First, a prolegomenon: Can this blog withstand any more of what Jean Leclercq (with reference to monastic theology), in The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, calls “reminiscences,” that is, individual recollections of fragments of learned theology or scripture, however “out of context,” in service of a particular theological formulation at hand? Or, translated for present purposes: Can we ever truly get beyond theo-musical recollections of the 1980s? I suppose that one answer is: Yes, we can and yes, we will, but not in this post. Another answer would be: Which of us, lovers of rock and theology, can ever free ourselves of all the rock that is part of our “logic of concrete individual knowledge” (to quote Karl Rahner) of what matters most in, through, and beyond our lives?

So: Doesn’t an indulgence in rockish extravangance require releasement to the pleasures of a veritable mandala of Loverboy tunes?

Given the pop-rock tasty hooks full of come-ons, I wonder why I didn’t associate Loverboy with Bon Jovi back in the day as mutual masters of an overlapping (and who can deny, so pleasurable) craft. But whereas I thought of Jon Bon Jovi as a rock star (the hair was a big part of it, and also his terrific sense for stylized moves), I thought of and still think of Loverboy lead singer Mike Reno, no doubt unfairly, as a really talented frat boy. He never seemed Dionysian, he just had a whole lot going for him (aside from the headband and that taunting, pleading yell of a throat), but most of all, he was a hard, hard worker, who was going to get wasted and laid not a moment after the set. Even then you knew he was most likely to be medicating, like so many of our frat friends, and my God maybe us, too!, his fear of a false life.

Many of Loverboy’s 80s videos have him sartorially signaling, if not actually performing, “workout.” The headband, as profoundly as one can have in these matters, was part of his “exercise.”

What kind of exercises of headbandish turning me loose can these be (even as late as 2008, where you see him in a disclosive moment preparing the headband upstage at 1:37 before he starts working so hard for us), such that, in the enjoyment of Reno and his Loverboys, they coinhabit the physical and the conduction into the more? Can Reno’s headband yet come to us as occasion and symbol for that kind of physical-psychical askesis that Pierre Hadot, in Philosophy as a Way of Life, and with ancient philosophy and Christianity, calls “spiritual exercises”? Or, in Reno’s plea–or is it eschatological cry, or theodicial accusation?–”I hope you’re with me when it’s over.”

Tom Beaudoin

Hastings-on-Hudson, New York