They're still big — it's just the crowds that got small

By Beth Kaiman
Seattle Times staff reporter

SCOTT COHEN Wearing his trademark headband, Loverboy frontman Mike Reno shakes hands with a fan while he sings during a July performance at the Emerald Queen Casino in Tacoma.

E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Most read articles Most e-mailed articles

Other links Search event listings Search movie listings Sign up for Movies e-mail

Eddie Money is a ghostly smoky blue. Periwinkle maybe. Yes, his face is a weathered periwinkle purse, but his hair is beautiful. Glossy and conditioned. His hair has done well for itself.

The plastic beer cups are raised. Dozens of hands reach up to pump the "I love you" sign to the beat of Money's anticipated opener: 1978's "Two Tickets to Paradise."

It's OK by this crowd that Money is 50ish now, apparently comfortable in a lime green sweatshirt and jeans, and that by the fourth song, "Take Me Home Tonight," any trace of a strut has deteriorated to a sweaty trudge and each spin concludes with a profound exhale.

It's OK, too, a month later on the same Emerald Queen Casino stage, when Mike Reno, lead singer of Loverboy — the group responsible for the inexplicably enduring "Working for the Weekend" — emerges big-armed and pot-bellied in a tank top, black sunglasses and red bandana twisted into a headband.

The crowd goes nuts. They remember the Loverboy uniform from nearly 25 years ago. They are grateful for the memory. They respect Reno's decision to forgo the red-leather pants. Time has had its way with them, too.

One by one, especially during the summer, rock's also-rans of the 1970s and 1980s slog through the Emerald Queen in Tacoma, the Skagit Valley Casino in Bow and fairs and festivals around the country, rejecting any notion that if the crowd can remember you in spandex and gold chains you should probably stay home — or perhaps produce.

Rick Springfield, Air Supply, Blood Sweat & Tears, Three Dog Night, most of Foreigner, George "Bad to the Bone" Thorogood, Cheap Trick, Alice Cooper, K.C. and the Sunshine Band and Village People — all in varying states of preservation — all are making stops in the state this year. As they have since their hits ended, they play to smaller audiences, for far less money, and in settings so lacking in glamour that egos are checked as frequently as the amps.

	"This is my midlife crisis, and I want to go back, way back," said die-hard Loverboy fan Calleen Shanahan, 39, of Vancouver, Wash., holding up album covers while screaming to the band.

All the while, though, they are boosted by the fans who never forgot, like 39-year-old Calleen Shanahan of Vancouver, Wash.

Shanahan has seen Loverboy three times so far this summer, enshrines pictures of the band on her desk at work alongside those of her children, and thinks of ticket stubs as keepsakes from a life of Loverboy love. She pulls from her scrapbook a tiny treasure: "July 16, 1999, Taste of Beaverton."

"Don't laugh," she begs. "They were great. They are still so great."

The members of Loverboy say the memories of multi-platinum albums, stadium concerts, eager women, incessant radio play, a plane chartered from Arnold Palmer, and appearances on "American Bandstand" and "Saturday Night Live" are points of pride, not haunting images. They made their peace with changed circumstances awhile back.

Drummer Matt Frenette remembers the moment exactly.

Frenette tells of sitting in the back of a cab in Reno, maybe seven or nine years ago, with guitarist Paul Dean.

They were headed to a so-called "routing gig," a show booked between other performances, perhaps a couple of county fairs or bigger shows. The band had visited the performance hall earlier that day, Frenette said. "It smelled. Smelled of beer. It was a really ugly place."

As he and Dean sat in the cab, they complained, felt sorry for themselves and caught the attention of the driver.

The driver explained that he was a musician, too, if a more minor sort, and they ought to stop the self-pity. Then, this admonishment: "It's not where you play; it's how you play."

	SCOTT COHEN After making his way to the stage, Loverboy fan Ron Johnson, 44, of Shelton, shouts to lead singer Mike Reno during a show at Emerald Queen Casino in Tacoma. "It was rockin', " said Johnson. "They work hard and put on a really good show."

"Whenever we're in a place we think isn't great, or we're feeling down, Paul and I will look at each other and remember that," Frenette said.

The story is perfect. Too perfect?

Frenette insists it's true, and he stops to tell it in the Emerald Queen parking lot, walking through a rocky construction site, between two bulldozers, on the way back to the construction trailer that serves as the band's dressing room.

