Artist: Paul Dean, Album: Hard Core, Song: Sword And Stone

"I feel the power running through my bones.  I am the sword, you are the stone."  Most people know Paul Dean as the guitar player for the Canadian rock band, Loverboy.  He was also the principle songwriter for many of those great tunes they released in the eighties.  In 1989, he decided to release his first solo record with Columbia Records called, Hard Core.  The album featured his band mates, Matt Frenette and Mike Reno, along with musicians like Bryan Adams and even Jon Bon Jovi.  This was a great album from a guy that never really had the limelight on him as a solo artist before.  The two songs that I do remember hearing on the radio back then were Draw The Line and this tune, Sword And Stone.  Sword And Stone was actually a tune penned by Kiss singer, Paul Stanley.  Paul Dean also covers the Streetheart classic, Action, on this album.  A song that Streetheart recorded on their debut album back in the late seventies when Paul was in that band.  He of course left to join Loverboy and the rest is multi platinum history.  Paul toured Canada and the U.S. in support of the album and I believe he did some shows with Bad Company.  He would return to the Loverboy fold and continues to record and perform with that band today.  You can follow them at http://www.loverboyband.com/.  This wasn't the last solo recording for Paul however.  He would record again in 1995 and then in 1997, he released an album under the name Blackstone.  Today these albums are very hard to find.  At the time of this blog, there were copies of Hard Core on Ebay and Amazon trading between $10 and $75.  You can watch the original video for the song, Sword And Stone, on You Tube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iI2LfzK0K7o).  Thanks for reading and enjoy!