The UFO album by album thread.

Ok, well after the frankly suprising success of my poll regarding which UFO studio album is considered the best it seems there is enough demand to start a UFO album by album thread.

With over 40 years in the business and 20 studio releases, a multitude of live albums and compilations and in recent years a spate of reissues and boxsets as well as a million line-up changes and inner band melodramas the time is right to discuss the bands career in detail and what better place to do it tha right here

For the unaware the UFO studio albums are as follows

UFO 1 (1970)
UFO 2: Flying (1971)
Phenomenon (1974)
Force It (1975)
No Heavy Petting (1976)
Lights Out (1977)
Obsession (1978)
No Place to Run (1980)
The Wild, the Willing and the Innocent (1981)
Mechanix (1982)
Making Contact (1983)
Misdemeanor (1985)
High Stakes & Dangerous Men (1992)
Walk on Water (1995)
Covenant (2000)
Sharks (2002)
You Are Here (2004)
The Monkey Puzzle (2006)
The Visitor (2009)
Seven Deadly (2012)

Additionally there are the live "official" albums
UFO Live (1972)
Strangers In The Night (1979)
Showtime (2005)

Key compilations include;
Headstone (1983/2009)
Official Bootleg Box (2009)
At The BBC:On Air (2013)

and also worthy of addition are
Mogg/Way - Edge Of The World (1997)
Mogg/Way - Chocolate Box (1999)
Sign Of 4 - Dancing With St. Peter (2002)

If anyone cares to discuss other off shoot bands (ie Waysted, MSG, etc feel free)....

Ok let it roll....

 

I appreciate the first two for what they are, great "space rock," but I start with Phenomenon.

 

UFO I (Beacon records 1970)

"Unidentified Flying Object" (UFO) – 2:19
"Boogie" (Way, Mogg, Parker, Bolton) – 4:16
"C;mon Everybody" (Cochran/Capeheart) – 3:12
"Shake It About" (UFO) – 3:47
"(Come Away) Melinda" (Hellerman/Minkoff) – 5:04
"Timothy" (UFO) - 3.28
"Follow You Home" (Way) -2.13
"Treacle People" (Bolton) - 3.23
"Who Do You Love" (MacDaniel) - 7.49
"Evil" (Way) - 3.27

The debut album from UFO was, like many bands from the early 70's (Priest, Lizzy, Journey, Scorpions). a tentative step into the recording world with little to no relevance to what they would eventually go onto become.
The band were young and their enthusiasm alone makes for a pretty enjoyable listen. Vocalist Phil Mogg is always quick to dismiss this and it's follow up as space rock nonsense and best forgotten but that is really doing both albums a diservice as they are historically important and as such let the band grow and get their live chops in order for their inevitable breakthrough into the mainstream consciousness.

UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECT is a brief electric instrumental with the sounds of UFO's (!) panning from speaker to speaker. Fairly pointless to be honest but what strikes me most is the very 60's production especially in the drums.

next is BOOGIE (aka BOOGIE FOR GEORGE) which was a minor hit in Germany (#30) a pretty basic but catchy boogie track (suprise suprise!) the song remained in their live set for sometime even after the arrival of Michael Schenker due to it's early success.

a cover (the first of 3) of the Eddie Cochran standard C'MON EVERYBODY is next and it';s a great rendition with some cool guitar licks and a pretty tasty solo from Mick Bolton. Bassist Pete Way shines here too with some great playing, Another minor hit in Japan and Germany apparently.

The band penned SHAKE IT ABOUT is next up and as a song it's not great but the middle section has some great musicianship on display - unfortunately the cheap production does it no favours though.

The final track on side one of the album is (COME AWAY) MELINDA another cover version originally recorded by Harry Belefonte and later Judy Collins, Tim Rose and Bobby Gentry. Uriah Heep had also recorded it for their Very Heavy Very Humble opus released a few months earlier. UFO do a respectable version of this haunting ballad .

One thing that's clear even at this early stage of the album is that the band has some serioulsy great chops as musicians and Mogg is a world class vocalist in the making.

Side two in the days of vinyl opens with another band composition TIMOTHY. Nothing spectacular here to be honest and lyrically it doesn't really go anywhere. Again the groove the band locks into in the mid section is very cool and Pete Way's bass keeps it interesting throughout.

