverboy - Get Lucky
#497
By Brian Kushnir
October 7 1981
Loverboy
Get Lucky
Genre: Loverpop
Allen’s Rating: 4 out of 5
Brian’s Rating: 3 out of 5
Highlights:
Working for The Weekend
When It's Over
Lucky Ones
Take Me To The Top
Who Wants The Guy in the Hot Red Leather Pants?
After the success of their 1980 debut, Loverboy was a contender. They had a hot and sexy band based solidly on the lover archetype and ownable red branding, riding in on a Canadian power pop goose and seemingly going straight up to the top with their sweet, fiery and inspiring sound. Question was, with their second album “Get Lucky” in late 1981 could they continue their cupid streak?
Loverboy wastes no time in making their saucy case, and with three swift knocks of a cowbell we’re galloping straight into one of their biggest ever hits, “Working For The Weekend.” Loverboy knows what they are and immediately places you at the center of a tantalizing romantic vision, YOU are off the deep end, YOU are in the show, YOU want a piece of Mike Reno’s sugary sweet heart. It's an anthem of anthems and just thinking about it here you are compelled to sing along and join them in their romantic quest to get to the weekend that everyone including YOU have been working for. Are we there yet?
Unfortunately, while the tunes all sparkle with catchy hooks and Bob Rock engineering sheen, “Get Lucky” heads mostly downhill from there, because the kid who was once hot tonight and seemed like a kind of James Dean lover/hero is now someone who’s been on the road too long, gotten himself into multiple overlapping relationships, been dumped a few times, and is jaded, pissed, and likely hungover to boot.
Who ever said it was easy being Loverboy!?
The “Get Lucky” songs are like a series of Joan Didion shorts slouching around the unspoken sordid drama at the intersection of love, fame, and violence. Trying to get someone in the sack by convincing them that their current lover is a jerk. Lovers sneaking around while cheating on their other lovers. Finding the ‘sexy’ in being mugged by a gang. Haters hating on you for making it almost to the top of the rock game. Fighting and cheating your way through your unhappy relationships.
Only in “Take Me To the Top,” the last track on the record, do we finally have a song of uncontrollable Loverboy lust and unbridled carnal desire, with a slinky groove that slow-burns its way to an inevitable peak, hearkening back to the original Loverboy promise.
“Get Lucky” Loverboy sounds like a band coming again and again out of a department-store dressing room with different outfits each time, almost never satisfied with how it is looking. We all know they chose the tight red leather pants for the cover of the album, which was spot on for the band, but what you actually get with the music on “Get Lucky” is more like patched-up jeans.
I’m left with a couple of unanswered questions:
Does The Weeknd ever think about releasing a cover of “Working for The Weekend?”
What really may have happened when legendary promoter BIll Graham brokered a “sit-down” between Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson and Loverboy’s Mike Reno backstage at Day on The Green #2 in Oakland in July of 1982, when Iron Maiden opened up for Scorpions, Loverboy and Foreigner? George Montgomery and I were both at the show (unbeknownst to each other at the time) and I have intel that the conversation would have gone something like this:
Bill Graham (hereafter, BG) “Listen you motherfuckers, we have 55,000 people here today who are expecting a good time, a massive show to put on and I will not tolerate any crap from any of you.”
Bruce Dickinson (BD) “All I can say is that Iron Maiden are the band that fucking gallops and there’s only going to be one fucking galloping band on this stage here today. In Oak Land.”
Mike Reno (MR) “I will concede that we have a few songs in our oeuvre that may include some galloping riffs. That said,” he said while raising one eyebrow, “don’t you like my tight red leather pants? We all have them.”
BD: “Real rockers don’t wear underwear! And have you met Eddie, our 10 foot tall zombie-demon mascot who shoots lasers from his eyes and treats Satan as his puppet?”
MR: “Oh, hi Eddie....” He takes a sip of beer. “Actually I always get new underwear before each show, it’s one of the ways I get in touch with the local fans in each market so…”*
BG: “Get the fuck out on stage you motherfuckers.”
*h/t Andrew Anthony
https://open.spotify.com/album/6oZb0svo8JG9mVxZmHjPxE?si=LXCGb7V_TE2JrOwuHRyj_g
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