December isn’t usually a month to provide albums by major acts. Certainly, Foreigner qualified as a major act in 1984. And yet, there they were, releasing their fifth album Agent Provocateur while everybody else was either churning out their Christmas records or staying clear of the month completely.
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Perhaps the release strategy derived from the fact it had been more than three years since the band had released a record, so anticipation was high. Foreigner came through with another hit in Agent Provocateur, which included their first No. 1 single. But in many ways, the album hastened the end of their halcyon period.
Potent Agent
Foreigner’s first three albums contained a passel of hits that managed to please hard rock fans while also doing brisk business on the pop charts. In 1981, they raised their game on their arena rock contemporaries by seamlessly incorporating synthesizers without losing the toughness of their sound.
That album, 4, was produced by Mutt Lange, and it’s generally regarded as the artistic pinnacle of the band. And then, nothing for 3 1/2 years, at least not a studio record. The delay partly stemmed from Foreigner’s struggle to find a producer to replace Lange, who moved on to other projects.
The band went a little bit down the road with Trevor Horn, who at that point was about as hot a producer as there was in the industry. But they felt that Horn was tipping the balance too far away from their harder edge, and moved on from him. They eventually settled on Alex Sadkin, whose eclectic list of past clients included Bob Marley and the Wailers, Grace Jones, and Duran Duran.
Sadkin walked into a situation fraught with tension. Foreigner’s two main creative forces, guitarist Mick Jones and singer Lou Gramm, were clashing about the direction the band should be taking. Sessions dragged on for 10 months before the album titled Agent Provocateur was in the can.
It was telling Foreigner, who hadn’t released any ballads as singles on any of their first three records, chose “I Want to Know What Love Is,” a slow one, as lead single from this record. The strategy worked, as the song was their first No. 1. But Gramm’s anger at being left out of the songwriting credits on the track only ramped up the dissension in the band.
Examining the Music of Agent Provocateur
Agent Provocateur is somewhat of an inconsistent listening experience. All the different facets the band had shown throughout their first four records seem to run up against each other in a somewhat herky-jerky mix. Individual moments stand out, but it’s not exactly a cohesive listen.
Of course, “I Want to Know What Love Is” deserves all the plaudits it’s received over the years. Whoever wrote it, they deserve credit for a touching lyric. And Gramm, always a belter of the highest degree, gives a crowning performance, with help from a gospel choir and Dreamgirls legend Jennifer Holliday. It’s hard to imagine pop-gospel hits such as “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” or “The Living Years” hitting the same way without this clearing the path.
There’s still a bit of the synth-rock of 4 hanging around on the sharp second single “That Was Yesterday” and “Two Different Worlds,” the latter solely written by Gramm. And opening track “Tooth and Nail” flashes some of the defiant rock moves the band displayed so confidently in their early years.
Still, it’s fair to say Foreigner was always more successful as a reliable singles band than one that was able to deliver full albums of consistent excellence (4 excepted). Here, tracks like “Reaction to Action” and “She’s Too Tough” feel overproduced and underwritten. The sleek melding of musical worlds that was evident on tracks like “Urgent” and “Juke Box Hero” is harder to find here.
Still, Foreigner walked away from the album with another massive commercial success. Inside Information in 1987 would give them one more Platinum record before the fissure between Gramm and Jones, exacerbated by the making of Agent Provocateur, started to become irreparable.
Photo by Gary Gershoff/Getty Images
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