Lou Gramm

by DOUG FOX

His band was Foreigner, but Lou Gramm's voice is no stranger -- having been warmly welcomed in Walkmans, homes and automobiles across America for three decades now.
Boasting one of the more recognizable voices in rock, Gramm's vocals appear on a truckload of hit songs that have graced radio airwaves since the band's with-a-bullet debut in 1977.
In fact, we'll bet the mere mention of Foreigner tunes like "Cold as Ice," "Hot Blooded," "Double Vision," "Juke Box Hero" and "Urgent" instantly bring melodic guitar riffs to memory, start your foot tapping and head bobbing, and set your mind on hum control. Go ahead and give in. It's nearly unavoidable.

"It's unbelievable to have a repertoire like that to pick from," Gramm, who is now touring with his own band, said in a backstage interview prior to Friday's concert at the Sandy Amphitheater. "Altogether, I was 26, 27 years with Foreigner and there is so much to show for it. The real big ones seem to be standing the test of time cause you still hear them on the radio."Gramm brought most of those hits to life for an appreciative crowd Friday. His one-hour, 20-minute set not only featured timeless Foreigner classics, but also touched on a few highlights from his solo career -- namely top 10 hits "Just Between You and Me" and "Midnight Blue."

The Lou Gramm Band, as his touring unit is called, is not only tight musically, but a tight-knit group as well. The band features two of Gramm's brothers -- Ben Gramm on drums and Richard Gramm on bass and guitar. So when Lou turns to his bass player as he's leaning into a tasty highlight in the middle of "Ready or Not" and exclaims, as he did Friday, "Come on, brother!" -- well, it's apropos on more than one level. It turns out that touring together after all these years is a real brothers Gramm fairy tale. "It's awesome. It's something we've never done before, the three of us together, " Lou said. "It's really something we're just thrilled about." The band also includes Donny Mancuso, who worked with Lou in his pre-Foreigner days in a group called Black Sheep, on guitar and bass, and keyboardist Andy Knoll.

That Lou Gramm is touring at all these days is something of a minor miracle. He was diagnosed in 1997 with an inoperable brain tumor. It was at that point that fate intervened, as Gramm said he saw a segment on the television show "20/20" that showed how laser surgery was starting to be used in conditions previously considered inoperable.
Three days later, Gramm underwent a grueling surgery that successfully removed the tumor, but had dramatic physical effects. Not only did Gramm's golden voice lose a lot of its power, but he also experienced massive weight gain, making him virtually unrecognizable to his legions of fans.

The past 10 years have seen a slow climb back for Gramm. He has lost a good portion of the extra weight he put on after the surgery, and, judging by Friday's concert, his voice is most of the way back. Gramm looked and sounded 10 times better than he did at his last Utah concert -- at Franklin Covey Field on Aug. 11, 1999, a date made memorable for the tornado which ripped through downtown Salt Lake City earlier in the day. "I'm feeling better than I have since before the operation," Gramm said pre-show -- then went out on stage and proved it.

Gramm's voice actually seemed to gain strength as the night went on as he belted out a bevy of Foreigner classics, including "Double Vision," "Dirty White Boy," "Waiting For a Girl Like You," "Blue Morning Blue Day," "Cold as Ice," "Rev on the Red Line" and "Head Games." "Midnight Blue," featuring some fantastic backing vocals, was a clear highlight on the night, as was the encore combination of "Long, Long Way From Home" and "Hot Blooded."
Gramm said his creative function also was stifled following his 1997 operation, but reported that his songwriting talents have rounded back into shape over the past four years. He is currently working on a 12-song Christian album. Yes, a Christian album.
"But let me tell you, it still rocks really hard," Gramm said with a smile. After seeing him in action Friday, we believe him.

