Foreigner and Lou Gramm have been finishing and releasing some previously unreleased music from the band’s archive in recent years. The good news is that fans will get to hear even more nuggets from the vault, taken from sessions for two of their classic albums.
“[There’s] quite a bit [and] my assistant musical director, Tim Pedersen, is working on some of this stuff,” the band’s bassist Jeff Pilson tells UCR, detailing that the pair are almost finished with an unreleased song from the sessions for 1979’s Head Games. “There’s another track that we have, which is [also from the] Head Games [period] that is a spectacular track. Lou wants to add a couple of harmonies to it, which he’ll probably be doing relatively soon between now and when we do the Foreigner 4 shows [together] and then that will be ready to be mixed.”
“We found seven tracks [from] the Agent Provocateur [album sessions]. I don’t think we’re going to finish all seven, but certainly five of them are really, really worth finishing up. So there’s more to go through,” he shares. “So there’s two from Head Games that are going to be finished and as I mentioned, probably five from Agent Provocateur. Then, there’s other pieces of songs that Lou and Mick [Jones] wrote over the years, which we plan on finishing. So there’s a lot of stuff in the pipeline.”
“Obviously, we travel all the time, so it’s hard to find time in the studio, which is why [Tim] is doing a lot of prep work,” Pilson explains. “He’s a very capable musician and producer on his own, so he’s able to make a lot of progress. I can’t give you dates on when it’s going to come out, but know that we’re working on it.”
Foreigner is Planning Additional Album Reissues
The British-American rock legends recently released a five-disc box set for 1981’s 4 album that features a lot of previously unreleased material, from live material to session takes and alternate versions and also things that had not been heard prior to now, including a new song they completed with Gramm, “Fool if You Love Him.”
Listen to Foreigner’s ‘Fool if You Love Him’
According to Pilson, they have similar plans with other classic albums in the group’s catalog. “That’s the objective,” he confirms. “Some of these songs are really high [quality]. The Head Games one that’s going to come out, it’s a great song. It was kind of ahead of its time for 1979 and Ian McDonald, by the way, had a lot to do with this track. I’m excited about it and Lou is really excited about it. This is a song, I’m telling you, it’s every bit as good as anything else on Head Games. It was just ahead of its time. So I’m glad it’s coming out [at some point].
READ MORE: Foreigner Builds on Their Legacy With ‘Head Games’
Foreigner begins a Canadian tour tonight (Oct. 21), their first proper outing with new lead singer Luis Maldonado. The guitarist and vocalist joined the band in 2021 and was recently elevated as the replacement for longtime frontman Kelly Hansen, who played his final concerts with the group earlier this month.
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Gallery Credit: Stephen Lenz
