Foreigner

Foreigner's signature approach to album-oriented rock took root in the late 1970s through Mick Jones’s songwriting and incisive guitar work alongside Lou Gramm’s commanding, stadium-ready voice. The band’s opening pair of long-players—Foreigner in 1977 and Double Vision the following year—delivered a string of irresistibly memorable tracks wrapped in polished production that quickly climbed the charts and generated multiple massive singles. When prevailing tastes shifted, Foreigner adapted by folding new-wave textures into their palette, enlisting Mutt Lange for the 1981 album 4, and exploring a more mature ballad-oriented direction on pieces such as “Waiting for a Girl Like You” and their signature 1984 chart-topper “I Want to Know What Love Is.” Although Gramm’s departure in the late 1980s slowed new studio output, various lineups kept the group on the road, their catalog remains in heavy rotation on rock stations, and the group’s fusion of hard-rock drive with softer material left a mark on acts from Soul Asylum to One Direction.

From the outset the guiding force was British guitarist Mick Jones, who had already logged time as a session player on records by George Harrison and Peter Frampton before joining a later edition of the hard-rock outfit Spooky Tooth. After settling in New York City during the mid-1970s he spent a brief period with the Leslie West Band and worked in A&R for a label, yet he soon felt compelled to assemble his own project that would merge rock, progressive, R&B, and pop elements into one cohesive sound.

Jones recruited saxophonist Ian McDonald, formerly of King Crimson, drummer Dennis Elliot, ex-Ian Hunter, plus New York-based musicians Al Greenwood on keyboards, bassist Ed Gagliardi, and vocalist Lou Gramm, who had previously sung with the little-known 1970s group Black Sheep. Songwriting rapport between Jones and Gramm developed at once—one of their earliest collaborations became the eventual hit “Cold as Ice”—and the newly christened Foreigner secured a deal with Atlantic Records. Their self-titled debut arrived in 1977 and surged on the strength of singles “Feels Like the First Time,” “Long, Long Way from Home,” and “Cold as Ice,” eventually achieving five-times platinum status.

The feared second-album lull never materialized; instead 1978’s Double Vision yielded further smashes including “Hot Blooded” and the title track, lingered in the Top Ten for six months, and became the band’s biggest commercial triumph, moving seven million copies in the United States by 2001. Head Games, released in 1979, introduced the first of many personnel shifts when Gagliardi was replaced by Rick Wills, who had played with Peter Frampton and Roxy Music. Although another strong seller and perhaps the group’s most straightforward effort musically, both Gramm and Jones sensed it broke little new ground and resolved to address that shortcoming on the next release.

Reduced to a quartet of Jones, Gramm, Elliot, and Wills, the band brought in super-producer Mutt Lange, fresh from AC/DC’s late-1970s successes. The strategy paid off: 1981’s 4 became another blockbuster, spinning off hits such as “Urgent” featuring a fiery saxophone cameo from Motown veteran Junior Walker, “Jukebox Hero,” and the power ballad “Waiting for a Girl Like You.” The latter track’s enormous success nevertheless left some fans uncertain whether Foreigner leaned more toward hard rock or balladry. A 1982 compilation, Records, collected ten major singles and has remained a steady catalog item, eventually matching the seven-million sales mark by 2001.

Three years elapsed before Agent Provocateur appeared in 1984. The band navigated the MTV era smoothly; the gospel-tinged, lavish ballad “I Want to Know What Love Is” featuring the New Jersey Mass Choir became one of the year’s dominant radio and video successes. Yet overall sales dipped compared with earlier albums because the set lacked the same consistent focus. After an exhausting nine-month tour concluded a year later, Jones and Gramm pursued outside projects in 1986: Jones produced Bad Company’s Fame and Fortune and co-produced Van Halen’s 5150 debut with Sammy Hagar, while Gramm began work on his own solo record. Both Gramm’s Ready or Not and Foreigner’s sixth studio album, Inside Information, surfaced in 1987. Each yielded Top Ten hits—“Midnight Blue” for Gramm and “Say You Will” for the band—yet friction over Gramm’s solo ambitions ultimately led to his exit from Foreigner in 1989.

That same year Gramm released his second solo effort, Long Hard Look, which underperformed relative to its predecessor, while Jones produced Billy Joel’s Storm Front and issued his own star-studded solo debut. Jones, Elliot, and Wills kept Foreigner going with new vocalist Johnny Edwards, resulting in the largely overlooked 1991 album Unusual Heat; Gramm’s new band Shadow King issued an equally unnoticed self-titled debut the same year. Heeding Atlantic’s counsel, Jones and Gramm reconciled to record three fresh tracks for an expanded hits package. The 1992 collection The Very Best…And Beyond, containing seventeen tracks, marked the band’s strongest commercial showing in years, followed in 1993 by their first live album, Classic Hits Live.

The reunion solidified, and bassist Bruce Turgon plus keyboardist Jeff Jacobs joined the fold. The refreshed lineup delivered Mr. Moonlight in 1995, which failed to restore the group to the upper reaches of the charts. Foreigner continued to draw crowds on the road until Gramm’s 1997 diagnosis with a brain tumor cast uncertainty over the future. The growth proved non-cancerous and was successfully removed; after a protracted recovery Gramm was fit enough by 1999 to join Journey for a summer tour. Archival projects proliferated in the early 2000s via Rhino, including Jukebox Heroes: The Foreigner Anthology, Complete Greatest Hits, and expanded reissues of the debut and 4. In 2009 the three-disc set Can’t Slow Down combined a new studio album, remixed hits, and a documentary DVD. The band toured steadily through the 2010s, issuing the Acoustique album in 2011 and marking its fortieth anniversary in 2017 with the hits compilation 40. That year also saw a Swiss concert captured with a fifty-eight-piece orchestra and sixty-piece choir; the resulting Foreigner with the 21st Century Symphony Orchestra & Chorus appeared in spring 2018. Later the same year a series of “Then and Now” reunion shows revisited the band’s history, followed in 2019 by Rhino’s release of Live at the Rainbow ’78 documenting a sold-out London performance.