Why do you think UFO are not as big as they should have been?

It's one of the greatest misfortunes that any band has had to endure. Michael Schenker was really young when he joined UFO and apparently spoke little English to boot. He was alleged to have been picked on by the singer Phil Moog. Although the were still somewhat successful, they were on the verge of being huge.

 

I arranged a KILLER bass line for "Too Hot To Handle" for a band I was in briefly that never played any gigs. I wish I could still play it!

"Only You Can Rock Me" is my favorite UFO song and IMHO ought to be recognized as the ultimate arena rock song.

 

Thank you for beating me to the punch. There are not many singers/frontmen that have the moxie and balls of a Phil Mogg. No bullsh**t, no flash just "hit ya in the gut and stand over you" type of stage presence.

 

Uh, bro. It's not a slam. I think Phil Mogg is great too. I'm simply answering the OP's question.

Ask a chick, er girl, who Phil Mogg is. Go ahead. She knows Plant, Mercury, Roth et al, right? Mogg? Be serious. That's the reason UFO didn't rise to those heights. NOT lack of talent.

You need that front man, and he better ooze SEX.

Mogg has/had a lot of great qualities (and AGAIN I freakin' love UFO) but he didn't have that extra "@#$%" that puts a band from goodness into GREATNESS.

 

So you're saying Klaus Meine was sexy?

 

Well...I like quite a few UFO albums. To me they were kind of a cult band. They got ZERO airplay where I live. And AFAIK...they came here exactly once.
I think that was ultimately why they didn't break through. They just didn't come around enough.

 

Yup.

Kidding aside, the Scorps kept the main guys intact and lost NOTHING in guitar, AND happened to make a few tunes that chicks dug too. That chick factor cannot be understated.

UFO has NEVER been a band chicks liked, ever...

...Phil Mogg never was gonna be that guy. Seriously. Bon Scott and AC/DC were barely making waves before Highway to Hell or, after Bon died, Back in Black.

UFO imploded after they reached their TOP - Strangers in the Night. And, they were only popular (leave that "exception" aside") with dudes.

The HUGE bands connect with both sexes.

 

I was a pretty big fan in the 70's and early 80's, and saw them twice with Schenker, but I'm not surprised they weren't huge. They may have been a little bigger ie top 20 albums, but they weren't disco, weren't corporate rock, weren't pop, and weren't classic rock holdovers (though they had been around for at least 5 years by the time I got into them when Force It was a new album) which was what sold by the bucketloads at the time. By the time Scorpions started to get big (Lovedrive?) Schenker had left--he was on Lovedrive, come to think of it. I still liked them, but the classic era was Phenomenon to Strangers In the Night.

 

Yeah, I think that had a lot to do with it. I actually really like Paul Chapman, but I think the public probably felt "Ah, the crazy amazing guitar guy is gone, forget this!).
Plus their live show while musically jamming doesn't seem like it was highly visually interesting. (Though that opinion comes from live footage, as I only saw them live much much later on).

 

The first rock band I ever saw live (excepting Girl who were support that night), and a band I have stuck with through thick and thin (yes, I was at THAT Manchester show. Great, intelligent songwriting, finely crafted albums, what's not to love?

I've always wondered just how good they could have been in the late 70's and early 80's if the'd actually been more in control of themselevs and their destinies rather than in a chemical stupor.....

As to their lack of mainstream success, I think earlier comments relating to the lack of singles applies, plus the fact that they seemed to be happy to live up to their somewhat salubrious image may hve been offputting to some.

New albums are excellent too, hoping to catch them again next year.

Philip

 

To the OP's question:
Few bands were/are as popular as Zep or Queen, even talented bands like UFO. Could be marketing, the lack of a real monster single (even Zep had Whole Lotta' Love), personalities onstage, who knows. But the two bands mentioned burst on the scene with a "sound" that was very different to what else was out there. UFO, IMO, did not possess that big WOW factor, something uniquely different, a "what's this all about" thingy. They just pumped out good solid rock albums. At least the albums, when you can find them, are usually affordable!

 

Look what ya'll made me do! I hope you're happy with yourselves!

 

Speaking as one familiar with both UFO and TG, I would add that both of the folks on the cover of Force It - Genesis P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti - were later in TG. The guy on the cover of Lamb might be TG member Peter Christopherson, who was a recent hire at Hipgnosis at the time, but it's hard to tell for sure.

No idea about the TG connection to the cover of Lights Out, or if there even is one, but given its vaguely homoerotic overtones it wouldn't surprise me if "Sleazy" Christopherson designed it.

 

They had some really cool looking album artwork!

I went through all of their cover art just now. I remember many of them from 30 some years of not seeing them!

 

Their covers were great. Cool design by Hipgnosis. They most certainly didn't look "second rate".

 

IMHO I would say when they lost Schenker the main talent had gone, although the rest of the guy's were talented in their own right they just became a run of the mill band.

 

Most of the bases have been covered but in real terms they lost their momentum I don't think there's much doubt they had built the platform to get to the next stage.

Schenker leaving was one thing but I would make the AC/DC Bon Scott analogy---if AC/DC had followed up Bon Scott's death with a mediocre album then there's every chance they would stalled and would have been talked out the way we are talking about UFO now.

