Following the tour to support the album, Paul Raymond, the band’s keyboardist, rhythm guitarist and supporting vocals, left the band. He instead, he chose to follow his former bandmate and join his band The Michael Schenker Group, in time to record and tour on their second album “MSG”. This left the band in a predicament. The band was lined up to play the Reading Festival on 23 August 1980, when the band played as the Saturday night headliner. For this gig, former Wild Horses' keyboard player Neil Carter replaced Raymond. But when it came to writing and recording for the band’s new album, he was not the first choice. In an interview after the album was released, Paul Chapman was quoted as saying:
"We produced the album ourselves with nobody breathing over our shoulders. The only problem was it cost twice as much because we kept changing studios and rerecording stuff. I tried to get John Sloman involved because he could sing, play keyboards and guitar, and was just out of Lone Star like me. He did play on the Wild album, but most of the keyboards are by the brother of the engineer Gary Edwards – until Phil sacked him. We finished that album without a keyboard player, then got Neil Carter in later."
So despite Neil Carter being listed on the album as having played on it, it was a combination of Slocum and Edwards who played the keyboards, with Chapman recording all of the guitars.
“No Place to Run” had been seen to be a good album rather than a great one, and now the band had the chance to show that they were not a one trick pony, and produce a follow up album that would showcase the best parts of the individuals within the group. That album was released almost a year later to the day, and was called “The Wild, the Willing and the Innocent”.
I did read somewhere that someone compared this album to being a conundrum, because it sounds like side A and side B are two completely different albums, and that isn’t a bad analogy.
“Chains Chains” opens up the album with the heavily blues slide distorted guitar from Paul Chapman, and then settles smack bang into the atypical Mogg/Way written tracks from UFO that you expect to hear. Pete Way’s bass guitar comes through beautifully on this track and provides the basis for Phil Mogg to beautify the track with his wonderful vocal line. The follow up is an interesting combination of factors that create a fallowed mix. The instrumental and orchestral pieces in “Long Gone” are an interesting touch to the track, but I fear for my own likes, the slower quieter opening passages before breaking out into the faster more powerful places of the song are what drive me to distraction. The drawing on the band’s 1970’s ideology certainly keeps the song relevant to the album and the band, and I’ve always believed it is one of those tracks that gets better as you listen to it more, but I do also have some reservations over it. The title track “The Wild, the Willing and the Innocent” settles into its mid tempo early on and just chugs along throughout with the best UFO vibes you can imagine as a fan. The chorus though feels mutilated by the out of places ‘ooh ooh oh oh’ backing up Phil Mogg’s lead vocal. The riff itself from Chapman is catchy and chunky and his chugging riff also suits the style that UFO like to create. The chorus though, that makes me cringe a little every time I hear it. Despite this small crack, Mogg’s vocals throughout drive this song in his wonderful way, the power of his singing through the verses here is outstanding. The fade out of this track then segues with the closing track on Side A, “It’s Killing me” which actually fades in for the beginning of the track, and you are struck once again of the fact that it is drawing in those influences from 1970’s contemporary rock, almost AOR sounding. Paul Chapman very much more of a contemporary 70’s guitar sound, not as flashy or individualistic as the band’s previous guitarist was. He has brought more of his own sound into this album, and yet it is interesting that this song is a Mogg/Way composition without his contribution to the writing, and the very laid back and ‘laisse fare’ attitude of the sound and tempo of the song brings a different tone and atmosphere to the first side of the album. In all of my reading of reviews and fans opinions on this album, it continues to surprise me that not only is there a large opinion out there that this is one of the best UFO albums if not the best, that this first side of the album is the best that UFO ever released.
Side 2 opens with the quiet and almost acoustic opening that channels the opening of “Doctor Doctor” all those years ago before breaking back into Chapman’s typical guitar riffing mixed with the melodic bass line from Way that is the basis of the song. “Makin’ Moves” indeed does just this, a song that is reminiscent of the style of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal movement of the time without the true push into a metal form, retaining the band’s 1970’s roots instead. Mixing things up the band opens the following track with the keys, again reminiscent of older UFO tracks. “Lonely Hearts” contains the most prominent keyboard sound of any song on the album, something that has always been a part of the charm of the band. Here without a hired keyboardist in the band, the songs have a much more guitar-heavy composition with Chapman taking more prominence. The solid yet simple rhythm of the track reverberates throughout the length of the song, holding its own along its pathway. “Couldn’t Get It Right” bases its form by the rhythmic drum beat from Any Parker and also Pete Way on bass once again, induced along by hand claps and the chanting vocals. The album then concludes with “Profession of Violence”, driven by the keys and orchestration from the beginning, the ballad of the album. UFO have been able to write amazing songs of this type in their history which have a substance that creates their status as legendary tracks. This isn’t a bad song, but it also doesn’t have enough about it to truly create the atmosphere and adulation that would give it a pass mark on this or any other album. Essentially, it just seems a little too… dull… compared to the great movements and writing inspiration that those albums had. And for the most part, that is true in too many places on this album.
My story of the discovery of UFO has been aired before on this podcast and also the podcast that preceded it, and involves in the main the purchase of a compilation album called “The Michael Schenker Anthology” while in my first year of university in 1988, one that culled songs from his career with the Scorpions, with his own band The Michael Schenker Group, and also his work with UFO. That album is one I loved and played to a standstill, and it eventually directed me to the five amazing albums he produced with the band during the 1970’s, ones I came to love just as much.
Chasing down and listening to the albums beyond this was not a priority at the time. It became something I did much later on, well beyond the years that those albums were released. It wasn’t that I wasn’t interested as such, it was just that it was Schenker that I had originally come for, and then he had gone. It eventually became my task to find and listen to the rest of the UFO discography, which of course did result in me tracking down “The Wild, the Willing and the Innocent”. And I think my opinion of the album has been best expressed here already. It doesn’t create much enthusiasm. It hasn’t got the inspiration of their earlier albums. It has some good pieces here that are enjoyable, and the musicianship is not under question, because each of Phil Mogg, Pete Way, Andy Parker and Paul Chapman are excellent once again. But it just hasn’t got the spark about it that their great songs and albums contain. Is this perhaps because of the fact that the band produced it themselves, and that they were in and out of studios too often rather than knuckling down and truly creating what they needed to make this album work? It is possible. And let me also add this - on my review for “No Place to Run” I spoke about whether or not this is a good or average album, in comparing it to the albums being released that year by up and coming hard rock and metal acts it was a tough gig. And that could be seen to be true here once again. 1981 had, for instance, Ozzy Osbourne’s “Diary of a Madman”, Iron Maiden’s “Killers”, Def Leppard’s “High N Dry” and Black Sabbath’s “Mob Rules”, just to mention a small sample size. Again, all four of those albums had a spark and an energy about them that was continuing to push their name forward. This album doesn’t have anything like that.
I have had this album on again for periods over the past few weeks, and I’ll say it again here that I still enjoy listening to this album, despite the many flaws I think it possesses. That comes from a love of the band itself and a tolerance for the differing levels of excellence that they portrayed over their career. But it also reiterated to me that it doesn’t hold a candle to their great albums, despite my mentioning earlier of the great love some of the fandom has for this album. For me it is an average album. Good, if you really want to press me hard on it. The fact that it is so very highly regarded by so many long term UFO fans is a little bewildering to me. But hey, opinions vary greatly, and if mine does here with some of you out there, then I offer you my sympathies. We can’t be in agreement or disagreement all the time.
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