Foreigner - Jukebox Heroes

All of their first 8 singles relentlessly landed in the US top 20 – a feat achieved up to that point only by the Beatles. Over 50 million albums sold across 45 years of career, 40 million of which in the US alone. A string of memorable songs, lodged in the collective memory in almost every corner of the globe. So what is it that has kept Foreigner from earning a reputation as solid as their riffs in the grand story of rock? The answer lies in a combination of factors, chief among them the short-sightedness of the critics and, to a lesser extent, a few excesses indulged in by the Anglo-American band, especially in the latter part of their career. More than anything else, though, the group formed in New York in 1976 is paying for the original sin of a sound that was among the most despised by the pseudo-alternative critics who so often dictated the rules of rock. Right as punk was about to set fire to both sides of the Atlantic, more or less knowingly consigning an entire musical era to the flames, Foreigner were attempting a desperate mouth-to-mouth resuscitation of dying classic rock – and even prog – of the era. The public, above all, believed in the miracle of resurrection, rushing en masse to buy their records and packing out their concert arenas, while critics, disillusioned by punk's nihilistic cynicism, refused for a long time to even consider the possibility. This is rock past its sell-by date, rock for old folks, they ruled. And as such it would also be contemptuously labelled: Adult Oriented Rock.

The Beatles got me into everything: Marvin Gaye, things I'd never heard before, more girls than I'd ever seen…

(Mick Jones)

Between Sylvie Vartan and the Beatles

The Beatles, as it turns out, were evidently written into the destiny of Mick Jones, the enterprising guitarist born in Portsmouth, Hampshire (on 27 December 1944). And this was true well before he came to share with the Fab Four the fateful record for eight consecutive number-one singles. It's January 1964, and the barely-out-of-his-teens Mick is pacing around the dressing rooms of the Olympia in Paris, cursing: the strap of his guitar has just snapped, sending his gleaming Gibson crashing noisily to the floor as he accompanies Sylvie Vartan on stage, the celebrated French showgirl and wife of Johnny Hallyday. He's gripped by panic when he hears a nasal voice asking him a question: "Are you English?". Mick turns around and can't believe his eyes: it's his idol John Lennon. He stammers a confirmation: "Yes, yes, I'm English". "Ah, I thought everyone here was a frog…", replies the cheeky Fab, who's about to go on stage with his mates from Liverpool on that very same bill. They become friends, and before long young Mick becomes the Beatles' mascot during their tour of France. "I was totally in awe of them," Jones would later tell Rolling Stone. "They got me into everything: Marvin Gaye, things I'd never heard before, more girls than I'd ever seen in my life. I'd go out with them in a limousine after a show, or go back to their hotel, with all the madness that came with it. It was astonishing. It was like the peak of everything to me, and I was right there in the middle of it. I stood at the side of the stage every night with tears in my eyes. I was a massive fan of theirs."

Before lending his riffs to the shows of the Grande Dame of French variety entertainment — and his pen to her husband Hallyday, for whom he wrote "Oh Ma Jolie Sarah" — Jones had served his apprenticeship in Nero and the Gladiators, scoring a couple of modestly successful singles in England in 1961. He then teamed up with Gary Wright, founder of Spooky Tooth, to form Wonderwheel (and later to reform the aforementioned Spooky Tooth with him in 1973). It's a career that seems to proceed respectably under the radar: he joins Leslie West's band and plays guitar on Peter Frampton's "Wind Of Change" (1972) and George Harrison's "Dark Horse" (1974) — the Beatles keep cropping up again... Then, though, comes the meeting that truly changes his life: with Ian McDonald, freshly out of King Crimson, in New York in 1976, where Jones had moved in search of his fortune. Two kindred madmen meet.

A good dose of madness was indeed needed, in the year of our Lord 1976 — amid dancefloors packed under the strobe lights of disco music and basements overrun by makeshift punk bands — to believe that hard rock and prog might still have a future. With that same technical skill now buried by the do-it-yourself era, and on top of that, a pronounced pop sensibility to sweeten the dish. And yet that is precisely the idea that unites Jones and McDonald, despite their different backgrounds.

The two are determined to form a band, and for the role of singer they pick a guy with the right physique du rôle — curly mop of hair à la Robert Plant — but above all the voice needed for the job: Louis Andrew Grammatico, known to friends as Lou Gramm, fresh off an unlucky stint with Black Sheep. The audition in New York is a revelation: Gramm picks up the sheet music for "Feels Like The First Time" while the keyboard sketches out a slight, faintly psychedelic frame, and his smooth soul-blues voice immediately takes hold of the song, gradually swelling those desperate lines with pathos, over the midtempo beat marked out by the keyboards (“I would climb any mountain/ Sail across a stormy sea/ If that’s what it takes me baby/ To show you how much you mean to me…”). He's the right man, Jones and McDonald agree at once.

