THE GUITAR OF FOREIGNER TOOK A LYRICAL DETOUR TO THE WRONG SIDE OF THE LAW

Probaly not the coolest thing to admit but i have always admired
Foreigner, the anglo-american band accused of inventing the pow-
er ballad and even miming during live performances. Ask my `ol
mate Buddy Wilson, the guy who makes comments on Lost Treasures,
the only one who makes comments on here (get the hint everyone),
he said in a comment to a previous post i wrote about Foreign-
er that back in about 1978 when he went to a Foreigner concert
at Festival Hall in Brisbane and a malfunction occured with
sound equipment and the band members of Foreigner stopped
singing that strangely enough the music kept playing complete
with vocals. Talk about a musical conspiracy, we`ll just call it
FOREIGNERGATE. I know Buddy is sticking to his story because
he was there and i was 3 and half years old back in mid `78
so i concede he knows more than me. Anyhow, whether or not
Foreigner cheated in a live setting or not, which most like-
ly they did, on vinyl or disc i still really like the finished re-
sult of so much of what the band recorded. In the late 80`s,
when vocalist Lou Gramm and guitarist Mick Jones were having
an artistic and personal rift, Gramm recorded two solo albums
and unbeknown to a lot of Foreigner fans Mick Jones also re-
corded a one off little known solo album with him singing as
well. He was never a great singer but in Foreigner`s early
days he actually sung a couple of songs on the first two al-
bums. The solo album i am talking about is self titled and
was released in 1989, and the song i highly recommend off
it is a progressive rock guitar, sweeping keyboard, atmos-
pheric epic called WRONG SIDE OF THE LAW. Unlike a few of
the more too try hard songs which characterised this `keep-
ing up with Gramm` solo outing, Jones adopts a lot less
structured approach to playing this song and sings within
his limited capabilities in a convincingly troubled manner
which reflects the lyrics perfectly. The song is the story
of someone who finds themselves `inside these four walls`
and on the `wrong side of the law`. He is singing about a
jailbird who has regrets. Mick proved he didn`t need Lou
this time round. So what do you reckon Buddy Wilson dude?