Bruce Turgon: The "Ensemble" Bass Player

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By Brett Ratner

Bassist Bruce Turgon is not foreign to the concept of hard work.

Turgon's career dates back to the late '60s releasing three major label albums in a band with buddy Lou Gramm. Their songwriting and recording collaboration continued through Gramm's solo career as well as soundtracks for films such as The Lost Boys, Navy Seals and Highlander III.

Joining forces with the one and only Mick Jones as well as keyboardist Jeff Jacobs, drummer Mark Schulman with Mark Rivera and Scott Gilman, (who split sax, guitar and key duties,) Turgon is now an official member of Foreigner.

Following the release of The Very Best...And Beyond, (a greatest hits collection,) and the full-length L.P. Mr. Moonlight, Turgon and crew have been touring at breakneck pace, including a stint sharing a bill with the Doobie Brothers.

The bus wheels have finally ground to a halt, and Turgon has welcomed the opportunity to kick back and start fleshing out some new material for the next album, due this spring.

"We're happy to be taking a break right now and sleeping in our own beds," Turgon said. To Turgon, taking a "break" includes writing and recording demo tracks in his home studio. The last album and ensuing 15 months of touring has given him ample experience to draw from when approaching the new project.

"We're just starting to put some effort into some of the things that we've received as our own highlights or high points on this album and how some of the material translated to the live thing and the interaction between the two of those," Turgon said. "We're starting to become aware of where we're at emotionally after the Mr. Moonlight album and what we should be aspiring to."

Creating a hard-hitting guitar album is high up on Turgon's "to do" list.

"It's really important to us," Turgon said. "We tried to record the Mr. Moonlight album with the spontaneity of the live show. It's funny because so many of the Foreigner hits of the last few years have been ballad or more keyboard oriented but in fact the band is still basically a guitar rock band live. So that's why there was more effort put into those sorts of textures on Mr. Moonlight and I think that will continue in the future." Turgon's guitar and keyboard work has made the final mix of many a hit record, but the bass is without question, his main ax. Turgon feels strongly about taking a mature, song-oriented approach to the instrument.

"One of the things I had to reign in as a younger player was being more of an ensemble guy," Turgon said. "That whole [current] awareness about [bassists Flea and Les Claypool] now is just another retro type thing because in the late '60s, early '70s there was a whole wealth of bass players like Tim Bogert and John Entwhistle, Andy Frasier and Chris Squier and all these guys who were intense players. They were soloists really, particularly Tim Bogert. I mean he's basically a lead bass player. He's a big forerunner to people like Billy Sheenan and guys like that. I'm glad to see it come full circle although I must admit that the vehicle has to be right for players like that. Those are actually good examples, The Chili Peppers and Primus, where the rhythm section are working in such a way that the bass player can play like that. It wouldn't work in a band like Foreigner. I play a solo live so I get my ya ya's out during that. But generally speaking, I had to put some serious effort into being aware of what an ensemble player was."

Turgon's advice to up and coming players is to have the arsenal of an army but the attack of a sniper. "Any kid who wants to be a real player when he's young goes at the instrument probably in overkill. You learn all that stuff but part of the learning experience when you're coming up is being able to pick your spots well and to know when not to turn that on."

According to Turgon, this "ensemble" mentality had a lot to do with the reunion of Foreigner. In other words, this band is all about chemistry.

"There's an interesting cross section of players, there's only two original members which are Mick and Lou, but Jeff and myself have been with the band for over three years," Turgon said. "Lou and I go back pre-Foreigner. Lou and I did two albums for Capitol and one for Chrysalis with a band called Black Sheep, which is a band from New York. We have a long history together and we've been best friends since the late sixties and early seventies. For him and I, it's kind of a natural for us to work together and basically with Foreigner it was sort of an osmosis into the current lineup because we were in the middle of getting ready to record Lou's next solo record and Mick came up and worked on an idea with us and we started talking and they were releasing this "Best and Beyond" album which was a compilation of Foreigner hits and they wanted to do a short tour just to draw some attention to it and everything and it supposed to be maybe a six to eight week tour and it ended up going around the world and lasting about a year. By that time the band was so hot that we just ended up taking it right into the studio. It's just evolved into the band that it is now and it's dead hot. It's smokin' live and by most people's judgments, it's the best version of Foreigner there has been."

With the Foreigner magic back, Turgon expects a future of hard rocking sets, and, oh yeah, hard work.