Ye Olde Metal: Foreigner's Head Games

The 2013 Martin Popoff short ebook about the making of the Foreigner album, Head Games.


For all their smash multi-Platinum fame, there really hasn’t been much written about Foreigner, so Popoff is particularly proud of this in-depth analysis of the band’s biting, dark horse album from 1979, arguably the last or second last of the classics from the hard AOR masters. Our celebration of Head Games finds Martin joined by both Lou Gramm and Mick Jones (plus a couple of producers), who together unlock the magic of this record, one that—hard to believe—was considered a career setback for the chart-charging veterans.


“It was definitely among the first 48 track recordings," guitarist Mick Jones says. “But there was also a feeling that we wanted to come up a little heavier than we had been perhaps on the first two albums, a little more raw, kind of the street-type thing.”

 

“There were some radio stations that wouldn’t play it, first of all, because of the cover, which they viewed as in bad taste,” singer Lou Gramm says. “It’s a little bit out of line, but it’s not evil. And then second of all, Dirty White Boy was the first single, and there were stations that perceived that as being in poor taste as well.”