{"id":528820,"date":"2026-07-02T05:34:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T05:34:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/528820\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T05:34:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T05:34:17","slug":"foreigner-the-epic-story-behind-foreigner-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/528820\/","title":{"rendered":"Foreigner: the epic story behind Foreigner 4"},"content":{"rendered":"

Along with Journey, Anglo-American superstars Foreigner<\/a> defined early 80s AOR<\/a> music thanks to 1981\u2019s mega-selling 4 album. In 2011, the band looked back on the making of a classic.<\/p>\n

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\"Classic\n<\/p>\n

Six months into the endless, ever-expanding time frame that was the making of Foreigner\u2019s fourth album, producer Robert John \u2018Mutt\u2019 Lange<\/a> decided he needed a break.<\/p>\n

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Looking up from the mixing desk in Electric Lady Studio, located at 52 West 8th Street in New York\u2019s Greenwich Village, he yelled at those in the control room who, like he, had just endured yet another gruelling night-shift and missed yet another sunrise.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhat the fuck are we doing here? We need to go out! We never go out! We need to go to Central Park\u2026 Let\u2019s go buy some Frisbees!\u201d<\/p>\n

With the band having long left the studio, Mutt\u2019s outburst would only have been witnessed by his close coterie of engineering staff, and a young, then-unknown keyboard player named Thomas Dolby who had recently been drafted in for the sessions.<\/p>\n

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All of them were startled, but took their cue and followed Mutt up the stairs and out on to West 8th Street, blinking in the morning sunshine. He hailed a yellow cab and ordered it to wait outside 5th Avenue\u2019s legendary toy store FAO Schwarz while he bought a variety of Frisbees, then leapt back in the cab and instructed the driver to take them all, giggling, to Central Park. For what Dolby remembers as a truly joyous five minutes, they raced about the park, flinging the coloured plastic discs around like excited schoolchildren high on life. But, after those five minutes, the real Mutt Lange resurfaced\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the fuck are we doing here? We\u2019ve got an album to make!\u201d<\/p>\n

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With that, he led them all away, hailed another yellow cab and raced back to Electric Lady.<\/p>\n

Foreigner\u2019s guitarist Mick Jones<\/a> hears this story for the first time when Classic Rock Presents AOR meets him in his London hotel suite during the band\u2019s recent European tour. He might be unfamiliar with this specific tale, but recognises it immediately as indicative of what he describes as the producer\u2019s \u201cintense\u201d commitment to the work. Jones recognises it, of course, because it mirrors his own, and explains why the album took so very long to make. How long?<\/p>\n

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\"Foreigner\n<\/p>\n

Foreigner in 1981: (l-r) Dennis Elliott, Lou Gramm, Rick Wills, Mick Jones (Image credit: Paul Natkin\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt took about 10 months, counting pre-production\u2026 maybe the best part of a year,\u201d Jones shrugs, pointing out that the group\u2019s 1977 debut LP <\/a>had taken nine months, their second, 1978\u2019s Double Vision \u201cabout six months\u201d, and their third, 1979\u2019s Head Games, \u201cprobably almost the same again\u201d. So Foreigner had form in that department. But 10 months? The best part of a year?! Wasn\u2019t that some kind of record at the time? Apparently so\u2026<\/p>\n

What to read next<\/p>\n

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\"The\n<\/p>\n

This feature originally appared in Classic Rock Presents AOR issue 3 (July 2011) (Image credit: Future)<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember I was in a club in London and Simon Le Bon came up to me and said, \u2018I hear we\u2019re in the running for the prize for spending the most time and money in a studio!\u2019,\u201d grins Jones, not a little ashamed as well. \u201cUnfortunately, we did share that distinction\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

The Frisbee excursion was not a significant factor, then, in Foreigner 4\u2019s extended gestation. The real reason was Jones and Lange\u2019s 100 per cent commitment to making absolutely the best record possible, and refusing to stop until they were sure they had. For both men, that meant achieving a new level of excellence in the songs.<\/p>\n

Jones: \u201cThe songs are the basis of everything. They always were with this band. I always set out to make albums that you could listen to from beginning to end, without filler\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

The statistics for Foreigner 4 prove that all the hours, days, weeks and months in the studio, all the deadlines missed, all the budgets broken, were ultimately worth it.<\/p>\n

