Foreigner, Mick Jones and Synthesizers
 

I've been searching for info on what synths/gear was used in the making of some of Foreigner's more popular material on the "4" album and "Head Games".
There's some really nice use of synths on those albums. My curiosity has been tugging at me for a while to discover what might have been used on songs like "Waiting for a girl like you", "Rev on the Red Line", "Feels like the first time", etc.
If any of you have links or information on this, I'd love to know.
I have been searching Google, and not found much info. I really think Mick Jones came up with some great sounds in those songs. I'm pretty sure he was responsible for most of the keyboards in the original recordings.
Let me know if you have anything about this...

Chris

Seems he played even with Al Greenwood's stuff, so I've found:

- Fairlight CMI
- ARP Omni-2
- Roland JX10
- Roland Jupiter 8 (no sure about this one)
- Oberheim OB-1
- EML 101
- Orchestron (used in Cold as Ice and Tramontane melody line)
- Hammond L-100
- Hammond B-3
- Wurlitzer EP

Luca

Thanks Luca. That's quite a list.
I'm trying to convince my fellow band members to pick up "Rev on the Red Line"
I think I'll be able to cover it with my current setup. Glad no one's asked for "Waiting for a girl like you" as I don't have anything to match that really cool ethereal sound in the very beginning :) Maybe that was the Fairlight CMI...


C.

I've always liked Foreigner's stuff, and "Waiting For a Girl Like You" meant a lot to me a few years ago in particular. Naturally, once I got my Motif ES rack and Ion, I had to figure out how to reproduce that sound, and did a bit of research. Finding out that Foreigner has used no less than 15 different keyboard players to record parts didn't exactly help things. Fortunately, I just noticed that this topic was discussed on another forum, and a quite knowleagable guy had this to say,

"The Foreigner "4" album was recorded in the spring of 1981 with three keyboard players: the main synth-player during the sessions was Thomas Dolby, the other two were Larry Fast (of Synergy) and Bob Mayo (formerly of Peter Frampton band).

As for the last one mentioned, Bob Mayo is credited with playing the synth on this song. I know that he used a Yamaha CS-80 on the last album he recorded with PF in 1979 so maybe that was the synth he used in "Waiting for a girl like you" and "Break it up" (the latter in which both Mayo and Fast performed synth parts).

Larry Fast used his old rev 1 Prophet-5 on some of the tracks (eg "Break it up", "Jukebox hero" and "Don't let go") and Dolby's own setup at the time consisted of a Roland Jupiter-4, a Micromoog, a solina string ensemble and possibly also the PPG 340/380 which he aquired sometime in 1981. I kind of doubt though that he would have brought this beast with him to the U.S where the recording of the album took place."

I haven't been able to duplicate the sound myself either (albeit synthesis is still very new to me), but I have gotten some nice sounds on my Ion that have the same vibe.

Thanks !! This is great information ! I can only guess how they were able to pull that off live. I saw them back in 199(5?) on the tour for the "Agent Provocateur" album...Maybe they sampled some of the tracks and just triggered samples ? Seems like it would be the easiest way to recreate the studio trax on stage....Thanks again for the info