From Forbes.com (I will be there in AC, health permitting for this show!):
Tonight, at the end of their set in Sturgis, South Dakota, Foreigner announced, from the stage, four special celebrations to take place this November and December. The four shows are November 9 at Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, November 10 at Agua Caliente Casino in Rancho Mirage, California, November 30 at the Hard Rock in Atlantic City and December 1 at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut (tickets are available this week at
https://www.foreigneronline.com/welcomeWhat makes these appearances so special is, just as they did in Sturgis, all members of the band, past and present, will share the stage. The current lineup, as well as past members such as vocalist Lou Gramm and drummer Dennis Elliott, will join forces to celebrate four decades of such massive hits as “Jukebox Hero,” “Waiting For A Girl Like You,” “Urgent,” “Feels Like The First Time,” “Cold As Ice,” “Double Vision,” “Head Games” and many more.
In their first joint interview in many years, guitarist Mick Jones and Gramm spoke with me about these special concerts, plans for possible new music, competing with the Rolling Stones in the '70s, their appreciation for younger bands like the Killers and why these one-off gigs today are so special for both of them.
Steve Baltin: How have you enjoyed the guest spots over the years and talk about now getting to bring those to a full show?
Mick Jones: First of all, it’s great to see everybody, who you haven’t seen, in some cases, for a long, long time. From time to time the guys come up on stage, wherever we are, it doesn’t matter, somewhere in the world somebody will be there and we’ll get them to the show. They’ll sit in and it’s just a really cool atmosphere and there are no big problems with anybody, as far as I know (laughs). It’s a great experience. It was really conceived around the 40-year anniversary to give the fans something and to give us something too. It’s a celebration.
Lou Gramm: Well put.
Baltin: Do you find that these gaps have brought new energy to the fold when you play together?
Gramm: When we performed on Long Island, it was very exciting to play with the members of the original band, on the same hand, comfortably familiar too. So it’s both of those emotions.
Baltin: You’re both such different people from 1978 as well. How have these songs changed for you?
Jones: I guess that’s like any career in the arts or music or whatever.
Gramm: Or an old girlfriend.
Jones:(Laughs) Comes in handy quite a lot, the old girlfriend. But, yeah, I think it’s good for us to be able to experience this again. It’s been great for me to honor the songs of the band, honor everybody’s contributions over the years. There’s no better vehicle than just getting together and jamming it out. Everybody gets on very well, as I mentioned, probably a lot better than we did (laughs).
Gramm: I agree.
Jones: So there’s sort of closure on it, but it’s a happy event. It’s great that we’re doing a few more this year and I think the audience really loves it, so looking forward to it.
Baltin: You also had so much success early on I imagine it was overwhelming and that creates pressure.
Gramm: As a band, we were thrown in the deep end in terms of performance. We had the first single and the first album getting a lot of airplay and we wanted to get on the road to support the album and I think we were playing with the Doobie Brothers?
Jones: That was the first tour we did.
Gramm: Yeah, and we had only played a handful of shows together before we started being their special guest and we had to deliver right away.
Jones: We sure did. Neither of us, I don’t think, had ever imagined what Foreigner would become. It certainly was beyond my wildest dreams. I think we all felt we had a strong album and perhaps we might get a foothold at the beginning of our career. But that was all taken away. Three of us had previous experience in bands, and two or three were not so experienced. And we had to adapt to all that in the beginning. But, again, I don’t think anybody could have predicted how big a mark we would leave on our first album. And also where’d we go from there.
Gramm: And I think, in general, the audiences and radio was ready for a band like us.
Jones: Yep, I think so. We came out the dawn of punk and the end of disco, except for my friend Nile Rodgers, who has a special place. We were the white band and they were the disco band at the beginning on Atlantic Records. We were selling most of the records on that label.
Baltin: Are you able to step away from it after all this time and see why that first album took off the way it did even in the midst of punk and disco?
Jones: The second album, Double Vision, we found ourselves suddenly vying and competing with the Rolling Stones on the same label. And we actually ended up out-selling Some Girls with Double Vision and that’s like, “What? What’d we just do?” It was a real euphoric feeling. I think we all felt that was the beginning of the band almost, of the ability to go out and play and headline ourselves.
Baltin: There are such a string of Foreigner hits you have to play.
Gramm: Not too bad, right?
Jones: (Laughing) Terrible problem to have.