The album enjoyed 10 weeks (in three spells) at No.1 in the Billboard charts, starting on August 22, 1981 and ending February 11, 1982. American sales exceeded six million. It remains the band\u2019s best seller in the UK, reaching No.5, and earning a gold disc, while it also made No.4 in Germany. Of the six songs released as singles in the US, only the last \u2013 Luanne, in 1982 \u2013 failed to go Top 30.<\/p>\n

Perhaps most importantly of all, 30 years later all 10 of these songs still resonate strongly.<\/p>\n

Foreigner – Urgent (Official Music Video) – YouTube
\n\"Foreigner<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

Time and money are relative. As is failure.<\/p>\n

A bit of context is needed. Foreigner were a success right out of the box: Stateside, their self-titled debut of 1977 sold five million copies and reached No.4. A year later, their second effort, Double Vision, made No.3 in the US \u2013 even climbing to No.32 in the UK \u2013 and shifted seven million copies. So when third album Head Games, released in 1979, stalled at No.5 on the Billboard chart and only went quintuple platinum, something was deemed to have gone wrong.<\/p>\n

Jones: \u201cThat did start the thinking, that we needed to be positive about our identity for the fourth album. Okay, we\u2019d beaten the jinx of the first album being a flash-in-the-pan with Double Vision being so strong, but I think on Head Games we really went into \u2018excessive mode\u2019. The drugs came into the picture a bit too much there. So we kind of had a massive hangover after that album [laughs]. I look back on it and think it wasn\u2019t quite focused. We tried to toughen the image of the band up with Dirty White Boy and Head Games itself, but that\u2019s where the question about where we were going originated\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

English bassist Rick Wills \u2013 who had joined the line-up for Head Games, the former Peter Frampton band\/Roxy Music member having replaced New Yorker Ed Galgliardi \u2013 had a few concerns. \u201cIn some ways, after the first two Foreigner albums, Head Games was something of a departure in style and form,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was a bit more heavy and rocky, and that didn\u2019t go down so great with everyone. And, of course, we had that very controversial album cover\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

It featured a girl caught in the act of wiping her phone number off a gents\u2019 toilet wall, but it was perceived by some as something more provocative. A lot of American record stores refused to rack it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we sold a lot less of that album for that reason alone,\u201d Wills continues. \u201cIt did very well, but by Foreigner standards it was considered something of a failure. Having just come into the band I was thinking, \u2018Bloody hell \u2013 this doesn\u2019t bode well for my future!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Jones was thinking about the future, too, but Wills wasn\u2019t the one who needed to worry. The guitarist and band-leader was more concerned that the demands of keyboard player Al Greenwood and ex-King Crimson multi-instrumentalist Ian McDonald to be included in the songwriting process would weaken the band. Greenwood was dismissed first, McDonald followed soon after (years later, when the band reconvened in mid-2010 to rehearse some new songs, McDonald was present, but the line-up was soon pared again down to four).<\/p>\n

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\"Foreigner&rsquo;s\n<\/p>\n

Lou Gramm in the early 1980s (Image credit: Oliver Morris\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Wills: \u201cI hadn\u2019t expected this. Mick had said to me he wanted more freedom to bring other musicians in, to experiment \u2013 especially with keyboards \u2013 because this was the era when people were beginning to do amazing things, electronically. Mick \u2013 who was never one to stand still \u2013 wanted to try these things out, because he thought that was the way forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jones: \u201cIt was a tough time, emotionally. Ian was a close friend, but Lou [Gramm, singer] and I just felt we had hit our stride writing together and we wanted to really start to maximise on that. We talked at length about it and had a fairly clear vision of where we wanted to go, so it was a question of being a bit ruthless. We felt we wanted to focus.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the songs that was helping them focus was a ballad.<\/p>\n

Wills: \u201cMick tended to write most of the songs on a piano, using mostly the black notes, so everything was in sharps and flats, and little bit weird when it came time to transpose them to the guitar\u2026 As I recall, it was fairly bitty at first, but the one song he did have completely finished was Waiting For A Girl Like You. The first time they played it to me, I said, \u2018Well if that isn\u2019t a hit, I don\u2019t know what is!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Jones\u2019 voice bears a tremor of emotion as he recalls the genesis of that song: \u201cWaiting For A Girl Like You almost wrote itself. That was the first time I had a really serious emotional experience. It was overwhelming. From the moment we put down the basic track and Lou added a scratch vocal, I found it hard to be in the room without breaking down during the playbacks. It was such a strange sensation. I really got the feeling that something was coming down through me, that I was just the conduit. It was the first time I\u2019d got in touch with what I\u2019d heard other writers or artists talk about.\u201d<\/p>\n

