Lou Gramm and his former band Foreigner are still riding high following their long overdue induction into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame. Gramm exited the group back in the early 2000s and has performed solo ever since.
Despite co-writing some of the band’s biggest hits for decades, Gramm said he was creatively stifled by bandmate and band co-founder Mick Jones. “In the late ’90s, early 2000s, Mick and I began writing,” Gramm told SiriusXM. “And we put some really, really good ideas together. I think we had about seven songs complete. And we were hoping to finish with about three or four more songs and put out a new Foreigner album.”
Foreigner hadn’t released a new album in nearly a decade, and Gramm’s breaking point with the group came at a festival in Belgium.
“We were playing something called ‘Night of the Proms’,” the singer said. “It was done in Brussels, Belgium, and they had a huge indoor tennis arena where there could be four games of tennis going on at once. It held 80,000 people. And after that series of shows, I left the band. I just had enough.”
Gramm continued: “Mick is the founder of the band, he’s the leader of the band, but he wasn’t necessarily doing the job the way he used to do it, and he was suppressing a lot of my creativity. ‘Just sing your parts, Lou.’ And after contributing to just about every hit song that the band had released in 20-some years, to be reduced to just a non-creative part, just the singer, didn’t sit well with me.”
Foreigner management couldn’t believe Gramm was leaving, but the singer said his choice was made. “‘Why? What could be wrong? Everything’s going so good,’” Gramm recalled being asked. “I said, ‘It’s not going good.’ I said, ‘I’m being shut out creatively, which is extremely important to me.’ I said, ‘I’m not just a singer. I’m a songwriter.’ I said, ‘And I always have been, even before Foreigner.’ So I left the band. And I’ve never had any regrets about it since.”
