Celebrating Phil Mogg on his 78th birthday. —Ed.
What do I have to do to send you home in a UFO today? Now hear me out, dear buyer here at Area 51 Motors, because I know what you’re thinking—UFO was a very good English heavy metal band that put out some very good albums back in the seventies, but nowadays they’re a big name only in places outside our solar system.
And the best of them (1977’s Lights Out) isn’t even on the lot! I sold it to a Hawkwind fan who obviously had it confused with UFO’s rather desultory foray into space rock, 1971’s UFO 2: Flying. (Hey, this UFO salesmen can’t afford to have scruples—he’s got a wife and kids!)
But here’s the thing—for a couple of years in America’s bicentennial decade UFO, thanks in large part to the fancy fretmanship of wunderkind Hun guitarist and Scorpions defector Michael Schenker, produced some tasty and surprisingly melodic heavy metal that deserved better than it got. And what we’re looking at here (feel free to give the tires a kick) is my personal favorite, 1975’s Force It. As you can tell just by looking it’s cherry. Only one previous owner, a kindly little old lady who only drove it to Black Sabbath shows on black sabbath.
If you have a bathroom plumbing fetish, the shiny stainless steel fixtures on the cover are a real turn on, and if you’re more of a traditionalist there are also a couple of the members of Throbbing Gristle going at it hot and heavy amidst all the gleaming German steel and blinding white porcelain, although the powers that be in the US MADE THEM TRANSPARENT so if you bought the album in the states you basically got shafted by puritanism. But lucky for you, the baby you’re looking at is an import!
Cool thing about Force It is that UFO delivers the hard rock while largely avoiding the kinds of wimpy power ballads that give metal a bad name—only “High Flyer” is a sweet little concession to the softies of the world, and on the plus side it boasts a killer guitar solo. The cooler thing about Force It (if’n you’re not a diehard adherent to the AC/DC aesthetic, not that there’s anything wrong with that) is that UFO knew how to build a song with more than one gear—real students of songcraft, they were—why, you almost get the idea they studied under Carole King.
Which by no means disqualified ‘em from your being your 8th grade metal shop buddy’s favorite band. Just means their songs have nuances. These guys were no dummies; they could clobber you with power chords, but they could be subtle too.
“Let It Roll” opens with some primal chug-a-lug and guitar razzmatazz and is the coolest roll on down the highway this side of BTO, before they shift gears and go into this sweet instrumental passage that is all Schenker waxing eloquent on the ax until the rhythm section commences to pounding away and the song goes back into overdrive.
“Let It Roll” ain’t your usual three-chord bash and crash, and the same goes for the hard-hitting and shoulda-been-a-hit “Shoot Shoot,” which features a great see-saw riff and a spectacular Schenker guitar solo. Phil Mogg’s vocals are mean and clean, and he proves he can go all sensitive on ya on “High Flyer,” which is far less offensive to the ears than you’d expect.
On “Love Lost Love” the band demonstrates that they were ahead of their time—this is Foreigner foretold, only better! Melodic but with bigger biceps! Opens with some clean-bore Schenker guitar, then in comes Mogg (double-tracked I think) sounding all soulful over the power chords, before Schenker comes back in, showboating the whole way to the end.
Ten Years After’s Chick Churchill opens “Out on the Streets” on electric piano, then in comes Mogg sounding as sensitive as James Taylor, but any idea that this is a sweet one is blown away by Schenker’s monstrous power chords and the assault and battery of the rhythm section. And as usual Schenker delivers up a great axe solo. “Out on the Streets” is definitely hard rock of the first order, but what surprises is the song’s sweet and gooey center.
“Mother Mary” is a no-nonsense hard rocker, all chukka-chukka guitar, one helluva riff, and lots of king hell guitar pyrotechnics. Great stuff. The same goes for “Too Much of Nothing,” on which drummer Andy Parker pounds the skins in accompaniment to Schenker’s Godzilla power chords while Mogg sounds a bit too much like too many other people to give the song the unique edge it deserves. Then Schenker rips one before things suddenly get spacy, what with Parker assaulting the skins over some solar powered guitar before the band rips back into it.
“Dance Your Life Away” is a fuzz-guitar boogie with a Led Zep vibe—Schenker’s guitar has a dirty tone, the melody is nice and it’s got this funky riff, and when Schenker takes off for hyperspace only a fool would get in his way. Don’t understand why this one wasn’t a hit.
“This Kid’s/Between the Walls” also has Led Zep feel to it. It’s a dirty business by UFO standards, but Churchill comes in occasionally with this piano figure that sweetens things up some before the band stops everything to do the crunge, and boy is it nasty—you get this crawling king snake rhythm over which Schenker plays and plays, before they go all stately on you with the instrumental closer (organ, synths, lots of cymbals, and one very elegaic guitar solo) that is “Between the Walls.” Nice to know they still had some space rock in ‘em!
Look, I could put you in one of those superbig Boston spaceships or a gaudy ELO spaceship or the BOC-logo-shaped spaceship on Club Ninja even, but basically you’d be paying out your ass for frills and unless you intend to drive MILLIONS of kids to soccer practice you’re wasting your money. Do you know how much it costs to keep all those people in the city of Beantown in the bubble atop the Boston albums in Boston Baked Beans? You don’t want to know! UFO’s Force It is affordable, gets good gas mileage, comes with a wonderful bathroom, and includes a slew of not-so-shabby hard rock songs not one of which will make you regret your purchase.
Give it a test drive around the solar system. Crank up “Shoot Shoot” on the UFO stereo. I’ll have the paperwork right here when you get back. And if you’re not completely happy with it, I’ve got the funkonaut-friendly spaceship on the cover of Parliament’s Mothership Connection I can sell you for a song. “Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication,” to be exact.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
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