Remember When a Future Synth-Pop Star Played Keyboards on Foreigner’s Best Album in 1981?

It’s always a lot of fun to look through the credits of classic albums. Occasionally, you’ll find a name or two in them that might surprise you. In the 70s and 80s, when budgets were huge, it was often all hands on deck as an artist or band tried to get the best possible results.

In 1981, Foreigner went for the gusto with their album 4. Not many people realize that the synthesizer and keyboard sounds on the record came from a guy who, in just a few years time, would score one of the most distinctive hits of the 80s on his own.

Keyboard Player Wanted

You couldn’t argue with the success of Foreigner’s first three albums. But Mick Jones, who was generally the band’s artistic decision-maker, thought that they might have been stagnating a bit. He felt some changes were needed to give them a boost heading into their fourth LP.

He hired Mutt Lange as producer. Lange had been in contention to produce Head Games, the band’s third record. Coming off massive success as a producer for AC/DC, he was the natural choice to update Foreigner’s sound.

Jones also made the decision to fire Al Greenwood and Ian McDonald prior to the making of the record. Both men wanted more say in the songwriting, but Jones wanted to focus on his writing collaboration with lead singer Lou Gramm. Since both Greenwood and McDonald were involved with playing keyboards for the band, the decision left a big hole in the lineup for the making of 4.

Dolby Sound

Lange and Jones hired several session keyboardists early in the making of 4. But they weren’t particularly blown away with the results. Since modernizing the band’s sound was a priority, they kept searching. That’s when Lange remembered the keyboard work he’d heard on a demo of songs by a young man trying to make his way as an artist.

Thomas Dolby was just 22 and hardly knew who Foreigner was when he got the call to head to New York City to play on the sessions. Still, Jones and Lange trusted him enough to leave him alone with the tracks in the studio during the evenings to see what he could do with them.

His most significant contribution came on the ballad “Waiting For A Girl Like You”. Lange and Jones wanted some sort of musical intro set apart from the rest of the song. Dolby came up with an ambient synthesizer part inspired by the work of Brian Eno. The song became a No. 2 hit.

A Solo Career to Start

Dolby soon headed back to Great Britain as the album sessions drew to a close. Aside from the standout part in “Waiting For A Girl Like You”, his work on the record mostly consisted of subtly beefing up the sound, more in the margins than out in front of the action.

Nonetheless, he walked away with a nice chunk of change from the experience. And he used that money to finance his solo music. One of the first things he did was to compose a piece of music that he initially thought of as a soundtrack for a video.

That piece of music was “She Blinded Me With Science”. The song hit big in 1982, starting a wonderful recording career for Thomas Dolby. Who knows if he would have ever had that chance without a little seed money from Foreigner and Mutt Lange?

(Photo by Paul Natkin/Getty Images)

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