FOLLOW YOU HOME is another fairly unspectacular rocker which is followed by the Mick Bolton penned TREACLE PEOPLE and from the lyrics to this one you'd have to assume the drugs were good back in the early 60's! Not a bad song though with some weird phased effects on the solo to spice proceedings up a bit.

WHO DO YOU LOVE is a pretty darn good cover of the Bo Diddley standard - clocking in at almost 8 minutes it allows the band to spread their wings into a trippy extended jam section towards the end - a precursor to what would go on ad nauseum on their next album (more on that later!!!).

EVIL a Pete Way penned track rounds the album out and reminds me of another old song which I can't put my finger on. The bassline in this track also reminds me at times of early Sabbath but far less doomy! The odd thing is how the track fades so quickly at the end when it seems there was another minute or so to go...

So overall this album is actually a lot better than most will ever give it credit for. Production could be so much better but for the shoestring budget Beacon afforded the band the results are respecatble to say the least

While this is one of my least listened to UFO discs it still has merit and should be owned by any serious fan.

RATING 7/10

 

I've never heard the first album. What are the CD options? (I'm sure this has been discussed in another thread, but perhaps it would be good to recap here.)

 

The three options that I am aware of are the original Repertoire release from late 90's (?) which was later reissued in 2008 as a mini-lp sleeve but from my recollection the sound wasn't as bad on the earlier pressing as it is on the reissue (perhaps it's remastered) There's also a Japanese mini-lp version too which was released around the same time which I have not heard.

According to Rate Your Music there are also cd versions available on Disky and Green Tree. The album has also been included in it's entirity on many 2cd compilation of the early years this one being the best...

 

I'm usually very thorough in checking out the recordings of my favourite bands, but for some inexplicable reason I have yet to delve into the early years of UFO. I don't know what has kept me so long, I really have no excuse at all. I've been a fan for almost 35 years now, maybe the time has finally come for me to take the plunge...

 

Yes an actual promo video for BOOGIE!

 

The first album is a decent effort... a few good songs, like Boogie or C'mon Everybody.

My rating: 6/10

 

First heard UFO in '75 on a live radio (KSAN San Francisco) broadcast from the Record Plant (Sausalito, Ca.)
I recorded it to cassette actually. It's smokes Strangers In The Night. - Great Show!!

 

I remember asking Eroc about the Repertoire remasters of the first two UFO albums. If I'm not mistaken he did the mastering on the Reps. Let's just say not his favorite project.

 

UFO 1 (1970)

Track listing:

Unidentified Flying Object
Boogie
C'mon Everybody
Shake It About
(Come Away) Melinda
Timothy
Follow You Home
Treacle People
Who Do You Love
Evil

I really like this album a lot. In fact, I love it. But the deal for me is, uh, is this "space rock"? I guess because we get the cheesy flanged effect that is supposed to simulate a UFO flying by, that's where our space rock reference comes from? "Unidentified Flying Object" is a nice opener, though and conveys a mellow, kind of spaced out vibe. So it sets the tone well. I'll say that.

Let's be honest, the rest of this album is really just kind of loose, bluesy rock hard. Take the true opener, for instance, "Boogie" which runs off a basic 4/4 groove with Way's characteristic loose, somewhat sloppy bass playing underneath. Bolton is a bit down in the mix which, for the time, isn't that odd for early 70's rock production. Bolton is a fairly perfunctory guitar player in reality. He does some interesting things on occasion, but never strays away from standard pentatonic scale solos and bluesy stylings.

"C'Mon Everybody" is fairly straight forward cover version of Eddie Cochran's original. With Bolton's distorted chording and soloing, though, it makes into a fairly urgent, moving rock n' roll song. Way is, again, underneath, with a somewhat fuzzed out bass tone and playing a bit loose. To me, he sounds like he's trying to emulate John Entwistle a bit, but Way isn't, in any, that caliber of a player. Mogg's voice is washed in some reverb to give a bit of psychedelic leanings to song that is, in reality, a pretty straight forward rock n' roll number.

