Roger Earl's heart is wearing a smile now that he and actress Britt Ekland are more than friends. But Foghat, the Long Island band Earl drums for, has growing pains. After three years at a comfortable career plateau, the British-American boogie band has broken wide open with a multi-million-dollar international tour and new Bearsville album, Stone Blue. Lonesome Dave Peverett, Rod Price, Craig MacGregor, and Earl are suddenly stars ... week after week the biggest box-office draw in the country. And the press spotlight that blonde Britt Ekland has helped shine their way is making Foghat a little uneasy. "All I ever wanted to be was an old blues musician," moans puckish guitarist Price, adding with a smile, "but these things happen."

Tawny-haired Roger Patrick Earl feels slightly strange himself about all the fuss. A blues-schooled drummer who's so serious about his work that he uses a 1930's drum kit to recreate a vintage sound, Earl is fast becoming one of rock's Beautiful People as he rips up the highway in his Lamborghini, wings from gig to gig in Foghat"s private Lear Jet, and shows his rugged Celtic features at exclusive Hollywood parties.

Both of Roger's grandfathers were Irish, his bass drum is emblazoned with the Earl coat-of- arms, and he loves to tell how Celts and Saxons fought and settled in Great Britain. The Earl's are a musical clan ... brother Collin is pianist for the London-based Mungo Jerry group, and he's tickled the ivories on plenty a Foghat session. Beneath the werewolf of London locks, Roger has a landholder's mind that respects property rights, proscribes violence, yet is nowhere close to saintly. "A saint? He's not that," says Earl's former lover writer Ann Marie Micklo, shaking her head. But the truth is that this fabled demon of the highway can likely be found fishing, cooking, or listening in composure to Allen Toussaint.

"Roger doesn't want to upstage his three friends," says band manager Tony Outeda. "He's wary of the glamor trip, with all the posing and the fox stoles. He and Britt would rather be seen eating breakfast together." Of Britt Ekland, all Roger will say is that "She's the most wonderful w-o-m-a-n person I've ever met." The two met in L.A. in March and have since gotten too serious for Earl to discuss their liaison with snoopy reporters for slick mangazines. The aura of secrecy is enhanced be the drummer's dark glasses. There's plenty he will discuss though;

His obscure past as assistant manager of a London art studio, twelve years ago; "It was soul destroying. I always knew I wanted to play in a rock and roll band. "Kim and Harry Simmonds granted Roger's wish and took him on in Savoy Brown, he recalls, "because I agreed to work the first ten days for free."

The excitement of playing live, especially on this tour. "I've never had so much fun!" This tour's even civilized! I didn't get into this to earn a living. It's only that eighty minutes on stage that pulls us through the rest. You walk out on the platform and you get the big rush ... all the way down and all the way up again."

Foghat's drinking: We used to drink more whisky, but for drinking in quantity, we found it's a lot less damaging to drink wine," he explains, sipping a young Beaujolais. "Would you like to come out one Friday night and get drunk with us?"

His doing 170 mph in the Lamborghini,m and other manifestations of a fast-lane lifestyle; "I may as well live ... I'll have nothing in five years anyway.

What all four members of Foghat are eager to discuss is Stone Blue. It's the eighth Foghat album, played in the familiar style but with some novel pop twists. "It'll get us a wider audience without selling out our style," says Rod Price, who admits that he set himself more difficult tasks in the writing for this LP.

"We're interested in our careers," Rod continues, being open, if wary of a pop/rock tag, "We love what we're doing, and if we can earn a living at it, we'll keep doing it for as long as we can. It's now that we're thinking AM. We're pleasing ourselves as much as anything else.

Foghat embarked on it's seven-year quest for stardom in 1971, when Lonesome Dave, Roger and then bassist Tony Stevens left Savoy Brown under a cloud and set their sights on a new band with a new lead guitarist. Enter Roderick Michael Price, clutching a Gibson and a Bottleneck for delta blues effect The other three grabbed him. Not only could he play, but, according to Earl, "He drove a wine truck so we knew he was all right." The Quartet arrived in New York State where Bearsville owner Albert Grossman inked the new band to his label. Two years ago, Connecticut bassist Craig MacGregor became Stevens' permanent replacement. Stevens' severance pay would have been enough to set him up for life, had it not been for immigration technicalities.

