It was a dark, rainy afternoon in Los Angeles. I was tucked in a modest corner suite at the Sunset Marquis with Foreigner’s Mick Jones, working up historical background material for the liner notes to the band’s multi-disc Anthology.
As my tape recorder whirred, Jones recalled that when the Beatles played a stand at the Paris Olympia just before heading off to America, Ed Sullivan, and unparalleled world conquest, he was onstage opening for them as guitarist for French pop chanteuse Sylvie Vartan. His gigs backing Vartan would go on to make a favorable impression on her husband, Johnny Hallyday, better known as the “French Elvis,” and Hallyday soon hired Jones on for his own band. Given Hallyday’s clout and budget, Mick found himself working with many of his idols but feeling very much the foreigner in the midst of it all—a sentiment he would well remember when it came time to form his own band a decade later.