The UFO album by album thread.

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Jimmy Agates, Apr 18, 2013.

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  1. GodShifter

    GodShifter Forum Member

    Location:
    Dallas, TX, USA
    No doubt! My 2nd favorite guitarist ever, in fact.
     
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  2. phoenixhwy1982

    phoenixhwy1982 The Last Cowboy

    Location:
    Chicago
    Here's a 1977 vid to go along with the guitar walk-through :D

     
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  3. slipkid

    slipkid Senior Member

    I'm with you in the minority I guess; when I think of "great" bass players Pete Way doesn't come to my mind either.

    I don't think he is "bad" per se but he's never done anything to make me think he is in a league with guys like John Entwistle, Jack Casady, Billy Sheehan, Geddy Lee, Stu Hamm, Jack Bruce, Chris Squire, etc. Pete just kind of blends into the background of the songs to me. Not that that is a bad thing - I doubt that Too Hot to Handle would sound any better with lead type bass playing, it might even ruin it!

    I think Pete earned the stripes on his yellow pants more as a songwriter than a bass player. :)
     
  4. rcdupre

    rcdupre Flying is Trying is Dying

    I'd never thought of Way as that great either until I started following this thread and listening to the full albums on youtube
    at work this week on headphones, I think this is the first time I'd heard UFO with headphones...and you've got to figure that Way,
    like fellow bassist Andy Fraser of Free, is the key reason these bands were so great...they really carry the songs, imo...didn't Way have a
    hand in writing most of UFO's music?, I can't imagine it was Mogg, or Schenker who could barely speak English at this time....if you listen to MSG
    there's none of the inventiveness, it's extremely dull in comparison...sure he was an awesome guitarist, but without UFO or the Scorpions (ie, bands w/ great songwriting skills and music to solo on) he kinda bores me...Paul Kossoff bores me too when he wasn't with Free, or John Martyn, beacause he didn't have great songs to inspire him...
     
  5. Rose River Bear

    Rose River Bear Senior Member

    A small but important correction....the ending actually goes from E to D for the final chord. The final run at 3:49 is a D Major run in thirds and ends on a D major chord. Sorry about that. Starts in C sharp, verse is in E, song ends in D. Man this song is all over the place.
     
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  6. Rose River Bear

    Rose River Bear Senior Member

    Awesome. I don't remember seeing that clip before. :)
     
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  7. slipkid

    slipkid Senior Member

    Interesting that you just posted that. I was thinking that myself up until about 30 minutes ago, that Pete had a hand in writing most of UFO's songs. I was just listening to Walk On Water & looking at the booklet, and I was surprised to see that every song on it is written by Schenker/Mogg, except for one song (Knock Knock) which is by Way/Mogg.

    So I went back & looked at all of the Schenker UFO albums, & excluding cover songs, Schenker or Mogg has a hand in writing probably like 80-90% of the songs, some mostly only as Schenker/Mogg (as opposed to the ones where the whole band is credited), with much less credit going Way's way, at least during the Schenker years.

    I'm going to assume that Mogg gets his songwriting credits for the lyrics and the vocal melodies; Schenker must have come up with the riffs that got things rolling. Pete Way is involved in writing some songs but not nearly as many I thought before. That being said I think the band is also a sum of its parts, all the guys contributing something to make the magic whether they got songwriting credit or not.
     
  8. quicksrt

    quicksrt Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    In my opinion No Heavy Petting is just as fine as the one before and the one after. A perfect hard rock album. It has a nice thick sound that sounds heavy, and but is balanced out with lightness all over the LP. Too bad that the UFO albums during this era were very low charting, and band was basically a cult band in the US.
     
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  9. slipkid

    slipkid Senior Member

    I know what you mean - without great songs great playing IS boring - but I really dig the first three studio ones (Michael Schenker Group, MSG, Assault Attack) but then Built to Destroy is weak. After that mostly blech IMO - I can't stand McCauley's vocals on the albums he's on, and although Written in the Sand has some OK songs the singer does nothing for me. Everything after that really bores me, except for the covers albums (I like that sort of thing - give Michael some great tunes again!) although I do dig his last studio one (Temple of Rock). I think Phil Mogg must have a great ear for vocal melodies & was the perfect foil to shape Schenker's riffola into songs, thus making a lot of the UFO magic.
     