Baltin: Are there songs you’re excited to bring back you haven’t done in some time?
Jones: All the way back to the beginning we always feature “Jukebox Hero,” that has probably become the rock anthem over the years. And these songs, even when I listen back to them myself, which I do probably once every five years, I think, “My god, they’re not bad.” They’ve certainly stood the test of time with the audiences.
Gramm: And the production still sounds great.
Jones: So I still get a lot of memories from those days, we had a few ups and downs obviously. But we ended up doing what we wanted to do and this really is a celebration of that.
Baltin: Is there ong song you haven’t played in a while you’d love to revisit?
Gramm: What is the one you’d like to hear?
Baltin: I’d go “Headknocker.”
Jones: That was the one I was gonna say, it’s right on the top of my tongue.
Baltin: There is an energy and vitality about those songs. It’s almost punk-ish.
Jones: We had a lot of energy and we put a lot into it. And really serious work, we were able to survive the sophomore jinx with Double Vision, which, to me, was one of the biggest feats and the most important thing for acceptance. As it happens I think we’re gonna be doing “Headknocker” in the set. It’s been a long time since I did that.
Baltin: Are there bands that were contemporaries of yours still going today you admire or enjoy for the way they’ve evolved and continued to go on?
Jones: We had original ideas from the Who and we had that fermenting quietly in the background and then it came to the fore with doing songs a little rougher edged and not quite produced and all that kind of stuff. We put a tremendous amount of effort and work, it was serious sacrifice, not only for us, but more so for our families. It took a bit of a toll there when we were touring so much, traveling so much that our home life was virtually non existent. So at least it’s a little more in control. We don’t quite do the same kind of schedule, but we’re still packing a lot of energy into the live shows. And obviously people will see that when they come to the show.
Gramm: It’s a lot more fun to play shows like this these days than six, eight weeks of five, six days a week.
Jones: Not complaining, but it is a tough life. There’s a lot of stuff around it, glamour and everything, but the bottom line is, if you’re gonna succeed you have to work your ass off. That’s what we did and unfortunately it caused a few ruckuses. But we survived that..
Baltin: After those ups and downs do you have a greater appreciation for doing these type of shows?
Gramm: There is definitely an appreciation for it, that’s for sure. Knowing that the shows are for a special reason and it’s our party, it’s our celebration. And I’ll cry if I want to (they laugh).
Baltin: Who would be the one contemporary band you’d want to share the stage with you for the Double Vision shows?
Jones: For me, probably Queens Of The Stone Age and the Killers. Josh [Homme] is a very cool guy. My stepson, Mark Ronson, produced an album recently with them. It’s good to listen to music when it’s your life and try to distinguish some of the new artists that come out. Like the Killers when they came out, I thought the freshness and the sound and the songwriting were there. Those are the things I go by and I guess I always have. Lou and I started out probably, we were so similar in our taste in music, music that had come through Island Records, Free, and a mixture of hat and R&B.
Gramm: Marvin Gaye, Aretha [Franklin].
Jones: So we kind of looked upon ourselves as more of a R&B band at one point. Not that we sounded like a R&B band, but the feel that we played with together.
Gramm: And we did some cool old R&B things for our encores that probably not a lot of people had ever heard before. But we knew them like gospel.
Baltin: Have you been surprised at all by the way the music keeps finding younger audiences over the years?
Jones: The shows have attracted a really young audience too this summer. Sometimes you look out there and it looks like it could be 1977. It’s a strange sensation and it’s all good. It’s great, it’s the longevity we spoke about earlier. None of us dreamed we’d still be doing this as a career. When we started out the projected lifespan of bands was very, very low.
Gramm: Not even 10 years.
Jones: Now it’s come full circle. Kids are really getting into stuff that their parents liked and you get kids at the show, right down to the ages of 10, 11, who are singing all the lyrics to all the songs. It’s uncanny. But I love it. To me, it proves we did something valid, which just doesn’t get pigeonholed too much. And that we wrote some great songs together.
Baltin: What comes after these shows?
Jones: We’re just contemplating work on a couple of songs that we wrote that are not quite complete or that we wrote 20 years ago and see what we can do with them. Hopefully towards the holiday season, first early part of next year, we can make that happen.
Gramm: Now that’s exciting for me.
Jones: Good.
Baltin: So we could hear new music fairly soon?
Jones: Yes, could be.
