Legendary rock band Foreigner has been one of the great Rock & Roll Hall of Fame snubs since becoming eligible in 2002. The long wait has finally come to an end. The Hall recently announced the class of 2024 and will finally induct Foreigner. Founding keyboard player Al Greenwood took some time to talk about what this induction means to him and reflect on the early days of this storied band.
Please press the PLAY icon below for the MisplacedStraws Al Greenwood interview –
On his emotions when the inductees were announced – Well, obviously we waited a long time for this, it’s been 20 years overdue and I’d just about given up any hope of getting in. So to hear it be announced that we were nominated was just a joy. A lifetime achievement to be able to be one of the people that are my idols, that’s just such a humbling experience. Then to get all the fans voting and that felt so great having everybody voting and trying to get us in there It was just a wonderful thing. Our fans are just some of the best out there. So it was remarkable and then we get the induction notification that we’re in and it was just a joyous experience. I popped a bottle of champagne. I said, “Here we go”. But yeah to be in a group of incredible artists. It is so humbling to be part of that group and finally be in there. Year after year, we’d wait for the nominations to be announced and we’d never, never be part of it. We thought we had what it took to get in there. We’ve sold over 80 million (records), what we’ve accomplished is just incredible. But to not even be recognized was a bit disappointing over the years, but we’re finally in, and that’s great. I feel so good. It’s such a relief.
I think this class, I think we’ve all been waiting in this class, and they’re such talented people. I’m so honored to be a part of this class going in because they’re all great artists and wow, I mean Cher, Peter Frampton, Ozzy, just all of them is just incredible.
On how he and Mick Jones first formed Foreigner – Well, it’s a long story, but I’ll make it as concise as I can. The end of 1975 I was in another band with a few members of English prog band called Flash, Conlin Carter and Mike Hough. That band broke up and I got my own band together. This was early 76, I’d say early February of 1976. I get a phone call and it’s from Mick Jones and he says, “I’m putting a project together. And I got your name from a mutual friend, would you be interested? ” And I said, “Well, actually I have my own band right now. You’re welcome to come down and go to our rehearsal and check it out”. It was all the songs that I had been writing. So that night he came down with Bud Prager, who would be our manager eventually. They listened to the band, didn’t say very much. Got up and left. But the next day I got another phone call and he said “I really liked what you were doing. Would you be interested?” I said, “Okay, think you’re a little ahead of what I’ve got. So I think I’m going to take that shot”.
So our first rehearsal was in Bud Prager’s office. He had an office at 1790 Broadway in Manhattan. In the middle of his office was like a storage area with file cabinets and things like that. So we moved aside all the file cabinets. The drummer then was Stan Williams. So he set up his drums. The bass player was Jay Davis. He set up his bass rig. Of course, Mick Jones on guitar. He had to set up his stuff and I brought up my keyboards and we started jamming. This was the very beginning. It’s the first day of anything. After about two weeks of jamming, I go home and I’m saying to myself, “I don’t know about this, there’s no songs. We’re just having fun, it’s a great time. I love playing, but I don’t think it’s going anywhere”. So I’m about to go in that next day and tell him, “I think I’m gonna just go back with my band”.
So I go in and Mick comes in, he says, “I’ve got this song”, and he starts playing “Feels Like the First Time” on guitar. I go, “Holy crap, we got something here”. So thank goodness he started playing that because I would not have been in it. I would have said, “I’m out of here”. But that started the whole thing rolling.
We started working on “Feels Like the First Time”, two weeks later Ian McDonald walks in. I was a huge King Crimson fan. McDonald and Charles, King Crimson, I followed his career and here he walks into our rehearsal. I was like, “Wow”. So we started working on three or four songs, putting them together. Bud Prager says, “Let’s go into the studio. Let’s make a tape of these songs”. We go into the Hit Factory. We don’t have a singer. We go into the Hit Factory. We make a tape of four songs, what’s called a demo tape. For auditions, we’d have singers come in one by one into the studio with a mic in the studio and sing on top of “Feels Like The First Time”. After about 40 or 50 singers, we were going nowhere again. It was like, “Wow, what’s going on here?” So then Mick says, “I remember this group that we played with, they’re called Black Sheep and they had a really good singer. I thought he was really good”. So he went home that night and he took out the album I think Lou had given him, the record, when they did the show. He played it and he said, “Yeah, I think this guy’s got something”. So he calls up Lou in Rochester. He says the same thing he said to me, “I’m putting a band together. Would you be interested in being a singer?” He says, “My band just broke up”. He was in Black Sheep and they just lost their record deal and he was not really into getting back into another band that quick. So Mick says, “We’ll fly you down, audition whatever it takes. We’d like you to come down here”. And he said, “Well, let me think about it”. So a couple of days later, Mick calls him back and he Lou says, “Okay, I’ll come down”.
