"I've been living in New York City for over 40 years now," muses Mick Jones (72), "but whenever I'm in London, like now, I feel at home. I've remained a foreigner, even after all these years. For Johnny Hallyday and others I wrote songs for several years and was a session musician in France. Those were exciting years when I made friends with the Beatles and Jimmy Page. I think this time in France had its share in the later Foreigner sound."
Friends of the Beatles - so it's not so surprising that Jones played on George Harrison's solo album "Dark Horse" (1974). "Now that I've said it myself in one sentence, these are really the two cornerstones of our sound: the Beatles and Jimmy Pages Led Zeppelin. Between France, good old Rock'n'Roll, a little bit of mine and Ian McDonalds prog phase with Spooky Tooth and King Crimson and of course a lot of Lou Gramm."
Long, Long Way From Home
When Spooky Tooth played in Rochester, New York, Louis Grammatico took all his courage and gave Jones the first LP of his band Black Sheep. "I was immediately excited about this singer, and when I played the LP to Ian, he was also on fire and said it was just the right singer for Foreigner. The song 'Long, Long Way From Home' from the first album could be related to the three Brits - guitarists Jones and McDonald and drummer Dennis Elliott - but is actually a lyric by Lou Gramm, who came from the New York province to New York City to conquer the big music world with Foreigner."
Before, Grammatico became Gramm. "That's figuratively typical of us as a band. Less is often more." In addition to Gramm, two other US boys, keyboard player Al Greenwood and bassist Ed Gagliardi, joined the legendary line-up. The Brooklyn bass player died of cancer three years ago. "When I think of Ed," Jones said in an eclipsed interview shortly after Gagliardis death in 2014, "I always think of his madness about everything to do with Paul McCartney. He couldn't believe that I had been friends with Paul & Co. since their first Beatles appearances in France." The bassist mostly played a left-handed Rickenbacker bass. "The crazy dog even played the part left-handed, although he was actually right-handed. I think if I had told him that Paul recorded his songs lying down, he probably would have laid down on the floor for a long time."