Lou Gramm Band
Sandy Amphitheater
July 27, 2007
1. Double Vision
2. Ready or Not
3. Dirty White Boy
4. Just Between You and Me
5. Waiting For a Girl Like You
6. Blue Morning Blue Day
7. Cold as Ice
8. Rev on the Red Line
9. Head Games
10. Women
11. Midnight Blue
12. Juke Box Hero
ENCORE
1. Long, Long Way From Home
2. Hot Blooded
Performance time: 1 hour, 20 minutes

This story appeared in The Daily Herald August 1, 2007 on page B1. - Daily Herald (Sandy/ Salt Lake City, Utah)

by MATTHEW CLAIRMONT

The question at the start of the festivities Friday night was obvious: was this the Lou Gramm of old - one of the world’s most recognizable vocalists - or an old Lou Gramm? As the crowd started to fill a smoky, humid Windsor Exhibition Arena, it appeared the answer would be just as obvious.

However, as the evening progressed and anticipation of his onstage appearance mounted, all doubts were cast aside with the opening lines of “Double Vision”, Foreigner’s 1978 hit that reached #2 on the Billboard US Hot 100 chart.

Largely a retrospective

It was largely a retrospective of some of Gramm’s best work with Foreigner, but also included some of his underappreciated solo material with a few personal favourites sprinkled in. Forget what it’s not; this was classic rock at its finest, stripped down to the bare bones without excessive production or unnecessary instrumentation.

The crowd roared as Gramm slowly made his way front and centre with the booming bass drum in the background in the middle of a skillful guitar rift. It was as if the entire building held its collective breath; the silence in the split second before he started was rich. But as soon as he uttered,“Feeling kinda dirty” - the opening line to “Double Vision” - everyone knew what kind of show Gramm would deliver.

The Bedrock Blues Band and Ambush were both sensational and had the joint jumping, but the professional display from this point on was remarkable. There was no strain in the voice or body language of Gramm, who instantly transformed into a seasoned showstopper.

Thanks to the explosion of the Internet and popular sites like YouTube, his music remains accessible and relevant to today’s generation, and these songs remain staples at school dances and on students’ mp3 players and iPods.

But for one night three decades after the debut of Foreigner, Gramm proved he still had what it takes and more, pleasing the crowd into the wee hours with a set that was as fresh and powerful as it must have been in years past.

This wasn’t the Lou Gramm of old, but it wasn’t an old Lou Gramm, either. It was a supremely gifted musician with a keen creative instinct and crowd awareness whose talent brought down the house and left a lasting impression on his fans in Windsor.
- NovaNewsNow.com (Nova Scotia, Canada)

By Evan Parker Pierce NEWS CONTRIBUTING REVIEWER

LOCKPORT — This review could have been about how Lou Gramm and the Lou Gramm Band put on an awesome show Friday Night. I was thinking about writing about how surprised I was that I legitimately enjoyed this show.

I could tell you how the man, now 58, still has his pipes, that his voice was as clear as it was on the original recording of set-opener, “Double Vision.” I could tell you that he’s no longer a svelte, 20-something with kinky hair, but he seems to have aged pretty gracefully into an elder statesman of sorts — graying and crinkle-eyed, but still limber enough to kick it around the stage without looking creaky.

I could tell you he still croons “I Want to Know What Love Is” as though he’s completely unaware of how overwrought that whole song is, that this jaded reviewer was at first giggling when the chorus first kicked in, but was singing along wholesale by the end. I could even tell you that “Cold as Ice” is a cool song to hear live, and Gramm and his band still seem like they love playing it.

And that’s all true — Gramm and his band were really good. But there’s no surprise in that — Gramm has been performing for more than 32 years, both with Foreigner and as a solo artist. After decades of performing, Gramm, like almost all other aging rock stars, is a pro. He knows how to perform.

The real star Friday night, the first night of the Molson Canal Concert Series, was Lockport and the new venue for the free concerts — David Ulrich City Centre. This concert series used to be in North Tonawanda’s Gateway Park, an underrated gem of a venue, with a gorgeous canal-side view, room

for boats to dock and a pretty decent space. But it has its flaws.

For one, Gateway Park is a small venue in relativity, with a larger proportion of the audience forced to be farther away from the stage. Another problem was that the stage at Gateway was practically adjacent to a row of buildings, with the canal on the other, meaning the sound would get muddy very quickly, moving farther away from the stage.