To complete the line-up, they bring in British drummer Dennis Elliott and two other American musicians: keyboardist Al Greenwood and bassist Ed Gagliardi. At first they call themselves Trigger, then, since that name turns out to already be taken, they change it to Foreigner: strangers to one another, given their different geographical origins, but also strangers to the rock of the era, as mentioned. And yet they're less isolated than one might expect. Because, alongside them, a kind of "resistance" is taking shape around a cluster of bands, linked — almost exclusively — by the desire to keep alive artifacts that were by then seen as démodé, such as guitar solos, instrumental digressions and epic melodies. Progressive rock had almost never managed to take root across the Atlantic, least of all on the charts. Paradoxically, it did succeed, in disguised (and mutated) form, right at the dawn of the second half of the 1970s — that is, just as British prog ground to a halt. "Even as it still landed the occasional winning blow, the constant shifts in technology and the market caused it to crumble within a few seasons: in Britain it ended up partly merging into new wave, while in the United States it spawned the wave of arena rock," as Federico Romagnoli recalls regarding "Leftoverture" (1976), noting that "Kansas were among the names that brought that transformation to completion, sealing it on their fourth attempt. That same year Rush released '2112', the first of a long string of classics, and Boston released a debut with shape-shifting passages that left no room for doubt (think of 'Foreplay/Long Time'). Soon Styx would sink their teeth into the mainstream with the epic 'The Grand Illusion', while Foreigner's debut would conquer the airwaves, bolstered by the production of Ian McDonald (chief songwriter of King Crimson's debut). In no time at all, the United States bowed down to a series of bands that, while filtering some of its intricate rhythms and dropping the suites, took progressive rock as their model, injecting it with gleaming hard-rock guitars, pop sensibility and choruses by the dozen. The recording studio once again became king, and the blues component was muzzled, though without being purged entirely as many of the British godfathers had done." Techniques that would later become emblematic of the 1980s (such as the vocal layering typical of Mutt Lange's productions) have their origins here as well.

You're as cold as ice

You're willing to sacrifice our love

You want paradise

But someday you’ll pay the price, I know

(from "Cold As Ice", 1977)

Red-hot ice

So, Foreigner had progressive roots, evident not only in McDonald's background but also in the instrumental emphasis that marked their early experiments, brought to fruition on their triumphant self-titled 1977 debut, where the roles within the band are already clearly defined. Jones is the star performer: guitarist, co-producer and songwriter (often in collaboration with Gramm), he manages to weave together an original blend of driving riffs, thoroughbred melodies and astonishing vocals, all embroidered with shimmering synthesizers and intricate harmonies. Gramm wraps the songs in the passionate warmth (and candor) of his singing, which can be deep and celestial at once, with shifting timbres able to range dynamically from rock to blues, from soul to gospel. McDonald, a refined multi-instrumentalist (keyboards, guitar, saxophone), instead carves out a more low-key role, acting as the director behind the scenes, taking charge in the control room and limiting himself to writing just one track, "Long, Long Way From Home" — a driving hard-rock number scarred by the ex-King Crimson man's own sax — which would also remain the only hit credited to him during his time in the band.

Signed to Atlantic Records, the band refines, on Foreigner (1977), some of the songs already sketched out during the Trigger-era sessions. Besides the aforementioned "Feels Like The First Time" (with its catchy chorus soaring amid keyboard interplay and tempo changes), there's a song built on staccato piano chords; it shows real promise and was born in a snow-covered New York, "Cold As Ice": its insistent chimes are tasked with drawing out the precious melodic thread over which Gramm's voice bursts in, with his emphatic delivery built entirely around the words "cold" and "ice", intoned in shifting, alternating tones, before the synths take hold of the track with a driving rhythm (inspired by an idea from Billy Joel, by Jones's own admission) reinforced by jolts of electric guitar and punctuated by vocal harmonies and tangles of synth, suspended in a no-man's-land between hard rock and progressive. And it's this latter influence that the dreamy "Starrider" looks to even more openly — sung by Mick Jones but clearly a product of McDonald's legacy — with its stellar ride streaked with psychedelia, soaring over celestial choruses, delicate guitar arpeggios and synthesizers reminiscent of Keith Emerson, before the electric guitar solo that launches it into its final climax. A gorgeous track, tenderly old-fashioned: it was exactly what punk was tearing to shreds in those very same weeks.

The other root, the hard-rock one, comes to a head in the full-blooded "Headknocker", with decidedly rougher, more visceral sounds married to Gramm's ever-passionate singing. Still leaning in this direction — but with clear prog influences — "The Damage Is Done" closes side A with an epic ballad, embellished with vocal harmonies, tempo shifts, muted keyboards and scorching guitar solos, confirming that behind Foreigner's punchy formula lay a far more complex instrumental and compositional skill.