"Shake It About" is another pedestrian blues/boogie number with, again, Pete Way dominating with his fuzzed out tone. Mick Bolton is relegated to the right side of the speaker system for the first solo and then he pans over to the left for the second part of his solo. For most of the song he's on the right side, though. He does some pretty decent bluesy playing, but let's be honest Bolton isn't any kind of a virtuoso or, for that matter, a truly gifted player. He does, however, do what is needed for the song. This song doesn't show me much, honestly.

"(Come Away) Melinda" a slower, ballad that breaks up the boogie rock of the first three numbers (not excluding the opener). To me, this sounds like something Grand Funk Railroad could have recorded. It's got the same kind of Farneresque soloing over it and the overly dominant bass sound of Mel Schacher thudding behind it. The ending builds in intensity and ends with a fuzz pedal wash out from Bolton and what sounds like an effects laden piano. Not bad, though.

"Timothy" I've always liked this song though it's pretty basic in its structure. Pete Way is the king of the repeating two note bass line, I guess. He certainly does it a lot in countless UFO songs. Yet, he also does a nice job of filling in space over the guitar which, in this song, basically picks its spots until the solo break. The rhythm section sounds a bit looser than usual on "Timothy". It's almost if Way is trying to do too much here. So now we're about seven songs in and, yet, no space rock? Uh, so where is it?

"Follow You Home" is a fast paced number with a good riff and melody to it. It sounds like something Cream might have done circa Disraeli Gears, perhaps or, at least the main riff of it, the solo is pretty good here though somewhat brief. Again, the song is propelled by Way's thudding bass line. There's not a lot really going on with this song honestly; very much by the numbers.

"Treacle People" more of the same here: heavy bass line moving the song with wah effects from Bolton. During the solo, however, there's some a cool phasing effect that is incorporated for the entire mix. The whole band basically sounds like shot down a rabbit hole and then the song ends.

"Who Do You Love" another cover here this time with covering the Bo Diddley standard. It stretches out almost 8 minutes with Bolton doing his best to make it interesting. As I said, Bolton isn't a fantastic player by any stretch of the imagination, so effects are used to spice up his sparse, basic guitar playing. This is the case for a lot of the album, in truth. (Not hard to see how the band jumped at the chance to have Michael Schenker join UFO after they toured with Scorpions for their Lonesome Crow album. They had to have seen that he would add a huge new dimension to their sound. Schenker would actually replace Whitesnake Bernie Marsden in the line-up as Bolton was gone by that time.) Anyway, this song kind of meanders about a ends of a decidedly weak, almost give up tone. Sounds like they weren't sure how to end it quite frankly.

"Evil" is song is a bit different in that Bolton plays the beginning of the song fairly straight, eschewing the fuzz on his chords and using a clean tone but then switching over to more fuzz towards the middle section of the song. Way's bass pounds its way through the song often moving up into the higher registers to keep things interesting and sounding urgent. Bolton does some perfunctory, noodling solo towards the end and, in places, you can hear him actually botch some notes. "Evil" works okay, but it's nothing spectacular.

So, not a bad outing for a first time band. As with most hard rock/psych bands in the early 70's, UFO borrows from the heavy blues blueprint made popular by Cream for their originals, and in two cases, covers out and out rock n' roll standards while putting their heavy blues/psych spin to them. This isn't a unique practice, as I mentioned, in that almost any band that got a recording contract in the early 70's would take the standards they played in the clubs to fill out their set and record them for their albums. The fact is most of these flourishing psych/hard rock bands were still trying to iron out their own sound and, in reality, didn't have a ton of originals under their belt when they first hit the studio. It's almost the case for every single act, so that's why you get what you get on an album like UFO. But everybody knows this, right?

All that said, no space rock on this album! Everybody talks about the first UFO albums being space rock, but as we've seen, they really isn't any. There are a couple of instances where the band gets inspired, effects wise, and does something close to it, but for the time, Hawkwind was the band that truly carried the "space rock" banner (as undeveloped as the genre was back then) or, at least, close enough to resemble what we know as space rock today.

 

I consider myself a serious fan, but I've yet to come across a decent and affordable copy of this on LP - so unfortunately I don't know it well at all.
This thread has urged me to seek it out again.