That song would, of course, change everything \u2013 but so would the band\u2019s choice of producer. Jones had taken both co-production and \u2018musical direction\u2019 credits on the first three albums \u2013 never less than fully involved \u2013 but was also keen to gain a respected second opinion on a song (or third, if it was one co-written with Lou Gramm). The man chosen was Robert John \u2018Mutt\u2019 Lange (rhymes with \u201changer\u201d), a man known as Mutt who was the big dog in rock production at the time, having steered AC\/DC to consecutive multi-platinum successes with Highway To Hell and Back In Black.<\/p>\n

Foreigner – Juke Box Hero (Official Music Video) – YouTube
\n\"Foreigner<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

Jones, though, had been a fan of his for some time: \u201cMutt first caught my attention when he produced a band called City Boy, way back [Mutt produced City Boy\u2019s first five albums, starting with 1976\u2019s self-titled debut]. I\u2019d been impressed by the work he\u2019d done on that band. And he had applied to do the Head Games album, actually. He came over to New York to see me, but it was just a question of bad timing for him, so we chose Roy Thomas Baker. But Mutt was always in the back of my mind, so when he reapplied for the fourth album, that was it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lange later became legendary for his painstaking, particular note-by\u2013note work with Def Leppard, but was still a relatively unknown quantity to Jones, who insists he was unaware such methods might be used upon Foreigner.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew that he was really into sound, that he was dedicated and he was very serious,\u201d says Jones. \u201cHe really showed incredible enthusiasm.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first evidence of that enthusiasm came during the pre-production stage when, having heard the songs that the band felt were ready to be recorded, he asked to hear the ideas that Mick considered unfinished. It was not something the guitarist felt comfortable doing, inviting this stranger into his hitherto-private world of taped bits and pieces.<\/p>\n

Mick says Lange \u201cforced his way into\u201d this private world. \u201cIt was the first time I\u2019d ever let anybody in there,\u201d he adds. \u201cIn some cases, he was hearing stuff I thought was embarrassing. But he wanted to hear every single thing I had, even if it was only a 10-second snippet.<\/p>\n

\u201cOut of that process, we put Urgent together. It began as just an instrumental passage I had, the thing that became the intro. But I didn\u2019t know what I was going to do with that. I thought it might become some sort of weird instrumental.<\/p>\n

\u201cMutt also helped put Juke Box Hero together. It was originally two separate songs. Lou had one idea called Take One Guitar, and I had the Juke Box Hero thing. Mutt helped us to gel the two\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Foreigner\n<\/p>\n

Foreigner\u2019s Mick Jones and Lou Gramm onstage in 1981 (Image credit: Paul Natkin\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Mutt\u2019s contributions are openly acknowledged, but not recognised with the co-writing credits he later received with Leppard. It seems safe to presume he was handsomely rewarded, although Mutt is never available for comment. The man who Jones, with a grin and no small degree of understatement, describes as \u201ca bit of a recluse\u201d, has made only one significant public statement in the last couple of decades: \u201cI\u2019ve always been a private person. I don\u2019t value being in the media spotlight. I\u2019m fortunate to be able to avoid it.\u201d<\/p>\n

English engineer Tony Platt, a man who worked with Mutt on a number of albums before Foreigner 4, offers a first-hand view of his methods, and insists the producer is always artist-led. \u201cOne of Mutt\u2019s absolute talents \u2013 and it is an exceptional talent \u2013 is insisting upon getting the songs right,\u201d Platt says. \u201cAnd he wants to get the songs right before you go into the studio, so you\u2019re starting from a very strong perspective. In fact, the Foreigner 4 album got put back a couple of times, because Mutt didn\u2019t feel the songs were in quite the right shape. Even when I went out to theoretically begin recording, and they were still in pre-production, I ended up hanging around in New York while they were sorting out a couple of songs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen we took them into the studio and started getting sounds. That would undoubtedly suggest other changes that they might want to make in the arrangement of the song, strengthening the sound. The sound can then move further forward \u2013 and at a certain moment, we take a snapshot of it and then they could say, \u2018That is how it should be. That is the moment in time that this song should inhabit.\u2019 Mutt was always very good at picking that moment, perfectly.\u201d<\/p>\n

History has proven Mutt\u2019s infallible sense for what makes a hit record. But what was it like on the other side of the control room window?<\/p>\n

