GIRL ON THE MOON: THE FOREIGNER 'DEMO' WHICH BECOME AN OBSCURE TRIBUTE TO JOHN LENNON

Right now i have a bad flu and chest infection, my throat is cactus and i want to cough all the time. Every time i get the flu i always think of the song GIRL ON THE MOON by Foreigner, not just because Lou Gramm was suffering a bad chest infection like i have when he sung the take which made it onto the epic 4 album in 1981, but because it was also recorded the day after JOHN LENNON was shot dead by Mark Chapman in New York on the 8th December, 1980.


According to comments that Foreigner lead guitarist MICK JONES made sometime during the 90`s, it was a spontaneous and un-premeditated decision on the part of all band members, including Gramm, to let the singer's raspy and croaky flu affected rendition of GIRL ON THE MOON onto the album, which was only intended to be a demo version, as a kind of immortal tribute to their slain musical idol.


From a instrumental point of view, the song is a little unadventurous and workmanlike, bass guitarist Rick Wills and drummer Dennis Elliot hardly even feature on it, but the space age synthesiser of crack session muso THOMAS DOLBY, who essentially was the 'unofficial' fifth member of FOREIGNER for the 4 album following the sacking of keyboardist Al Greenwood in 1980, gels perfectly with Gramm's cracked vocals to create a wonderfully pleasant if not groundbreaking progressive pop classic. GIRL ON THE MOON was the B-side to the hyper-funk classic URGENT, the biggest selling single on 4.