TOP 40 DEBUT: November 24, 1979
PEAK POSITION: #14 (January 5, 1980)
Ian McDonald was 33 years old at the beginning of 1980, and he already had a resume that would be the envy of musicians twice his age. In his twenties, he’d been one of the founding members of King Crimson, and his multi-instrumental skills—flute, Mellotron, saxophone, harpsichord—are all over In The Court Of The Crimson King, one of the greatest prog-rock records ever made. His work as a session musician included a studio stint with Marc Bolan, meaning those are his saxophone lines gracing T. Rex’s “Bang A Gong (Get It On),” one of the greatest glam records ever made. (The remake will be appearing on this site eventually.) And in 1976, he co-founded Foreigner. By the end of 1980, Foreigner had already sold more than ten million records and charted three Top 5 singles. And McDonald was out of the group.
In the band’s first five years of existence, Foreigner functioned as a power struggle between three men: McDonald, Mick Jones, and Lou Gramm. Michael Leslie Jones didn’t possess McDonald’s credentials—his only notable gig before 1976 was guitarist in the fifth lineup of British afterthoughts Spooky Tooth—but from day one, Foreigner became his baby. He had a hand in writing every significant track on the first three albums, including all eight of the group’s charting singles. And McDonald? Just one lone co-write during his entire Foreigner tenure. Looking back, the writing was on the wall long before McDonald’s actual exit. “Head Games,” like the four Top 20 hits preceding it, is credited to two men: Jones and his new songwriting foil, Lou Gramm.
Unlike Jones and McDonald, Louis Grammatico was a complete unknown before Foreigner—and an American to boot. Born to musical parents, Gramm kicked around in a variety of Rochester, NY bands before becoming lead vocalist of Black Sheep, the first U.S. act signed to the British label Chrysalis. The group eventually released two albums through Capitol Records, but neither one sold. And after a freeway accident ended their tour prematurely, Black Sheep quietly disbanded. When Gramm got the call from Jones to audition, the nascent group had already considered more than fifty other lead singers.
The chemistry between Gramm and Jones was, according to both men, always volatile. But it worked. “Cold As Ice,” “Hot Blooded,” “Double Vision”: these were massive, massive hits on Top 40 radio, in an era where Top 40 radio played mostly lightweight pop and disco. (Respectively, they’re a 9, a 5, and a 7.) As their partnership reaped dividends, McDonald’s contributions to both production (credited) and arranging (uncredited) grew even further marginalized. Head Games certainly benefited from his knottier, proggy tendencies, but the relative failure of the album (mostly due to this awful album cover, honestly) doomed McDonald’s stint with the band. After 1980, Jones and Gramm were running the show.
Foreigner was one of those bands both incredibly successful straight out of the gate and loathed by critics just as quickly. In hindsight, such criticism feels entirely predictable, if mostly unearned. The kind of meat-and-potatoes rock Foreigner churned out during its heyday wasn’t hip or sexy. They weren’t reinventing the wheel, like the CBGB’s art kids, or destroying the wheel entirely, like punk. No one’s mind was ever blown by listening to Double Vision. And yet, a lot of the group’s best singles were sneakily subversive, pushing against the limits of guitar/bass/drums without ever losing sight of the almighty hook. From a songwriting perspective, “Head Games” breaks about four different rules of “proper” chord structure. And it got to #14 because that weirdness never once gets in the way of its elemental arena rock stomp.
For the chorus of “Feels Like The First Time,” Mick Jones used an old metal trope—shifting chords in the guitar against one unchanging bass note—to great success. ("Feels Like The First Time" peaked at #4 in June 1977. It’s a 9.) And he doubles down on the same idea with “Head Games.” New bassist Rick Wills gets the thankless task of sitting on a G# for basically the song’s entire duration; above him, Jones and keyboardist Al Greenwood hit both the minor and major of that chord, along with an F# for good measure. (Quick summary for those who know nothing about music theory: Shifting between the major and minor of the dominant chord is not kosher.)
The giant hook that kicks off the track, and then only appears once more? That’s in a completely different key (A major). Even the lyric “head games” gets twisted. Gramm sings the title phrase three different ways; the band hits it on two different beats. Everything in the track is explicitly designed to be unresolved, off-center. And then to couple that music with lyrics dealing explicitly with relationship tension, a tension that remains… unresolved? That’s some next-level shit.
In the wake of McDonald’s departure, Jones and Gramm pushed Foreigner even further into the realm of pure pop. Sometimes the results paid off brilliantly, other times not so much. We’ll be getting to every one of those entries soon enough, but I can already assure you none of them will be as quietly complex—or as strangely overlooked—as “Head Games.” Beneath its simplistic veneer, it’s as weird as anything Foreigner ever produced.
GRADE: 8/10
I WANT MY MTV: Good on the official Rhino YouTube channel for continuing to add rare vintage videos on a near-daily basis. I'd literally never seen this before it went up a mere three weeks ago. Standard performance video, so not much to say, except: Someone in Ed Sheeran's inner circle needs to convince him to adopt the Lou Gramm 'do. Like, now.
BONUS BITS: Here’s “Head Games” soundtracking a great scene from Cobra Kai, the sneakily subversive (ahem), present-day update of The Karate Kid.