Jones shrugs. \u201cMutt was intense. He was intensely dedicated to it, as well. We had our differences, you know. We were like two goats \u2013 stubborn \u2013 and we locked horns a few times\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Foreigner&rsquo;s\n<\/p>\n

Foreigner\u2019s Mick Jones onstage in 1981 (Image credit: David Corio\/Redferns)<\/p>\n

At a point that even the meticulous Platt can only recall as \u201clate summer\/early fall 1980\u201d, recording finally began in the same studio where Head Games had been recorded: Atlantic Studios, on New York\u2019s Upper West Side. However, it would prove to be a false dawn.<\/p>\n

Platt: \u201cIt was a studio in which a lot of very good things had been done, but it had seen better days at that point in time. Atlantic had air-conditioning units that buzzed, and there were desks that were a little bit weird, so after about a week in there we just decided we had to go somewhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n

They would end up at Electric Lady, the legendary recording studio in Manhattan\u2019s Greenwich Village that Jimi Hendrix had built in a basement he\u2019d originally bought to turn into a nightclub. His earlier plan to make it a \u2018curvaceous\u2019 space with no right angles faltered, but as a studio it has endured. Jones had worked there in Spooky Tooth. Lange had used it for Back In Black.<\/p>\n

Platt: \u201cBoth Mutt and I had been very happy at Electric Lady, so we decamped and went there. Studio A is a big room. It still has the murals on the wall that were done when Jimi first bought it. It\u2019s an astonishing space. It has a lot of vibe to it.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we set up\u2026 We created a large area for the drums, with a big screen set up for the bass. We built a room within the room for the guitar amps. I had to get as much separation as I could, but within a rock context \u2013 because I knew a lot of stuff might be replaced. And Lou sang all his vocals in the vocal booth that was already there. It was quite a large booth \u2013 and that became his home for all the time we were there! He kept bringing things in and making himself more comfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n

But first things first, and that meant recording Dennis Elliott\u2019s drums.<\/p>\n

\u201cMutt had wanted to go the electronic route with the drums,\u201d remembers Jones. \u201cThat didn\u2019t sit well with me or with Dennis. That was a bit of a bone of contention!\u201d<\/p>\n

Wills: \u201cI remember for three days Dennis was just hitting snare drums. He finally got up and said, \u2018Listen man, I can fucking play drums. You can\u2019t even get a sound!\u2019 He was really angry [laughs].\u201d<\/p>\n

Foreigner – Waiting for a Girl Like You (Official Music Video) – YouTube
\n\"Foreigner<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

Jones: \u201cMutt also wanted to use a click track for timing, and Dennis took offence to that, as well. When he and I were working on the song Break It Up, we got so fed up that, at one point, we just said, \u2018Fuck this!\u2019 and went into the studio together. I sat at the piano, Dennis sat at the drums, and we laid down the basic track, just him and me. Then we turned round to Mutt and said, \u2018Okay? Happy now?!\u2019 We wanted to prove the point that this band could play and keep time, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess I wanted to stay more old-school than Mutt,\u201d Jones muses. \u201cHe was all for going ahead and using the technology that was coming up at that time \u2013 as you can hear on his Def Leppard albums, the drums there are electronic, they\u2019re synthesised\u2026 But I didn\u2019t want to go that route. It wouldn\u2019t have worked for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, Dennis Elliott \u2013 now retired from the music business and answering a new calling as a wood sculptor \u2013 seems reluctant to re-live all this, but recalls that his working life was simpler on the group\u2019s earlier albums. \u201cI was usually done with the drum tracks within the first two weeks, and the songs were then built upon those tracks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elliott is a keen sailor, and during the sessions for Foreigner 4 he would moor his boat at a basin on the Upper West Side, where he lived with his wife Iona. The basin being a relatively short drive from Electric Lady, members of the band and Mutt would often step aboard after a day in the studio, to unwind and enjoy the views.<\/p>\n

Elliott, who might ordinarily have expected to be hitting the ocean by this point in the sessions, recalls: \u201cI couldn\u2019t really go too far, and it did seem to take an eternity. Sometimes a song would go through so many changes during that time, it was necessary for me to come back in and start all over\u2026 I would stop by the studio every week or two to see what progress was being made \u2013 but on the Foreigner 4 album, they always seemed to be playing foosball!\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Foreigner&rsquo;s\n<\/p>\n

