Love Is Like a Rock

"Love Is Like a Rock" is a song by American rock musician Donnie Iris from his 1981 album King Cool. The song was released as the second single from his second album.

"Love Is Like a Rock"
Single by Donnie Iris
from the album King Cool
B-side"Agnes"
ReleasedDecember 1981
Recorded1981
GenreRock
Length3:35
LabelMCA
Songwriter(s)Mark Avsec, Donnie Iris, Marty Lee Hoenes, Albritton McClain, Kevin Valentine
Producer(s)Mark Avsec
Donnie Iris singles chronology
"Sweet Merilee"
(1981)		 "Love Is Like a Rock"
(1981)		 "My Girl"
(1982)

The song reached No. 37 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart[1] and No. 9 on the U.S. Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. The song was also recorded by Slade on their 1987 album You Boyz Make Big Noize.

"Love is Like a Rock" is often used by the Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania band during football games. Iris attended SRU in the early 1960s.

Composition

In a September 2006 interview with Songfacts, Iris explained the song's origins:

That song was a jam. The group went into the studio and Marty Lee, our guitar player, came up with that riff. We just kind of built around that riff, put the instrumentals down, and that's all we had. We just had what we thought was a good track – guitar, bass, drums. Then Mark and I were in the studio and we listened to the song and wrote the lyrics around the track. That's basically what we do with most of the stuff we've been writing nowadays. We just go with a nice rhythm track of guitar, bass, drums, keyboard, whatever. Come up with what we think is a nice piece of music. Then, Mark will take the tune home and write a lyric for it. Together, we'll work on the harmonies and background vocals and the melodies and things like that. But for "Love is Like a Rock," he and I sat in the studio listening to that rhythm track. I think it was Mark's idea to come up with "love is like a rock," and then, together, we just wrote lines that rhymed.[2]

Chart performance

Slade version

English rock band Slade recorded a version of the song for their fourteenth studio album You Boyz Make Big Noize, released in 1987. The band's bassist Jim Lea had heard the song and thought the song suited Slade and their style. He also felt it would fit with the commercial rock sound of the time. The song was recorded at Wessex Studios and was one of two tracks from the album to be produced by Roy Thomas Baker. In a 1987 fan club interview, guitarist Dave Hill said of the song: "This track is a cover of an American song which Jim thought sounded a bit like us in its original format. Jim suggested that it would fit in nicely to the current mould of Bon Jovi/Europe. Roy also liked the song, so we got him to produce it. It's got an up-tempo American feel to it."[7]

Critical reception

In a review of You Boyz Make Big Noize, an American review from Guitar magazine highlighted "Love Is Like a Rock" as one of three of the album's 'hot spots' and stated "No one will ever mistake this for compositional brilliance, but Slade's consistent ability to suck you into their friendly carousing is impressive. It starts with the muscular riff of "Love Is Like a Rock" and never lets up through raspy Holder chorus after chorus." Doug Stone of AllMusic said in a retrospective review of the album: "The raging opener "Love Is Like a Rock," didn't fare any better commercially for the boyz than the tune did for awesome originators Donnie Iris and the Cruisers; this class cut remains an ace way to kick off the album because "Love" is, like, so Slade in the first place." Stone also highlighted the song as an album standout by labeling it an AMG Pick Track.[8] In the album's 2007 Salvo remaster liner notes, writer Chris Ingham said: ""Love Is Like a Rock" is a telling observation about Slade's ongoing quest to style themselves to the times. One of several more obvious candidates for a single than the tracks that were actually chosen, it nevertheless kicks off the record in great rambunctious style."[9]

gollark: Instead of the AI managing everything we should just have me.
gollark: This might be fixable if you have some kind of zero-knowledge voting thing and/or ways for smaller groups of people to decide to produce stuff.
gollark: If you require everyone/a majority to say "yes, let us make the thing" publicly, then you probably won't get any of the thing - if you say "yes, let us make the thing" then someone will probably go "wow, you are a bad/shameful person for supporting the thing".
gollark: Say most/many people like a thing, but the unfathomable mechanisms of culture™ have decided that it's bad/shameful/whatever. In our society, as long as it isn't something which a plurality of people *really* dislike, you can probably get it anyway since you don't need everyone's buy-in. And over time the thing might become more widely accepted by unfathomable mechanisms of culture™.
gollark: I also think that if you decide what to produce via social things instead of the current financial mechanisms, you would probably have less innovation (if you have a cool new thing™, you have to convince a lot of people it's a good idea, rather than just convincing a few specialized people that it's good enough to get some investment) and could get stuck in weird signalling loops.

References
  1. Whitburn, Joel (2004). The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits, 8th Edition (Billboard Publications)
  2. "Donnie Iris (Ah! Leah!, The Rapper): Songwriter Interviews". Songfacts. Retrieved January 29, 2018.
  3. "Item Display - RPM - Library and Archives Canada". Collectionscanada.gc.ca. Retrieved 2016-10-19.
  4. "Top 100 1982-02-27". Cashbox Magazine. Retrieved 2015-05-16.
  5. "Music: Top 100 Songs | Billboard Hot 100 Chart". Billboard.com. 1982-02-20. Retrieved 2016-10-19.
  6. Whitburn, Joel (1999). Pop Annual. Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin: Record Research Inc. ISBN 0-89820-142-X.
  7. "1987 - Slade Fan Club www.sladefanclub.com". Sladefanclub.com. Retrieved 2016-10-19.
  8. Doug Stone. "You Boyz Make Big Noize - Slade | Songs, Reviews, Credits". AllMusic. Retrieved 2016-10-19.
  9. Slade - You Boyz Make Big Noize - Salvo 2007 CD Remaster Booklet Liner Notes
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