Edward John Gagliardi (February 13, 1952 – May 11, 2014) was an American bass guitarist, best known as the original bass player for the 1970s rock band Foreigner. He was a member of Foreigner from the beginning in 1976. Gagliardi, most notably, played a Fireglo

Rickenbacker Rickenbacker International Corporation is a string instrument manufacturer based in Santa Ana, California. The company is credited as the first known maker of electric guitars – a steel guitar in 1932 – and today produces a range ...

bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...

, left-handed even though he was naturally right-handed. It is widely known that he did so out of admiration, and devotion to

Paul McCartney Sir James Paul McCartney (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter and musician who gained worldwide fame with the Beatles, for whom he played bass guitar and shared primary songwriting and lead vocal duties with John Lennon. One ...

(most often self-doctored from right-handed basses, reengineered and played upside down, by Gagliardi himself). Gagliardi was on the albums '' Foreigner'' and ''

Double Vision Diplopia is the simultaneous perception of two images of a single object that may be displaced horizontally or vertically in relation to each other. Also called double vision, it is a loss of visual focus under regular conditions, and is often v ...

'', but was fired from the band in 1979. In 1981, Gagliardi formed the band Spys with former Foreigner keyboardist

Al Greenwood Alan Greenwood (born October 20, 1951) is an American rock musician who was a founding member and keyboardist of the rock band Foreigner from 1976 to 1980. He performed on the albums '' Foreigner'' (1977), ''Double Vision'' (1978) and '' Head ...

, a band that set the tone for much of the 80's synth-rock bands, and received acclaim within the musical community. In the early 2000s, Gagliardi worked as a Service Department Writer at Rallye Lexus in

Glen Cove, New York Glen Cove is a city in Nassau County, New York, United States, on the North Shore of Long Island. At the 2020 United States Census, the city population was 28,365 as of the 2020 census. The city was considered part of the early 20th century ...

. Gagliardi died of cancer on May 11, 2014, after battling it for eight years. Friends and family held a private ceremony.

References

1952 births 2014 deaths American rock bass guitarists American male bass guitarists Foreigner (band) members Guitarists from New York City American male guitarists 20th-century American guitarists Deaths from cancer in New York (state) {{US-bass-guitarist-stub