The other two ballads are more conventional: "Woman Oh Woman" opens side B with the desperate cry of a tormented lover, carried by the band's usual fine guitar embroidery, first acoustic then electric, which runs through Gramm's litany, while "Fool For You Anyway" retreats into more melancholy, intimate atmospheres with a guitar that sobs in the style of George Harrison. And while "At War With The World" renews the formula of this hard-prog sound, in which keyboard interplay and vocal inlays help soften the harshness of the feedback-drenched guitars, the closing "I Need You" confirms the band's full firepower, unleashing a midtempo number propped up by rock-solid drumming, in which Jones has a field day with his six-string, ranging from frenzied riffs to punishing distorted solos, while the keyboards hold the thread together and Gramm belts out yet another heartfelt invocation, backed by the choruses. It's pomp rock in the noblest sense of the term, but for all those who see grandiosity as the epitome of everything wrong with rock, it will forever remain taboo.

Branded on the cover by a drawing of the bundled-up sextet with their oversized suitcases in tow, Foreigner would go on to sell more than 4 million copies in the US alone (reaching No. 4 on the Billboard 200), landing their first three singles in the Top 20 ("Feels Like The First Time", "Cold As Ice" and "Long, Long Way From Home") and setting a new, countercurrent standard for late-70s rock.

It's hard to believe this band will be able to hold on to its vast audience with more garbage like this

(Ken Tucker, Rolling Stone, September 7, 1978)

Rock Not Suitable for Minors

Perhaps unwittingly, Foreigner thus became – alongside Boston, Styx, Kansas, Journey, Heart, REO Speedwagon & co. – the standard-bearers of a new musical genre hastily dubbed Adult Oriented Rock, cast as a supposedly bourgeois, conservative response to the subversive thrust of punk, the youth movement par excellence. Where Johnny Rotten and his cohorts sowed iconoclastic, desecrating fury, these bands replied by polishing their instruments, smoothing out their sounds, sanding down rough edges and dissonance in favor of a rounded, if not glossy, tone that stripped rock of its transgressive, disturbing charge while keeping its energy and its most seductive melodic streak. A sound that was modern yet classic at the same time, one in which production played an essential role. And with a natural target audience: the over-30s, with their settled, quiet lives, free of the restlessness typical of youth. All of this, of course, mostly on paper – especially the critics' paper – since many of these bands would go on to win over plenty of younger fans too over the years, packing out their concerts with them. For this reason, the term "arena rock" might actually be more fitting, as it embraces a vast array of artists and strands, from hard rock to power pop, from classic 70s American FM rock to so-called soft rock and even yacht rock (see Steely Dan, Toto & co.).

But setting aside categorizations, which are always somewhat beside the point, Foreigner had hit upon a formula that was, all things considered, original, and far sharper – in verve and compositional skill – than that of many seasoned old hands of the AOR scene. So there was nothing left to do but repeat the success of the debut as quickly as possible. That task fell to Double Vision (1978), which updates the formula by injecting powerful new jolts of adrenaline, starting with the opening "Hot Blooded", with its violent hard-rock riffs (and that chug-chug guitar sound used back in 1969 on "Gimme Gimme Good Lovin'") tempered by the band's usual melodic openness in the refrain. Just as impressive is the spectacular boogie of the title track, with Gramm's powerful voice scaling steep heights, backed by Jones's usual high-octane guitars and refined keyboard inlays, in a kind of impossible heavy-synth-pop hybrid. And the brash "Love Has Taken Its Toll", with its muscular riffs, makes its intentions clear right away.

What almost entirely disappears is the link to prog, which survives only in flashes in the fine theme of "Tramontane" (the only instrumental in the band's entire career, written by Greenwood, with McDonald on organ and lyricon), but also in the vintage synthesizer textures of the soft-rock "Back Where You Belong" and in the dreamy ballad "I Have Waited So Long", with its sax tinges almost reminiscent of Pink Floyd in the "The Dark Side Of The Moon" era (both featuring Jones on lead vocals).

The dominant mood instead is a jagged energy, tempered by the warmth of Gramm's singing and by radiant melodic openings, like those that light up the abyss of "Lonely Children", lost in the night, and the searing melancholy of "Blue Morning, Blue Day", driven by Elliott's martial drumming and fresh, granite-hard guitar riffs, with McCartney-esque backing vocals evoking a Beatles-like touch. That influence is also tangible in the other ballad, "You're All I Am", which wards off excessive sentimentality with carefully calibrated arrangements centered on delicate acoustic arpeggios, a brief electric solo and more Fab Four-style harmonies. Closing the album is another melodramatic performance from Gramm on "Spellbinder", with his typical husky timbre carried by incisive guitar riffs. It may lack a high note on the level of "Cold As Ice", but overall the record confirms Foreigner's full ability to forge a sound that's energetic yet clean and pleasing, one that certainly looks more to the past than the future, but almost always does so with taste and honesty.