 

Thanks for the input so far, I imagine we won't dwell on these pre-Schenker albums too long as a lot of fans quite frankly either don't care too much for them or haven't even heard them beyond maybe a live version of Boogie or C'mon Everybody.

I'll give it another day or so for any late comers to add their thoughts on the debut before we move onto UFO 2 - Flying (aka One Hour Space Rock!!)

Surely with a title like that this one must contain some "space rock" eh GodShifter!?!?!

 

I said that first (space rock).

 

Yeah I know but in GodShifters review he said the debut does't even have any "space rock" and to be honest I'm inclined to agree...

 

Maybe the start of early "space rock?"

 

Early space rock, to me, is, as I said, Hawkwind, Guru Guru, and, perhaps Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come. Those a couple of examples. Certainly "space rock" at the time,was a genre in its infancy. That said, I don't hear any real space rock on the first UFO album outside of some psychedelic leanings and a few gimmicky effects.

I think the 2nd album, UFO 2, probably has more characteristics than the first. I guess we'll get to that one soon enough, eh?

 

This is pretty good (and somewhat goofy)!

 

this stuff is awesome, imo....I wish there was some recorded output of Larry Wallis of the Pink Faries / Motorhead in this band from 1972, he did like a European tour, here's some !

 

although I have it all, the 1993 Repetoire comp The Decca Years is a great CD, it features the (at that time) previously unreleased on
CD pre-Phenomenon A&B single with Schenker, and the lion's share of the 1st 2 LPs:

 

What do I know. I call early Pink Floyd " psychedelic space rock."

 

UFO - Flying: UFO 2 - Space Rock (1971)

Silver Bird
Star Storm
Prince Kajuku
The Coming of Prince Kajuku
Flying

This albums right away seems more jammy and less song oriented than the previous one. Clearly, the band had done some woodshedding in terms of defining their "space rock" sound and this time come much closer to the goal than the previous album. Maybe they listened to some Hawkwind this time .

As I stated before, the first album is basically boogie rock and a couple of rock n' roll standards with some psychedelic leanings and effects thrown in for good measure. On Flying it seems, maybe, the band had indulged in more psychedelics then took some premises and structures for some songs and decided to stretch them out. There's a lot more soloing from Mick Bolton on Flying and the production does its best to make it interesting: panning from one channel to another, adding some wah pedal and reverb for effect, and using the volume nob for swells; dynamics in terms of shades and tone, etc. And, yeah, some spacey sounding effects thrown in as well. On the 2nd track, for instance, "Star Storm" Bolton seems to be putting down the blueprint for Rush's live version of "By-Tor & the Snow Dog" from All The World's a Stage. What he's doing is very similar to what Lifeson does to create atmosphere - using delay and reverb to create a mood. We also get some weird effects thrown in and, yes, this time the sound is pretty "spacey". Under all of this, of course, is Way doing his best to create interesting lines underneath.

On Flying Way is substantially less in the front than on the first album. His playing is not overly dominant in the mix like the first album and, instead, works more in tandem with the guitar and drums to create a unified sound. Now, with that said, Way's playing is still pretty heavy on this album, but he's not so front and center this time. Nor is his bass as noticeably muddy and thick in tone as the first album. The first track, "Silver Bird" shows this right away. Way is underneath providing a pulsing rhythm but he's not so in your face. It works better. In some ways, his playing reminds me of Geezer Butler's in Black Sabbath. But, then again, a lot of hard rock bass players of the early 70's had that kind of busy, ambitious playing thing going on thanks, in part, to Jack Bruce of Cream. Bruce was always busy, but at the same time, always interesting. Ways does his best to be interesting as well. "Silver Bird" is a good track that clocks in around 7 minutes. It has some good soloing from Bolton while Way and Parker work underneath creating a shuffling and slightly off beat rhythm. The panning of the guitar at the end is effective and a bit disorienting in a good way. "Silver Bird' seems like a track that was worked out and formulated as opposed to a jammy/experimental deal.

