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Mick
ILLINOIS ENTERTAINER: Isn’t Nate
Ruess from fun. dating your stepdaughter
Charlotte Ronson?
MICK JONES: Yes. They’re together and
they just had a child. My first grandchild!
him in the family.
Foreigner, 2017
IE: Ever thought of collaborating with
him?
MJ: Could be, could be. It’s not out of the
realm of possibility. But he actually did a
TV show where he sang with us – he trad-
ed off with our singer Kelly Hansen on “I
Want To Know What Love Is,” and he real-
ly got to show off his range. And he has
got quite a range.
IE: It’s so weird to remember that your
“Foreigner” debut came out in ’77, just as
punk rock was revving up.
MJ: But I always tried to keep my ear to
the ground as to what was going on, and I
08•2017
Well, step grandchild. But she’s lived with
me for a good part of her life. And Nate is
great – we get along like a house on fire,
and he’s a really sweet guy, very dedicat-
ed, and he takes care of business. He’s a
good man, and very talented, too.
IE: He told me he was very nervous about
meeting you for the first time because he
was such a huge Foreigner fan. He really
does love music.
MJ: Yeah. I think we have that in common.
And to be able to make a career out of it?
That’s never easy. So it’s very nice to have
8 illinoisentertainer.com august 2017
understood the appeal of punk, given the
socio-economic times that we were going
through back then. It was rebellion, and I
kind of liked that. So we came in at the
dawn of punk, and disco was flying high.
And then you had bands like Chic, who
just blew me away when I heard that stuff.
For me, soul music was truly back when I
heard that, and I actually became quite
friendly with Nile Rodgers over the years.
He’s always somebody that I’ve respected
and enjoyed listening to. But on the first
tours we did, I tried to reach out a bit to
younger artists that were probably more
New Wave than anything. We had people
open up for us like The Cars, and Bryan
Adams, who was kind of new at the time.
I even had The Ramones on a couple of
gigs. They were a bit lost, playing in an
arena, because they were used to clubs.
But they played well, and they really got
the crowd going. And I was on the side of
the stage, egging them on.
IE: What did your ‘60s UK outfit Nero and
the Gladiators sound like?
MJ: Oh, my God. You can dig it up some-
where. I joined as their hit singles were
sort of fading, but the band was sort of a
novelty. I mean, it had to be a novelty
when you were dressed up as a centurion!
I was a centurion, with a skirt, a skirt with
armor. And we used to get a lot of curious
young girls, standing right at the front of
the stage, trying to see what was under-
neath. So it was my first opportunity to
really play professionally, and the band
had been a mill for up and coming guitar
players – they had some really cool play-
ers over the years. So I stepped in, and
very quickly it became almost an R&B
band. That’s kind of what it morphed into
– it was a long way from its vaudeville
roots.