So he comes down, comes into the studio, just like everybody else (he) goes behind the microphone, “Feels Like the First Time”, lyrics are there, and within about the first two lines of the song, we said, “This is our guy”. He just blew us away. It was just a perfect match. He put his vocal on the four tracks that we had, and Bud Prager started shopping it, bringing it to various labels to see if we could get any interest in it. They all turned us down. Everybody. Got nothing. So at this point, we still had Stan Williams on drums and Jay Davis on bass guitar. They said, “Look, this doesn’t look like we’re going to get anywhere. I’m going to have to leave”. So they both left the band. The band is basically non-functioning. We didn’t have a record deal. We didn’t have all the players. Bud Prager turns around and says, “You know what? I think you guys, perfect fit would be for Atlantic Records to pick you guys up. So I’m going to bring the tape up there personally again and have them listen to it again”.
So he goes up to Atlantic and he goes into the A& R department office, which is artists and repertoire. They’re the ones that listen to the tapes. He starts playing it again. They said, “We already passed on this”, and stuff like that. So he’s playing the tape again, and in walks John Kalodner. I’m not sure exactly of all the events that take place. You’d have to talk to John. But what I understood to have happened is that John heard the tape, and he said, “Who is this?” The other A& R person said, “It’s a band called Trigger”. We were called Trigger at the time. He says, “Well, we passed on these guys”. He says, “I think they’re really good”. So John Kalodner takes the tape up to the president of Atlantic Records, who was Jerry Greenberg at the time. And he goes, “Jerry, you got to sign these guys. I think they’re really good. I think this is going to happen”. He says, “No, we’ve already passed on this band”. He says, “No, no”. So he insisted and we got the record deal. Which was another dilemma, cause now we have a record deal, but we don’t have a full band because two of the guys left. So again, we started auditioning for a drummer and a bass player, and we found Dennis Elliott as our drummer, and Ed Gagliardi as our bass player.
About two weeks after we got that, we went into rehearsal to go over the songs that we were going to do, and we went right into the recording studio. This was the end of 1976 probably around October, I would say, September, October of 76 recording the first album. The record came out in March of 77 and the rest is history.

On if the band’s rapid success surprised them – At the time, it felt like everything was going in slow motion. There were a lot of disappointments along the way. The band could have broken up a few times during that whole (time). It was a year and a month, basically from Mick calling me up and the release. Mick calling me up in February, early February of 76 and the record being released March of 77. So it’s a year and a month, but there were so many stumbling blocks along the way. Then when we finally got in the studio, that’s when things really gelled. That’s when we knew we had a band and we’re putting things together. It was just an incredible experience with our first producers as well they gave us a lot of leeway to do whatever we wanted to do. We’re all talented musicians. So we knew what we were doing.
Then it came out and it just hit radio like crazy. Then the other problem was we never played together as a band. We didn’t start out playing clubs or anything like that. So we had to learn each other to do a live act where we have to put together a whole live performance. Luckily the first tour that we had, we opened for the Doobie Brothers, which was great. What a great bunch of guys and a great band. It was just a great experience to be out with them, to be able to hone what we were doing on stage, the interactions and things like that, and lengthening the songs, put solos in and making things be more performance-oriented rather than in the recording studio.
So that was a learning experience. It took us a while to get that to gel, and then within about four weeks of being out with the Doobie Brothers, our record was platinum, and they wanted us to headline. So, there’s even more that we had to do. We had to put together (a headline set). We put filler songs in to fill out a headlining type of thing. So we had to stretch songs out. We made “Starrider” into this really long song with a lot of solos in the middle and we added two songs. We did “Not Fade Away” and “Love Maker”. So we covered those two. We added those to the set.
On if cracks began to show early on the road – Yeah, being in a band is like being in a family. You’ve got to live together, you’ve got to work together you have to make decisions together, there’s a lot of pressure on you, especially when you’re a skyrocket like that. All eyes are on you, so there’s a lot of things going on at once that you have to perform and we were all perfectionists as well, which didn’t help. We all wanted to do the best we possibly could, so yeah, there was a lot of pressure, a lot of things that we were expected to do and to do well while we’re learning and learning the craft and being together as a band. So yeah, it was hard. It wasn’t easy. Like I said, if you grow up together and you’re school buddies and you’re chums and you know each other and you did the high school dances and you worked at clubs and worked your way up, it’s a totally different thing than putting together a band and then skyrocketing to the point where you’ve got so much pressure on you that you know you have to do things really well. So it was tough but we did it.
