The British-American band Foreigner was the late Seventies/early Eighties Great Hard Rock mean—commercial radio conformists who delivered on the occasional great song, and dumb but just smart enough to make their stand in the middle of the road, the passing tractor-trailers in both lanes be damned, because they knew conquering the airwaves by fair or foul was their ticket to infamy and fortune.
Well, they were right, and the proof lies in the fact that their eponymous 1977 debut sold a shitload of units. In short, they were savvy customers and laughed the whole way to their Lamborghini Countach LP400s.
Their professionalism and Foreigner’s slick and immaculate production were catnip to people who value such things, but they have detractors galore—Robert Christgau skewered them every chance he got (of Foreigner, he wrote “You’ve heard of Beatlemania? I propose Xenophobia,” while in his review of 1978’s Double Vision, he called Foreigner “the world’s dullest group”). And another critic dismissed Foreigner as “sanforized, sanitized and safely sterilized into three basic chords.”
Christgau took the broader view—if Foreigner boded anything, it couldn’t be anything good. (And he had a point.) Listeners weren’t so picky—they heard songs like “Feels Like the First Time” and “Cold as Ice” and swooned. And the piano, synthesizers, flute (!), and layered vocals didn’t turn them off, because undiluted hard rock was too primitive.
But let me say this: Foreigner were smarter than I ever gave them credit for, because all of the reasons I’ve despised Foreigner for over the years faded away when I actually paid attention to their debut. I discovered (and hated myself for it) that “sanforized, sanitized, and safely sterilized into three basic chords” didn’t tell the whole tale. They had just enough imagination to make their dumb MOR songs interesting.
For the first time I found myself kinda/sorta agreeing with the crank/contrarian Chuck Eddy by name, who ranked a Foreigner compilation at No. 85 in his flawed but immensely entertaining book Stairway to Hell: The 500 Best Heavy Metal Albums in the Universe with the words “… jerks who lumped Foreigner into Styx/Toto/Journey limbo are jerks who miss the point… because Foreigner had twice the oomph and thrice the imagination of those other brand-name boobs.”
“Thrice the imagination”? Nobody mocks Styx and Journey on my watch! Imagination is Styx’s “Come Sail Away”! And Journey’s “Wheel in the Sky” has mystico-imagination galore! While most of Foreigner’s lyrics were generic placeholders!
But let’s move on to Foreigner. “Feels Like the First Time” has hard rock guitar crunch, but it’s the synthesizer and lavishly layered backing vocals that dress things up real nice. So what if the lyrics are universal mush—that Lou Gramm mutt has real pipes.
“Cold as Ice” has a simple but great piano intro, the synthesizer adds texture galore, the guitar solo gets the job done, and the backing vocalists are power pop sweet. And these sweeping strings take the song out on a grandiose (in a good way) note.
You want Styx? Of course you do. Neo-classical flute and perfectly strummed guitars open “Starrider,” a New Age-school opus that is proof positive that we live in the Age of Kali Yuga. The synthesizer pretends it’s a harpsichord, Lou Gramm pretends he’s living during the Renaissance, and is it possible these are the same guys who created “Cold as Ice”?
“Starrider” features a hushed Gramm, “catching a ride on a passing star,” and would be a full-blown muddle of an astral plane if it weren’t for the irresistible chorus and a magical Merlin of a guitar solo. Foreigner should have given this one to Gary Wright. He’d have known how to give it stream-lined keytar-heavy New Age luster. And he’d have trashed the harpsichord.
“Headknocker” is a piece of inspired brutalism and that rarest of all things—a Foreigner song with lyrics worth paying attention to. It’s also a first-class hard rocker with get up and go, and name-checks “Louie, Louie” and James Dean, while endorsing Fender Strats (that he “plays around his back”) and Smith and Wesson brand handguns. And it has a melody that reminds me of the Eagles! And how can you go wrong with lines like:
He’s a backseat mauler
A barroom brawler
I think he’s gonna blacken your eye?
“The Damage Is Done” is another serving of musical ages past, and features a herky-jerky synthesizer with punch, another synthesizer to add color, and yet another synthesizer impersonating a trumpet. And by this time, the damage has truly been done. Lou Gramm’s formidable vocal cords and a truly tasty guitar aren’t enough to wash the lark’s tongue in aspic out of your mouth.
“Long, Long Way from Home” is pure hard rock punch taken at punk rock speed, and it all works right down to the saxophone solo and the synth-squiggles. Lyrics aren’t much to write the Complaints Desk about, but with the guitars on steroids kicking holes in brick walls, who cares? “Woman Oh Woman” is mid-tempo crapola, complete with a tinkling waterfall synth. Surgically extract the guitar solo and listen to it. Throw the waterfall synthesizer in the closest dumpster.
“At War with the World” is a serviceable Foghat boogie substitute with a formidable guitar riff and a Lizzy Borden-school axe solo. But those are the only things bellicose about it. Synthesizer solo: should have run headfirst into a machine gun nest. Opening lines: “Never have no need/For any military aid/Never took charge of the Light Brigade.” He’s a one-man army! He’s Rambo!
“Fool for You Anyway” is a likable mid-tempo ballad with guitars lite and a very prominent electric piano alternating with a slightly tougher chorus. Gramm’s a smoothie and seems to have given up on his war with the world. A slide guitar adds enough color to make the song, as do the team vocals that come in at the end. Keeper!
“I Need You” comes in very stealthy like, and instruments come out from behind trees in a real rock ’n’ roll ambush! Then you get this barbaric yawp that grows and grows in volume, so watch out. Meanwhile, the synthesizer actually ups the macho quotient, Gramm gets his graduate degree in Lead Vocals, and Mick Jones’ guitar solo wails on, and on, pushing everybody else out of the way like it doesn’t need anybody, and to be honest, it doesn’t.
It kills me to say I no longer hate this album. And it kills me to admit I’ve been wrong about Foreigner for decades. I’ll never like them (much), but I think Christgau was wrong about them. They weren’t the world’s dullest group. Not by a long shot.
They were far from being the world’s most exciting group, but songs like “Long, Long Way from Home” and “Headknocker” prove they had the divine spark in them. Ditto songs to come like “Dirty White Boy” and “I Want to Know What Love Is.”
Mr. Christgau, tear down that wall!
GRADED ON A CURVE:
C
