Foreigner haven’t been shy about putting live CDS out since Mick Jones rebuilt the band from the ground up a couple of years into this millennium. Choosing the choicest cuts from the 75 million record sales made since their debut in 1976, there was a hard rocking release featuring Jason Bonham on drums that got offered free with The Mail on Saturday in the UK, and more recently an acoustic based set. On October 3rd & 4th 2014, Foreigner played the Borgata Hotel in Atlantic City, NJ with a set dominated by tracks from their mega-hit 4, the results of which can be found on this, their latest, The Best of Foreigner 4 & More.
To be frank, I didn’t realise that when I first played it, and such is the way the music changes throughout that I initially thought the songs were cherry picked from live tours through assorted years. Indeed, I was sure the first batch of numbers came from the 4 Tour back in the 80s, and it wasn’t until ‘Urgent’ where Kelly Hansen’s showbiz style recognition of Tom Gimbel’s saxophone solo occurs that I realised it wasn’t Lou Gramm singing. Further listening, however offers evidence that the more r’n’b flavoured voice of Hansen is at work throughout rather than the blues rock timbre of Gramm. And he does it well, very well, with only the last few hits from the earliest part of the band’s career sounding a little rough, or tired, which the whole band probably are because they work the crowd throughout.
They open aptly with ‘Night Life’, here stripped of its straight-laced studio sound, as Michael Bluestein keyboards surge forth and Jeff Pilson’s bass swings and pulses forth, accentuating the chord changes of this rocker, that proves a good track to start on, setting the mood for an evening of entertainment. It’s followed by a soul harmony version of ‘Woman In Black’ with a different arrangement and a lot of colour offered from the various guitarists at work with distanced chords strummed on electric guitars while a blues lick screaming lead line flows in and out. The aforementioned ‘Urgent’ is orchestrated by the keyboards as the rest of the band get into a grittier funk sound with the sax wailing back at the vocal melody prior to its extended solo, even adding a little techno into the mix along the way. The tune is actually played a tad slower than the original version, and this is something that is reflected a couple of tracks later with ‘Break It Up’- its upbeat doo wop goes rock bounce is slower, darker and a little bit deadlier than the studio, and both these tracks begin to evoke that stalking manner in the way The Police did with ‘Every Breathe You Make’ and you wonder if the original frontline were going through divorces back then.
Where this line up thrive is with their live vocal harmonies: They come on like The Beach Boys during a mainly acoustic version of ‘Say You Will’ with some good interaction with the audience, while ‘Waiting For A Girl Like You’ has Pilson giving it a groove and some umpf in the pocket alongside Hansen’s soul influences moving to the foreground and the harmonies featuring individual voices without being over lush, while ‘Girl On The Moon’ features some lovely acoustic and subdued slide guitar with evocative flute and piano undulating either side of each other.
As they hit the home stretch, ‘Feels Like the First Time’ thrusts us back to the late 70s for a very live feel, and while the keyboards pomp up the volume and tinkle gloriously, the original’s prog bass feel is missing and the guitars a little subdued. The lead vocals are tired but still in tune though overall it becomes too much of a singalong for my listening tastes. ‘Cold As Ice’ follows in a similar subdued manner, but Bluestein shines here one minute coming on like Tony Banks with some imaginative melodies, next he’s breaking out like Rick Wakeman or John Lord during the organ solo, and underneath it there’s this interesting slightly slow riff that creeps in on the guitars that sounds like ‘Black Knight’ by Deep Purple.
‘Hot Blooded’ features an old school tremolo intro by Mick Jones, and the band collectively groove out on the guitar section with some good overdriven sounds before returning to the main song with speedy punctuating drums. With a New Jersey choir guesting on ‘I Want To Know What Love Is’ it veers towards 3+3 era Isley Brothers and adds a little liquid sexy-funk to dilute the schmaltz but it’s still a song I don’t care for.
The show’s finale is 4’s ‘Jukebox Hero’. Opening with drums and synthesiser, Bluestein is very much in Gary Wright mode (whose band Mick Jones played in (before it became Wonderwheel then a reformed Spooky Tooth), as the bass comes in the song moves without restraints between funky cosmic rocking keyboards and hard rocking guitar licks, then the vocal harmonies come in to back one of the best American Dream type rock lyrics as they chug down on those guitars, Jones whips out some lead lines then there’s a bump and grind section with Hansen extemporising and involving the crowd, then hitting out loud with a scream; it’s sex for grown-ups and as if to reconfirm that they play a variation on Zep’s ‘Whole Lotta Love’ and Jones solos rock and roll style – He’s never been what you would call a virtuoso but he’s been in the game long enough to knows how to work both a song and a crowd. And that’s it. Over. And you’re left, pretty much gobsmacked.
It’s not like you’re going to go out looking for live versions of tracks like this, but when you hear them and they’re as good as most of these are, you’ll know you made a good purchase.