Produced by Keith Olsen, the sound engineer behind "Rumours" by Fleetwood Mac, Double Vision would prove an even bigger success than the debut, climbing to No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and going platinum within a week of release, eventually selling over 7 million copies in the US alone. It wouldn't do as well in Europe, where it only cracked the Top 40 in the UK. And naturally it would displease snobbish critics, who went as far as making crude statements like Ken Tucker's in Rolling Stone on September 7, 1978: "The emotions and motivations expressed in Foreigner's music are, besides being unconvincing, overblown and garish. Right now, the band's rhythms and Lou Gramm's singing are tickling the ears of a lot of record buyers, but it's hard to believe this band will be able to hold on to its vast audience with more garbage like this. We're not as dumb as Foreigner takes us for." A few tens of millions of records and another 40 years of band history would go on to disprove that unfortunate prophecy.

It was the first record that got away from us. The initial ideas were good, but we weren't able to follow through on them

(Lou Gramm)

Dangerous Games

Having replaced Gagliardi with Rick Wills, a seasoned bassist who had already played for Peter Frampton and Roxy Music, Foreigner nonetheless took an abrupt step backward with their third album, Head Games (1979), whose kitschy cover – featuring a girl crouched by a men's urinal – already didn't bode well. But beyond this lapse in taste, it's the band's compositional vein that seems to have dulled, as Gramm himself would admit: "It was the first record that got away from us. The initial ideas were good, but we weren't able to follow through on them, and that was a symptom of our problem. It seemed like everyone had let their guard down. It was a disappointment."

It didn't help that the lead single, the driving Who-like anthem "Dirty White Boy", was mistakenly read as a kind of crypto-racist statement, due to somewhat crude lines like “Hey baby, if you’re falling down, I know what’s good for you all day/ Are you worried what your friends see/ And will it ruin your reputation loving me?/ ‘Cause I’m a dirty white boy”.

And yet the band's mettle still manages to shine through, for instance in the interlocking keyboards and distorted guitars of the relentless "Love On The Telephone", carried home by Gramm with his usual vocal grit, in the Cars-like pop'n'roll of "The Modern Day", or in the tormented title track, buoyed by the band's usual pompous gait built on tempo changes, synth flourishes and sturdy guitar riffs. In short, this is Foreigner doing what they do best, even if without the spark that had animated the debut.

Elsewhere the band tries to raise the stakes – for instance with the frenzied, blues-inflected rhythms of "Women" or the shamelessly catchy melody of "Rev On The Red Line" – but without the creative madness that made similar experiments by Electric Light Orchestra so memorable. Other tracks, meanwhile, sink straight into oblivion ("I'll Get Even With You", "Seventeen", "Zalia"), leaving behind a sense of fatigue.

Paradoxically, then, the album's high point is a new power ballad in which McDonald's long-shelved prog instincts resurface: it's his dreamy keyboard work that builds the suspended atmosphere of "Blinded By Science", with production by Roy Thomas Baker (who had already worked alongside Queen) lending just the right emphasis, and Gramm sinking into a new, desperate vocal performance, making for a twilight-toned song that almost feels like it's lowering the curtain on an entire musical era. Sated by so much grandiosity, one can happily accept the calm after the storm in the shape of "Do What You Like", with its somewhat shameless groove and ethereal backing vocals. But that's quite enough.

Despite everything, Head Games manages to sell almost 3 million copies, but even these numbers ultimately mark the gap with the two formidable records that came before it.

That's how the record industry works: you're only as good as your last album. Poor Atlantic – why settle for two million, when yesterday you could have had five?

(Mick Jones)

Starting Over From 4

After this setback, Foreigner find themselves questioning their future. "There's no point hiding it," Jones would later recall, "the criticism had really gotten to me at a certain point. I felt that what we'd done up to then was pretty respectable – we'd never done anything blatantly commercial. I thought we'd really started something, maybe not entirely new, but different from everyone else. I guess I realized we weren't doing things differently enough...". Even the top brass at Atlantic turned up their noses: "I felt a certain pressure around me," Jones would further reveal, "too much attention from the label, which couldn't stomach the modest success of 'Head Games' and saw the band teetering. That's how the record industry works: you're only as good as your last album. Poor Atlantic – why settle for two million, when yesterday you could have had five?"

And as often happens in these situations, some take the opportunity of the impasse to bow out: in this case McDonald and Greenwood, heading off to Spys. Foreigner thus become a quartet, with the contributions of the two defectors replaced by a handful of session musicians. Hence, perhaps, the idea of titling the new album "Silent Partners".