  10. Trillmeister

    Trillmeister Forum Resident

    Location:
    England
    Bingo.
     
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  11. GodShifter

    GodShifter Forum Member

    Location:
    Dallas, TX, USA
    Not too belabor the point too much, but Pete Way co-wrote, easily, less than half of UFO's music and, in most cases, is usually credited in tandem with Schenker and Mogg or sometimes Paul Raymond. So he was involved in the writing process, but I have to think he was maybe supplying ideas for different stanzas, perhaps, but almost never entire songs. Even in his own band, Waysted, he's often credited as a third co-writer with vocalist Fin Muir and guitarist Ronnie Kayfield and later with Muir & Paul Chapman.

    As far as his playing goes, I don't think he deserves the kind of credit Andy Fraser gets for propelling Free. They're not even remotely the same kind of player. Andy Fraser was a a very melodic yet, at the same time, precise, punctuating type player whereas Way is a bit loose and less defined in terms of his attack. His style of playing, in fact, lost the Ozzy Osbourne gig for him in that his loose style didn't fit with Ozzy's music. He himself states the music was too difficult to play correctly due to his style.

    That said, I'm not trying to take anything away from him, either. His style and playing obliviously worked for UFO but to call him a "great bass player" is a bit much.

    Note: I read a blabbermouth article where Michael Schenker complained about how Pete Way would often get too close to Schenker onstage and step on his feet or fall into him during the concert and "deaden his strings". He said this was very annoying and tried doing it to Way in concert one night and wound up getting headbutted by the singer of The Quireboys afterwards for his seemingly obnoxious behavior.
     
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  12. jon9091

    jon9091 Master Of Reality

    Location:
    Midwest
    Re:pete Way

    He's definitely one of the boys, and a fun stage presence...but I'll be damned if I can think of a single UFO song where the bass playing stood out so much as to make it memorable.

    This month's Prog is devoted to. Rush, and they have plenty of stories of being on the road with UFO....mostly being drunk under the table by them.
     
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  13. Rose River Bear

    Rose River Bear Senior Member

    My review of Shoot Shoot follows. Thanks for letting me backtrack the thread. Looking forward to the rest of the reviews.

    Shoot Shoot.... another UFO favorite of mine. A rock and roll take on Bonnie and Clyde.:D
    The song kicks off with an A Major power chord and then into a hammered on D Chord which sets your ear up for the band kicking into a heavy metal shuffle rhythm. A well timed cymbal crash kicks off the first verse. Phil Mogg is in fine vocal form and at his blusey best. Great drum fills from Andy with Pete holding it all down. Rock and Roll at it's finest.
    The first verse moves along with some great vocal harmonies until :46 when instead, where you would expect a vocal chorus, the band kicks into a cool descending riff played in unison by Michael and Pete. I'm thinking Pete wrote this section....it sounds like his style of writing.
    The second verse kicks off and burns along until 1:29 where a bridge, with some heavy chord changes (D-C #Minor - F#), pops in. The verse returns until 1:45 which kicks off the start of one of Michael Schenker's finest solos on record. Only the caliber of player like Schenker could play a solo for 8 bars over a sole A Major chord and still make it sound killer and hold your attention. At 1:59 where you would expect the solo to go to D as in the verse instead, they shift to the chords of the bridge where at 2:02 starting with a wicked sounding string slip, Schenker solos over the F# chord with one of my favorite lines by him. For five seconds, he plays with unparalelled melodic attitude. To finish the solo, at 2:13 he plays some wicked string bends that sound like tortured wails coming from his Flying V. They are some of the most wicked sounding string bends on record IMO. The chorus riff returns at 2:16 leading to the final verse where our boy gets caught with his prints on the gun. The bridge returns at 2:38 bringing the song to a glorious end with the chorus riff.
    IMO it just doesn't get any better than this. The next song High Flyer was well timed...you need a break from the intensity of Let it Roll and Shoot Shoot.

