{"id":75635,"date":"2025-10-12T10:54:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-12T10:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/75635\/"},"modified":"2025-10-12T10:54:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T10:54:11","slug":"lou-gramm-is-finally-planning-to-retire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/75635\/","title":{"rendered":"Lou Gramm Is Finally Planning to Retire"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lou Gramm<\/a> has retired before<\/a> — and then he came back<\/a>.\u00a0But after more than 50 years on the road, the former Foreigner<\/a> vocalist says he’ll finally hang it up in 2026.<\/p>\n

“I’ve been doing this over 54 years, [including initial group] Black Sheep,” he tells UCR in a new interview. “You know, that was a professional band. We had two albums out on Capitol Records [and] did some serious touring. I just feel like there’s some other things that I want to do. I want to spend more time with my children — my older children and my younger child — and spend more time playing with my cars while I’m still capable of driving.”<\/p>\n

“[I’d like to] just stay off the road and enjoy my home, the surroundings and my family and friends, something that I’ve had to sacrifice for over 50 years,” he adds. “I’ve done all there is to do I feel. And being in the Songwriters Hall of Fame<\/a> and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame<\/a> are huge milestones for me. You know, I think in this business, you just know when it’s time.”<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Foreigner Inducted Into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame<\/a><\/p>\n

What is Lou Gramm Doing Now?<\/p>\n

He’s got big plans for his final year. Presently, Gramm has been touring, both with his solo band, but also with Foreigner<\/a>. He continues to make special appearances with his old group and will share the stage with them this weekend in Atlantic City for two shows<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“I’ve been doing shows with them and I’ve been enjoying it a lot. The band is excellent. They portray the songs [in a way that] an original member of Foreigner would be proud to to to play along with,” he shared<\/a> with UCR. “They have their own style, but they stick close enough to the original [versions] where no one’s going, ‘Hey, where’s that part?’ So it’s a lot of fun.”<\/p>\n

READ MORE: How Lou Gramm Feels About Foreigner Today<\/a><\/p>\n

The past year has also given Gramm a chance to work with Mick Jones<\/a>, Jeff Pilson<\/a> and the other Foreigner members to complete some songs from the band’s archives that were previously unfinished. “Turning Back the Time<\/a>” was released last year leading up to Foreigner’s induction into the Rock Hall, while another previously unreleased song, “Fool if You Love Him,” was among the rarities included in a recent reissue<\/a> of their 1981 album 4<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Listen to Foreigner’s ‘Fool if You Love Him’<\/p>\n

Is Lou Gramm Working on New Music?<\/p>\n

While there’s reportedly additional music that Gramm and Foreigner have been working on, similarly sourced from the archives, the singer also has another project on deck. He went back to his own collection of solo work and unearthed a wealth of material that was conceived for his solo albums, 1987’s Ready or Not and 1989’s Long Hard Look. The sessions, as he shares, were potent and left him with a good amount of ideas and songs that didn’t make the records at the time. It gave him a new project to focus on and he began tracking the material with his current solo band in the past two years.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Lou Gramm Goes Solo With ‘Ready or Not’<\/a><\/p>\n

“It was a labor of love, for sure, going back to listen to some of these almost finished songs from my solo albums,” he shares.\u00a0“You know, a lot of the\u00a0stuff that you write and record, the songs that are get finished first are the ones that that end up on the album. Some of the ones that aren’t finished soon enough to make the cut are some of the gems. It’s funny, after you release the album, those great ideas that almost made it,, but time constraints were against it, you forget about them.”<\/p>\n

“[All of these years later], I went back and pulled out the the 24-track [tapes] and and played them on my equipment,” he continues. “I heard some of the roughs for three or four songs that didn’t make the album only because they weren’t finished, but the ideas were awesome, So I decided to finish the songs and start using those ideas for my next solo album.”<\/p>\n

The album, tentatively titled Released, is a clever nod to the material being rescued from Gramm’s vault. He predicts it will arrive early next year and he says\u00a0fans should expect a tour when it comes out. “You know my focus is on Foreigner right now going into the 50th anniversary and new material and this and that,” he concludes. “But I am also very, very dedicated to the work I’ve done on my own, and I’ll be touring to support it. I hope everybody gives it a listen.”<\/p>\n

Foreigner Albums Ranked <\/p>\n

It’s hard to imagine rock radio without the string of hit singles Foreigner peeled off in the ’70s and ’80s.<\/p>\n

Gallery Credit: Jeff Giles<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lou Gramm has retired before — and then he came back.\u00a0But after more than 50 years on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75636,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,1302,61,1694,60,278,43],"class_list":["post-75635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-exclusive","tag-ie","tag-interviews","tag-ireland","tag-music","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}