As it was I saw both bands around that time and only saw UFO with Paul Chapman (saw them finally with Schenker about 12 years ago)....the drop in quality/atmosphere etc in UFO trying to prop up No Place To Run live after the SITNT tour was noticeable and whereas in my opinion even though Brian Johnston fronting AC/DC was a shadow of what went before (I was lucky enough to see them in 1979 and 1980) they had an album that gave them the step up-it made them massive.

I think also UFO partied hard and maybe they lost their desire to work hard but really if you are being honest they ran out of songs....You can tell sometimes with bands as well if they know they've missed their moment UFO certainly did appear to but that's life-a tremendous live band at their peak and a legacy of pretty unique hard rock songs that deserved to be called classics.

 

All the elements in the late 70's were there for a chance at stardom but a few things that happened in succession to ebb the tide. Firstly, they had the producer in place with Ron Nevison to make a hit record with Lights Out and, following that one, Obsession, but the record company (Chrysalis a subsidiary of CBS) failed them in terms of promoting the albums. Secondly, I think there was a lack of charisma with the band. Mogg, as great as we know he is, isn't real *frontman* material (i.e. not a great looking guy (not ugly by any means, but not poster boy material, either) and, as well, he doesn't have an outstanding voice. I'd say he's more in the range, vocally, of John Waite (who's band The Babys was a label mate of UFO during the time of Obsession), but didn't have Waite's pretty boy looks.

In fact, according to Way, Chrysalis chose to put more promotion money and effort to The Babys instead of UFO and it really hurt their momentum right when things could have been taking off. Also, with Schenker leaving, it killed any kind of cohesiveness and momentum the band had going. They were back to square one in terms of finding a guitarist and, ultimately, the label gave up on them. Oddly, the band chose George Martin, of all people, as a producer for No Place to Run, and while it wasn't a bad choice, the material just wasn't there to make the album great. No Place to Run marked the end, really, as they were relegated to second rate producers from then on out and then line-up changes really starting messing with the band. By the mid 80's, the band was effectively over and Mogg was in LA looking to start a solo career that would effectively become UFO once again but with disastrous results (Misdemeanor).

 

I think it is the most accurate answer. In case of hard/heavy style "making it classic" happened in the early 70s and "making it big" in the 80s. I mean, how many hard&heavy bands, which started to build up their career in the interregnum period, between classic rock and heavy metal eras, would have been considered big these days, without some break-through albums in heavy-metal, glam-metal or AOR genres of the 80s?

Let's enumerate some most renown post-classic hard-rock acts operating before the heavy metal era kicked in: KISS, Aerosmith, AC/DC, Rainbow, Whitesnake, UFO, Thin Lizzy, Uriah Heep, Nazareth, Ted Nugent, Bad Company, Judas Priest, Blue Öyster Cult, Rush, Scorpions, Budgie, Pat Travers, Montrose, Moxy, Triumph and Mahogany Rush. I guess if they all had called it a day around 1979, UFO would have been considered now among the very top acts of that style and time.

However, some of these performers successfully hardened/smoothed their style in the 80s becoming hot-selling acts, which can be considered now "big". Others, among them UFO, were not able to find a foothold between MTV and a heavy place, and became forever trapped between two eras. Never as classic as their forerunners and never as big as those which made it adapting to the 80s music styles.

 

Of all those acts you listed, some, obviously, were more "renown" than others. For instance, bands like Moxy never translated to being a headline act while Mahogany Rush, Travers, and, sadly, Lizzy never were huge main draw acts, either. For the most part, they were playing halved stadiums or smaller venues. Triumph, too. I don't think UFO was that much different.

My point is that some acts had more momentum in 70's than others. UFO is one that didn't. By the early 80's they were after thought as were many of the other acts I listed. Few "hard/heavy" bands were able to transition from the 70's to the 80's smoothly, in fact.

 

Which acts of my list [KISS, Aerosmith, AC/DC, Rainbow, Whitesnake, UFO, Thin Lizzy, Uriah Heep, Nazareth, Ted Nugent, Bad Company, Judas Priest, Blue Öyster Cult, Rush, Scorpions, Budgie, Pat Travers, Montrose, Moxy, Triumph and Mahogany Rush] would you consider top (popularity-wise) in the 1973-79 period?

 

Guy? Kind of looks like two girls on the Force It jacket.

 

Do you the history of Genesis P-Orridge?

 

Firstly, I think we're going to go off on a wild tangent about when the heavy metal period began. I say this because you have narrowed your scope to '73 to '79 which is to assume you find '73 the beginning of the 'heavy metal period'? I wouldn't agree, but I don't want to get into that argument.

Of the bands you listed, from '73 to 79' taking into account that seven year span, I'd rate KISS, Nugent, Bad Company, Aerosmith, Judas Priest, BOC, and Rush as top acts in terms of popularity. AC/DC was about to hit it real big, but had not by '79, Priest's huge popularity began in the early 80's as did Scorpions. The rest of those acts, outside of the one's I mentioned, either had huge, but fleeting success (Whitesnake in the 80's), never did much at all (Budgie), or were middle of the road (Rainbow & Heep).

 

No, I meant the end of 70s as the beginning of the heavy metal era! The period we are talking about I view as a sort of post-"classic rock", new wave of classic rock, classic rock 2.o, whatever.