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Guitar Songs, Tabs & Lessons

Foreigner

4 guitar songs · Tabs, Lessons & Tone Guide Rock

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Band Overview

History and Guitar Legacy

Foreigner formed in New York City in 1976, blending UK rock heritage with American sensibility. Founding guitarist Mick Jones, experienced in Spooky Tooth and Nero and the Gladiators, partnered with vocalist Lou Gramm to create one of the late 1970s and 1980s defining arena rock acts. The band sold over 80 million records worldwide, establishing Mick Jones as a master architect of Pop Rock guitar within massive commercial songs.

Playing Style and Techniques

Mick Jones blends British rock sensibility with polished American AOR approaches, avoiding shredding in favor of memorable riffs and singable solos. His technique features wide expressive vibrato, precise bends, and layered rhythm work combining open chords, power chords, and arpeggiated figures. Jones understood dynamics, shifting between clean arpeggios and crunchy overdrive. His guitar parts interlock seamlessly with keyboards, creating Foreigner's signature spacious sound through intentional restraint.

Why Guitarists Study Foreigner

Foreigner demonstrates essential songwriting craft: guitar parts that enhance rather than overshadow vocals and keyboards. Mick Jones exemplifies song first thinking, showing how to deliver impactful parts through tasteful execution rather than complexity. This approach makes Foreigner invaluable for guitarists seeking to understand their role within band arrangements, learning when to support and when to lead through hook driven riffs and emotionally weighted melodic lines.

Difficulty and Learning Path

Most Foreigner material falls within beginner to intermediate technical range, but true mastery lies in nuance: tone quality, verse to chorus dynamics, and rhythm parts breathing alongside other instruments. Songs like 'Cold as Ice' teach arpeggiated picking, 'Juke Box Hero' focuses on iconic riff construction with palm muting, and 'Waiting for a Girl Like You' demonstrates sustained chords and tasteful fills. This is ideal for developing full band context playing.

What Makes Foreigner Essential for Guitar Players

  • Mick Jones is a master of the memorable riff, the opening of "Juke Box Hero" is built on a deceptively simple power chord figure with palm-muted downstrokes and strategic open-string drones that sound enormous through a cranked amp. Learning this riff teaches you how spacing and dynamics matter more than complexity.
  • Foreigner songs frequently use arpeggiated clean passages that transition into overdriven choruses, making them excellent for practicing clean-to-dirty tone switching and pickup selection mid-song. "Cold as Ice" is a perfect example, with its fingerpicked arpeggios demanding precision and evenness across strings.
  • Jones's lead playing relies heavily on pentatonic and blues-scale vocabulary with wide, vocal-like vibrato and expressive string bends, often bending up a whole step and holding it with sustain. His solos in songs like "Juke Box Hero" are concise and singable, great for learning melodic phrasing over changes.
  • Rhythm guitar layering is a signature Foreigner technique, Jones often double-tracked rhythm parts in the studio using slightly different voicings or positions on the neck to create a wider stereo image. Learning to play the same progression in different positions (open vs. barre vs. partial chords) is a practical skill you'll develop studying these songs.
  • Many Foreigner tracks feature sustained chord pads where the guitar blends with synths, songs like "Waiting for a Girl Like You" and "I Want to Know What Love Is" require you to hold chords cleanly with controlled strumming dynamics and let notes ring without buzzing, which is harder than it sounds and builds real right-hand discipline.

Did You Know?

Mick Jones played, produced, and arranged most of Foreigner's music, he often laid down multiple guitar tracks himself in the studio, sometimes using different guitars and amps for each layer to build the band's signature wall-of-sound approach.

The iconic riff in "Juke Box Hero" was reportedly inspired by a fan Jones saw standing outside a sold-out concert in the rain, he went back to his hotel room and wrote the riff that night on an unplugged Les Paul.

On "I Want to Know What Love Is," Mick Jones intentionally pulled the guitar back to a supporting role, using gentle arpeggios and sustained chords to leave space for the choir and Gramm's vocal. It's one of rock's greatest examples of a guitarist serving the song by playing less.

Jones was known for using the Gibson Les Paul through Marshall amps for most of Foreigner's classic recordings, but he also incorporated a 12-string acoustic on several tracks to add jangle and width, listen for it layered under the electrics on ballads.

"Cold as Ice" features a guitar part that mirrors the keyboard riff, Jones deliberately wrote the guitar and synth lines to interlock, creating a technique that later influenced how '80s rock bands arranged guitar and keyboard parts together.

During the recording of the debut album, Mick Jones and fellow guitarist Ian McDonald (formerly of King Crimson) split guitar duties, McDonald handled some rhythm parts and added sax, while Jones took most of the lead work. After McDonald's departure, Jones became the sole guitar voice of the band.

The "Juke Box Hero" guitar tone was achieved partly by cranking a Marshall stack in a large live room and placing microphones at a distance to capture natural room reverb, no digital reverb needed. That ambient quality is a big part of why the riff sounds so massive.

Essential Albums for Guitarists

4 album cover
4 1981

This is the album where Mick Jones's guitar work reached its peak balance of power and sophistication. It contains both "Juke Box Hero", one of the greatest rock riffs ever written, perfect for practicing palm-muted downpicking and power chord dynamics, and "Waiting for a Girl Like You," which teaches sustained chord voicings and restrained lead fills over a slow groove. The production is pristine and lets you hear every guitar layer clearly.

