Kelly Hansen current lead vocalist of Foreigner and erstwhile front man of Hurricane had big boots to fill when he replaced Foreigner’s legendary vocalist, Lou Gramm. But even die hard Foreigner fans would find it difficult to fault Kelly as a worthy replacement for Gramm. Even Mick Jones, Foreigner’s founder and only member remaining from the original line-up, is all praise for Kelly, but insists on taking some of the credit for grooming Kelly’s transition to the trademark Foreigner sound. Here Kelly Hansen speaks to C P Joseph and Stanley Paul about his musical journey and his views on the current music scenario.

Tell us what’s Foreigner been up to recently, apart from the India Tour?
Oh a lot actually, in Sept  ’09 we came out with ‘Can’t slow Down” and we are still promoting this record, but we’re in the planning stages of some new releases, we’re going to be doing a live version of Foreigner’s 1981 album  ‘4’, because it’s the 30th anniversary of the album release, then there’s a DVD lined up and some re-recording of classic tracks and an American Tour….yeah there’s a lot to do.

The last album was a studio recording?
Yes, in fact we did all the tunes with Marti Fredericksen co-producing, who’s you know worked with Buckcherry and Aerosmith and a lot of bands… great guy, great songwriter, great producer, but we also did one song with Mick’s stepson, Mark Ronson who’s produced Amy Winehouse…he’s very 60s kinda sounding, so when finally Mick and Mark had a chance to talk, he said listen we’re doing this record and wish we could finally work together and asked him, “would you like to re-do one of the songs…which would you like to do?” and Mark said, “I’ve always been a fan of ‘Fool For You Anyway’” and so we re-recorded that track with Mark Ronson in very retro style, so on the one hand we were recording this very modern, new technology record with Marti Fredericksen and then Mick and I would go to Brooklyn or New York to a very very old studio with no air conditioning, 8-track tape recorder and we recorded very old school like, reminded me of back when we first used to make records, so those two kinds of recording processes happened on the same album, it was very interesting.

So which sounded better?
Oh they’re both good but they are both different, but mentally it’s just a big challenge for you, because you are working one with new technology, which is you know pretty quick and fast and everything is very crisp and produced and slick and very nice and then you go into this studio, where you have to wait for the tape to rewind and I haven’t had to wait for a tape to rewind in 20 years and it was really cool and we’d had to learn all our parts together and it’d take all day to get the arrangement together, everybody would cut together, everyone played at the same time and then Mark had these background singers come in and the choir director was this old blind guy and he would be playing the piano and going, “no, no  sing it that way, sing it that way”… it was a total old school experience, so I really enjoyed doing both.

Which musicians have had a major influence on you when you were young?
A lot of R&B artists, like I was saying Aretha and Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield and a lot of stuff like that.

These were the artists who influenced you but who were the musicians you listened to when you were young?
Well I used to listen to that kind of stuff, I was always listening to the singer…it took me a while to understand what a band was…till I was used to listening to a singer with a band behind him, like a Frank Sinatra or Rod Stewart, something like that...a singer with a band behind him. It wasn’t until much later that I recognized like a Led Zeppelin or The Who which are more bands so… but that’s because I’m a singer I think.

What do you think of the new sound, like hip-hop and dance music which is happening today and very popular?
Well, I think a lot of hip-hop is cool, but I’m still not a big fan of some of the sampling that goes on. It’s a popular thing to do but I think we should rename it – lifting. I think its very lazy, its pretty easy to take someone else’s track or riff or groove and play with it and make it a new track, you know that’s not hard to do…what’s hard to do is to create that original riff out of nothing, out of the air…to me maybe because I am old school, making music should be creative… out of the air and although it is popular and in some places its kinda cool, I don’t think it is really my way of making music…but there’s a lot of cool sounds, a lot of cool grooves going on and I appreciate people you know who can make a beat that really moves people.  You know there are a lot of rap bands a lot of huge rap records that costs very little money, because all you have is machinery, you don’t have musicians playing instruments, you don’t have people costing money, you could be like in the bedroom making beats and I think in a lot of ways those people are saying, we’re just gonna make this record for nothin and we’re just gonna get it out and we’re gonna make a lot of money… and that’s not the way I make music, that’s not why I do it, I wan’t to make great music – from scratch, so...

Why has this happened - is it lack of creativity or because they can’t be bothered to make the effort to create something really original, or they want everything to happen fast?
I think it’s a lot of those things combined, I think once technology allowed you to do it people started doing it. One thing I’d like to say is just because you can make a record in your bedroom doesn’t mean you should, now there are so many records being put out by people who aren’t qualified to make records, that it makes it harder for people who are qualified to be heard. I remember when I first started out, you had to be good to have a record label to want to invest in you and a manager invest in you and you were sifted through until only the best were getting record deals and management, because they proved that they had what it takes. Now you know, anyone can make a record and there’s thousands and thousands of bullshit records out there and so it makes it harder to find the good ones but that’s, that’s the way life is, so I pretty much am thinking that you have to accept things for what they are…you know just  say, well that’s the way it is and not be upset by it…but  it is a difference, it is a change and it is harder to find the good artists.

Are there any new artists from the present that you like?
Well I love Alicia Keys, I like a lot of these female singers. They are actually singers and I tend to gravitate towards R&B and Soul based singers, like Jennifer Hudson and Beyonce…like I said Alicia Keys. They are the ones I like to listen to, maybe because in my fantasies…in my fantasies, I imagine that when I’m laying down in my bed, getting ready to sleep and Alicia Keys is singing to me in my ears. I used to think that way with Whitney  Houston, I used to think that with Chaka Khan, with the young Aretha, so that’s this thing I always had in my head (laughing, hugely amused with himself).

So what is this thing you have for female singers?
Well if there was real good blue eyed soul singer, male, I’d be checkin  it out, but I don’t know, I’m not hearing any.

What about James Blunt, he fits into your category of blue eyed soul singer?
Yeah I know, kind of but not really because it has to be combined with the performance side of it too…I firmly think that if a guy is a soul or R&B singer, he’d be like James Brown, he was a singer but he was a performer…and there’s always been people who were great performers or they were great singers but there are very few that are both…and I try to be both and its much harder than people think. Michael Jackson was both, Rod Stewart was both, David Lee Roth and then there were bands like Steely Dan - great musicians, not great performers, so there you have it.

Any message for your fans in India?
We love India and we thank all our fans and look forward to coming here again.