"Prince Kajuku" and "The Coming of Prince Kajuku" work together to make kind of a suite as both songs run together and between the two of them comprise about 7 minutes of the album. To me, these two songs sound more worked out than anything else on the album. That is, the are more focused, less jammy, and seem to move with determination and confidence. "Coming" seems almost more of an introduction to the first song or, perhaps, more of an interlude than a song unto itself. There are no vocals on this track and no guitar solo either. It's all chords and Way and Parker working underneath while Bolton does some chording and riffing with the rhythm section following behind. So, this begs the question: why isn't this track before the first one? It is, after all, "The Coming of Prince Kajuku" shouldn't it be first? Anyway, on this song Andy Parker does some nice fill work towards the end. So, let's look at Andy Parker for a minute.

I've always liked Andy Parker as a drummer, but in reality he's not a particularly talented player, imo. He's always seemed to me to be more of a blues drummer (straight 4/4) that got stuck in a hard rock band. He's patterns are fairly bland and his playing is always minimal with little flair or fills. That's fine in that he doesn't get in the way of anything, but he doesn't create good dynamics, either. Also, he sounds kind of thin on this record; the drums weren't recorded well here, but that isn't his fault. Parker is just not a powerhouse drummer; a hard rock band needs a hard hitting skinsman for heaviness and dynamics, and he doesn't provide either.

Back to "Prince Kajuku" and "The Coming of Prince Kajuku": I wonder how much the guys in Rush listened to this album (if at all), because I hear some similar chord progressions and dynamics on Flying that would show up on some of the early Rush albums. Perhaps Rush never listened to this album at all and it's simply a case of the music and the recordings of early UFO and Rush being products of their time - similar technology available (guitar effects more than anything else). It's hard to say, but I do hear some commonalities especially with these two songs and the aforementioned "Silver Bird".

Finishing off the album is the sometimes painful "Flying" which clocks in at a long 26:30. Bolton does his best to make things interesting here using various techniques to create mood and shade, but the song is just too long and meandering for there to be any real highlights here. Also, curiously, it seems that Way's bass and Bolton's guitar are a bit out of tune on this track. There's something going on here and it's not right. Mogg intersperses vocal lines through out a lot of the song to keep it from being a complete snooze fest, and when he's present, the song has some form and intent, but the last ten minutes of this song are a lesson in endurance. In fact, by the end, it seems the rhythm section and Way in particular have really lost interest in maintaining any sort of support at all. Way's bass just kind of dies out and waits for Bolton to finish whatever he's doing. It's an effects washed delivery, but falls fairly flat.

I mentioned in the first review I did for the album that Mick Bolton is not an overly adventurous nor talented guitarist if the truth be told. He does his best to move around the neck and solo with intensity, but he's just not a very versatile player. Perhaps he would have faired better if the band had more live jam experiences under their belt and, maybe, around this time they were doing just that. However, jamming doesn't seem to be completely his thing as he resorts to the same scales and licks over and over. But, what he does work. It does. It's just that he can't seem to keep the listener's interest on a tune that is, say, almost 20 minutes in length or longer. Something has to give, really. Still he gets an "A" for effort and, probably, a C- for actual talent.

So this would be the last UFO studio album with Mick Bolton and the last album where they'd try to create their brand of boogie space rock. With the addition of Michael Schenker on guitar the band would move in a decidedly more commercial direction with concise, driving hard rock songs with great melodies and hooks. For UFO, their best times were ahead of them.

UFO would release Live in 1972 as their last recordings with guitarist Mick Bolton. I believe it was released in Japan only. It's a good outing but is guilty of the some of the same problems with the two studio of albums with Bolton, in truth. Too much of a noodling and jammy nature that gets old after a while. Bolton would move on to Pink Fairies (or so is the rumor - in truth, there isn't much record of what Bolton did after playing in UFO. One of the rumors was he became the guitar tech for Michael Schenker when he joined the band). Bolton's replacement would be Larry Wallis (also of Pink Fairies and later Motorhead), but his tenure in the band wouldn't be for long, either, before he was replaced by Whitesnake's Bernie Marsden for a time. Then came the blond virtuoso from Germany!

 

the run-out groove on my original German LP of this has a skip that repeats backwards talking, I forget what it says...

 

Mine does the same thing. I'll see if I can find out what it says.

 

Who was in the band during the first 2 albums? I really only know Premonition through Mechanix years.