This lovely, soaring love song climbed all the way to No. I can tell 4 on the pop charts, Foreigner's leader traded in hard rock guitar for what essentially amounts to a disco groove punctuated by a saxophone solo, the cheesy instrumental choice of the '80s. Atlantic Records promoted ‘Midnight Blue’, and the song did extremely well, but every single after that saw less and less promotion.. Robert: Why do you think Atlantic chose to do that?.
Lou: No, we probably made about the same. Lou Gramm discography and songs: Music profile for Lou Gramm, born 2 May 1950. Lou: To be fair to Mick, I think it was more of a rock direction versus a middle-of-the-road direction. We just had a cancellation for Thursday.” By 5 am Thursday I was in Boston, on a gurney, being wheeled into an operating room for 19 hours of surgery.. Robert: The surgery was technically a success, but your problems were just beginning.. Lou: They successfully removed the tumor, but apparently it had been growing inside of me since birth, and had grown large enough that it had done real damage.
If you listen to several of those songs with a fairly decent ear, you’ll hear me. Lou: No, I was not fearful. So that wasn’t good. [Robert laughs], Lou Gramm’s memoir, ‘Juke Box Hero: My Five Decades in Rock ‘N Roll’ (2013). To tell you the truth, I was thinking more about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the time. I play a little bit of keyboard and I noodle around on guitar a bit, and at that time I had a 2 track reel-to-reel machine that I would use to record a little bit of everything, including drums.
It was like talking to him 20 years ago.. Robert: Since that point, you’ve made a few guest onstage appearances with Foreigner to mark their 40th Anniversary, and in January, you and Mick walked onstage together at Madison Square Garden and played ‘Urgent’ and ‘Cold as Ice’ at a sold out Billy Joel show. Lou: It certainly did. Robert: Regarding Mick and your chemistry together with Foreigner, you wrote almost two dozen hit songs, and very often, both of you would make memorable contributions to the same song. I swear to you, Robert, for the 3 or 4 minutes it took to get there, I had no idea where I was. Honestly! My pituitary gland and other regulatory things were operating at a third of what they should have, so I was on a multitude of prescription pills, and giving myself shots several times a day. Phil Collins, Sting, and Steve Perry all left huge bands to achieve massive solo success. When they came to Rochester, our manager arranged for us to see their show, and Mick was playing guitar. I never got tired of collaborating with Mick. For ‘Juke Box Hero’ I had the verse written, and a part of the B section and a little bit of the chorus. You did some heavy lifting.. Lou: Yes, I sang multiple parts on many of those songs, and I doubled voices on many of them. We were in Studio A, and at the same time, a young Bryan Adams was recording in Studio B. Mick was doing some guitar solos for our album, so I was just hanging around the control room when Bryan walked in and said, “Look guys, I’m in a bind, and I’m wondering if you can help me out. This Kiss tour was going to be a long one, and they were allowing us almost an hour every night to play in front of sold out crowds. Albums include Ready or Not, The Lost Boys, and Long Hard Look. The problem was, I didn’t have enough money for a hotel.
Lou: That’s true. Lou: Foreigner was in a studio called ‘The Right Track’, and we were recording the ‘Agent Provocateur’ album (in 1982). We came back later in the day to see what our equipment looked like, and almost all of it was destroyed. I know that I can still hear my voice. I let him know what happened to us, and told him that we were sorry, but we could no longer fulfill our obligation to the tour.