Rick Wills, the former bassist of the rock band Foreigner, didn’t know what to make of his manager’s somewhat cryptic message to him from over a month ago. “He said, ‘You’re going to be very pleased,’ Wills now recalls. “And I said, ‘Well, tell me what it is.’ He said, “I can’t. Next Saturday, there’s going to be an announcement made.’ It was right before the Super Bowl, and I had a hint that maybe we would be a surprise guest artist on the Super Bowl or something.”
It wasn’t a Super Bowl invitation for Foreigner, but the surprise on Feb. 10 was even better: the group, led by guitarist Mick Jones, was nominated for induction into this year’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Included for consideration is Foreigner’s original lineup of Jones, singer Lou Gramm, multi-instrumentalist Ian McDonald, keyboardist Al Greenwood, drummer Dennis Elliott and bassist Ed Gagliardi—as well as Wills, who joined the band in 1979 and appeared on several Foreigner’s hit albums throughout the 1980s.
“It’s amazing,” Wills, who has been performing recently with the band as a guest artist, says of Foreigner’s nomination. “That was a real honor and a thrill, I have to tell you. Because to join all those other greats that are in there is an honor. Obviously, we feel part of all that because of what we’ve achieved.”
Before joining Foreigner, the British-born Wills had cut his teeth with several well-known acts, including Roxy Music, Peter Frampton, and future Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour. In the 1960s, while playing with Gilmour in the band Jokers Wild in Paris, he met an English journeyman musician named Mick Jones. “Mick Jones was the guitar player and musical director for Johnny Halliday, who was the French Elvis Presley,” Wills recalls. “Mick had a great job. He came to check us out because we were English playing in the club in Paris. And we got to know one another..”
Wills and Jones wouldn’t reconnect until towards the end of the 1970s; by then, Wills had been playing with the reformed Small Faces. He was in New York City taking care of some financial business when he heard that original Foreigner bassist Ed Gagliardi had left the band.
“I’ve been following very closely because I was aware that Mick was in the band and had this huge success,” he says. “But they were about to change bass players, and I didn’t know really why, except that they decided that’s what they were going to do. And they were auditioning for someone new to come into the band.
“So I got hold of Mick Jones’ number. [He] had an apartment in New York, rang him and said, ‘Mick, it’s Rick Wills. I’m in New York.’ He said, ‘Oh, Rick. I didn’t know you were here.’ I said, ‘Listen, I’ve just heard what’s happening. I want to audition for the band. I love what you’re doing. I love the songs. This is my kind of music. I want to do that.’ He said, ‘I’ll tell you what. Come to SIR studios tomorrow. We’ll run through a few things with you and see how it goes.’ And that’s how it all started.”
Following his audition with the band, Wills returned home to the U.K. One morning, he received a phone call. “It was [Foreigner’s manager] Bud Prager in the office in New York with Mick Jones ringing me to say, ‘How are you feeling, Rick?’ I said, ‘Oh, Bud, I’m really jet lagged at tired, but I’m feeling okay.’ He said, ‘Well, you’re going to feel really good. You’ve just got the job with Foreigner.’
“I was like, ‘Oh, my God.’ I couldn’t believe it. My wife and the two children – we all were hugging. Tears were in my eyes. It was such a fantastic moment because we all realized this was life-changing. To join Foreigner is a big deal. It’s like an opportunity that doesn’t come along very often to anyone, and it came my way.”
Wills returned to New York City to join Foreigner as they were recording their third album Head Games, the follow-up to the smash Double Vision. “I got to rehearsal, and they were ready to go. They had some songs, “Dirty White Boy,” “Head Games” and stuff like that for me to play. I just fitted right into that whole thing. It just worked so well. It was like I was meant to be there with these guys. There was just a feeling of happiness between us that we got it right…And the whole sound of the album, Roy Thomas Baker, who produced the album, made sure that’s what we got out of it. It was almost verging on distortion loud in a way. We thought it was a great album.”
Foreigner went through a major lineup change before making their 1981 album, eventually titled 4, with the departures of Ian McDonald and Al Greenwood–leaving Jones, Gramm, Wills and Elliott remaining in the band Co-produced by Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange (AC/DC, Def Leppard) and Jones, 4 became the band’s ultimate smash and signature album featuring the hits “Waiting for Girl Like You,” “Urgent” and “Jukebox Hero.”
“We brought in guys from England like Thomas Dolby that really gave us a whole different perspective to what we were used to doing because they were experimenting in a whole different way,” Wills remembers. “Mutt Lange was really dedicated to his job as a producer and is one of the hardest-working men who’ll ever meet in music and has had incredible success. So he pushed us to the limit in many ways to get the best album we could make. He pushed Lou to the ultimate. It’s things like “Jukebox Hero” and stuff like that where Lou is literally singing at the top of his range. And it’s not just one take. There’s many takes where Lou’s almost losing his voice through it, that Mutt wanted the very best out of everything we did.
“He insisted that we rewrite. I mean, we did “Waiting for a Girl Like You” the first day in the studio in two hours. We foolishly thought, ‘Oh, we’re off to a winner here. We’ll probably get this done in a couple of months.’ One year later, we’re still working on it. It was hard, and there were times when I thought, ‘Oh, boy,’ because Mutt was really very strong in his ideas, and so was Mick Jones. They locked horns a lot at times about ideas and stuff. But we got there in the end.”
