There's a UFO album possibly still sitting at the bottom of a North Shore harbour in Sydney. I know because it belonged to me. Sat inside a Sony Walkman that detached itself from me as I disembarked a ferry. Fell, like a musical Titanic into a watery grave, long-since sleeping with the fishes in a neighbourhood of sharks. The sort of company one can imagine being kept by many of Phil Mogg’s lyrical creations from the album that went down; hustlers, villains, missing persons, predators and addicts, night life and pond-life. People trying to escape and like the female on the (awful) cover desperately trying not to being dragged down to a very certain fate. The album being, of course, ‘The Wild, The Willing and the Innocent’.
For me, it's the gold standard of the Chapman-era UFO, and in many ways hold's a similar status to that of the Schenker featured 'Obsession' in that the album is very much a sum of parts effort as, opposed to being dominated by half an album of epics, although the album can lay claim to at least a couple of those.
TWTW&TI isn't a concept album, though the stories and themes acted and played out in the dens and side-streets within feel connected; similar to one of those movies where the main characters' paths converge over the course of the day. Or should I say night. There is no light in TWTW&TI, everything gets played out nocturnally, befitting an album of dark themes.
Whereas the triumph of 'Obsession' was the band hitting it's peak with a flawless performance and the jaw-dropping virtuosity of Schenker, TWTW&TI similarly delivers the performance of the Chapman-era UFO. But this time if any one band member excels it's Phil. In both his singing and his ideas and words. Especially his ideas and words.
'I saw the stars come out tonight
So lonely and immune
Summer rain kissed the streets
That bleed like open wounds.'
Sonically, TWTW&TI is rougher around the edges than it’s predecessor but that was the bands intention after the George Martin affair. At the time band the band were hinting at this through the British music press and without a producer were able to get a stripped- down, raw sound. Chapman's crunching and gutsy guitar tone sets the scene on 'Chains Chains' and Parker's drums sound higher up the mix. The song's angular riffing jabs away at you and introduces you to the neighbours, 'Jack' and 'Little Jeanie'. It doesn't end in tears, just a dead body and life going on.
The opening sequence to 'Long Gone' is subtle and hypnotic. There's a sense of foreboding and malevolence in the air and you know the trigger's about to be squeezed. And when it is, it's brutal. Chapman's playing a musical machine-gun for all the constant rat-tat-tat that's going on and the rhythm section follows up with some hefty punches. All the while Mogg's been painting a quite diabolical picture of a city breaking down whilst two lovers try and break-out. Bruce who? And here, the apprentice out-wits the sorcerer, the King has been usurped, the Boss has to clean-out his desk. Frankly, it's the best pairing of music and words in hard rock history. Phil, take a bow.
'And the wild, the willing and the innocent
Are down, down in the jungle tonight
As the jackal tracks every step you make
Watching, waiting for the one chance to bite'
pic by R Burrows
The title track is bridged with 'Long Gone' with some nifty orchestration but more on that later. Again, there's a build up in tension effected this time by Chapman's chiming acoustic guitar and Paul Buckmaster's sublime strings. When it breaks out, it's less frantic and more coloured, musically, with some superb vocal harmonies in the chorus. And while all hell isn't breaking loose this time around, you are reminded that you ain't out of the woods yet and are under the watchful eyes of predators.
Despite Phil doffing his cap, lyrically,in the direction of Springsteen, TWTWTI is UFO at their most British sounding. On hearing the jagged riffing on 'Long Gone' for the first time, I immediately thought of British New Wave. 'Chains Chains' sounds like the Stones on steroids and 'Lonely Heart' stripped of it's sax and 'Couldn't Get it Right', courtesy of Tonka's muscled guitar tone, wouldn't have sounded out of place in any number of songs knocking about in the UK charts by Punk/NewWave bands with a pop leaning.