On what led to him and Ian leaving after Head Games – That’s a good question. I don’t really know. I can just say from my experience because I can’t speak for anybody else, there were, you could see the cracks and the little fractures coming into play after Ed was asked to leave. You think that you are a cohesive unit and you just did Double Vision selling 8 million records. So the whole idea of different little people moving in their own little spheres was kind of what was happening at the time.
Head Games was an odd record for me. It was a good record. I think people overlook it as what it was, but I think it turned out really well. It sold quite well over time, it wasn’t initially a huge seller. We had a lot of problems with the album cover. It was controversial with a young girl on the cover. The first single was “Dirty White Boy” and there were stations that for some reason thought it was something else and they wouldn’t play it. Then the album cover wouldn’t be put in certain record stores because they thought it depicted something not quite right. It was a rough period all around between the album coming out and the fractures within the band. I just think that whatever happened, it was their decision. Both Ian and I were not so well, maybe a bit surprised. But it was something that maybe they thought had to be done. That’s all, I can’t speak for them.
On if he was ok seeing Foreigner become even bigger after he left – I was okay with what I was doing. I thought it was an opportunity for me to get more songwriting credits and things like that. I started a band called Spies with Ed. When I heard “Urgent”, I think that was the first single off of 4, I was blown away. I said, “This is a hit record, they did it again”. It was just an amazing record. I had nothing but joy for them. They put out another great record. Then when “I Want to Know What Love Is” came out I stopped, it’s one of those car-stopping moments where you hear a song on the radio and you got to pull over to the side to listen to it. I said, “Wow, this is a number one, there’s no doubt in my mind”. So yeah, I felt good for the band. Mick started it. He deserves all the accolades he can get. He’s a very underrated guitar player, but he’s extremely good and he should be up there with all the rest of them as a guitarist. Mick and Lou got into the Songwriters Hall of Fame as well. It was an incredible experience. I have nothing but praise for whatever they’ve done and for me to be a part of it, it’s kind of overwhelming.
On how the original lineup finally reunited – Well our current manager, Phil Carson, in 2017, he called all the members, the original members, together for a meeting in Manhattan, and we all got together, which was fine. I have no ill feelings towards anyone, I was glad to see everybody. We were glad to be with each other. Phil said, “It’s our 40th anniversary, and we’d like to do something really special for the fans, for the 40th. So we’d like to do some reunion shows. How does everybody feel?” We all said, “I think this would be great to do something like that, to put it together again”.
So we got everybody on board, and we started rehearsing, which was surreal, to say the least. To be back with everybody again rehearsing and going over those songs again was just incredible. I never thought that would ever happen, but here we were. doing those songs again and to be out on stage. It was the same lineup, the Head Games lineup and on stage next to Dennis on the riser in the back, same place as I always was. To look out over the backs of Ian and Lou and Mick, and Rick. I had to pinch myself, I had chills, it was amazing, I just wanted to savor that moment forever, it was like, “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
On his thoughts about the current lineup – I think they’re amazing. For them to carry the torch for this long, for Foreigner, they’re a great bunch of guys, personality-wise, they’re phenomenal friends to be with when you go out there, but they’re great musicians in their own right. They love the songs that they play them so well, they put everything they’ve got into it. The shows are phenomenal. Kelly Hansen has got to be one of the best frontmen in rock and roll. I’m so proud of them to be out there. Rick and I occasionally go out and do a special appearance and play with them, it’s just a joy for us to be with a great bunch of guys.
On plans for the induction ceremony – It’s really preliminary right now. So there’s a lot of talk of what could be. I know what I would like to do, but I don’t have the power or the say to do it. It’s just a shame that both Ed and Ian won’t be with us to do this because they so deserve it as well. It’ll be kind of sad that they won’t be up there with us. That’s kind of a hard thing. Mick Jones is in ill health as well. So I hope he’ll be there and I hope he’ll go be with us. That would be great because it’s his baby. He was the architect of this and he has to be up there and do that. I just hope he’s well enough to be with us. So those are the things that, that sort of, I have to think about. Then the joy of performing whatever they want us to do. I’m all in. I’ll do whatever they want us to do. I’m a musician. I’ll play whatever they ask us.
I’m pretty sure the new Foreigner band, all of them will be with us in Cleveland. If there was any decision, that is one of the decisions that’s made, so they will be there. But beyond that, we’ll see (who will induct the band). Paul McCartney did a special shout-out to us. That would be kind of cool to have him come on board with us. Dave Grohl and Slash and Jack Black. Who knows? Who knows what’s going to happen? I’m looking forward to it and just as anybody else, we’ll see what happens.