FOREIGNER WITH JOHNNY EDWARDS LURCHED TOWARDS HARD ROCK

https://youtu.be/oo4VXGZzi90?si=MBFIUgPQJQl-Ry-j

As fate would have it, JOHNNY EDWARDS tenure in FOREIGNER was dealt a cruel and early termination after only recording one solid but some might say not spectacular album for the band in early 1991 titled UNUSUAL HEAT.

More tracks than not out of 11 probably suffer from being too workmanlike, but undoubtedly this album, the seventh and the first ever FOREIGNER recording to not feature LOU GRAMM on vocals, was a clear departure away from the melodic AOR style towards a much heavier one, which reaches heavy metal proportions on the three best tracks.

They being FLESH WOUND, which probably goes down as featuring guitarist MICK JONES' heaviest riff of all time, LOWDOWN AND DIRTY, the best song there is to scare off the feminazis (laugh), and the very underated READY FOR THE RAIN, which has all the dynamics of a classic FOREIGNER ballad but without the somewhat tiresome lost love melodramatics, all too common and maybe a bit too common in the band during the 80's.

The other tracks on UNUSUAL HEAT miss LOU GRAMM either slightly or a lot, the more blues style of Edwards didn't quite gel with the keyboard dominated tracks, but given the shoes he was asked to fill, singing three of FOREIGNER's heaviest songs of all time and quite convincingly at that was still a great achievement.

Unlike Gramm, who had the same limitations as DAVID LEE ROTH in VAN HALEN and only sang in the band, Edwards was not a half bad guitarist in his own right, and for the brief time he was in FOREIGNER, when performing live he played guitar on certain tracks, giving the band a twin guitar option for the first time since multi-instrumentalist IAN MCDONALD was booted out of the band in 1980.