Interview with Michael Bluestein
Foreigner at Forty Five
By Jay Luster
When I first got into it, I was inspired by people who had come before me, and I found myself in the position of handing that on.
-Mick Jones
In March of 1977, just a few months ahead of their first album release, Foreigner dropped the single "Feels Like The First Time." A few weeks later, the song reached #4 on the charts. Critics like pigeon holes, and they just weren't sure which one the song fit into. With its hard-rocking guitar, whirling synthesizer, and Lou Gramm's powerful voice, Feels like the First Time was, quite simply, kick ass rock and roll and no matter what the critics thought, the kids loved it. When the album hit the store racks, it sold five million copies in the United States alone. The singles "Cold As Ice," and "Long Long Way From Home," joined Feels Like The First Time as concert powerhouses, and over the next decades, the band would release albums and singles, which would make them legendary.
Along the way, there was drug use, infighting, near fatal illnesses, and personnel changes. Eventually, this left Mick Jones as the only original member in the band. Jones started Foreigner after the break-up of Spooky Tooth. He had found the right musicians, but had a hard time finding the right vocalist to bring his musical vision to life.
After an extensive and time consuming search, he was introduced to Lou Gramm. Gramm had been working in the Rochester, New York area and was glad to come to New York to work with Jones. After all, it's not everyday you get an invite from one of the greatest guitar players of his generation. Once the band was assembled there were four Americans, and two Britons, and with that lineup, no matter where they were they'd always be foreigners. Puns aside, the name Foreigner became synonymous with great records, and great concerts.
We had a chance to catch up with Michael Bluestein, the keyboard player with the band. Bluestein joined Foreigner in 2008, and has been with them ever since. In the late 1980's he studied music at the prestigious Berklee College Of Music in Boston, and then moved to the San Francisco Bay area. His touring history reads like a copy of Who's Who of the music industry. Over the years, he's played with Boz Scaggs, Roger Hodgson, and Stevie Nicks. When he received the invite to try out for Foreigner, he was touring with the Latin king of pop, Enrique Iglesias, but ready for a new challenge.
ROM:
How did you weather Covid?
Michael Bluestein:
It was actually a good creative time for me. I did a lot of writing and producing here in the studio. The beauty of technology these days, there's just so many tools available for us. Even for most of us who weren't trained as audio engineers. The technology has gotten to the point where most musicians have a rig, and they record and produce on their own. I got to do a lot of that here in the home studio. My girlfriend and I have a duo called Tina Blue, and we wrote some new tunes, and I did some producing and arranging for us. We recorded a lot, and got into the streaming thing. We figured out the multi-angle camera situation for doing live concerts out of the studio, and getting the audio and video together. That was sort of a fun project that kept us busy.
ROM:
It sounds like you kind of thrived during the isolation period?
Michael Bluestein:
Yeah, for a while it was kind of nice, the isolation part of it. A lot of apprehension about the virus was obviously there. People were freaked out, and for a year or so they didn't know what was going on. They didn't know how transmissible it was or how sick you were going to get? I think there's a lot more perspective about it now. It's becoming more endemic instead of pandemic. It's become something we just have to live with. I've had it. Everyone in the band has had it at this point. The blessing was having all that time to do some creative work. Being in the lab, so to speak, working on new music, geeking out in the studio, so that part of it was fun.
ROM:
What was getting back on stage like?
Michael Bluestein:
Pretty amazing. People were just so psyched. We have a lot of fans who are repeat customers. Some have been to tens of shows, even hundreds in some cases. Everybody was dying to get back out and see live music again after being isolated for so long. You could really feel the excitement for everybody, and for us getting back to what we do.
ROM:
Is there a possibility of new Foreigner music on the horizon?
Michael Bluestein:
It's been a little bit since Foreigner had a new album. There are some new things floating around, and some songs in various degrees of completion that will hopefully be getting out there in the next year or two.
ROM:
Foreigner has so much great music, how do you choose what to play?
Michael Bluestein:
We have quite a list of hits we have to deliver for the fans. We're in the enviable position of having more hit songs than we can do in a set. As far as what people want to hear, those hits come first, but it's hard to get to everything.
ROM:
Considering how long Foreigner has been around, you've somehow still remained one of those must see live acts. How, after 45 years, has the band managed to remain so relevant?
Michael Bluestein:
It's pretty incredible. Songs like Feels Like The First Time, which came out in '77, were built to last. The musical arrangements, and those amazing vocal arrangements, and of course Lou Gramm. They're hit songs that became part of the culture. They've been featured in many movies, and TV shows, and people grew up with them and then raised their kids on Foreigner and classic rock. It's pretty cool to see the kids, the teenagers, the twenty something's, the thirty something's coming to the shows and knowing all the tunes too. Not many bands have the type of music that can stand the test of time the way Foreigner has.
Foreigner in Rock On Magazine
