“I Want to Know What Love Is,” “Juke Box Hero,” “Hot Blooded,” “Waiting for a Girl Like You,” “Urgent,” “Cold As Ice,” “Feels Like the First Time,” “Double Vision,” “Blue Morning, Blue Day”—these hits (and more than a dozen others) helped Foreigner become one of the biggest-selling groups of the 1980s.
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So bassist Jeff Pilson was in an extraordinary position when, after years playing with metal bands such as Dokken, Dio, and Lynch Mob, he was invited to become a member of Foreigner in 2004. It was, he says, an easy decision to make the switch.
“Honestly, for a band like Dokken, Foreigner was a big example for us,” Pilson says. “It was like a template because it was heavy rock, but it was really all about songwriting and great performances. If you see Foreigner live, it’s not as different from a Dokken or maybe a Dio in energy as you might think. I mean, it’s certainly not metal, but it’s great high-energy rock, which is really what I’ve always loved. I always thought they wrote amazing songs. To me, it was high-class music, so I was really honored to join.”
Despite Foreigner’s impressive track record, Pilson says it wasn’t daunting to step into this new role. “It’s funny: I’m a very self-critical person, and I’m not always all that confident, but in this particular case, I was very, very confident that it was the right move, not only for me, but for the band,” he says. “So joining the band didn’t intimidate me, but I definitely felt the weight of its legacy.”
Pilson first met Foreigner co-founder and guitarist Mick Jones in early 2004 via a mutual friend, Jason Bonham, who was drumming with the band at the time. The chemistry the three of them felt when they played together was undeniable, so things “just all fell into place very naturally,” Pilson says.
Pilson came into the band with plenty of successful songwriting experience of his own—he co-wrote much of Dokken’s music, including their hit singles “Alone Again” and “Dream Warriors,” but he still made the deliberate decision that he wanted to learn as much as he could from his new bandmates. “I feel like I am a journeyman songwriter,” he says. “I feel like I’m always working on my songwriting.”
It has been, he says, particularly eye-opening to watch the way Mick Jones works with vocalists. “This is where he’s just absolutely such a master,” Pilson says. “As you’re listening to a vocal performance, sometimes you can get caught in a trap of, ‘That’s good.’ But Mick has this great gift of, ‘No, that right there could be different. There’s something about this performance that isn’t what it needs to be.’ There were a few times when I saw him do that where [I thought], ‘Oh my God, he just turned that from good to great.’
“To me, that’s the goal. I want to get goosebumps or feel emotional about every single vocal that happens in a song. That’s tough because singers sometimes don’t want to go that far. Some do, but some will say, ‘That’s all I’ve got.’ And to be able to push them, Mick was brilliant at that. That’s something that’s going to be front of mind every time we do vocals.”
He’s putting this into practice with Foreigner’s new vocalist, Luis Maldonado, who came on board in 2025. Already, they’ve made Spanish-language versions of four of the band’s songs, and Pilson is thrilled with the results.
“He makes my job easy in so many ways because he’s so focused,” he says of Maldonado. “He is the kind of guy who wants to make sure to get everything right. He and I have a wonderful, wonderful working relationship. We’re very honest with each other, so he trusts me, and I trust him. He is probably the most naturally gifted musician I’ve ever met—he just is musical to the bone.”
Now that they’ve established a comfortable working relationship, Pilson says they’re working on creating new material, which will be Pilson’s first songwriting contributions to Foreigner. Even though it’s been more than two decades since he joined this band, he believes that it was the right decision to wait this long to take this step.
“I feel like knowing Mick and the band as well as I do, and knowing Mick’s vision, that maybe it’s taken until now to really germinate into something where I think I can contribute to the band on a songwriting level,” Pilson says. “Now that I am what I am with the band after being here over 20 years, and the responsibilities I have now, I think it’s really good that I went through that period of learning with Mick, which was really a musical goldmine. Not only his stories, but his knowledge.”