The success of 4, which went to number one in 1981, and “Waiting for a Girl Like You” represented Foreigner at the height of their powers. “Sold out shows, night after night,” says Wills. “It was just ‘Wow.’ You can’t believe how exciting that was. The money was rolling in. It was crazy. It’s not just about money. We were so focused on what we were doing and wanting to get it right. And we did. We really did.”
Foreigner returned three years later with the sleek-sounding Agent Provocateur album, which contained the band’s first and only number-one song, the ballad “I Want to Know What Love Is.” Wills knew that song would become a hit. “It was no doubt in my mind. I mean, [Mick] had the music first before he had the lyric. I know Lou sometimes says, ‘I should have got a credit.’ But it’s Mick’s song. It was always his song because it’s really the story of his life. I didn’t know it’d be number one exactly, but I thought it could be, and it was all over the world. We’re very proud of that.”
By the time Foreigner recorded 1987’s Inside Information album (which yielded the hits “Say You Will” and “I Don’t Want to Live Without You”), there was growing tension between Gramm and Jones that led to Gramm leaving the band to further pursue a solo career that began with his Top 10 hit “Midnight Blue.” “I think for Lou, the ballad thing became an issue,” Wills says. “Lou said, ‘You know, it’s going too far in that direction.’ And then at the same time, people in the record business were saying to him, ‘Look, you’re the voice. You are the voice that’s recognizable with Foreigner. Why don’t you do a solo album? We think you should.’ And Lou took that on board. And the more he took it on board, the more he kind of moved away from being us, as it were.”
The other members of Foreigner found Gramm’s replacement in singer Johnny Edwards and released 1991’s underrated but commercially unsuccessful album Unusual Heat. “It just didn’t go down well for some reason,” Wills says of that record. “And I think the record company didn’t get behind it enough. They didn’t push it in the way they could have done, which they’d always done for us before. It just felt like we were at an end at that point. And Mick really struggled for a while to know what to do.
Unusual Heat was the last Foreigner album to feature Elliott and Wills, with the latter joining Bad Company shortly after. “I said to my wife, “I think I’m going to have to just quit and do something else. And I called friends I knew, Simon Kirke and Mick Ralphs of Bad Company. I rang them up and I said, ‘Are you guys touring this year?’ And they said, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘Can I join the band, please?’ So I left Foreigner and joined Bad Company that day. And for 10 years, I played for Bad Company. So I never stopped working. That’s what I do.”
Wills still kept an eye on the activities of Jones, who was rebuilding Foreigner with Gramm (he later left the band again in 2003) and a newer lineup of players that included over the years singer Kelly Hansen; drummers Jason Bonham, Brian Tichy and Chris Frazier; multi-instrumentalist Thom Gimbel; bassists Bruce Turgon and Jeff Pilson; keyboardist Michael Blustein; and guitarist Bruce Watson. In 2017, to mark the band’s 40th anniversary, former members Wills, Gramm, Elliott, McDonald and Greenwood made special guest appearances with Jones and the then-current incarnation of Foreigner on stage.
“Like putting on a pair of slippers,” Wills says about playing with the band again decades later. “It was so comfortable. I remember standing on the stage and we were playing. And I looked at Lou and I walked over and said, ‘I think we’re better than what we used to be.’ He said, ‘I think you’re right, Rick. It sounds great, doesn’t it?’ We just got so comfortable together. And that’s how it should be. It really is. It’s lovely. I’m so sorry that Ian’s not with us anymore [after he passed away in 2022]. I didn’t know Ed Gagliardi [who died in 2014] because he was gone before I joined. God rest his soul.”
Wills has recently appeared as a special guest with the latest edition of Foreigner on their current farewell tour amid an absent Jones as he recently revealed he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. “Mick likes to be at his very best when he’s on the stage,” says Wills, adding later, “He’s doing okay. He’s doing as best as he can. He has a lot of work, you know, therapy and stuff.”
Wills also praised Jones’ stepson, musician and producer Mark Ronson, for advocating Foreigner’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with video tributes from the likes of Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl. Guns ‘N Roses’ Slash and Paul McCartney. “I mean, Paul McCartney cursing on TV ever,” Wills says. “I couldn’t believe Paul did that. Wow. But it’s a fantastic honor for him to say, ‘Foreigner’s not in the Hall of Fame? What the ****?’ Amazing, man. We have so many great friends you know in our life that we know who support us so well.”
Wills raves about the current Foreigner lineup that is keeping the band’s legacy alive on the farewell tour. “I just do the end of the show [playing “I Want to Know What Love Is” and “Hot Blooded”] with the guys these days. They’re somewhat 10, four years younger than me, and they have an awful lot of energy. They run around that stage, and I’m bewildered when I’m on the stage with them. I’m like, ‘What the hell’s going on?’ It’s fun…Kelly Hansen is unbelievable. The best showman singer I’ve ever seen. He’s incredible. And he does this big introduction for me and the crowd obviously responds very well to it. It’s very heartwarming from my point of view.”
“Mick [oversaw] the whole thing,” Wills later adds. I mean, that’s the way he is. He’s an overseer of all things. When you think back now, it’s been like over 20 years, this new lineup has been doing Foreigner. And boy, I tell you, when I watched them last night from the side of the stage, they’re killing it. They’re doing it so well. They love it. And I love them, and they’re such super nice guys, all of them.”
He marvels at how the band has remained popular over the decades and has connected with audiences both old and new. “We’re so fortunate that the fans have stayed with us…I will support and love this band always.”
Fans can cast their vote for this year’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominees, among them Foreigner, by visiting vote.rockhall.com. The inductees will be announced in late April.