NEMZO HITS ON THE POSE OF SUCCESS

There aren’t many struggling musicians who would say that the tough road to success is “like falling in love.” More often, the frustrations and disappointments make it seem closer to going through a divorce.

But to singer-guitarist Lisa Nemzo, whose career finally appears to be off and running after eight years of playing clubs and bars, the analogy to falling in love is entirely fitting.

“When you’re looking for someone, you never find him,” Nemzo, 27, said during a recent interview in her West Hollywood apartment.

“But as soon as you stop worrying about it and get on with what you’re doing, it’s like, ‘knock knock knock,’ and there it is.”

For Nemzo and her band, the knock of opportunity came in the form of a European contract with Metronome Records, a German affiliate of the giant international PolyGram Records group.

After signing Nemzo, the record company brought her group to Frankfurt last month, where it landed a spot on the popular European television rock show “Pop Rock Music Hall” alongside such well-established acts as A Flock of Seagulls and Meat Loaf. Nemzo’s segment will air in numerous European countries in a couple of weeks.

Before embarking on an extensive European tour in April, Nemzo will do several solo shows at Fellini’s in Hollywood, beginning Saturday and continuing every Saturday in February and March (except Feb. 23).

Metronome also recently released Nemzo’s debut album, “Tough Girls Can Be Pretty,” and a single, “Hard for a Girl Like Me.”

From the tough, fist-shaking pose Nemzo strikes on the album cover, the first comparison that comes to mind is with Joan Jett. On the record, however, Nemzo’s voice shows more polish than Jett’s, while projecting equal power. One reason she has been a popular club performer for several years is her versatility, which allows her to move with equal effectiveness from soft ballads to gritty blues numbers to powerhouse rockers.

If she has a role model, Nemzo prefers it to be the Pretenders’ lead singer.

“Chrissie Hynde is probably the best example of a woman rocker who doesn’t go out and act like a man,” she said. “She’s feminine and strong at the same time--not the type of feminine that’s weakness or little-girlie-girl feminine. That’s the image I want to have. Our music has a hard-rock edge, but we have real romantic lyrics.

“It’s important to maintain a balance between the two extremes,” Nemzo said, “because if you’re too soft, you lose the drive, but if you’re too hard, you lose sensitivity.”

European audiences, she said, generally were more open to her tough-but-sensitive image than some American crowds have been.

“The amazing thing is that the stronger and wilder I came across, the better they responded,” she said. “Over there, it turns people on. Women didn’t find it threatening and men didn’t find it intimidating. It was refreshing for the band, and especially for me, to be accepted like that.”

As recently as last summer, Nemzo temporarily gave up music to finish her training as a massage therapist.

“Last January, I gave myself a one-year deadline to do something with my (music) career. If I was going to go back to bars, I decided I would move up north and think about settling down. During the summer, I quit music for two months. By October, I realized I only had three months left to get something going. I saw my whole career crumbling--I wasn’t going to school, I wasn’t playing guitar, I wasn’t doing anything. But I had to let go of it for a while.

“That was a very valuable lesson for me,” she said, adding with a laugh, “I should have done it a long time ago.”