Foreigner\u2019s Lou Gramm onstage in 1981 (Image credit: Paul Natkin\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Sometimes known as table football on this side of the Atlantic, Platt recalls that he and Lange installed the foosball table at Electric Lady. \u201cWe bought a table and put it at the back of the studio so, at the end of the night, we\u2019d all unwind around it. We\u2019d get the beers or the wine out, and have a tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wills: \u201cEvery time there was any downtime, we\u2019d go out there and play at the foosball table. We all got good \u2013 and got ferociously competitive about it. Especially Mutt\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Platt insists he was the foosball champion \u2013 \u201cSomewhere I\u2019ve got the trophy, a miniature Converse sneaker\u201d \u2013 which Jones confirms. But, as Wills observes, \u201cat $2,000 a day, it was quite an expensive hobby!\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the bassist, very little work seemed to be getting done. \u201cIt was hard to get the gist of where we were going to go with this album, because after just about every session, there would be this long conversation, between Mick and Mutt, about where we were going with the album and what was needed. If Mutt\u2019s anything, he\u2019s a perfectionist. He doesn\u2019t let anything slide, won\u2019t let anything past him unless he thinks it\u2019s good enough. And Mick Jones is pretty similar \u2013 so boy the two of them did lock horns a few times. It was tough!\u201d<\/p>\n

Everyone agreed, though, on Waiting For A Girl Like You.<\/p>\n

Wills: \u201cThat was one of the first songs we recorded \u2013 kept and done as a second take! It sounded fabulous. Everybody\u2019s performance on it sounded great and we knew we had that in the can.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWaiting For A Girl Like You was Lou\u2019s original live vocal,\u201d says Platt. \u201cThat was one of those tracks where I remember the recording session very, very clearly. We put down a basic washy keyboard in the background, with the main track. There was some editing in between takes\u2026 And once we\u2019d chosen the master and done all the edits, I remember sitting there till about three o\u2019clock in the morning, and everyone was still saying, \u2018Oh, play it back again, play it again!\u2019 There was a general feeling that this was going to be the big hit\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

What no one appreciated while listening to Waiting For A Girl Like You, however, was that Gramm was not going to be able to replicate its incredible chorus live.<\/p>\n

Jones: \u201cIn hindsight, I\u2019d say Mutt really pushed Lou, probably past his range. I was there as well, so I have to take a bit of\u2026 I don\u2019t know about blame, because it all worked out as we all wanted it to work out. But in hindsight, Lou did have a lot of difficulty with the pitch and the range of a couple of those songs. Juke Box Hero was another song that strained his voice to the limit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wills: \u201cLou could sing it in the studio, but he couldn\u2019t reproduce it live every night. We actually used to do it a semitone down from the record. We used to detune \u2013 we had separate guitars for that song. Same with Juke Box Hero. It was just too much for Lou to do. It led to some sort of mind-games going on between him and Mick about performances and stuff. That\u2019s how the whole thing started to disintegrate later on in our careers, really, with Lou not being able to really cope with the demands.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the time, though, Wills reckons the singer was unfazed by most of what was going on: \u201cHe just dealt with it in Lou\u2019s way \u2013 very quietly and subdued. Although he was very much involved in the writing side with Mick, when it came to the recording he would make suggestions, but pretty much let Mick and Mutt run the show\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

That show was gradually running around the clock. They might take the occasional day off, but recording was becoming a way of life.<\/p>\n

Wills: \u201cElectric Lady became our second home. We initially began sessions at midday, but three months later they\u2019d gone on so long that we were starting at midnight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like Dennis, Mick and Mutt were holed up in the city. Lou Gramm and Rick Wills were commuting from their homes in Westchester County \u2013 about 45 miles, or a 45-minute drive, from Manhattan. This was \u201cno big deal\u201d according to Wills, who prefered to \u201cgo back to his home and his family every night. Or whatever hour it was. Sometimes I\u2019d get back at 6am, just as they were getting up to go to school\u2026 It was pretty bizarre!\u201d<\/p>\n

Their shifting schedule ultimately led to the lyrics for one of Foreigner 4\u2019s songs. Nearby the studio, on the corner of Sixth Avenue, there was a Nathan\u2019s Famous hot dog eaterie, as Jones recalls: \u201cThe later it got at night, the bigger the buzz got, and a lot of weird characters, some of them hookers, would appear. It was a big mixture of a lot of different characters \u2013 so that was the inspiration for opening song, Night Life.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Foreigner&rsquo;s\n<\/p>\n

