LOU GRAMM On Possibility Of Selling His Portion Of Rights To FOREIGNER Songs: 'It's Crossed My Mind'

In a new interview with Kiki Classic Rock, former FOREIGNER singer Lou Gramm was asked if he has ever considered selling the rights to his back catalog and recordings. He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "It's crossed my mind. And I've had companies and people calling me, asking me if I wanted to sell my portion of the [FOREIGNER] songs. And I hadn't really thought about it that much, but I have been thinking about it. I don't know if songs won't be worth that much in the future — maybe now's the time to do it if you're gonna do it; I'm not sure — but I wanna leave that creativity and any funds that it generates to my children… And that's something that forever in their lives and their children's lives that they can remember their dad."

Gramm also talked about his recent announcement that 2024 will be his last year as a touring performer. He said: "I still enjoy performing, but being that I'm not the kid I once was, it's more difficult, more exerting. And a lot of it also has to do with the way travel has become. It is ridiculous. It used to be so easy to fly from one city to another. Now flights are canceled for no reason at all and people are left stranded. I've had flights where I booked a first-class seat and ended up on the last aisle of the plane next to the back bathrooms, just because as they give me my boarding pass, it's not the one that I booked. But it's either take that seat or miss your flight and maybe miss a show. So I get on very begrudgingly, and the whole flight I just sit there at the seat, because the airlines used to be very professional and very good at what they do and things seem to be upside down and there's no reason for what's going on that I can see. And I just prefer not to travel."

Asked what he will do with all his free time, Lou said: "I have a small home in Florida that I get out of the Rochester winters and I go there for three or four months. I enjoy that. I fly there, but I'll grin and bear it. And it's not every flight; it's just every so often that that kind of thing happens. But it's very upsetting to me when that does. I'm a classic car collector. I don't have a big collection — I have three or four cars — but I've had them for 25 or 30 years now. I go to cruise nights and car shows and stuff. That's my outlet. And I'm sure I'm still gonna be writing songs and maybe recording, but I think I've just had enough of touring. I've been doing this for almost 50 years now. And that's a long time."

Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Stevie Nicks and Neil Young are some of the iconic musicians who have recently sold off substantial rights to their music, whether it's just for publishing or the original recordings, known as masters. Investors, major music companies and private equity firms have poured billions of dollars into buying song catalogs, believing that the rise of streaming and growing music revenues will make song rights acquisitions highly lucrative in the long term as they can be exploited for up to 70 years after a musician's death.

This past April, it was revealed that FOREIGNER is among the 2024 inductees into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame.

The induction ceremony will be held on October 19 at the Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse in Cleveland, Ohio. It will air live on Disney+. An edited version will run on ABC at a later date, and will be available on Hulu the day after.

To be eligible for this year's ballot, each nominee's first single or album had to have been released in 1999 or earlier.

Eligible since 2002, FOREIGNER has had a huge number of rock hits, including "Cold As Ice", "Double Vision", "Hot Blooded", "I Want To Know What Love Is", "Juke Box Hero" and "Urgent", and has been nominated for three Grammy Awards, with no wins.

According to the Hall Of Fame, the FOREIGNER members that will get inducted include only the classic-era musicians Gramm, Mick Jones, Dennis Elliott, Ed Gagliardi, Al Greenwood, Ian McDonald and Rick Wills. McDonald and Gagliardi died in 2022 and 2014, respectively.