Foreigner formed in New York City in 1976 with guitarist Mic Jones as the leader. He started playing London bands when he was aged 17 and performed with The Beatles in 1964 and Jimi Hendrix and Otis Redding in 1967. The band auditioned for singers and one Lou Gramm, working minimum wage jobs in Rochester New York was given the call, "Can you come into NYC tomorrow to audtion?" The rest is history. Foreigner was committed to playing rock music in the age of disco and the height of the movie "Saturday Night Fever" with actor John Travolta playing a Brooklyite pizza eating, hair snob and dancing hip swinger in the hippest NYC discos. Foreigner released nine studio albums, seven of which reached the Top 30 in the Billboard charts. Foreigner was the first act since The Beatles to have their first eight singles chart in the Top 20 of the Billboard Top 100. The band manager was Bud Prager and it was Mic Jones who suggested the band name Foreigner. The band was made up of Americans and Brits, so wherever they played, they would have members considered to be foreigners. Their first album, Foreigner , was released in March of 1977 and was a commerical success selling five million copies. They went on to release eight more studio albums and some of their hits include "Feels Like the First Time," "Cold as Ice," "Long, Long Way from Home," "Hot Blooded," "Waiting for a Girl Like You," "Juke Box Hero," "I Want to Know What Love Is," "That Was Yesterday" and "Women" among the many others. In 1997, Lou Gramm was diagonosed with a brain tumor, and due to the impact on his singing, was replaced by singer Kelly Hansen in 2002. The band has sold over 80 million albums, and has sixteen songs in the Top 30. They have more Top Ten hits than Journey and as many as Fleetwood Mac. Their weekly catalog sales have eclipsed Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Van Halen ande Aerosmith. Mic Jones and Lou Gramm were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2013 and the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2024.