Foreigner\u2019s Mick Jones with Led Zeppelin\u2019s Robert Plant and Jimmy Page in 1981 (Image credit: dpa picture alliance \/ Alamy Stock Photo)<\/p>\n

However, the extended studio hours were taking their toll financially.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the time it was considered unrealistic,\u201d says Wills. \u201cWe\u2019d spent over a million dollars in recording costs. There was a lot of pressure \u2013 from the record company, from the management and from ourselves. It was pretty tough. Our manager, Bud Prager, was going crazy, having to keep going to Atlantic for more and more advances, just to pay for the studio time. Because once you\u2019ve got that far into it, you can\u2019t turn back, and you begin to realise that you\u2019re going to have to sell a hell of a lot of records to pay that advance back\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Steadily, though, great tracks started to emerge, including songs like Urgent, which had barely existed when sessions first began, and was, at one point, stripped right back to Elliott\u2019s drum track and that quirky guitar intro.<\/p>\n

The song, however, is made by the sax solo played by the late, great Junior Walker. Jones saw Walker and his All-Stars were playing in a club nearby, so he and Wills skipped out of Electric Lady, watched three or four sets, and then invited a bemused Walker down to the studio.<\/p>\n

Elliott and his wife made sure they were there to see the soul legend in action. \u201cIt was very amusing,\u201d remembers Iona, \u201cbecause after he played his solo once, he was very happy with it, but Mick made him play it several more times, and was trying to get him to stretch out more and more, until it became that wonderful solo.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt turned out that in all his career he had never done an overdub,\u201d adds Jones. \u201cEverything he\u2019d ever done was live. So the first five or six takes, he was really uncomfortable. He had the headphones on, but couldn\u2019t get used to that fact that he was overdubbing. But he did, after a while, and started playing some stuff. He explained, \u2018I\u2019ve kind of changed my style up a bit\u2026\u2019 and started playing this jazzy, softer type of stuff. Mutt and I were sitting there thinking, \u2018Oh, no, we need the Junior Walker we know and love.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cMutt, bless him, went and straight-talked it to Junior: \u2018This is great but we really need some of that Shotgun\/Road Runner stuff.\u2019 \u2018Oh, you want the old shit? Okay!\u2019 So he gets up, does it again and in two or three takes we\u2019ve got it. However, it did take a tremendous amount of editing. Mutt and I spent two days chopping up little slivers of quarter-inch tape from the different takes, and then splicing it all together. We wanted it to be a classic solo, and I think that\u2019s how it ended up\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s tempting to paint Lange as the villain of the piece, but, as the Junior Walker story shows, Jones was just as much a perfectionist. Today, he concedes: \u201cWe had these moments with Mutt, but we kind of overcame it. Nothing lasted longer than the time it took to achieve what we\u2019d set out to achieve. Gradually, things eased up with Mutt, and we really started to appreciate what we were all bringing to the party. He loosened up from his more \u2018stiff\u2019 approach.\u201d<\/p>\n

After three months, however, Platt had to leave. He\u2019d stalled a prior engagement to re-mix Samson\u2019s Shock Tactics LP, but could delay the project no longer.<\/p>\n

Platt: \u201cI would speak to Mutt now and then, of course. If he ever had any questions on anything I\u2019d done, he\u2019d just call me up. It was all recorded in 24-track analogue. Those tapes already had a lot of edits in them, so you wouldn\u2019t want to keep playing them. The normal practice in those days was to make up a slave reel from the master reel so you could do all your overdubbing on the slave reel \u2013 then you would lock the two together when you did the mix, so you wouldn\u2019t be degrading the sound on the master reel, by playing it over and over again. So before I left I made up all the slave reels and checked everything was right before I left.\u201d<\/p>\n

The other thing Platt did before leaving was recommend his replacement, Dave Wittman, the man who would carry the torch as Lange\u2019s right-hand man to the very end of the project.<\/p>\n

Initial sessions had seen Platt record keyboards by Peter Frampton\u2019s Bob Mayo, sometime Lou Reed man Michael Fonfara, and Larry Fast from Peter Gabriel\u2019s band. But Mutt and Mick wanted something more. They went after a then-unknown Englishman by the name of Thomas Dolby, who could be found busking in Paris, avoiding a UK music lawyer\u2019s bill he couldn\u2019t afford\u2026<\/p>\n

