Desperate Times AI Music
Foreigner is having a great time being on the tour of their career, saying farewell to fans in a massively successful concert series. Despite all the accolades British-American rockers Foreigner have earned throughout the years, one still escapes them – a place in the prestigious Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
In a new interview with “Good Day Rochester”, the band’s first frontman Lou Gramm recalled an interesting (and somewhat bizarre) story, which might explain the band’s absence from the hall of legends, starting by pointing out the connection between a band member and the hall’s director (via Blabbermouth):
“Boy, I tell this story a lot… [Foreigner guitarist and founder] Mick Jones and the director of the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame were very close friends. Their families were close. They used to run together and have dinner with the families and see each other socially a lot. They were good friends.”
Gramm continued, telling of an encounter between the aforementioned men that quickly turned tense:
“When we didn’t get inducted with our peers, and most of the bands in the area that we were successful in had all gotten into the Hall Of Fame, Mick and our manager went to see… The guy who is the head of the Hall Of Fame is also the owner of Rolling Stone magazine; I can’t remember his name offhand. So they went to see — they had an appointment, and they went to see him and asked him if there was something we had done or said or something that insulted him.”
Gramm concluded by revealing the harsh words supposedly spoken by the Hall of Fame’s director:
“They couldn’t understand why we weren’t brought up for induction. And it started to get heated, apparently. I was not there, but this is what I heard. And it got real heated. And when our manager and Mick got up to leave, [the head of the Rock Hall] said, ‘It’ll be a cold day in hell before Foreigner gets into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame.’ And that was about 25, 30 years ago now.”
