In a rare in-depth interview with Rock Candy Magazine, Lou Gramm, the man with the golden voice, told editor Howard Johnson that it was just a twist of fate that led him be in Foreigner at all and when he was first offered the chance to audition, by guitarist Mick Jones, he turned it down.
“I said, ‘Mick, jeez, that’s very nice of you to ask me but Black Sheep [signed to Capitol Records] is in a difficult spot right now. We’ve got our second album coming out and we’ve just started a tour with Kiss. The problem is that we had an accident right after the first show in Boston. We’ve lost our truck and 80% of our equipment. We’re trying to figure out what to do and how we can continue to tour.'” Mick Jones persevered to get Lou to audition: “I told Mick I was honored to have been asked and I hoped that our paths would cross again in the future. Mick asked me if he could call me back in two or three weeks to see how things were going, and I told him I’d be happy for him to do that.”
Black Sheep couldn’t get the money from any source to replace their van and gear and then their label dropped them so Lou’s bandmates did a great and noble thing. “They said, ‘Lou, we have to be realistic. To all intents and purposes Black Sheep is over. You really need to get hold of Mick and see what he has to offer.'”
But amazingly the band that would become Foreigner weren’t met with instant applause, and were turned down by numerous record labels at the beginning. “That’s true. We sent out plenty of demo tapes and the idea was that if anyone expressed an interest we’d invite them to come and take a look at us playing live. We had maybe eight or nine labels come down.
They pretty much all said the band was proficient and that we had good song ideas, but somehow they didn’t quite get it.” Fate intervened again at that point because a young A&R guy at Atlantic, John Kalodner (who would go on to shape and remake the careers of many bands and artists later on) had been at the showcase gig the band did for Atlantic and even though the label turned them down he got back to them and said they should shorten their songs for radio play. “He said, ‘Next time you hear a Beatles song, time it. I guarantee it won’t even be three minutes long… Kalodner was right. I hadn’t realised how short their numbers were… Even though they were short they satisfied all your needs. So Kalodner, Mick and I went back into the songs.” Then they re-presented some of the songs back to Atlantic and ended up with a three album deal and an out of the box smash with their debut album which went top 5 in the US, as did the debut single ‘Feels Like The First Time’.
Lou has recently made some guest appearances with the current Foreigner and he is kind and gracious about them. “At first I was angry at Mick for starting a new Foreigner, but so much time has gone by now, and it wasn’t the fault of the guys who are now in the band, was it? If I were one of them and had been offered the opportunity, I would have taken it too. So we’ve got a nice friendship now… After all that’s happened over the years I’m still extremely proud of my career with Foreigner, and at this stage of my life that’s the most important thing.”
Read the rest of the mega interview with Lou, as well as a big feature on 60 years of the Scorpions, ex-Deep Purple guitarist Steve Morse on finding peace and purpose, the making of the King’s X debut album, a reappraisal of Queensrÿche’s ‘Operation: Mindcrime’, an exclusive look at the ‘Back To the Beginning’ show from the promoter who made it happen, and many other fascinating features inside issue 53 of Rock Candy Magazine.
ABOUT ROCK CANDY MAGAZINE
Rock Candy Magazine is a 100 page, full-colour bi-monthly rock mag, created in the UK. It covers the sights, sounds and smells from the greatest era in hard rock, the ’70s, ’80s and early ’90s. The brainchild of respected UK rock journalists Derek Oliver, Howard Johnson and Malcolm Dome – all frontline writers for the legendary Kerrang! magazine in the golden era.
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