Always on My Mind

Album: Loverboy (1980)
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Songfacts®:

  • From the group's first album, this was the first song that Loverboy lead singer Mike Reno and guitarist Paul Dean wrote together. It wasn't released as a single, but remains one of the band's favorites. When Songfacts spoke with Paul Dean in 2012, he said, "The first night that we met, we just started writing songs right then. We sat down, 'What have you got?' 'Well, I don't know, I got this.' And I don't even know if we had anything. I mean, we just started to play. That tune is a real mystery to me how that was written. I got a pretty good picture on most other tunes, but I guess it was just an adrenaline thing. It was like, 'Hey, this is cool.' This guy can sing and I can play and we can write together and I can sing along with him. This is good. And we just started, and out came 'Always on My Mind.'

    We recorded that tune live in Winnebago about 5 years ago. And I remembered it's the only time we played it with Spider (bass player Ken Sinnaeve, who replaced Scott Smith after Smith died in 2000) and the only time that we've played it live probably in 30 years. Mike wanted to do it, Spider learned it, and we played it that night. And killed. That's actually going on this album. And because it's our tune and because we can, we rewrote the lyrics a little bit, updated them, took them away from a teeny bop boy/girl situation more to an adult, just a little bit more updated."

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