Lou Gramm's journey to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 

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If a truck carrying his band’s equipment hadn’t skidded into an embankment on a wintry night, Lou Gramm might not have made it into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

On Christmas Eve 1975, the singer’s Rochester hard rock group Black Sheep opened for KISS at the Boston Academy of Music. They even got a standing ovation ahead of the headliner.

After, Gramm and his band mates headed back east in a Pontiac station wagon while their road crew lugged the instruments and amplifiers. Around 4:30 a.m., the crew’s truck hit an ice patch and tipped off the road near Albany, critically damaging their gear.

“The drums were not round anymore,” Gramm said. “They looked like eggs. The guitar amps? Mic stands smashed through them.”

Black Sheep couldn’t afford to replace their inventory in time for the next show, so the accident effectively ended their existence as a band.

That freed up Gramm, a Gates native, to bring his bellowing vocals to arena rock band Foreigner, which he led to critical and commercial success from 1977 to 2003, and that legacy helped propel them into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s 2024 induction class, alongside Cher, Peter Frampton, Mary J. Blige, Ozzy Osbourne and more.


With Gramm and lead guitarist Mick Jones at the helm, Foreigner scored nine Top 10 hits and five Top 10 albums on the Billboard charts and toured across the world. The group first became eligible for induction into the Hall of Fame in 2002.

Gramm wasn’t sure the day would ever come.

“After coming to terms with the fact that it was not going to happen, I have no problems that it came late,” he said. “Better late than never.”

The writing has perhaps been on the wall — Gramm’s a member of both the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Metal Hall of Fame. Locally, the Rochester Music Hall of Fame inducted Gramm in 2013. The hall’s president, Jack Whittier, said Gramm’s vocal talents cemented his legacy.

“It's the voice. It's such a unique, iconic voice,” he said. “It really embodies that stadium rock group era.”


Gramm, who now lives in Webster, lent his commanding voice to Foreigner’s signature songs like “Cold As Ice” and “Double Vision.” His soaring performance on “Juke Box Hero” still fills Blue Cross Arena during Rochester Americans home games.

Gramm said that song, about a young kid with dreams of rock superstardom, is at least partly autobiographical. He recalled trying to sneak backstage at that very arena on March 21, 1968 for the Jimi Hendrix Experience. He only caught a glimpse through a cracked-open door.

“I saw Hendrix playing his guitar and going crazy,” Gramm said. “Even though the War Memorial didn't have great acoustics at the time, you could tell the band was great. The people were having a lot of fun — before they started burning the seats.”

Through Foreigner’s commercial peak, Gramm co-wrote several other smash singles, including 1981’s power ballad “Waiting for a Girl Like You,” with lead guitarist Mick Jones. Its sparkling synthesizer intro, played by new wave pioneer Thomas Dolby, helped it reach No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Gramm has asserted that he likewise helped pen Foreigner’s sole No. 1 hit, “I Want to Know What Love Is,” though Jones received full credit.


Such disagreements helped motivate Gramm to leave the band in 1990 and again permanently in 2003. “He would attempt to be diplomatic,” Gramm wrote about Jones in his 2013 memoir, “but he wound up being condescending.”

Healing takes time. Gramm hasn’t heard from the other surviving Foreigner members since the induction news on April 21. But he said he’s meeting with the band’s management this week to talk about how they might capitalize on their moment, possibly even with unreleased material.

“We have songs that Mick and I wrote in the early 2000s that were never made into an album,” Gramm said. “There's definitely enough songs there to fill an album.”

He looks forward to reuniting with the band members at the induction ceremony in October. Inductees typically perform two songs onstage. Foreigner’s management team, he said, has already selected “I Want to Know What Love Is.”

“I told them that the other one better be ‘Juke Box Hero,’” Gramm said, “before they pick another ballad.”

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony takes place October 19 at the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland. The full 2024 class of inductees includes Mary J. Blige, Cher, Dave Matthews Band, Foreigner, Peter Frampton, Kool & the Gang, Ozzy Osbourne and A Tribe Called Quest. rockhall.com/2024-inductees

Patrick Hosken is an arts writer for CITY. He can be reached at [email protected].