\n

\"Foreigner\n<\/p>\n

Foreigner onstage at Wembley in London in 1982 (Image credit: Hulton-Deutsch Collection\/CORBIS\/Corbis via Getty Images))<\/p>\n

Dolby: \u201cI got a call from a friend in England who said, \u2018Somebody called Mick Jones phoned for you and said he wanted you to do a session\u2026\u2019. I thought this was Mick Jones of The Clash, who were one of my favourite bands at the time. I\u2019d actually never heard of Foreigner. But when I looked into it, it turned out that they were actually very big in America!\u201d<\/p>\n

Lange, a partner in Zomba Publishing, had heard one of the 22 year old\u2019s demo cassettes and liked his keyboard playing, so, in mid-January 1981, he suggested to Mick that they should check Dolby out.<\/p>\n

\u201cI spoke to them from Paris and they suggested I should try out for a day or two and asked, \u2018When could you come over?\u2019,\u201d remembers Dolby, of the initial contact. \u201cI thought very hard and said, \u2018Well, tomorrow morning!\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cMutt was really sticking his neck out in insisting that they hired me and fly me over. I was a kid who had previously thought himself lucky to have spent four hours in a recording studio. I was like a bull in a china shop \u2013 ordering up all sorts of keyboards and effects, from a list like a takeaway menu.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019d already put keyboards on most of the album, but they weren\u2019t very happy with them, so they gave me a trial to see what I could do. The first track they gave me was Urgent, and they were very pleased with that so they asked if I could stick around and do the whole album.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mostly, Dolby\u2019s contributions consisted of very subtle keyboard arpeggios, doubling every note Mick Jones and Rick Wills had played.<\/p>\n

Mutt could then add yet another layer to the mix but, as Dolby explains, \u201che\u2019d make it very, very quiet, so you could hardly hear it. That would just make the guitar playing sound better\u2026 I think I was on pretty much the whole album.<\/p>\n

Foreigner – Night Life (Soundstage) – YouTube
\n\"Foreigner<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWaiting For A Girl Like You was clearly the centrepiece of the album, but they were nervous about it, because they weren\u2019t really known as a \u2018ballad band\u2019. But they were also very confident about it, and Mutt Lange, in particular, was absolutely convinced it would be the biggest hit they\u2019d ever had. He said, \u2018I really want to make this remarkable. Every time this comes on the radio, I want people to prick up their ears and know exactly what they\u2019re listening to.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI was very heavily influenced by Brian Eno and his ambient stuff, and I had a style like that. This was in the days before polyphonic synths that allowed you to play chords. Back then you could only play one note at a time, but you could build up chords on a multi-track by playing long single notes and layering other notes above and below them. It would vary the sound a bit, and you\u2019d end up with a nice mesh. So I recorded a few minutes of that, and Mutt came in and took a slice of it \u2013 maybe 25 seconds or so \u2013 and spliced it into the front of the song. And it worked rather well!<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember, a couple of years later, I\u2019d be driving in middle America somewhere, listening to some AOR rock station, and this sound would come on. It was absolutely unmistakable. I felt it was quite subversive, really, to get some ambient Eno music on to American AOR radio!\u201d<\/p>\n

For Dolby, who to that point had \u201cbarely made a penny\u201d as a session musician, one month\u2019s work changed his life. \u201cI came back from the States with an envelope full of cash, which I used to make my first album, so the proceeds from Foreigner 4 set me up. By the time Waiting For A Girl Like You came out, then suddenly I had all sorts of option for other work\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite that cash \u2013 which led directly to his 1982 debut album The Golden Age Of Wireless, and early hits Windpower and She Blinded Me With Science \u2013 Dolby recalls that \u201cthey were trying not to break the bank, so I actually stayed in Mutt\u2019s hotel suite on Central Park South. It had a pull-out settee in a second room, and I slept on that for the first week or so. I remember that Mutt would leave for the studio in the morning, before I woke up, and often wouldn\u2019t get back until after I was asleep. The man slept, like, four hours a night! And yet he still found time to sit cross-legged on his bed, playing guitar and singing like Van Morrison. Really extraordinary. He was a very interesting man\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time Dolby arrived, Foreigner had been in Electric Lady about six months but were, it would transpire, only two-thirds of the way through the process. \u201cThey would work during the day on vocals and mixing, and at night I was set free in the studio until they came back in at nine o\u2019clock in the morning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jones: \u201cWe would give him a load to do, then go out to dinner and just leave him there. Then we\u2019d come back to hear what he\u2019d put on\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"Foreigner\n<\/p>\n

