Notorious

The Zoo Crew has been spinning some fine vinyl for all you Zoo Freaks, and the needle just dropped on “Notorious” by Loverboy from their 1987 album Wildside. That track has the kind of polished hard-rock punch that filled arenas back when red leather pants and bandanas were the uniform of the day. It opens the record and still sounds like a statement from a band that knew how to craft a hook without losing the edge.

Paul Dean has told the story of how the song came together more than once. He connected with Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora while they were all orbiting the same Vancouver studio scene with producer Bruce Fairbairn. Dean flew out to New Jersey, stayed at Bon Jovi’s place for a few days, and the three of them worked up a handful of ideas. Only one stuck. Dean brought the title “Notorious” and the line that became the chorus hook—“every mother’s nightmare, every schoolboy’s dream”—while Bon Jovi and Sambora supplied the driving riff and other pieces. Mike Reno later helped shape the final version with Dean, turning it into a true four-way collaboration. The result sits right at the front of Wildside, the band’s fifth studio album, cut at Little Mountain Sound with Fairbairn back in the producer’s chair after a brief detour.

The lyric itself has a street-level origin that Dean has described in interviews. He was standing outside a venue one night on the road, watching the crowd roll in. A young woman walked past wearing fishnet stockings, high heels, too much makeup, and a chopped-off T-shirt. The image struck him immediately as the kind of look that would make parents worry and young guys stare. He pulled out the little dictaphone he carried and spoke the phrase into it on the spot. That casual observation became the backbone of the chorus. It is pure rock-and-roll observation—no metaphor stretching required—just a snapshot of the scene outside a show. The rest of the song builds around that image: a lone wolf on the prowl, a senorita with a certain savoir-faire, and the repeated declaration that she is notorious for getting everything she wants.

Wildside arrived at a moment when Loverboy’s earlier multi-platinum run was cooling. The album still went gold in both Canada and the United States, and “Notorious” became the lead single that kept the band on radio. Critics noted the familiar Fairbairn sheen—tight arrangements, big choruses, and the same Vancouver studio team of Bob Rock and Mike Fraser on the engineering side. For longtime listeners it felt like a continuation rather than a reinvention, which is exactly what many fans wanted. The cover itself, a woman on a motorcycle against desert mountains, matched the song’s restless energy.

The band that delivered all of this started in the most ordinary way possible. Mike Reno had been singing with Moxy and was back in Calgary after that chapter ended. Paul Dean had just left Streetheart and was writing songs alone in a warehouse that used to service city buses, the windows blacked out, a ghetto blaster on the floor. Reno was leaving a club one night, heard the guitar, and stepped inside. They talked, then wrote. The next day they wrote more. Within a short time they had pulled in keyboardist Doug Johnson, drummer Matt Frenette from Dean’s old band, and bassist Scott Smith. The name itself came from a night spent flipping through fashion magazines with their girlfriends. A Cover Girl ad turned into “Cover Boy,” then Dean dreamed the word Loverboy and it stuck. U.S. labels passed at first; Columbia Canada did not. They booked Little Mountain on their own dime, cut the debut, and the rest is the long string of hits that still fill classic-rock playlists.

Reno has described those early Calgary days as a mix of construction-site jobs in forty-below weather and warehouse jams that felt more promising than anything either man had been doing. Dean has said the chemistry was immediate—he heard Reno sing and decided the solo project could wait. They relocated to Vancouver to be closer to manager Bruce Allen, kept writing, and turned the rejection from American labels into fuel. By the time Wildside came around they had already sold millions, won a stack of Juno Awards, and become one of the first Canadian acts to earn Columbia’s Crystal Globe for overseas sales. The red pants, the bandanas, the high-energy shows, and the songs that radio could not ignore were all part of the same package.

Listening to “Notorious” now, the Bon Jovi connection adds an extra layer. Those were the same years Bon Jovi was rising fast, and the cross-pollination between the two camps produced a track that feels like both bands at once—Canadian arena rock with a New Jersey melodic kick. Dean has noted that working with Bon Jovi and Sambora felt different because they were so tight as a writing pair; he contributed the title and a couple of key lines while mostly listening and judging. The song still works on stage, and the band continues to tour with Reno, Dean, Johnson, Frenette, and Ken “Spider” Sinnaeve on bass. The original chemistry that started in that Calgary warehouse has lasted decades.

You can find the full catalog, tour dates, and more stories on the official Loverboy website. The band keeps an active presence on Facebook, Instagram, and X. Fans also gather in the Loverboy Fans Facebook group to share photos, memories, and set-list notes from the road. And if you want to keep hearing deep cuts and the stories behind them without the usual interruptions, the place to be is THE ZOO. The Zoo Crew will keep the records spinning for the Zoo Freaks as long as the requests keep coming in.