Even so, he adds, “I’m not going to be afraid to use my experience or the way that I emote through songwriting. I’m not going to be afraid of any of that. And I’m finding that it’s gelling, and that the other band members are working with it, and it’s really coming into fruition nicely.”
While he’s excited about this new material, Pilson emphasizes that he’s also happy to continue performing Foreigner’s vast catalog of familiar hits as the band continues to tour extensively around the world. “I do genuinely love the Foreigner songs. I’ve honestly never gotten tired of playing them,” he says.
This genuine love for the music is, Pilson says, truly at the heart of what compelled him to join the band—and he believes that every musician who’s considering a major career shift should carefully consider this, too. “I think it comes down to your gut feelings about what you’re doing. Like, what is your role? Are you comfortable with that? The worst thing you can possibly do is do something only because you think it’s going to be successful. Maybe sometimes it works, but honestly, it’s just not a smart way of making moves.”
Pilson first realized that this was his philosophy because of an experience he had in 1985. “I was asked by [frontman] Kevin DuBrow to join Quiet Riot,” he says. By that point, Quiet Riot had achieved massive success with the hits “Metal Health (Bang Your Head)” and “Cum on Feel the Noize,” and were one of the most popular metal bands in the world.
“Kevin and I were friends, and he offered me a great deal of money to join,” Pilson says. “I was in Dokken at the time, but we hadn’t gotten a gold record yet. So when he asked me, sure, I was tempted [to join] because at that moment, Quiet Riot was quite a bit bigger band. But I remember thinking, there’s something about Dokken where, even with all the ego problems we had, we still had a tremendous chemistry that I believed in. I just felt like, musically, that’s where I belonged. To join something else just because it’s a bigger band didn’t feel right.”
Now, as a main member of Foreigner, Pilson says he still relies on trusting his gut instinct to follow the right musical path, especially because he’s well aware that he must continue to meet the very high expectations that are placed on this band. After all, Foreigner was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2024, so the bar has clearly been set high. “I feel the responsibility that it’s got to be great all the time, no matter what we do,” Pilson says.
Fortunately, Pilson has long been accustomed to working hard. He started off in Longview, Washington, where it was clear he had a long way to go if he wanted to become a professional musician. “It was kind of a hole in the wall, like a mill town, but it made for a great place for me to just concentrate on music,” he says.
He was initially inspired by seeing The Beatles performing on The Ed Sullivan Show: “I just remember thinking, ‘That is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.’ I mean, if you could understand what America was like at that point: Kennedy had just died, a lot of the music on the radio was really bland and crap, and all of a sudden these guys come out with what is the most exciting-sounding music you’ve heard ever. It just changed everything.”
At 12 years old, Pilson began learning to play the bass guitar and became good enough to start joining bands a couple of years later. By his mid-teens, he was gigging at clubs four or five nights a week.
“From the time I was 14 on, I knew this is absolutely what I’m meant to do, and love to do. I just never doubted that I was going to do it,” he says. His conviction in this never wavered, even when he faced severe challenges as he worked his way up in the music scene. He recalls, after moving to California, that things got so dire that he resorted to living in his band’s rehearsal space and, on more than one occasion, only ate oatmeal or peanut butter for a month straight.
Looking back, Pilson believes these early struggles were actually a blessing in disguise. “I think that gives you a resolve. That, ‘OK, I’m going to do this. I’m going through all this for a reason. And the reason is to learn to be grateful for what I get when I get it, and to develop the ability to make something happen for myself on a professional level.’ And I think that is what happened. When you’re young, it’s amazing what you can do when you believe in something.”
Even now, many decades later, Pilson still has that same ambition driving him as he writes the songs that will define the next chapter for Foreigner: “I would love to finally write that great song that makes me recognized around the world. Of course I want to do that, and of course I’m working at that. I’ll probably work at that ’til the day I die. If I can make people connect with music in any way, if that’s my legacy, I’m happy.”
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