It will instead be called 4 (1981), underlining the band's new lineup while echoing the sound of their name. It's no easy birth: it will take ten months to complete, at Electric Lady Studios in New York, under the obsessively meticulous guidance of producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange, fresh off the worldwide success of Ac/Dc's "Back In Black" (Ac/Dc). It's Jones and Gramm who take the reins of the group, writing all the songs and proving what could already be suspected about them: they're not just gruff classic-rock traditionalists, but keep their antennae tuned to the sounds of the present too. And so, alongside the soul, pop and even disco shades glimpsed in the past, they don't shy away from forays into the synth-pop that was dominating the charts at the time. The main architect of this move is one of the album's star guests, a young Thomas Dolby on synthesizers. It's he who lays the foundations of "Urgent", the album's masterpiece and perhaps of Foreigner's entire career: pulsing keyboards dictating an almost dance-like cadence alongside a gritty bass line, with Gramm stealing the show for another masterful performance, pulling the track back into blues-rock territory, until a searing sax solo from Motown legend Junior Walker bursts in out of nowhere, derailing everything into a disorienting, distorted electro-funk. A stroke of genius that recalls the surreal dissonant sax interjections of Andy Mackay in Roxy Music tracks. Tremendously compelling and catchy, "Urgent" will be the first single released and will fly to No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100, settling in comfortably on FM radio playlists around the world.

Dolby's contribution also enriches the album's other hit, "Waiting For A Girl Like You", with a sparse descending riff at the opening and a finely calibrated electric piano shaping the glossy, romantic frame of a big ballad in pure Billy Joel soft-rock style, pushed to the edge by Gramm at the very limits of his vocal range with a decidedly soulful delivery reminiscent of Curtis Mayfield: essentially, the forerunner of the hugely famous "I Want To Know What Love Is", released three years later.

It's precisely the vocal acrobatics of an unleashed Gramm that make up the album's other trademark: slaloming between the more driving, syncopated rhythms of the hard-rock opener "Night Life" (one of the few connecting threads with the mood of the previous album); gritty and epic as he declaims the aspiring rockstar's anthem "Juke Box Hero", backed by an almost metal guitar, a rubbery bass and hammering drumming; even more daring on "Break It Up", where he climbs to ever higher registers, driven by the pulsing cadences of bass and electric piano, with the guitar only peeking through in the understated closing solo (another spot-on arrangement from Jones, poised between Cars and arena rock).

Jones's emphatic guitar work, meanwhile, comes into its own on a few numbers of pure guitar-oriented rock, such as the 1950s-flavored divertissement "Luanne", the solemn hard-rock charge of "I'm Gonna Win" and the equally emphatic "Woman In Black", where the guitar构 construction intertwines with near-gospel cadences. And while the swooning "Girl Of The Moon" takes us back to hushed nightclubs for aging voyeurs, "Don't Let Go" closes the show squarely in pop territory, amid sticky synth melodies and caressing backing vocals.

This time even the critics will have to give in to the band's display of flair and cohesion, as well as to the sheer weight of the numbers: spending 10 weeks at the top of the Billboard 200, 4 will prove to be Foreigner's biggest chart success, selling more than 7 million copies in the United States alone, and the Atlantic-released album to spend the most weeks at number one. The band's supposed "con" on listeners, in other words, turned out to be far less fleeting than expected, and Rolling Stone itself will have to make an abrupt about-turn with a "corrective" interview, tellingly titled "Foreigner: Mass-Appeal Rock in a Post-Golden Age".

Skillfully blending craftsmanship with a rediscovered creative streak, the Foreigner of 4 definitively refine – and probably in a way that could never be repeated – their blend of 70s rock traditionalism, irresistible pop melodies, romantic power ballads and pulsing quasi-dance rhythms, driven by keyboards and an ever-relentless rhythm section. Shifting times and trends, internal friction and an inexorable creative decline will make it effectively impossible to replicate the formula. But there will be time for one last flash of brilliance first. Just past its sell-by date.

I had the world in my hands

But it’s not the end of my world

Just a slight change of plans

(da “That Was Yesterday”)

That was (not) yesterday

Surprisingly, the new decade brings with it a revival for the seasoned old guard of Adult Oriented Rock. Almost in reaction to the spread of bands that had buried guitar solos under a pile of synths and drum machines, bands like Journey ("Escape", 1981), Toto ("Toto IV", 1982), Survivor ("Eye Of The Tiger", 1982), Heart ("Heart", 1985) and Boston ("Third Stage", 1986) are reborn for a second life, while prog veterans like Yes (see "Owner Of A Lonely Heart") and their former members gone over to John Wetton's (ex-King Crimson) Asia clean up on the charts, leaning on the reassuring sounds of former apostates of rock's revolutionary cause. It's the decade that sees the explosion of openly mainstream hard-rock phenomena like Aerosmith, ZZ Top and Bon Jovi, and that cements the reputation of inveterate chart-topping rockers like Tom Petty and Pat Benatar.

In short, even in the thick of the MTV epic, crowded with elbowing starlets, heavily made-up vocalists and decadent electropop dandies, Foreigner can comfortably stay afloat, touring the hit-filled classics from their first four albums and even allowing themselves the occasional fleeting TV appearance (including in Italy, where they turn up performing "Waiting For A Girl Like You" on Rai 1's Discoring). But it's clear that their winning formula's days, by this point, are numbered.