Foreigner onstage in 1981 (Image credit: Gary Gershoff\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

The painstaking work continued with some unusual distractions. Next door to Electric Lady is an art-house cinema called the 8th Street Playhouse. After a late-night showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, one of the punters had inadvertently left his seat gently smouldering. Some hours later, smoke was seen pouring out of the cinema; next door, in Electric Lady\u2019s control room, Mick Jones could smell something burning.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe thought at first the fire was on our side,\u201d he remembers. However, thoughts of countless hours of work being lost were suddenly interrupted by a loud banging on the wall.<\/p>\n

Dolby: \u201cSuddenly members of the New York Fire Department came through the wall of the studio with axes. They were very big, beefy guys, and all I could think was that they looked like the Village People\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Electric Lady survived the intrusion and work resumed. Soon, Dolby\u2019s work was done and he flew home. But for Jones and Lange, pressure was building. Their time at Electric Lady was about to hit a brick wall as the next client, Hall & Oates, refused to budge again. Worse, Mutt\u2019s booking to produce Def Leppard\u2019s Pyromania had also been put back for the last time. Eventually, he simply had to let go of Foreigner\u2026<\/p>\n

Jones: \u201cMutt stayed absolutely as long as he could. It was gut-wrenching for him when he had to leave, but he had to\u2026 Def Leppard was already three or four months over-schedule. We\u2019d been through this intense time together, the best part of nine months, so it really was gut-wrenching.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Mutt out of the studio \u2013 though still in touch on the phone, and listening to mixes couriered across the Atlantic \u2013 Jones ended up adding the final touches, mixing and sequencing with engineer Dave Wittman. This lasted around four weeks, from March through to April. With just 10 days of studio time remaining, Jones took the drastic step of taking a bed into the studio and sleeping there rather than lose focus.<\/p>\n

Jones: \u201cWe\u2019d got into this thing where the studio was like my den. I didn\u2019t even go outside.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wills: \u201cHe was almost going mad, truly!\u201d<\/p>\n

Juke Box Hero (Acoustic Live at the GRAMMY Museum) – YouTube
\n\"Juke<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

Come the final seven days, Jones and Wittman reckoned they still had 10 days of work to do. With \u201cHall & Oates\u2019 roadies in the corridor delivering their gear\u201d, they were completing the final song. Meanwhile, Lange and Prager opened what was supposed to be the final mix of Foreigner 4.<\/p>\n

Jones: \u201cI get this call from Mutt, and he says: \u2018Where are the fucking background vocals on Juke Box Hero?!\u2019 Then my manager called up, asking the same thing: \u2018Where are the background vocals?!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Jones admits he had removed them on purpose: \u201cIt was some ridiculous idea I\u2019d had\u2026 I tried to explain this as a creative decision, but they both said I was crazy and insisted I put them back \u2013 at which point I realised I\u2019d made the wrong decision, somewhere in those last 10 days of madness.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I go see Dave and say, \u2018I think we may have fucked up, here! How can we fix it?\u2019 He just said, \u2018Don\u2019t worry!\u2019 and rushed back in. Juke Box Hero was so intricate that we\u2019d used every single cable and every single piece of equipment in the studio. Dave and I had all four hands on the desk. Within two hours, he had re-established the set-up \u2013 all the equipment, the cabling, the faders, everything and remixed the whole chorus section of the song again. It was just his recall from a completely different mix. And by some miracle it fitted back in \u2013 with just a little bit of level adjustment \u2013 the choruses and the rest of the song are from two different mixing sessions. It was miraculous. And that was the very last thing we did!\u201d<\/p>\n

A fittingly fraught ending to the marathon process, a stroke of luck that was well deserved after all the hard work before. The band took the songs out on the road\u2026 and the rest is rock\u2019n\u2019roll history. Asked to reflect on Foreigner 4 today, Jones pauses thoughtfully before answering. \u201cIt was definitely the sum of what I thought we\u2019d been building towards. When I look back on it I know it\u2019s my favourite album. I know the process was long, gruelling and costly \u2013 costly not just financially, either. Relationships got strained during that album. Domestic situations got out of control. There was a lot of intensity involved in that. But looking back it\u2019s the one I always say I\u2019m probably the most proud of.\u201d<\/p>\n

Originally published in Classic Rock Presents AOR magazine issue 3, July 2011<\/p>\n

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