Friday, Aug. 30, 2002 | 11:08 a.m.
Who: Foreigner.
When: 8 p.m. tonight.
Where: Mandalay Bay Beach.
Tickets: $40.
Information: 632-7580.
When his band recorded the classic rock staple "Urgent" in 1981, Foreigner vocalist Lou Gramm hardly could have known the song's familiar refrain would someday apply to his own life.
Yet in early 1997, Gramm found himself in the most urgent of situations, lying on an operating table as doctors raced to remove a noncancerous but potentially deadly brain tumor.
Five years later, however, Gramm is alive and well and nearly fully recovered from his traumatic experience. Back onstage, he and his Foreigner mates are celebrating the band's 25th anniversary with a 50-city summer tour, which makes a stop at Mandalay Bay Beach tonight at 9.
"I'm doing pretty well, healing up," Gramm said during a telephone interview from a Los Angeles hotel room. "The medication has become less and less of a factor in my life. I'm taking off the extra pounds that they produced, and look and feel like Lou Gramm again."
Gramm's ordeal began with a series of sharp headaches, which were accompanied by occasional memory lapses. The New York native sought medical advice and his doctors discovered, then immediately removed, a sizeable tumor.
"It was noncancerous, but it was very large the size of a large egg and it had tentacles," Gramm said. "The size of the tumor itself and the tentacle-type things were both dangerous, as the tentacles ended up wrapping around the optic nerve and the pituitary gland."
Periods of radiation, rehabilitation and medication followed, and though Gramm's optic nerve was not damaged, the pituitary gland at the base of his brain was affected. Today it operates at just 30 percent normal capacity, a condition that led to a weight gain of nearly 100 pounds in the months after the operation.
"Because the pituitary was not functioning up to par, I have to take a lot of medication and vitamins to bolster my system in place of what would be being done naturally, and that's tough because it's hit and miss to try and get your body functioning the way it used to," Gramm said.
"The doctors are making real educated guesses on what I need and what I need more of and what I need less of, but after two or three months they make adjustments and they make adjustments again. Meanwhile it's thrown me for a loop as we try and find normal."
That attempt to "find normal" also naturally led Gramm back to the concert stage.
"I was given permission soon after the operation to tour for a couple of months, just to go out and do some physical activity, and it was very difficult," Gramm said. "My equilibrium was way off. I was continually out of breath, to where I had to have the oxygen mask from the local ambulance there to give me oxygen every two or three songs behind the drum riser."
Despite those difficulties, Gramm looks back on his initial return to the road as a positive step toward recovery.
"I wanted to do it, and in a way I felt that even as unhealthy or not up to par as I was, that it would be a stimulating experience and only be good for me spiritually and in my heart."
Even as he struggled through his first concerts after the operation, Gramm set his sights on 2002 and his band's planned 25th anniversary celebration. He is as fit as he has been in years, having lost about half his added weight, and says he is cherishing time spent with bandmates Mick Jones (guitar), Bruce Turgon (bass), Jeff Jacobs (keyboard), Tom Gimbel (guitar and sax) and Denny Carmassi (drums).
"The 25th anniversary of the release of the first album is this year, and I'm sure that everyone is thinking about the importance of being able to tour and sounding good and looking good," Gramm said. "The previous tours after my operation were to gear us up for this year."
To mark Foreigner's anniversary, the band has also released a new best-of package, "The Complete Greatest Hits," along with expanded editions of two catalog albums.
Along with hits such as "Feels Like the First Time," "Cold as Ice" and "Urgent," the re-mastered editions of 1977's self-titled debut album and 1981's "4" also include "nearly unplugged" versions of such classics as "Juke Box Hero" and "Waiting For a Girl Like You," recorded at Jones' home studio in 1999.
Much as he enjoys performing the group's vintage material, however, Gramm says he is eagerly awaiting Foreigner's next project: its first new album in more than seven years, which is due early next spring.
"There were about five or six songs written before I went into the hospital for my operation, and periodically I listen to those songs and they still sound good to me," Gramm said. "We'll take another look at them as we begin writing and working toward the new album. There might be a couple of those songs included.
"But I know that with all that's gone on in our lives since those days, there will be plenty of new things to write about."
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