Moving to the recently renovated Ulrich City Centre addresses almost all of those potential problems. Lockport’s space is massive — you could probably fit double the crowd Gateway could accommodate. Though it is bordered by downtown-style row buildings, it also is very open. Even at its attendance peak, the crowd was not packed in like sardines — which would have been the case in North Tonawanda. And because it is so open, the sound spreads clearly wide and far.

There are some quirks, however. It’s called the Canal Concert Series. And although the Erie Canal cuts through downtown, you can’t see the canal from the City Centre.

It’s not quite as scenic as Gateway. It’s cute to be sure, and the redevelopment down there looks quite good. But it’s a small price to pay for the added benefits.

So even though Gramm was good, it was the relocated concert venue in Lockport that really starred.
- The Buffalo News

CLASSIC LINE-UP PUT IN CLASSIC SHOW IN VEGAS:
By Gerry Gittelson / Melodicrock.com Los Angeles Correspondent.

Every so often, a rock bill seems upside-down. Perhaps that was the case Saturday, April 25, as headliner Rick Springfield technically did nothing wrong and might have even been the strongest ticket draw before an arena crowd of about 5,000 at Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas. But support acts Eddie Money, Lou Gramm and John Waite gave the handsome Australian all he could handle and then some.
Second-billed Money was in particular good spirits, and, as always, proved to have a great “it” factor during a 40-minute set that included a catchy, hit single during every moment – “Baby Hold On,” “Gimme Some Water,” “Two Tickets to Paradise,” “Think I'm in Love,” “Walk on Water,” “I Wanna Go Back,” “Shakin',” “No Control,” and so on.
Perhaps Money's best moment came during “Take Me Home Tonight,” during which the transplanted New Yorker's hot-looking 21-year-old daughter, Jesse, shared the stage and did a great job sharing backup duty on the “be-my-little-baby” parts.
Money, dressed like a college student in a polo-style shirt, blue jeans and sneakers, was in a great mood, and his spirit was infectious. When he wistfully announced he has “never done all this for the money but for all of you,” we believed him.

Gramm, the former Foreigner singer, might have stolen the whole night. True, he has put on quite a bit of weight and no longer possesses chiseled features like Springfield and Waite, but god can the man sing.
Because of time constraints, Gramm was forced to pack the best he could give into a tight package, and the result was spectacular. By the end of opener “Double Vision,” he was just beginning to warm up his voice before delivering an awesome series that included Foreigner classics “Feels Like the First Time,” “Cold as Ice,” “I Want to Know What Love is” and “Hot Blooded,” along with a particularly well-delivered version of his top solo hit “Midnight Blue,” – a underrated gem that has lost none of its appeal through the passage of time.
So central is Gramm to Foreigner's identity that there is no way the current version of Foreigner that is forging without him can stand up. That much was proven on this night in Las Vegas, and the crowd roared its approval.

Meantime, opener Waite was utterly brilliant, too. The carrot-topped Englishman was on fire and found himself in total control of the room once he launched into second song “Back on my Feet Again,” a Babys classic that features a hook large enough to catch a shark.
Waite delivered a 30-minute performance geared toward optimum audience enjoyment, and that meant more Babys songs such as “Isn't it Time” and “Head First,” plus his biggest solo hits “Change” and “Missing You,” and of course the former No. 1 single from Bad English, “When I See You Smile.”
Among those nodding their approval for Waite was legendary producer Keith Olsen, who produced the Babys' final two albums, “Union Jacks” and “On The Edge” and has remained a loyal friend for 30 years.
Nothing should be taken away from Springfield. He was well-received, his backing band was tight, and on display were his best pieces of work such as “Affair of the Heart” and the ever-catchy “Jessie's Girl.”
The hard truth was this night belonged to the others. But the tour continues, and as the saying goes, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” so Springfield will have lots more chances. - Gerry Gittelson / Melodicrock.com Los Angeles Correspondent