The guest list for those is rather small, obviously, so Hansen recognizes the value of this kind of package deal. Many of the bigger-ticket bands out there, including classic-rock giants, do a lot of those corporate or, as Felder calls them, “billionaire birthday party” gigs, to pay off the machine it takes to keep things running. Then there’s an acoustic tour in Germany, and then we’ll come back and do shows in the states, do corporate gigs.” After July, we take a little break and do some recording. While the new tour seems to be successful, Hansen has no idea if they’ll return to the package deal, at least in the near future. One other way the band reaches out is through its inclusion of elementary-school choirs on live versions of “I Wanna Know What Love Is.” Foreigner teams with the Grammy Foundation to help support public school music education, and the kids in turn get a once-in-a-lifetime experience. but that doesn’t mean that you should,” he said. “Not only the Internet but technology have made it possible for just about anyone to make a record. But Foreigner reaches younger audiences through parents passing down the songs, and through the various movie soundtracks, videogame inclusions, social media and Internet music sites. Classic-rock radio didn’t touch it, as, ironically, classic-rock radio only plays songs by the younger versions of the bands. In the past decade, Hansen has sung more than 1,000 shows with Foreigner, and helped write and create 2009’s ‘Can’t Slow Down,” the first album of all-new material by Foreigner in a decade. Everyone here is extremely accomplished we all recognize each other and respect that,” Hansen said. “Everybody here has been around the block, and we’ve seen a lot. With all those talents come egos, but the years of experience help balance things out, so there’s no real backstage melodrama. We have a nice camaraderie, which I think translates to the audience,” he said. “We got to hang out and rehearse in New York, just talking and being together that’s something you don’t get to do very much even when you’re on tour with other bands. The three units combined for the “Soundtrack of Summer” CD, with a new version of “Hotel California.” Every year when you’re trying to come up with a package tour, you’re trying to come up with something new, that hasn’t been done,” Hansen said. “So there was a thread through all of that. The various members of the groups have many personal interconnections, and Styx’s Tommy Shaw played with Don Felder on the latter’s 2012 solo disc. Most of the time you’re out with a few hits, struggling to make people listen to the rest,” Hansen said, laughing. “I’m lucky to be in a band with so many well-crafted songs. Songs such as “Waiting for A Girl Like You,” “Jukebox Hero” and “I Wanna Know What Love Is” always ignite audiences, and have been on this tour, where Styx and Foreigner share the billing, and swap nights being the closer. I think if you’re a really good musician, you want to serve the song,” he said. So while he may have some small modifications in delivery, Hansen is basically working to ride atop a well-established song with a well-known melody and arrangement. and one of the things we agreed about, when I go to a concert, I want to hear the songs the way I learned to love them.” “It’s a challenge to sing these songs, just by their nature, the key and so forth, are so difficult to sing. I think these songs sound great, and they feel great to me,” he said. And although Hansen pushed the group to record new music, in addition to its live discs of late, he knows his job on the Soundtracks of Summer tour: Deliver the hits. It’s not far from the gag the band found its name in: Originally composed of three Brits and three Yanks, the joke went, no matter where they toured, someone would be a foreigner. And Mick (Jones, founding guitarist and songwriter) has got his East Coast and English mentality about his music you put all those influences together, and it makes it what it is.” “I am definitely a West Coast-influenced singer,” he said. But counting the times Gramm left before - and came back - he’s in fact the fourth lead singer the band has had.īut being something of an outsider, at first, was not a detriment, Hansen said. He sang with Slash, Unruly Child and others before briefly re-forming Hurricane, then joining Foreigner in 2005, after original lead singer Lou Gramm left in 2003 for a solo career. When Foreigner’s biggest song, “I Wanna Know What Love Is” was released, Hansen was fronting his hard-rock band Hurricane, which broke the top 40, but busted up in the early ’90s. Foreigner singer Kelly Hansen was working with his own group in California about the time Foreigner’s biggest hits were breaking out, in the late ’70s.
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