Of the eight LPs (six gold, two platinum) Foghat has made, Stone Blue is the most richly textured. There are three facets to Stone Blue, says Price waving a cigarette as light plays in his eyes. Seated in the purple playback room of Electric Lady Studio in New York, he's halfway through the final night of recording and only adrenalin and coffee are keeping him going. Despite his nervousness, Price has a casual air in his blue and white striped shirt, tassled scarf and Hopi Indian jewelry. The record has some very pretty songs with a lot of punch, like Stay With Me. It has your Foghat rockers like Stone Blue, Easy Money, and High On Your Love. And it has three blues songs, Sweet Home Chicago, Chevrolet and It Hurts Me Too. "That's the influence of the blues show," says Price, referring to the Performing Arts Library benefit Foghat played at New York's Lincoln Center last September.

Not only does Stone Blue showcase a variety of rock styles, but the band uses chords and patterns unknown to past efforts. Yet the record stays true to the kicky ensemble sound Foghat has always rejoiced in. Stone Blue may roll and glide more than it boogies, but it has more than an echo of Savoy Brown, especially in Dave's heartfelt falsetto wailing of It Hurts Me Too. Craig interweaves his syncopated bass line with the familiar Price/Peverett dual guitar leads. The eerie Midnight Madness, which Dave says was written "just in time for Halloween," superimposes a Spanish-styled guitar over a classic Foghat highway mood. The entire LP is an adventurous rock tale in which the Lonesome Dave character becomes successively a fugitive, an opportunist, a slave, and a driven man whose flight is finally stopped by love.

The making of Stone Blue put a six month stranglehold on Foghat's time. It dragged the band from Suffolk, New York to Nashville, Tennessee. But Rod agrees that the time span involved is at least one reason for a better record. Embryonic versions of numbers like High On Love were written in the quartet's homes. Rhythm tracks took shape at the old Woolworth Mansion in Glen Cove, New York. The project reached a frenzied climax when Dave and Rod moved to blizzard-blighted Manhattan in February for vocals, solos and overdubs. The final mixes capture the nostalgic tube-amp sound Foghat loves but in a piping hot way that will please pop listeners. "It sounds good on the radio," Roger confides, and that's important."

One pop production technique which yielded amazing results was the use of Rod's multi-tracked acoustic guitars, which haven't been heard since Fool for the City. What Price conceived as added tone coloring gives Stone Blue a gloss that can only help it. Rod is quick to point out that "We weren't trying to be commercial. I did it 'cause I had a lot of time at home to write with acoustic guitars. I used two or three on Stay With Me, and three on Midnight Madness. I don't know whether that song or High On Your Love was the albatross of the album. But however much you write, or whether you dub in a Guild or a dobro, you never really think about developing a style. You just go ahead and do it."

Foghat plays three tunes from Stone Blue in its current stage show, which has grossed over 6 million dollars and enabled them to get European bookings at last. A videotape of the fall Blues Benefit has been a hit at Cannes and Montreux ... many more Continental showings will ensure. A Foghat song book, the first ever, is slated for publication.

The band couldn't be more delighted with its success. Dave's voice and Rod's lead guitar work both exhibit new confidence as the band tears through it's set on a new, all white neon-lit stage that swirls with white smoke. Craig MacGregor is a happy Connecticut Yankee, Roger is rejoining Britt, who's been shooting a mini-series for Scandinavian TV, "at the first possible moment." (Appropriately, Britt's acting part and Roger's reverse Atlantic crossing mark the first time each has had a professional engagement in their respective home countries since Earl joined Foghat.) Burbles Britt Ekland about the Foghat phenomenon: "It's marvelous!"

Rock mogul Bill Graham was promoter for the April 14 San Francisco Cow Palace concert where Foghat held sway. For two show, the barons of boogie drew $108,750 dollars each night, selling out both. Graham drew his thoughts on the subject away form the business side of it long enough to sum up neatly the high spirits of the band: "They enjoy entertaining more than they like to breathe."

--- by Richard Hogan