Released three years after its predecessor, Agent Provocateur (1984) manages, for a moment, to stop time. At least for the duration of its memorable hits: the big gospel ballad “I Want To Know What Love Is” and the electro-rock thrust of “That Was Yesterday”. The former, recorded with the participation of Jennifer Holliday and the New Jersey Mass Choir, hardly needs introduction: an instant classic made for permanent FM rotation, with Gramm's warm, passionate vocals drenched in soft candlelit atmospheres, barely rippled by a few injections of electronics and backing choirs. So accessible that it was even covered by Mariah Carey, becoming at once the band's blessing and curse: many, in fact, would never forgive Jones & co. for the syrupy drift, forcibly (and permanently) associating it with their entire career, while the charts had every reason to be grateful, making it the band's only ever No.1 single, both on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US and the Official Singles Chart in the UK. And countless would be the covers and uses of the song in films, TV series and commercials.

The true masterpiece of the record, though, is the other hit, “That Was Yesterday” (No.12 on the US charts), a midtempo hybrid that perfectly condenses the propulsive rock drive of 1970s Foreigner with the skillful electronic reworking of their sound carried out in the following decade, starting with the titanic “Urgent”: the chiming synths set up a solemn mood, but always within elegant, well-calibrated arrangements, while Gramm shows off another vocal feat of soulful intensity over a bed of synthesized sounds. The poignant story of betrayed feelings (in friendship and in love) erupts in the proud outburst of the refrain: “But that was yesterday/ I had the world in my hands/ But it’s not the end of my world/ Just a slight change of plans”. It's a personal story, but it could just as well be the perfect metaphor for the trajectory the band was headed for.

Indeed, little else on Agent Provocateur suggests a bright future for Foreigner. “A Love In Vain” tries to repeat the miracle of “That Was Yesterday” with the same elegance and vocal verve intact, but without the same melodic power. The episodes closer to hard rock — the opening “Tooth And Nail”, the cocky “Stranger In My Own House” and the final charge of “She's Too Tough” — put the keyboards away in the closet but without replacing them with guitar riffs capable of leaving a mark. Better, if anything, is the closing “Reaction To Action”, where Jones's aggressive staccato guitar lines set Gramm loose in one of those raucous, Who-style vocal performances that suit him so well.

But by now keyboards are Foreigner's ace in the hole, as even a minor episode like “Growing Up A Hard Way” proves, with its precious central interlude lighting up with melancholy a track that started out low-key, while the insipid midtempo of “Down On Love” and the flabby ballad “Two Different Worlds” betray a creative fatigue that the following years would go on to confirm.

But the glittering packaging of those two mega-hits redeems the entire content of Agent Provocateur (including its unlikely espionage plot), sending it straight to No.1 on the British charts (the first and only time for Foreigner) and No.5 in the United States, even though overall sales would fall short of its predecessors'. Credit is also due for the refined, minimalist cover art, light years away from the garish tackiness of the Head Games era.

Foreigner were without doubt the best AOR band of the late '70s and early '80s

(All Music Guide)

Distractions and Escape Attempts

After their umpteenth success and a triumphant 9-month world tour, Foreigner take a break, during which Gramm releases his first solo album, “Ready Or Not” (1987), while Jones starts a parallel career as a producer, working on Van Halen's “5150”, Bad Company's “Fame And Fortune” and Billy Joel's “Storm Front”, while towards the end of the decade he also gets the satisfaction of co-writing a song (“Bad Love”) for Eric Clapton on his “Journeyman” (1989).

Meanwhile, the creative drive of the memorable new wave era has already nearly run its course, let alone that of a movement like Adult Oriented Rock (or arena rock, call it what you like), whose roots were firmly planted in the previous decade. The early-80s flare-up now seems to have burned out for almost all of the bands mentioned so far. And Foreigner are no exception. Their new album Inside Information (1987), in fact, holds few surprises. There's still solid craftsmanship on display, yielding a decent hit like the polished “Say You Will”, with Gramm's usual fervent vocals and a keyboard hook to match, and the shamelessly crowd-pleasing new ballad “I Don't Want To Live Without You” (though light years away in intensity from a “Waiting For A Girl Like You”, or even from the recent “I Want to Know What Love Is”).

Also holding up are the opening “Heart Turns To Stone”, with its rugged rock drive, and the vibrant “Face To Face”, which hits on another interesting interplay between guitars and synths, but ill-advised experiments like “Inside Information”, with its hall-of-mirrors play of synthetic rhythms, and “The Beat Of My Heart”, with guest Hugh McCracken's Spanish guitar intro, betray a clear dip in inspiration. Foreigner's impeccable studio craftsmanship can't make up for the lack of the melodies and harmonic structures that had made their fortune. And even the collaborative attempt of “Out Of The Blue”, the only song written by the entire band — Jones, Gramm, Willis and Elliott — gets lost in a toothless pop-rock limbo.

