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

Mike: So how did things turn around? How did that happen?

Lou: Finally I would be seeing my doctor every three months and he finally got to the point where he saw an improvement and started to reduce the dosage of the steroids and the other powerful drugs that I was taking. And I started feeling more like myself again. The swelling in my head went down. I've dropped over half of the weight that I gained and I was able to create again. I started writing songs and performing again. I was performing with Foreigner while I was at my worst.

Mike: That mustn't have been easy.

Lou: It was horrible because although we had press releases of what I had gone through there were a lot of people that had no idea what I went through and were jeering me from the audience about too much pizza and hamburgers and now you're living the good life, Lou. Just really cruel things. And the music reviews, I would read that same kind of stuff the next day after a performance. It was horrible.

Mike: I can imagine. So, what about your faith in God? Obviously that was very tried and tested with all of that.

Lou: It really was. I thought it was tried and tested when the tumour was discovered but it was noting compared to the after effects of the operation.

Tony: Somehow or other, though, you hung on. When I played your album, Lou, what struck me was all these songs just full of faith, full of hope, full of Jesus, in fact. Somewhere in this whole process, God must have been doing something in your life. When you started to write songs again your faith came through strong.

Lou: I knew that after the operation I never hoped for a second that there would be songs that I would be able to put the Lord in, in a Foreigner song. I don't know if you're familiar with the 'Mr Moonlight' album?

Tony: Yes.

Lou: That album was before the operation but it's filled with the Lord and Bible verses and faith. That album has a lot of me in it. And after the operation as I slowly started to return to myself my biggest desire before I did anything else in my career I was going to do a Christian rock album.

Tony: Now you've done this with your brothers. By the way, are your brothers believers as well?

Lou: No one else in the band is saved. However they all believe.

Mike: Okay. Makes sense. So they're supportive of your beliefs? Without choosing personally to follow them?

Lou: Not the way that I follow them.