Frenette, small and fit and 50, is still sweating from the concert — a performance during which his extended drum solo got some of the strongest applause from the half-empty hall.

The size of the crowd, maybe 700 or 800, was a disappointment. "We were here a few months ago," Frenette reasoned. "Maybe we're back too soon."

Loverboy plays every weekend during the summer, this year scheduling 47 shows from April through October. On Thursday the band is scheduled to play in Spokane at The Big Easy Concert House.

"It's a living," said Dean, the guitarist, now 58. "We still get money from 'Working for the Weekend.' It gets a lot of radio play. A lot more than I ever thought it would. ... But we've got kids now and money to make and yes, the good part is, we still like playing together. It'd be bad if we didn't, wouldn't it?"

Reminiscing and gambling

The "classic" rock bands, said George Robinson, casino manager at Emerald Queen, continue to get bookings because they are good for business.

K.C. and the Sunshine Band and Village People — a natural doubleheader if there ever was one — nearly sold out the Skagit's 2,700-seat outdoor theater this month. Michael Bolton, even though he lopped off that hair years ago, did not.

The Skagit Valley Casino features three restaurants and a 108-room hotel, so it is more of a weekend destination than the Emerald Queen.

At both venues, though, management counts on the musical acts to draw crowds that gamble.

There's no science to predicting which acts will bring in the gamblers, but finding performers who appeal to 35- to 45-year-olds is key, said EQC's Robinson.

"If you bring in bands with a younger crowd, they don't have the money to spend in the casino," Robinson said. A too-old crowd, he added, just heads home after the show, somehow steering clear of the 1,500 slot machines.

So while Eddie Money only sold 900 tickets for his June performance, "we notice that his crowd wants to stay."

Robinson wouldn't disclose how much individual acts are paid but said the average is $30,000 to $35,000. Air Supply and America, probably a little less, he said, and Blondie — coming Sept. 3 — closer to the $50,000 maximum.

Tickets generally run from $20 to $60.

"We take the mindset if we sell out the shows we want to break even and make money at the casino," Robinson said.

Sweatin' to the oldies

Fans lined up for more than 45 minutes after Eddie Money's show to get a moment with him, maybe a kiss and, because age is supposed to bring a degree of selflessness — have him autograph a T-shirt he was peddling for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation.

	LYNN GOLDSMITH A 1982 photo of the band Loverboy.

"Kids are God's little creatures. You know that," Money whispered to the crowd between songs.

They didn't care that his face showed the wear of chain smoking (Money even smokes while playing the harmonica) and a past drug problem that he frequently jokes about during the show.

He sang great, still put out a provocative pout and posed at will in his road-tested I'm-about-to-be-overwhelmed-by-your-sexiness-pose — the one where he clutches the side of his head in seeming delirium and scrunches up a fistful of that pretty hair.

"He's delicious," said Dana Sharratt, 40, of Tacoma. "Listen, he brings it all back for me. I had a 1978 Camaro, I was wearing black stiletto heels and did a lot of damage to the hood of my car. And I used to listen to Eddie."

Calleen Shanahan, the Loverboy fan and mother of two teenage girls, is more refined in explaining her allegiance to a band she has adored since growing up in Mississippi — though she says she still could "drown in Matt's [Frenette] eyes."

The band, especially Reno's vocals, give her joy, even giddiness and "who gets that as an adult very much?" she asks.

Shanahan listens to Loverboy every day, sometimes on the way to school, where she works as a teaching assistant with a disabled student, sometimes making up an errand just to jump into the car and turn up the volume.

She laments the loss of bassist Scott Smith, whose body was never found after a boating accident in 2000, but doesn't care that the surviving members don't look the same — that Frenette has less hair, that Reno has more paunch.

"None of us looks the same, so it's not just about forgiving them or overlooking it," Shanahan said. "It's remembering a time."

And so when Reno closed the concert by removing his bandana and wringing it out until a substantial stream of sweat dripped to the floor, women shrieked. He teased a couple of times, then tossed the bouquet to the crowd.

This time, Shanahan didn't catch it. Maybe Sept. 18 in Sequim.

Beth Kaiman: 206-464-2441 or bkaiman@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

E-mail this article

Print this article

Search archive

More Entertainment & the Arts headlines...