8/13/2023 0 Comments Silver lame sofaNevertheless, there were glimmers of the greatness to come: UFO’s version of the Eddie Cochran hit C’mon Everybody became a firm live favourite, as did a self-penned song with the unlikely title Boogie For George. But with tracks such as Treacle People in their repertoire (sample lyric: ‘I moved ’round a bit/And started seeing people/And the people that I met/Oh, were all covered in treacle’) they were fighting a losing battle. Bolton’s guitar fuzzes and drones away aimlessly while Mogg, Way and Parker do their best to stamp their authority. Listening to those records today is a bizarre experience indeed. Over in America the band were signed to Rare Earth – believe it or not, a subsidiary of Tamla Motown. UFO released two studio albums and one live set through the little-known Beacon and Nova labels at the start of the 1970s: UFO 1, UFO 2 – Flying (subtitled One Hour Space Rock) and UFO Live, which was recorded in Japan. The fledgling outfit went through a number of names (Acid, Hocus Pocus, The Good The Bad And The Ugly) before settling on the UFO moniker and bringing in Parker to do Mogg’s old job. Mogg – a drummer who quickly downed sticks to become a vocalist – was next to enter the fray. UFO’s roots date back to the late 1960s when Way teamed up with guitarist Mick Bolton in a band called The Boyfriends. “We were like kids going: ‘How do we do this? How do we do that?’ You’re plonking around in the garage and you go: ‘How does this work?’ And you can’t quite get there.” “We didn’t know what we were doing,” says Phil Mogg of UFO’s psychedelic beginnings in the unremarkable North London suburb of Enfield. Instead, it became a tale of how three ageing rockers are struggling to come to grips with their uproarious past, and how UFO’s power base has shifted in a surprising direction over the years… But during the course of our conversations with Mogg, Way and Parker, our story began to veer off in an unexpected direction, becoming as much about the present as the past. Our original idea for this feature was to concentrate on UFO’s early days, their first three albums for the Chrysalis label ( Phenomenon, 1974 Force It, 1975 No Heavy Petting, 1976) having recently been re-released. Happy daze: UFO in 1976: Danny Peyronel, Andy Parker, Phil Mogg, Pete Way and Michael Schenker (Image credit: Getty Images)
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