Perhaps swapping the tropical setting of Air Studios, Montserrat for Air Studios, London made a difference? My guess, though, is that there was a conscious effort to make the record sound livelier than it's predecessor. There's also the temptation to believe that UFO were in some ways reflecting a change in culture that was being played out in 1980 in the pages of 'Sounds', the UK music-paper and driven principally by the paper's journalist, Gary Bushell. Via Bushell came the most unlikely pairing with an established rock act. Enter the Cockney Rejects, a punk band from East London, who became the poster-boys of the Oi! movement.
Strange bed-fellows, indeed. But the news stories and photos of both bands wearing each others shirt merchandise and guitarists swapping guitars certainly afforded UFO a credibility with the indie scene that only the likes of Motorhead and Thin Lizzy could lay claim to. In 1981, UFO were undeniably hip.
'Down the halls of justice
The echoes never fade
Notches on my gun
Another debt is paid'
Another very British affair is the ballad, 'Profession of Violence'. The song allegedly about 1960's, London, East-End gangsters, Reggie and Ronnie Kray. I say alleged because once into the song, there's very little detail on the characters. Nothing that will identify them, no prints on the gun. Just a few verses that could be about any gangster. If anything, Phil's read the John Pearson book of the same name and used it's title. Both music and lyrics caught everybody off-guard on it's release, the first half an arrangement of acoustic guitar, piano, orchestra and vocals. The second, band plus orchestra featuring a beautifuly simple solo from Paul Chapman, very much in the vein of 'Comfortably Numb' in it's execution, if you'll forgive the pun. The song is tender, sentimental and melancholic, an odd fit with it's subject matter but a masterpiece, nonetheless.
The album's fulcrum is undoubtedly the first three tracks and by the time 'It's Killing Me' arrives we've all been floored, counted-out and get to sit in the corner with the smelling salts. And the drop in tempo is welcome as the song is ushered in with harmonised guitars not sounding a million miles away from Thin Lizzy. In fact, it's a song that the other Phil would have been at home with, it's subject matter not dissimilar to 'Got to Give it Up' and cannily couched in such an oblique way that for many years I thought it was about a couple caught up in a doomed relationship. I guess I was only half-right.
'Living inside a bottle,
Strung Out on a line,
Caught in life's rough and tumble,
Blind leading the blind.'
And so to 'Makin Moves'. Deceptively ushered in with an instrumental intro of seemingly Paul's guitar-effects and piano before an unholy riff announces the heaviest 5 minutes of the album. Like 'Lonely Heart' it's essentially a British vehicle carrying more of Phil's themes on American street life; 'West Side Story' meets 'The Warriors’ where all the players are chasing the moment, their dreams and 'that one shot before they're old'. The one's that shoot wide or shoot themselves in the foot get to be the subject matter of 'Couldn't Get It Right',a bitter looking back on life's missed opportunities:
'So now you' got older
And the world's got colder than it used to be
Every day gets longer and turns into the darker night
Down in the gutter nothing seems to matter 'cos you're history
I couldn't get it, I couldn't get it right'
Laugh-a-minute stuff, Phil. But still light years ahead of his fellow lyricists in the hard-rock world where life was one long party, rock-you-baby anthem, or a wizards and dragons fantasy world.
You could say that this typified UFO and set them apart from the herd. Musically they were'nt content to be constrained by a label/genre and weren't afraid to take risks which is borne out on TWTW&TI. In 1981 who else would have used an orchestra to such unorthadox effect as is the case on 'Long Gone' and the spine-tingling segue to the title track. Thirty plus years later it is still a remarkable moment. And who else out there could have pulled-off a ballad as mature and sophisticated as 'Profession ofViolence'? On the other side of the pond, it was all sugary sap by the likes of Journey, Styx or REO. On the other side of the channel it was Eurovision-esque pap via Schenker/Meine.
TWTWTI is yet another case in UFO's career of why's and what-ifs? It's a monumental piece of work without monumental sales.
Some people just don't get it do they?
