Moving into the follow up album, the band had momentum on their side. The experience of playing together on the road had the effect of bringing the band closer together, and also of fostering new ideas and of ways to utilise the talents of the band in the best way possible. They harboured a desire like many bands of the day to break into the US market, and to do that they had to find the style that would not only push the band’s growing hard rock sound but funnel that into something those fans wanted to hear. Finding a true combination between the one guitar hard rock riffing of Schenker along with the adding of keys onto the album to give it the kind of melody that also drew outsiders towards the album was a balancing act that required not only great musicianship but the steady hand of a solid producer. Enter Leo Lyons, bass guitarist for the band Ten Years After, who knew a thing or two about producing and writing albums that made the charts in the UK and the US. With his guiding hand on the wheel, UFO entered the studio to complete work on their fourth studio album, titled “Force It”.
The great misnomer about looking back at this album from 50 years in the future is that, for all intents and purposes, it doesn’t come across as what the modern music listeners would categorise as hard rock. In much the same way as the previous album “Phenomenon” is a mixture of material that when performed live becomes a lot heavier than it is on the album itself, “Force It” certainly has its moments where it showcases those hard hitting drums from Andy Parker and hard riffing from bass guitarist Peter Way and guitarist Michael Schenker, and Phil Mogg extends his vocals into something that offers us a glimpse at the power he possesses, it doesn’t maintain that through every song on the album. In fact, it is mostly reserved for just a few songs, while the others fall back into a category that resides as rock or maybe even soft rock at times. Now this categorisation does not make the music or the album as a whole less enjoyable, but it is good to have that knowledge before you dive right in and think you are going to get a hard rock experience on a level of Deep Purple or AC/DC for the same era. That isn’t necessarily the case.
It opens up beautifully with the legendary “Let It Roll”, that opening note held while the bass and guitar riff comes in underneath, anticipating Mogg’s vocal arrival. Parker’s drumming is outstanding from the outset, setting the scene for another of his excellent album performances, while Way’s bass guitar holds together beautifully with Schenker’s guitars, especially through the middle of the track, where Schenker is dualling up his lead and rhythm in great syncopation. Phil Mogg is a terrific vocalist make no mistake, but when Parker, Way and Schenker are left to their own devices as they are here in the middle of the opening track it is pure magic. This is followed by “Shoot Shoot” which steps back a touch on the faster hard rock style and settles more into the mid-tempo, discussing the protagonist's liaison with a femme fatale, mixed with metaphor and innuendo throughout. Mogg takes the lead with his vocal on this track, while Schenker’s riff promotes the dalliance with his subtle changes throughout the song. It’s another of UFO’s best. “High Flyer” changes tone completely from the opening two tracks, the acoustically based ballad with harmony vocals and melodic guitar along with the introduction of background keys to emphasise the right portions of the song and solo. The lyrics tell the simple story, the second verse beginning with “Turn to summer goes so fast, Seems I’ll never see you, One weekend and a photograph, Oh all my boyish dreams”. It is performed beautifully, and heaven knows you can’t have an album of this era without a song like this on it. In the context of the album, it does what I fear most songs like this do, which is drain the momentum of the album at its point of contact. It sounds beautiful, but is this what you want from UFO? If it is, then you are in luck.
The mood and riffs ramp up again on “Love Lost Love”. It actually has a ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ feel about the stop start guitar riff and vocal melody on the track. Side one then concludes with “Out in the Street”, which starts with the soft laden keys synth riff overlaid by Schenker’s guitar riff and the duelled harmony vocals from Phil Mogg. It’s a mix of both the hard rock guitar riffing and that softly spoken keys, changing throughout the song where the mood requires it. The middle has Schenker dominating not only with a great solo but then a heavy riff as Mogg sings through the bridge. It is one of UFO’s best known and most beloved tracks, and does offer everything that is great about the band in one song.
