Mick Jones: We’re certainly thrilled to be in India

For those of us who knew Foreigner as the sextet of Mick Jones, Ian McDonald, Dennis Elliot, Lou Gramm, Ed Gagliardi and Al Greenwood, the band that performed in India may have been a little too ‘foreign’.
Nevertheless, Mick Jones, Tom Gimbel, Kelly Hansen, Jeff Pilson, Michael Bluestein and Jason Sutter didn’t really disappoint as they performed in India for the first time in February this year.
After the band was formed in 1976, the lineup has changed one time too many, but even then, the band has always maintained that it has been loyal to its roots.
The long locks may have given way to grey hair, but the slightly balding Mick Jones was an enviably energetic 67-year-old on stage as the band belted out “Waiting For A Girl Like You”, “I Wanna Know What Love Is”, “Urgent”, “Dirty White Boy”, and “Head Games”, moving across Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Kolkata. The debut concert’s opening act – sitar maestro Niladri Kumar and his band SitarFunk – was a fitting token of the West meeting the East. What started as a brief interaction with Ravi Shankar, following time spent with former Beatle George Harrison in the 70s, culminated in the fusing of the sitar with the guitar.
During their interactions with the media, Mick Jones had said, “We’re certainly thrilled to be in India because we’ve never been here before. When we had success here was a long time ago and we’ve come to remind people that we’re still here.” Well, we sure were waiting for a reminder like this!
- Foreigner sold more than four million copies of its debut album ‘Foreigner’ in 1977 in the US alone
- The band stayed in the top 20 on US Billboards for a year
- They have sold more than 70 million albums worldwide