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Late last year, Foreigner dropped the first new song with Lou Gramm in about three decades. Turning Back The Time was part of the demos done with Mick Jones for a possible followup to 1994’s Mr. Moonlight, which did not make it to the finish line. Says Gramm, “I had given up on those songs that were unfinished. I’d given up because we didn’t talk anymore after that. I thought we were in our golden era – almost.”
But not long after that, Gramm was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor – just as the band were getting ready to tour Japan. “Just before that, Mick and I started working on new songs,” he says. “We felt it was more than long enough for us to be working on a new album. So we started working on new songs and we had about, I think, eight ideas that he and I worked on. He put the chords down; we both arranged it. I sang some lyrics and some gibberish just to get comfortable with the body of the songs – and it was at that point that I went in for my 19-hour brain surgery.”
Gramm returned to touring, but the unfinished album remained in the vault. He and the band parted ways in 2003.
“We kind of hit an impasse about the direction of the new album, and we never worked on it again. I didn’t hear from him about about trying to finish the album,” Gramm says. “So it took 22 years to unearth these demos and finish them. Now, one song at a time, they’re going to be released and the one that’s out now is the first one.”
Turning Back The Time is the title track for the 18-track compilation which dropped a couple of weeks ahead of Foreigner’s induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame last October.
Love, Dr. Scott James
