{"id":18735,"date":"2012-02-28T06:12:42","date_gmt":"2012-02-28T11:12:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hardrockhaven.net\/online\/?p=18735"},"modified":"2013-02-05T17:53:34","modified_gmt":"2013-02-05T22:53:34","slug":"andy-parker-of-ufo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hardrockhaven.net\/online\/2012\/andy-parker-of-ufo\/","title":{"rendered":"Andy Parker of UFO"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Steve Patrick<\/span>
\nStaff Writer —<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Andy Parker of UFO is No Bone Rider<\/h3>\n

Eddie Trunk can end his hunger strike. British rock legends UFO have just released their most recent album Seven Deadly<\/em>. On the record, UFO demonstrates that they still possess the heaviness and quality songwriting that has cemented their reputation as the musician\u2019s rock band. <\/p>\n

The well-oiled rock machine that is UFO has had drummer Andy Parker manning the engine room for over forty years now. Mr. Parker took some time to speak with Hardrock Haven about the new album, the band\u2019s relationship with estranged bassist Pete Way, and playing drums in a swimming pool.<\/p>\n

\"\"HRH: Well, let\u2019s just jump right into it. How did the band want to follow-up 2009\u2019s The Visitor?<\/p>\n

Andy Parker: That\u2019s kind of a tough one, Steve. It\u2019s pretty much as always, you know. We weren\u2019t absolutely sure we\u2019d get another album because SPV had gone through some changes, but once they decided they were going to keep going and that they wanted us to do another album, then it\u2019s just basically pitching the ideas and getting on with it.<\/p>\n

HRH: Can you describe how the UFO of today typically writes a new album?<\/p>\n

AP: Well, normally it would be Vinnie Moore (guitar) and myself\u2026and Pete (Way) when he was in the band, obviously we don\u2019t have a full time bass player right now, so the writing process is pretty much left down to the rest of us. This time around I didn\u2019t really do much. I had kind of a busy year. My kid was getting married and stuff, so…yeah, we were on the road a lot, so it was kind of just when it came time to do the album the guys pitched in their ideas. <\/p>\n

Traditionally what happens is we pitch in the ideas and Phil (Mogg, vocals) listens to them, decides which ones he can kind of feed off of, and we come down to a short list. Then we go into the studio and record those as backing tracks and he works on his vocals from there. I mean, quite often he\u2019ll give us kind of a lyric idea or a hookline or a melody\u2026some kind of phrasing ideas, but we don\u2019t normally hear the finished product until it is actually finished. <\/p>\n

I did the drums\u2026the drums and bass were done in Germany at Area 51 with Tommy Newton (producer). Phil worked there too\u2026Phil did his vocals. He tends to work out of his home studio in Delaware. He feels more comfortable there\u2026he\u2019s got all his stuff there. Paul (Raymond, keyboards\/guitar) kind of worked between London at a studio he likes in London and Area 51. It\u2019s not that far for him\u2026from London to Hanover so it\u2019s a pretty close commute. I think the only reason he doesn\u2019t do everything in Hanover is he likes to use a grand piano and a B3, so Tommy doesn\u2019t have those there\u2026so Paul found a studio in London that did.<\/p>\n

HRH: Who performed the bass parts on Seven Deadly?<\/p>\n

AP: By this time, if you remember last time around it was a German bass player, Peter Pichl, that we used. This time around, it\u2019s another German bass player named Lars Lehmann and he was a buddy of Vinnie\u2019s. Vinnie had used him in some solo stuff and suggested that he was a great bass player, which he is\u2026and a great guy. He was available and he was in Hanover, so that made things easier because at least he was around when I put the drum tracks down which was nice. We got to do the bass and drums together. <\/p>\n

HRH: That kind of leads into the next question, how is Pete doing?<\/p>\n

AP: Eh, well I mean I haven\u2019t seen him probably in little over a year. Last time I saw him he was pretty much the same, as usual. That\u2019s a tough one. I mean, you know, the story with Pete is he\u2019s basically on hiatus from the band because of his lifestyle choices. It was really starting to affect his performance and the band in general, although it really fell on Phil\u2019s shoulders to make the decision…that he kinda needed to sit out and pull himself together. <\/p>\n

