Foreigner’s Thom Gimbel reminisces about bandmates
“That’s the roots of it, in soul, but in the modern context you’ll find it in Dave Matthews music – tremendous sax in his music. Amy Winehouse used the baritone sax. It’s going through a hipster popularity phase. You have to have a beard and an IPA in one hand with a baritone sax in the other to be a bona fide hipster.”
He’s gotten to be a global emissary of horns, through his associations with Aerosmith and Foreigner. Hundreds of thousands of people come out to the festivals in Europe where Foreigner routinely tours. But the biggest crowd of all was with Aerosmith in 1994 when they headlined the Saturday night of Woodstock 2 with more than half a million people in the audience.
“When they’d just politely applaud between songs it sounded like a jet engine taking off,” said Gimbel. “Then when they’d roar, it was like a space rocket.”
One pleasantly fateful day not that long ago, at a festival in Europe, Aero- smith and Foreigner ended up on the same concert bill. It brought Gimbel to a strange point of full circle.
“I went backstage to talk to the guys. Steven Tyler just couldn’t have been nicer. Joe Perry, I got to talk to him, also, and I said isn’t it kinda strange that we end up on the same stage after all these years, and he said in some ways it was inevitable, because there aren’t that many rock bands from the ’70s still touring. Joe has a lot of insight. He really sees things clearly.”
Mick Jones is another who has had the vision to thrive and survive the fickle winds of rock music and popular culture. In addition to his renowned career as a songwriter and Foreigner bandleader, Jones also has one of the most heralded studio ears in the production business.
Among many other credits as a producer, Jones was called in to shape the cool, smooth soul sound of Ben E. King’s Save The Last Dance For Me material, but then also the power pop of Billy Joel on his seminal Storm Front album, then the bluesy metal of Van Halen’s crushing 5150 album.
Jones is the only original member of Foreigner still on the stage, these days. His most notable cohort in the band over the years, powerful vocalist Lou Gramm, had to bow out due to health issues many years ago.
Jones, with the help of Gimbel and other bandmates, found a high-energy replacement in Kelly Hansen who was once the frontman for the band Hurricane and later a band called Needle Park with Poison’s guitar player C.C. DeVille. Despite the drug-soaked inference of that band name, said Gimbel, Hansen is actually a fit and healthy guy who takes the physicality of lead vocalist very seriously.
“Kelly is a riot. He’s out of his mind,” said Gimbel. “He climbed on me once. He climbs on scaffolds. He runs around, he’s kissing girls, he’ll steal people’s cell phones if they’re texting or something and tells them ‘hey, you’ll get this back at the end of the show’ like the teacher in class. But he’s just kidding, he usually gives it right back. He’s so unpredictable. If it’s super hot I’ve seen him lay down on stage and take a nap for 18 seconds to get his wind back. He’s just so much fun.” Best of all, he comes Gramm-approved. “Those guys get along no problem,” Gimbel said of Jones, Gramm and the ex-members. “We’re not sure what the future will bring. I know Mick has invited all the past members from over the years to come down and play for this 40th anniversary celebration. (When they do) I see a lift in Mick Jones. He stands a little taller, has a little more fun, and they get telling these great stories. The stories are some of the best part, the best benefit (for the current Foreigner guys) of when those guys get together. We’re the beneficiaries. We get to hear them.”
The crowds still come out in droves to hear those radio classics, the tunes that helped define the pop-rock genre. In Prince George, Foreigner is set to perform at CN Centre with special guests Honeymoon Suite on Friday night.