This time the audience's response would be lukewarm too, but even earning much less than its predecessors, Inside Information would settle around the million-copies-sold mark, still marking the band's last commercial success. Small consolation for the impending decline would be the posthumous critical reassessment. “Foreigner were without doubt the best AOR band of the late '70s and early '80s”, you can now read on the AllMusic website. Better late than never.

When the night comes down

See the young boy cry

(da “When The Night Comes Down”, 1990)

SGrammatical Exercises

As the '80s drew to a close, tensions also exploded within the band between Gramm, who championed a return to hard rock, and Jones, increasingly drawn toward pop and synthesizers. So in 1990 the singer decides to leave the band, right after the guitarist has just released his first (and only) solo album (the self-titled Mick Jones). The loss of the ineffable Mr. Grammatical and his inexhaustible soul-blues pipes is too hard a blow for Foreigner to absorb, especially for a band already in evident decline after its last few records. So when they return to the studio with a new singer, Johnny Edwards (formerly of King Kobra and Montrose), to record Unusual Heat (1990), a flop is just around the corner.

It only takes the opening notes of the first track, “Only Heaven Knows”, to realize we're in the presence of a different band: Edwards tries hard not to make listeners miss Gramm, but his powerful big voice completely lacks the personality and the poignant soul-gospel streak that fired up his predecessor's performances. But it's not only the singer's vocal timbre that's missing: the songs themselves have lost their identity, ending up sounding like those of any random minor AOR band plucked from the pile. No more daring harmonic structures, layered keyboards, tempo changes and dazzling riffs — this time it's truly “Yesterday's gone”. And so, by a curious paradox, just as critics were starting to reconsider the value of Foreigner's music, setting it apart from that — by now admittedly bloated and worn-out — of so many other AOR bands of the era, Jones and company, with their new songs, end up proving right those who had called it “turgid and tacky”. Edwards's high-pitched hard-rock tones, moreover, sit awkwardly with this crowd-pleasing mainstream rock that now seems to be the main course (“I'll Fight For You” almost sounds like a clash between Robert Plant and the blandest version of Toto). The other single, “Lowdown And Dirty”, despite the new singer's piercing pipes, also quickly gets lost in a flabby, drunken Def Leppard-style anthem. Better, perhaps, is the pounding hard rock of the title track, which at least lands a minimally engaging chorus.

On the melodic front too, it's dead calm: "Moment Of Truth" tries to play the epic-chorus card but stalls halfway, while the backing vocals accompanying Edwards, also on guitar, in "Mountain Of Love" no longer have any of the carefree Beatlesque innocence that once set the band apart in its early days. And while the melodramatic "When The Night Comes Down" and "Safe In My Heart" at least manage to bring back a glimmer of the band's lost identity (albeit buried under layers of treacle), and "No Hiding Place" tries to self-plagiarize the old "Juke Box Hero", tracks like "Ready For The Rain" and "Flesh Wound" do nothing but testify to the confusion of a band that seems to have completely lost its creative bearings.

More than Adult Oriented Rock, by this point it's Grandparents Oriented Rock.

Not even production guru Terry Thomas can prevent what will remain Foreigner's biggest flop, and this time not even the charts come to the rescue, where Unusual Heat won't even reach the lower rungs.

Moonlight serenades

So, in an attempt to shore up its freefalling stock, the band puts a compilation on the market, The Very Best… And Beyond, complete with a surprise: three unreleased tracks recorded in the studio after the return of prodigal son Gramm. The singer also brings along bassist Bruce Turgon, who had accompanied him in his solo projects, to replace Willis, who was heading off to Bad Company. With Edwards also let go and Jeff Jacobs brought in on keyboards, this new lineup churns out the album Mr. Moonlight (1994). From the electric midtempo of the single "White Lie" alone, you can tell the pieces of the puzzle have fallen back into place: it sounds like Foreigner again, even if perhaps not at their most inspired, but at least a lively chorus resurfaces, serving the singer's thick-grained voice, which also shines on the aching "Until The End Of Time" (with Duane Eddy on guitar), which tries to recapture the perfect AOR melody alongside the heartfelt "All I Need To Know"; while Jacobs stands out on piano in "Rain" and "Running The Risk", sealing a first half of the record built on decidedly soft tones.

One thus imagines an imminent change of pace, which in fact never comes: the second half of the record, too, sticks to these freeze-dried power-ballad cadences, between the dreamy keyboards and acoustic strings of the solemn "Real World" and the electric sinews running through the equally morphine-soaked "Keep Hoping", with Gramm almost whispering like an intimate crooner. The guitar that drives the folk-rock melody of "Hole In My Soul" bites a little harder, while the aggressive riffs of "Under The Gun" and the oddball sax – propped up by electric guitar – of "Big Dog" try for a moment to rekindle the verve of the juke-box heroes, slipping a bit of healthy rock'n'roll grime in among all that gloss, before the sentimental (and slightly flat) pop-rock of "Hand On My Heart" closes the record the way it began: as honest entertainment for nostalgic, middle-aged rockers gone soft.

