Rock History recently released a short clip from an interview with Lou Gramm, where the rocker revealed that Mick Jones turned down a Foreigner hit. The songwriter shared how ‘Midnight Blue’ was made, only to reveal it was turned down by Jones with another hit.
After the interviewer shared his thoughts about the hit, Gramm thanked and shared the story of the song getting rejected by his bandmate:
“So get this. We were writing that song, and I knew that there was gonna be another Foreigner album coming up. So when Mick finally got back from his ocean tour, wherever it was, Bruce [Turgeon] and I took ‘Midnight Blue and Heartache,’ the song ‘Heartache,’ over to him and proposed those two songs to be on the next Foreigner album.”
The rocker shared Jones’ reaction when he first heard the demo of the song:
“Now, they were done, and there was no room for Mick on there. They were done. Basically, it was Bruce and myself. He heard the rough tape of ‘Midnight Blue,’ and he had a funny look on his face.”
Although it seemed that Jones could have played the song, Gramm claimed that he gave up after trying many times. He shared:
“He picked up his guitar and tried to play those chords, there are very strange fingering on that, and Mick is the master of that. I watched him try and duplicate those chords for 20 minutes and finally just take his guitar and put it down, and he said, ‘It’s alright, but I don’t think it’s for us.”
He added:
“I mean, it would not take a genius to pick up on what that song had and say, ‘Even if I can’t play the guitar, I’ll learn the right chords, that’s a Foreigner song, let’s play it.'”
After Midnight Blue was turned down by the rocker, Gramm shared it as a solo piece, which later turned out to be the biggest hit of the singer. The song topped the charts and became Billboard’s most-played rock song the year it came out.
According to Gramm, Jones was very angry with Gramm for recording and releasing the song, claiming that the band had to wait for months to release their own album so that ‘Midnight Blue’ could ‘die down.’
Since its release, the song is still known as one of the singer’s hits.
You can watch the recently shared snippet below.
