What The Original Band Members Of Foreigner Are Doing Today

On October 19, 2024, two original members of Foreigner appeared at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Cleveland, Ohio. Singer Lou Gramm and keyboard player Al Greenwood, along with the band's second bassist, Rick Wills, performed with an all-star band and accepted the award. Two other members — multi-instrumentalist Ian McDonald and original bassist Ed Gagliardi — died in 2022 and 2014, respectively, just some of the tragic details about Foreigner.

Also absent was the guitarist Mick Jones, who in 1976 founded the band that would go on to sell 80 million records and have a string of hits from "Hot Blooded" to "I Want to Know What Love Is." Jones bowed out of the event because of issues with Parkinson's disease. The original drummer, Dennis Elliot, also didn't attend. Over the decades, the band has gone through numerous lineup changes and had its ups and downs, from substance abuse issues to internal tensions, but through it all, Jones — the last remaining original member — has continued to helm Foreigner.

In 1976, when Mick Jones, an Englishman living in New York City, began putting together a new band after the breakup of his previous group, Spooky Tooth, he met fellow Brit Ian McDonald. McDonald was a founding member of the influential prog rock band King Crimson. "He was the type of intuitive musician that could add different textures and colours to any kind of song," Jones recalled in his autobiography "A Foreigner's Tale." By the next year, with Foreigner's lineup solidified, the band's first album shot up the charts, and the group found nearly overnight success.

Foreigner continued its rise to the top with two more albums that McDonald performed on and co-produced. Then, in 1980, Jones and Lou Gramm unceremoniously fired McDonald and Al Greenwood in order to have more control, just part of the untold truth of Foreigner. McDonald felt betrayed. "It's become a two man band," McDonald told the Los Angeles Times in September 1981. "The rest of us were squeezed out." McDonald later released a solo album, "Driver's Eyes," and in 2002 formed 21st Century Schizoid Band, which included several other ex-members of King Crimson. He reunited with Jones and Gramm for a single Foreigner show in 2017, the same year he formed a new band, Honey West, that included his son Malcolm on bass. He died in February 2022, age 75, from colon cancer.

Like Ian McDonald, Al Greenwood also felt blindsided when Mick Jones and Lou Gramm fired him from the band. "I was very, very bitter about it," Greenwood recalled in an interview published in The Morning Call. Foreigner's manager gave him the bad news. "I thought I meant more to the band, but I was wrong," he lamented. Afterward, he worked with other artists before forming a new group, Spys, with another former member of Foreigner, bassist Ed Gagliardi. Gagliardi was jettisoned from the collective in 1979 amid talk of an "inflated ego" and bad chemistry, Messenger-Press reported.

Their new band, Spys, released two albums before breaking up. Greenwood went on to record with Joe Lynn Turner of Deep Purple and continued producing and writing for other artists, including the rapper Redman. He also appeared on stage with Foreigner for several concerts during the band's 40th anniversary tour. Gagliardi died at age 62 in 2014 from complications related to cancer.

Drummer Dennis Elliot left Foreigner in 1993. "I've been there, done that," he quipped to The Naples Daily News in 2005 concerning his musical career. Born in London, England in 1950, Elliott and his wife, Iona, live in Coral Gables, Florida. The self-taught artist began woodworking in 1972, four years before the birth of Foreigner, and it was to sculpting that he returned when he left the band. He began crafting large wood vessels, wall pieces, and interactive sculptures using custom-built equipment.

Some of Elliott's pieces are in well-respected craft museums, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. and the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City. He often incorporates metal, semi-precious stones, and rare wood in his work. . In August 2017, he reunited with Mick Jones for a Foreigner concert in Tampa, Florida. Elliott skipped the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in October 2024 citing scheduling issues.

In 1990, buoyed by the success of his first solo record and reeling from the band's internal conflicts centered around creative differences with Mick Jones, Lou Gramm left Foreigner. But he wouldn't be gone long. After a short time with a new band, Shadow King, he got sober, became a born-again Christian, and returned to Foreigner in 1992. In 1997, amid this second stint as the group's frontman, he nearly died from what at first was thought to be an inoperable brain tumor that affected his memory and sight.

A new type of brain surgery saved him, and he continued to perform with Foreigner until 2003, when he returned to his career as a solo act. He also played with other original members of Foreigner for the band's 40th anniversary. In 2024, he announced he would be retiring from performing. "I would like to turn my attention to my family and my muscle cars and just enjoy myself knowing that when I lay down at night, it'll be in my own bed." he told Seven Mountains Media.

Through all the years since founding Foreigner in 1976, Mick Jones remained at its center and is now the last original member of the band. But since 2022, he has only appeared sporadically at concerts because of health issues. In February 2024, he revealed the reason. "Fans will have become very aware that for some time now, I have not been performing onstage with the band," he said in a statement (via Billboard). "Several years ago, I was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. I want everyone to know that I am doing alright ... Parkinson's is a daily struggle; the important thing is to persevere and remind myself of the wonderful career I've had in music. I thank all the fans who have supported Foreigner throughout the years and continue to attend our concerts — I want you to know I appreciate your support; it always means so very much to me, but especially so at this point in my life."

Lou Gramm, in his autobiography, groused about Foreigner continuing on although Jones rarely appears on stage with the group. "So it's reached a point where Foreigner now often performs without a single original member," he wrote. "Which begs the question — are you really listening to Foreigner of a glorified cover band playing Foreigner's catalogue?" The group's farewell tour began in 2023 and has been extended into 2025.