from the archives....Loverboy

I just read in the news that with the release of the new Charlie Angles movie the old eighties band Loverboy is looking to get famous again. Yeah, and I wonder what color their sky is? But anyway I gots a great Loverboy story from back in the day, it’s kind’a mangled but you’ll get the gist of it.

It was back in eighty or eighty-one and I was bouncing at Blayney’s in Westport. Here’s a little known stoner fact for the kids, back in the sixty’s when hippies circle danced roughshod thru the streets of Westport. The space that Blayney’s occupies used to be a chinchilla farm.

True story, swear to god, ask any old hippie, go on, I dares ya. But back in the eighties Blayney’s used to be the spot in Westport for the young and hip to hang out, and many a touring band fell down those steps to party and such.

Steve Steven’s and the Billy Idol band, James Dio, who was shorter then a muthafucker but had this bigassed Samoan bodyguard that was a total prick, Huey Lewis and the News, Pat Benatar, who was a total spinner, just to name a few.

So one night it was a cat by the name of Kevin Mahogany, who’s now a famous jazz singer, Jeff Black, who tours out of Nashville now, and myself on door duty when the band Loverboy came stumbling down the steps.

Oh, in case the down the stairs thing had you confused, for those of you not from the area Blayney’s is a basement club, Loverboy ended up hanging out all night and being the talkie bastards that they were, me and Kevin became friends with a few of em, especially Matt the drummer.

As a matter of fact they dug us so much that they offered me and Kevin a spot on the tour bus as bodyguards and shit. All we had to do was show up at the hotel with our bags ready to go, but that’s another story.

Now back in the eighty’s Westport was a lot wilder then it is now, and they had their own gun toting Security Company to keep the peace. Now the owner of the security company bred his own guard dogs so every one that worked for him either had a Doberman or German Sheperd.

I think the cat feed em babies or some such shit, cause these were the biggest muthafuckin dogs I’d ever seen, all teeth, feet and ass, you could’a thrown a saddle over em.

So to make a long story short, when the bar closed I ended up on the sidewalk with Matt Frenette and other members of Loverboy just in time to witness the famous Westport Friday night cleanup.

This shit was rude; when the clock hit three am the Westport security company would form a skirmish line at Westport and Broadway. Then they’d start that gunmen’s walk down the middle of Westport Road, but instead of six-shooter’s they had these giant salivating dogs.

And this was what we called the Westport version of crowd control, cause when the dogs showed up it was time to get off the street and go home. But this night was especially special cause for some odd ass reason the crowd decided to start this big assed riot between what used to be the Harris House (now McCoy’s) and Blayney’s.

Muthafucker’s were all about beating each other down and shit until the security cats let the dogs off their leashes. Then muthafucker’s were running so fast they had cartoon streaks behind em.

Coming from the quiet street’s of Vancouver, Canada, Matt from Loverboy having never seen shit like this freaked his ass off.

You had people screaming and fighting, huge dogs the size of Shetland ponies running everywhere biting whole asses off people and here’s Matt the famous drummer from Loverboy trying screaming and trying to climb up on my shoulder’s. Yeah, it was quite the scene. Dogs eating asses and rock star’s freaking.

"and the monkey flipped the switch"I