INTERVIEW: ‘Urgent’ message: Foreigner ready to rock Garden State
Photo: Mick Jones and Tom Gimbel of Foreigner play at PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, New Jersey. Photo by John Soltes.
For Foreigner multi-instrumentalist Tom Gimbel, the band’s Saturday night concert in New Jersey is not a long, long way from home. The show will actually be something of a homecoming for the bandmate, who was born in Morristown, New Jersey, and has found success with Foreigner for decades.
“It’s always amazing to see the way you feel different when you’re back on your home soil,” Gimbel said in a recent phone interview. “It’s really nice. You feel very centered. I love it.”
Foreigner, of course, are the hot-blooded band that has a long string of hits that continue to receive radio airplay and pack in crowds on summer tours. Fans heading to the June 30 concert at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, New Jersey, should expect many of the favorites, including “Cold as Ice,” “Feels Like the First Time” and the tune that gives this tour its name, “Jukebox Heroes.”
Foreigner, who have 10 multi-platinum albums and 16 Top 30 hits, will also have a few friends up on stage with them.
“It’s going to be Saturday night in Jersey, so that’s a good thing right there,” Gimbel said. “But we’ve got an amazing package this year with Jason Bonham’s Led Zeppelin Evening. They play the Zeppelin stuff as well as anyone, except Zeppelin, of course, but Jason was in Zeppelin with a reunion show. So he’s highly qualified, and they do a magnificent job. Then comes Whitesnake — unbelievable show to see. And when we get on there, we’re just gone to have a ton of fun. We play all the songs that people want to hear, hopefully, and maybe toss in a couple gems on top of that.”
Gimbel, who came to Foreigner in the 1990s after a multi-year stint with Aerosmith, is one of the most accomplished musicians in the rock business. He has been a steady presence with the band, which also features original member Mick Jones, lead singer Kelly Hansen (Hurricane), guitarist Jeff Pilson (Dokken), keyboardist Mike Bluestein, guitarist Bruce Watson and drummer Chris Frazier. Gimbel has many instruments under his belt, but he’s often on the saxophone and rhythm guitar.
“It’s high energy, and Kelly Hansen, our singer, wants to get people involved,” Gimbel said. “It is fun to stand up and clap and stomp your feet and sing and shout and do whatever you feel like doing. That’s what a rock concert is. People are just free to yell. When else do you get to do that, just scream at the top of your lungs? It’s fun. Hopefully it will be a good night.”
When Gimbel and the band look out into the audience each night, they typically see many generations of fans who are rocking out to the music. That’s a humbling fact about the Foreigner’s success: Parents have turned their children (and their grandchildren) into “Double Vision” devotees.
“We’ve got 6, 7, 8-year-olds up on their parents’ shoulders shaking their fists,” Gimbel said. “They know the words to the songs. That’s pretty amazing — teenagers, 20-year-olds, 30-year-olds, all the way up to our contemporaries. This music just sounds really good. It’s held up so well to the test of time that people are still discovering it, and they hear their friends or their relatives or their family members playing it. And they go, ‘Hey, what is that? I think I like that.’ We hear these stories a lot, and it’s very uplifting. I think Mick Jones, the guy that created this band and all this music and this history, he really gets a kick out of hearing this. He’ll just kind of wink and go, ‘Yeah, got you.'”
Foreigner’s early days featured Jones with original lead singer Lou Gramm and Ian McDonald. Today, it’s up to Jones and his new company of musicians to carry on the rock torch, although a reunion show is planned for later this summer. There have been many players who have joined the band over the years. In fact, Bonham was the drummer for a number of years before venturing out on his own projects.
The drive that keeps so many musicians in the band and so many fans in the seats are those songs. They are the definition of memorable, instigating sways of the shoulders, rhythmic nods of the head and plenty of memories.
“I really enjoy all of them equally,” Gimbel said. “There’s something special about every one of these songs that I could say that I particularly like, but if I had to pick one, for me, when I get to grab the saxophone and play ‘Urgent.’ … It’s just the most fun you can have. It takes a lot of concentration, but at a certain point, I just kind of close my eyes and clock out. I really don’t even know what’s happening, so that’s why I say it’s kind of like a ride. It’s just the most fun you can have playing the sax. For me, as a rock sax player, that’s the ultimate moment, and I enjoy it immensely. So if there was one song I had to pick, that would be it.”
On “Urgent,” Gimbel can show off his chops on the saxophone, an instrument he has been playing since he was a child.
“I started woodwinds as a kid, and I was actually playing my sister’s flute for a while,” he said. “And when I got to college, I think I was 17 or maybe 18, they said you really should play the sax, and I said, ‘I can’t wait. Give me a saxophone now.’ I really got serious at that point. I think I was 17 when I first got one, but I had been into the flute and guitar and drums and keyboards. So I was kind of speaking the language of music.”
Gimbel plans on speaking that language of music Saturday night in Holmdel and for the rest of the summer on Foreigner’s Jukebox Heroes Tour.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Foreigner will play with Jason Bonham’s Led Zeppelin Evening and Whitesnake Saturday, June 30 at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, New Jersey. Click here for more information and tickets.