Overall, a step forward from the disastrous predecessor, but nothing to call a miracle: Foreigner's sacred fire, that irresistible mix of imagination and pomp, now seems to have gone out for good at the twilight of the '80s. So Mr. Moonlight too fails to connect with the charts, getting no higher than number 136 on the Billboard chart.

Lions of the arena

Despite their recent string of studio flops, Foreigner remain a live-performance war machine, still able to fill arenas, especially in the United States. In 1997, however, their future is suddenly put at risk: Gramm is diagnosed with a brain tumor, fortunately benign, and it's removed through surgery. So two years later the singer, now recovered, is able to rejoin the band for a summer tour alongside Journey.

With no ambition of returning to the studio, the Anglo-American outfit indulges in a long string of anthologies (among the most notable, Jukebox Heroes: The Foreigner Anthology from 2000 and The Definitive from 2002) and the live release Alive And Rockin', put out on DVD in 2007 and on CD five years later.

In 2003 Gramm decides to leave for good to focus on his solo career, forming The Lou Gramm Band, so Jones, now the sole survivor of the original lineup, decides to replace him on vocals with Kelly Hansen, putting together a new lineup alongside bassist Jeff Pilson (ex-Dokken) and drummer Jason Bonham (son of John Bonham of Led Zeppelin, who in turn will depart in 2008).

Undaunted, despite everything, Foreigner head back into the studio in 2009 with three new members (Michael Bluestein on keyboards, Tom Gimbel on guitars and sax, and Brian Tichy on drums) for the album Can't Slow Down, released 15 years after their last album of new material. Alongside Jones and Hansen, the production also features Marti Frederiksen (who has worked the console for Def Leppard and Mick Jagger) and Mark Ronson (previously with Amy Winehouse and Duran Duran). The result is a record still leaning toward ballads, though with more than a few concessions to nostalgics of the band's rockier phase. Take, for instance, the title track, an honest hard-rock exercise dutifully carried off by Hansen over a thick blanket of jagged riffs, or "Living In A Dream", which races along on heavy layers of guitar, R&B horns and hammering drumming, "Give Me A Sign", with a fine soulful horn section push that mr. Gramm would surely have loved, or the nostalgic "Ready" and the driving "Too Late" (already included as an unreleased track on the previous year's anthology No End In Sight).

But it's perhaps on the softer side that the absence of the band's iconic voice is felt most: the midtempo of "When It Comes To Love" squanders a few decent melodic ideas on a rather sterile performance, while piano-chiseled ballads like "As Long As I Live" and "I Can't Give Up" run aground on a saccharine romanticism that, without Gramm's fervent pipes, has also lost the grandiose emphasis of the past. "When It Comes To Love" is perhaps the exception, at least managing to lodge a stadium-sized chorus in the listener's head. Flabby numbers like "Angel Tonight" and "Lonely", on the other hand, are an unconditional surrender to the most predictable AOR clichés. And not even the synth flourishes of "In Pieces" can save the fortunes of a record whose high point is a track from 32 years earlier, remixed in a soul vein ("Fool For You Anyway", from the band's self-titled 1977 debut).

It's nonetheless gratifying to note how the public's affection for Foreigner has remained intact after so many years: the album in fact debuts at number 29 on the Billboard 200, paving the way for a new tour by the band that also stops at the Alcatraz in Milan on April 11, 2010.

Another satisfaction comes on June 13, 2013, when Mick Jones and Lou Gramm are inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. For the occasion the two reunite on the same stage after so many years and take the chance to perform the classics "Juke Box Hero" and "I Want To Know What Love Is".

After the Acoustique Album in 2011, it's time for celebrations: Foreigner mark forty years of their career with the monumental anthology 40 (2017) and with a live performance in Switzerland alongside a 58-piece orchestra and a 60-voice choir, later captured on the live album Foreigner With The 21st Century Symphony Orchestra & Chorus (2018).

Meanwhile, the string of anthologies and live releases continues, while sporadic reunions and tours go on celebrating mostly the band's glorious past. The latest live project, "Juke Box Heroes", alongside Kansas and Europe, was postponed to 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Setting aside the decline that began at the end of the Eighties, along with the odd kitsch excess even before then, Foreigner's saga remains probably the most compelling in the whole of Adult Oriented Rock (or whatever you want to call it), though certainly not the only one. It stands as proof of just how significant that strand of music was, capable of producing numerous memorable songs as well as new recording techniques that would go on to shape the evolution of rock music. And if the most short-sighted of the critical establishment still won't admit it, the rest of us can simply live with that. Perhaps while dropping yet another coin into our heroes' million-selling jukebox.

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