     
  14. cjmiller

    cjmiller Forum Resident

    Hey, just a call out to all those participating in this thread – thanks. Some of the best commentary and reviews on UFO I’ve read. Trillmeister, love your writing style. This is the type of thread that makes SH Forums worthwhile.
     
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  15. Trillmeister

    Trillmeister Forum Resident

    Location:
    England
    :thumbsup:

    Coffee/keyboard interface (involuntary.)

    Genius.


    Cheers, CJ and I wholeheartedly concur with your sentiments and as I've said previously, analysis which acts as motivation to reassess even those albums you had hitherto imagined fully ingested.

    Our colleague from DFW has me replaying these classics with intense concentration, such is the calibre of his dissemination.

    Hail to thee, one and all.
     
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  16. Sandinista

    Sandinista Forum Resident

    I think there is such a thing as a great player for the right band. Or you could say a great singer for the song. I love hearing Dylan sing Dylan. Not sure I'd be all that into hearing his version of Close to the Edge.

    I think Phil Rudd is an outstandingly awesome drummer for AC/DC. But imagine him in Rush. :yikes:
     
  17. Baron Von Talbot

    Baron Von Talbot Well-Known Member

    Well all I can say is that the bass really drives the tunes home - Be it on album hearing 'Love To Love (Misty Green & Blue)" while typing - what a great tune. or during the various live shows as demonstrated on the great Official Bootleg Box Set I kept playing on and on since I read in this thread.
    Indeed Lights Out is a good album and it works well in concert..
    One element is the volume of the bass within the mix. You can hear each note he plays, which is not as often the case as one should expect on countless heavy Hard rock tunes Plus he is always on point or the bass makes perfect sense even if it is not the complicated riff type or up and down in light speed. Not overly tight but not sloppy neither.
     
  18. Trillmeister

    Trillmeister Forum Resident

    Location:
    England
    :righton:

    Speaking of the antipodeans, did you ever see their concert in Paris, captured on film (video tape?) from 1979? Our friends 'Priest were on the same bill (can't recall who may have been supporting who) but it was the definitive encapsulation of Hard & [in places] Heavy Rock with the late, great B Scott and wee Angus in absolute loon mode: with Messrs. Young, Snr. and Williams on bass and rhythm, respectively and the aforementioned Rudders on the bongos, it might not have been the musical equivalent of Jon Lord supping Earl Grey with Malcolm Arnold at The Albert Hall but there are times when a simple, three bar boogied, acoustic rogering is entirely in order.
     
  19. Sandinista

    Sandinista Forum Resident

    Never saw it - will keep an eye out for it. Never saw them (or UFO) in their prime - regrettably. Actually, never listened to UFO at all until a few years ago.
     
  20. phoenixhwy1982

    phoenixhwy1982 The Last Cowboy

    Location:
    Chicago
    Well, having lived with three UFO albums for a little while now (Obsession, Force It, NHP) I am sort of getting hip to the whole "classic UFO sound" thing. Right now I want to rank Force It as my favorite of those three, with NHP predictably coming in third, though I by no means find it some kind of a serious disappointment like many outside reviews (not the ones in this thread) would have you think.

    UFO - Force It (1975)

    The classic UFO ingredients are, quite simply, a tight, driving rhythm section, blue collar vocals that serve more as an additional musical instrument than an actual voice demanding attention, and a hole in each song large enough for Michael Schenker to drive a truck through (which he does, with remarkable consistency). There's some keyboard shading and piano accents here and there, too, along with a seemingly obligatory - and very 70s English rock - acoustic ballad.