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Foreigner album cover
Foreigner 1977

The self-titled debut is rawer and more guitar-forward than later records, featuring "Cold as Ice" with its arpeggiated picking patterns and clean tone work. Tracks like "Feels Like the First Time" showcase Jones's ability to write riffs that are instantly recognizable yet technically approachable. This album is ideal for intermediate players who want to study classic rock rhythm guitar and melodic soloing without heavy production obscuring the guitar parts.

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Agent Provocateur album cover
Agent Provocateur 1984

Home to "I Want to Know What Love Is," this album represents the more polished, keyboard-heavy side of Foreigner, but don't overlook the guitar work. Jones demonstrates how to play powerful, emotionally resonant parts within a dense arrangement. Tracks like "Tooth and Nail" and "A Love in Vain" feature crunchier riffing and bluesy soloing that balance the ballad material, making this a well-rounded study in versatility.

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Tone & Gear

Guitar

Mick Jones is most closely associated with the Gibson Les Paul Standard, primarily late '50s and early '60s models with mahogany bodies and maple tops for that thick, sustaining midrange. He also used a Gibson Les Paul Custom (the 'Black Beauty') on several recordings and live shows. For cleaner passages and jangly layers, Jones incorporated Gibson and Guild 12-string acoustics. He occasionally reached for a Fender Stratocaster for brighter, single-coil tones on specific tracks, but the Les Paul was his signature voice throughout Foreigner's classic era.

Amp

Marshall stacks were the backbone of Mick Jones's live and studio sound, primarily Marshall JMP and JCM800 heads driving 4x12 cabinets loaded with Celestion Greenbacks or G12T-75 speakers. He ran the amps with the gain at moderate levels to get a warm crunch that cleaned up with guitar volume changes, rather than full-on saturation. In the studio, he also used smaller amps at higher volumes for a more compressed, natural overdrive tone, and occasionally blended a Fender Twin Reverb for cleaner rhythm parts to sit alongside the Marshalls.

Pickups

Jones relied on the stock PAF-style humbuckers in his Les Pauls, these are medium-output pickups (typically 7.5–8.5k ohms) that deliver a warm, rounded attack with enough clarity to cut through Foreigner's dense arrangements of keys and vocals. The lower output compared to modern high-gain pickups meant his tone stayed dynamic and responsive to picking attack, which is critical for the clean-to-crunch transitions that define songs like "Cold as Ice" and "Waiting for a Girl Like You."

Effects & Chain

Mick Jones kept his effects chain relatively simple, the core tone came from the Les Paul into the Marshall with minimal processing. He used a subtle analog delay (likely an MXR or Echoplex-style unit) for lead passages to add depth and sustain, and occasional chorus (such as a Boss CE-1 or Roland unit) for clean arpeggiated sections to add width. A wah pedal (Dunlop Cry Baby) appeared on select solos. In the studio, natural room reverb and tape echo were preferred over pedal-based effects, contributing to Foreigner's warm, organic sound. The takeaway: Jones's tone was fundamentally about fingers, good pickups, and a cranked tube amp.

Recommended Gear

Fender Stratocaster
Guitar

Fender Stratocaster

Mick Jones occasionally grabbed the Strat for brighter, single-coil tones on specific Foreigner tracks, providing jangly contrast to his signature Les Paul warmth. The Strat's snap helped cut through dense keyboard arrangements without the heavy midrange of his primary guitars.

Gibson Les Paul Standard
Guitar

Gibson Les Paul Standard

Jones's main voice throughout Foreigner's classic era, the late '50s and early '60s Les Paul Standards delivered thick, sustaining midrange from mahogany bodies and maple tops. These guitars enabled the dynamic clean-to-crunch transitions that define songs like 'Cold as Ice' and 'Waiting for a Girl Like You.'

Gibson Les Paul Custom
Guitar

Gibson Les Paul Custom

The Black Beauty appeared on several Foreigner recordings and live shows, offering the same warm, rounded PAF tones as Jones's Standards but with a sleeker aesthetic. This guitar contributed to the band's signature rich, vocal-friendly lead tones that soared over synth layers.

Marshall JCM800
Amp

Marshall JCM800

The JCM800 head was the sonic foundation of Jones's tone, delivering warm crunch at moderate gain levels that cleaned up responsively with guitar volume changes. Driven into 4x12 cabs with Greenback speakers, it produced Foreigner's organic, dynamic overdrive sound without digital artifacts.

Fender Twin Reverb
Amp

Fender Twin Reverb

Jones blended the Twin Reverb in the studio for cleaner rhythm parts and arpeggiated sections, adding natural reverb and clarity alongside Marshall crunch. This combination created Foreigner's signature warm, spacious production that balanced heavy riffs with lush, layered textures.

Dunlop Cry Baby Wah
Pedal

Dunlop Cry Baby Wah

Jones deployed the Cry Baby on select Foreigner solos to add expressiveness and vocal-like quality to lead passages. The wah's sweep complemented his dynamic playing style, enhancing the emotional intensity of the band's power ballads and rock anthems.

How to Practice Foreigner on GuitarZone

Every Foreigner song page on GuitarZone includes a built-in Practice Toolbar. No app to download, no account needed. Open any song, then use the toolbar to slow the video to 0.5× speed, set an A/B loop around the exact riff you're working on, and jump between song sections instantly.

The toolbar appears automatically on every guitar tab, lesson, and cover page. Pick a song below, hit play, and start practicing at your own pace.

Practice I Want To Know What Love Is - Guitar CoverPractice I Want To Know What Love Is - Guitar LessonPractice Cold as Ice - Guitar Lesson