There are few songs that conjure up more vivid imagery than Foreigner’s “Juke Box Hero.” When the song came out in 1981, it brought back many memories of the evenings I spent near the exact same backstage door in Rochester, NY, that Gramm wrote about in the song, waiting to meet my personal Juke Box Heroes.
For his autobiography, Gramm chose the perfect title, “Juke Box Hero: My Five Decades in Rock ‘n’ Roll,” a book written with another Rochester native, Scott Pitoniak.
The book is filled with plenty of tales of sex, drugs and rock and roll, but none of them are particularly salacious, and when compared to Sammy Hagar’s or Steven Tyler’s books they are pretty tame.
Instead of those tales, we are presented with what turns out to be a fascinating tale of Gramm’s ascent from local rock star, descent to local janitor and then ascent to international superstar. While the book devotes a substantial amount of space to his tenure in Foreigner, it is introspective rather than self-serving and ultimately one leaves with a better sense of Gramm as a person rather than a larger than life rock star.
That holds true to my encounter with Gramm a few years ago at his studio in Rochester. Instead of the larger than life rock star, he was a guy from Rochester who played music. He was humble and introspective during our interview and amazingly candid.
If you grew up in Rochester during the era when Gramm hit it big in Foreigner, much of the imagery will seem familiar, if not long forgotten. (Gramm mentions buying a record album at a store called Neisner’s, which is where I bought many of my first record albums).
In the end, the tale is a love story like no other, Gramm expresses his love for his hometown of Rochester, NY, a city that has long been proud to call Gramm it’s native son. It is in Rochester where Gramm is at home, and when he is Foreigner and living in the New York City area that is when things seem to begin to unwind, it is when he returns home and eventually finds spiritual solace that Gramm can reflect on his life’s successes and misfortunes.
Whatever Pitoniak’s role as an author was, it is clear that Gramm showed a side of himself rarely, if ever, seen in his public persona. This “Juke Box Hero” is also the kid standing in the rain, in a heavy downpour.
