Tony Cummings and Mike Rimmer quizzed "the voice of Foreigner", LOU GRAMM

Mike: Now you continued being involved in rock and roll though, didn't you, even as you grew as a Christian?

Lou: I did. When I came back from rehab I let everyone know that I had given my heart to the Lord and I was clean and sober and intended to stay that way. We weren't on the road at this point, it was during down time and they said that they were very supportive of me and proud of me and that I had done the right thing. But the next year when we started our bus tour I ended up being a prisoner of the back lounge because although they said they respected and appreciated what I did for myself, it was business as usual for everybody else.

Mike: Obviously you have more control over that when you go solo, so you decided to do that and you forged a successful solo career. In recent years you've gone out and formed a band with your brothers which must make things more easily manageable.

Lou: They had helped me on both of my solo albums. I'd played with my brother Ben and with my brother Richard before but the three of us had never played together. My parents both passed away in 2003; my Mom passed first and before my Dad passed later in the year, only a couple of days before he passed, he had the three brothers in the room and he said, "Boys, it had always been your Mom's and my wish that you guys would do something together." We had never actually been on stage and performed and created and worked together and we promised him that we would.

Mike: I understand that you've had health issues. You had a brain operation a while back. That must have changed things for you as well.

Lou: Again, I gave my heart tot he Lord in 1991 and in 1997 my faith was tested - unbelievably so. I began suffering long and short-term memory loss; my eyes would cross involuntarily and then uncross and I began waking up in the morning with headaches that made any drug or alcohol-induced headache feel like nothing. I had no idea what in the world was causing that and I went to my family doctor and he suggested I have an MRI. In the centre frontal lobe of my brain they found a tumour that was shaped like a large egg. They determined it had been growing in me since birth and it also had tentacle like appendages that were wrapped around my optic nerve and my pituitary gland.

Mike: So you survived the surgery. I would imagine they didn't manage to get all of it out but got some of it out. Was that what happened?

Lou: Initially I went to an excellent doctor in Rochester, at Strong Memorial Hospital and he said he could operate but he didn't hold out a lot of hope for success and sent me to a top brain surgeon in New York who also did MRIs and he said that it was inoperable and that I should just wait until I died, basically.

Tony: Goodness me.

Lou: And I went home thinking that I was going to die.

Mike: So you got a third opinion I would imagine?

Lou: Well, I happened to be watching 20/20 - it's a news programme in the States - it has segments of different bits of news and they had an 11-minute article on Doctor Peter Black in Boston in Brigham & Women's Hospital who was the purveyor of laser surgery to operate on brain tumours. At the end of the segment it stated that his laser surgery was able to operate on brain tumours that had been considered inoperable. It gave his office number and at 7 o'clock the next morning I was on the phone with his personal secretary. That was Tuesday morning and she said there was an opening on Thursday and could I come in to Boston Tuesday, which was the day that I was talking to her. So I packed a small bag, flew to Boston, had another MRI and about 4.30 in the morning on Thursday they were wheeling me into the operating room and as they were putting me under I was very, very deep in prayer.

Mike: I bet. Because all kinds of things can happen with that. You can wake up with all kinds of problems. How has it affected you?

Lou: Well, to be honest, the next five to six years of my life were a living Hell. I was on heavy steroid prescriptions and for my whole adult life I had weighed approximately 140 pounds. Within three to four months I was up to 260 pounds. My face was round from the steroids; my skull was enlarged; I developed sleep apnoea. And for almost a year I had no idea what it was and in the middle of the night I would stop breathing. I would fall asleep while I was driving and I got into three head on accidents. Although I came away okay I hurt some people really bad. I voluntarily turned in my license for a year. It cost me my marriage and I ended up living alone for seven years.