    All of those elements are present on each classic UFO album (the ones with Schenker). What makes Force It stand out against even Obsession in my book is that everything's just that little bit tighter, and I'm inclined to chalk up that consistency of focus to the group's palpable excitement of finally nailing their sound. You can tell that they know they've found their groove. Within that hard rock canvas Schenker is given complete free reign and he leaves his fingerprints all over this album. He did on Phenomenon, too, but the difference is that Force It is 100% hard rock and the band's commitment to a singular sound pushes Mikey to play even nastier, to exhaust every trick up his sleeve, and that's a lot of tricks, people (as Rose River Bear has reminded us). The band furthermore seem to know what they have in Schenker and unlike some bands who unfortunately reign in their best players UFO let Mikey absolutely dominate this one. It's almost always a winning strategy, rock 'n' roll is really at its best when it's over the top. What is shocking is just how much breathing room Schenker is given here, you can really tell that even if Mogg had an ego he'd kept it well in check and just let Michael hog as many minutes as he'd wanted. I mean, compare this album to Ozzy's Diary - one of my reference guitar hero albums. Randy Rhoads is insane as I'm sure Ozzy was very well aware, but look how short the lead breaks are! RR basically has to work with the tiniest of windows. Now compare that to the gaping holes on Force It. This is the sound of a band knowing who their best musician is and showing him off for all it's worth.

    Guitar heroics begin immediately with the two-punch of Let it Roll and Shoot Shoot. Schenker hogs well over a minute of elaborate soloing in the former, this is an Angus Young kind of stunt right here, but where Young is really just a blues player (this isn't a knock, that's one hell of a fantastic blues player), Schenker is much harder to peg. He's all over the place, really, and he's incredibly creative. After an obligatory (though quality) ballad break the band rocks some more with Love Lost Love, and then throws a curve ball your way with Out in the Street. I'm new to UFO, but to me this is the best song they've done that I have heard. 5 minutes is enough to take it into epic territory and everything comes together for them on this one. By now one expects more Schenker fireworks somewhere midway through the song but what is there is more than just fireworks, it's guitar replacing the lyrics, basically. I mean, it speaks - this is an absolutely glorious, instantly classic, unforgettable sequence towering over an already brilliant composition. I guess the song was just a touch too long for FM radio back in the day? It shouldn't have seemed too long, not in the post-Stairway era. This should have been a single.

    And then there's Mother Mary, a mack truck of a rocker that simultaneously picks up momentum after a more soulful Out in the Street and sacrifices none of the latter's high-charged intensity. By this point the album's already a classic and some filler's to be expected. Indeed, Too Much of Nothing is just that, but on Dance Your Life Away the guitar hero strikes again and what should have been filler is rescued by another worhy lead break, memorable enough that it's worth sitting through the song for. The band concludes with another stab at an epic with This Kid's and it's very good and an excellent album closer, though not great like Out in the Street.

    So, for me the count is 1 filler track, 4 moments of sheer greatness, one of those moments (Out in the Street) for the ages, and a reference "guitar hero" album for the ages. I'm trying to think of the competition for this one, that year. I guess I'd still rank Physical Graffiti over it, just because it has some of my absolute favorite Zep moments. That's it though, I think this comes in second for me in 1975 for hard rock. Though I love High Voltage it really doesn't begin to compare, and I'm not a fan of Sabotage or RB's Rainbow.

    5/5
     
  21. bt1098

    bt1098 Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Hampshire
  22. GodShifter

    GodShifter Forum Member

    Location:
    Dallas, TX, USA
    Re-reading the thread, I noticed a glaring error here as "On With the Action" is actually a Schenker, Mogg, & Peyronel penned tune and not a Pete Way composition. My mistake in terms of the songwriting credit and getting the title wrong not once but twice! :(
     
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  23. phoenixhwy1982

    phoenixhwy1982 The Last Cowboy

    Location:
    Chicago
    You were going to do Out in the Street, too, right? :D
     
  24. Rose River Bear

    Rose River Bear Senior Member

    Alright what the heck. :D May take a day or so. I thought the two I did would be enough guitar gobblygook for everyone. :D
    Honestly, I hope they were OK...they were more of a run thru of the song structure than a real review. Thanks for asking me to do another. :)
     
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  25. Jimmy Agates

    Jimmy Agates CRAZY DOCTOR Thread Starter

    Good question. a lot of live material officially released out there. Since we're already well into the Schenker era I suggest that at the end of this period (ie after Strangers is reviewed) we recap the live material from that entire period and as such do a similar recap at the end of the Chapman era which will cover the vast majority. After that we can probably include them where relevant in release date order.
     
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