Side two opens with another classic in “Mother Mary”, the hard riffing template that the band became known for heard here in all its glory as Schenker takes centre stage with guitar, and Andy Parker’s hard hitting drums again at the forefront. It’s interesting how Parker is forced to take a back seat when the band plays its softer more introverted material, but when Schenker’s guitar takes over, his drumming follows in waves. Parker in particular shines when the hard to heavy songs come up, and he must have been particularly pleased when this partnership began. They do combine brilliantly here again on this song, along with Way’s bass guitar. The solo through the middle and as the outro to the song again showcases all three in perfect harmony. “Too Much of Nothing” follows this, and actually channels the pop rock songs of the late 1960’s, in particular the similarity in places to the song “Somebody to Love” which was popularised by Jefferson Airplane - there is a distinct comparison that can be drawn. This harks back to the band's roots to a degree but in a far modern sounding way (in 1975), and it works well as a result. “Dance Your Life Away” is, for wont of a better term, a typical UFO filler track on the album, one that holds itself in the gaps of those songs that are the heavy hitters on the albums, and gets you from one to the next. It is significant because it comes and goes without even noticing, the role of songs on good albums.
The destination it gets you to is “This Kid’s”, typically wonderful UFO to the ears. The opening Schenker riff dominates as Mogg’s vocals dive in, flaunting the story of the two youths stuck in a rut, knowing they need to escape but probably knowing they aren’t going to do that. There’s lovely keyboard flurry that supports the guitar into the chorus, before delving into a hard blues in the middle of the track. The addition of the piano keys here differentiates the tone of the opening of the song, and it feels like an unusual direction to head in, and an unexpected one. The song segues into the hyphenated title “Between the Walls”, the instrumental track that takes up the last 2.5 minutes of the track, again in a completely different style from the first two thirds of the song. But this is true beautiful Schenker, with Way’s wonderful bassline underneath complementing it perfectly, that flows out to conclude the album in style and grace.
My journey with UFO began with the discovery of the Michael Schenker Group, and then in my university days through an album called The Michael Schenker Anthology which I found one lunchtime while browsing through my favourite second hand record store in Wollongong at the time, Illawarra Books and Records. That album had highlights from Schenker’s career with Scorpions, UFO and his own band, and all three soon became very big favourites of mine. It also led to me buying the UFO live album “Strangers in the Night” from the same store not long after, and this forced me to go back and discover the rest of the UFO catalogue, at least those that featured the guitaring of Michael Schenker.
I first heard this album through one of my best mates Peter who has now been my brother-in-law for the last 32 and some years. He had both this album and the follow up “No Heavy Petting”, both of which I borrowed from him to tape onto one cassette, which was played often from that point onwards.
My evolving music tastes at the time I discovered this and the other UFO albums was probably a really good melting pot in which to find and listen to these albums. What you might consider traditional heavy metal was mixing with thrash metal and hair metal and all other variations possible at that time, and I was enjoying the lot of them. So even though other bands were bigger for me at the time and I listened to far more often, this was still great. But it probably became most enjoyable from the mid-to-late 1990’s onwards, when those initial band that I had loved adored were either slipping off the face of the earth or struggling to find their way in the music world they found themselves, and I began to go back to bands like Scorpions, MSG and UFO for what they offered in those times, music that combined guitar and bass and drums with vocals that harmonised.
“Force It”, with the album cover filled with kitchen taps in a play on the word ‘faucet’, still has so much to enjoy all these years later. Songs such as “Let It Roll”, “Shoot Shoot”, “Out in the Streets”, “Mother Mary” and “This Kid’s” are still as enjoyable today as ever, with the combination of Parker, Way and Schenker sounding just as fabulous as they did. And the added keyboards from Chick Churchill on this album, who performed the same role for Ten Years After, showcased how the music could sound with these added elements, and also the fact that with Schenker playing all the guitars that everything could mix together really well. What the band probably needed for their live shows was an extra two members to play the keyboards and play rhythm guitar. Or, perhaps, someone who could switch between both. Now there’s a novel idea... maybe the band could take that on in the future... great idea Bill.
I just recently bought the remastered 2021 3LP vinyl of this album, which has a complete live concert on the other two vinyls as the bonus, and playing it this week on my turntable in the Metal Cavern has been a wonderful experience all over again. The musicianship on this album continues to astound me, and you can actually hear the improvement in every aspect of the band that was taking place. In the UFO discography, of all of their studio albums this would rank as either #2 or #3 for me, depending on which album I listened to on the day. It is still terrific 50 years on... but there was more and possibly better yet to come.
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