Poor old Pete. He started off with a good attitude, but he kind of fell by the wayside, so I don\u2019t see him returning any time soon. I mean, obviously we\u2019re all hoping that he will be back and that he will sort himself out, but the last time I saw him he was still pretty much in the state that he had been for a while. Now, funny enough, he\u2019s actually been doing some stuff with Michael (Schenker) which I can understand, from a fan\u2019s point of view, is pretty confusing, you know? Why is he out there with Michael and not with us? <\/p>\n

It\u2019s just a matter of degrees with Pete. I think the deal was with Michael is that Michael had him along, but he also had another bass player along to cover the playing duties\u2026which works fine for Michael, but we won\u2019t do that. If he\u2019s going to be in the band then he has to step and play too, so\u2026like I said, we love him to death. We really hope that he\u2019s going to be back, but at this point in time I don\u2019t see it happening in the near future.<\/p>\n

HRH: So, I was curious, early on there was a press release stating that the album would be titled Last of the Bone Riders\u2026what prompted the change from that original title?<\/p>\n

AP: *laughs* Well, oh boy\u2026this all started early last year and Phil had come up with concept, he\u2019d come up with this title. It was either going to be Bone Riders or Last of the Bone Riders, as you quite rightly pointed out. So, he didn\u2019t get very good feedback from us about it. To be terribly blunt with it, people were saying it sounded like some sort of gay porno movie, right? *laughs* So, he started taking an opinion poll about it and he was kind of getting mixed reviews from it. His whole concept was more of a biker kind of thing. So, anyway, I can\u2019t remember exactly where it was, but we were in a bar of a hotel somewhere, just relaxing and this whole thing came up because we were going over songs, you know, just coming up with a short list of songs for the album and this question of the title came up again. So, he asks the bartender. He goes, \u201cAlright, I\u2019ll ask the bartender. They\u2019re always good to get feedback off of.\u201d So he asks this bartender, \u201cLook, if I said to you a title Last of the Bone Riders, what would you think?\u201d The guy looks right at Phil and says, \u201cSounds like a gay porno to me.\u201d *laughs* So Phil said, \u201cRight, I\u2019m not going to use that title and I\u2019ll come up with something else.\u201d Fair enough.<\/p>\n

Well maybe it was a few weeks later we were playing in St. Charles, Illinois. We had a gig there and we were staying just about two blocks from the gig in a nice hotel. It was a beautiful evening. Well as we\u2019re walking down to the show and as we\u2019re walking down there there\u2019s this group of people coming the other way and this guy had a t-shirt that showed a skeleton riding a motorcycle on it and it said \u201cBone Riders\u201d on it! So Phil\u2019s going, \u201cYes! See, I told you it\u2019s a bike thing! It\u2019s a bike thing!\u201d and he traded the guy his shirt right there for a UFO shirt and he\u2019s bouncing around ecstatic, so then Bone Riders came back in on the list. <\/p>\n

But, I think what happened was that eventually SPV announced ahead of time that the album was going to be called Last of the Bone Riders and it got some pretty negative feedback on the website. So, once again he changed it, but then he came up with Seven Deadly which was out of left field for us obviously because we were all expecting it to be the Bone Riders, but I think it worked out for the better. *laughs*<\/p>\n

HRH: Here\u2019s a song-specific question for you. In the song \u201cWonderland\u201d off of Seven Deadly, what is \u201cthe monkey\u201d that Phil keeps referring to?<\/p>\n

AP: I think \u201cthe monkey\u201d is whatever you want it to be. I mean, we\u2019ve all got our own theories about it. I think it would spoil it for me to come up with mine. I have to be totally honest with you, I don\u2019t know what Phil was actually referring to with \u201cthe monkey.\u201d He\u2019s got a thing about monkeys. I mean, it\u2019s come up with The Monkey Puzzle, \u201cHard Being Me\u201d has got a monkey in it, and there\u2019s even a song on You Are Here that mentions monkeys. So, I guess he just likes monkeys, but I guess it\u2019s whatever you want. I always see it as a \u201cmonkey on your back\u201d kind of thing, but it can be whatever you want.<\/p>\n

HRH: Seven Deadly is a really hard-hitting album right from the start\u2026<\/p>\n

AP: Yeah! More cowbell! *laughs* I\u2019m a lot happier with the drum sound on this album than I have been maybe with the last couple. That\u2019s fairly well known amongst the band. I mean, I wasn\u2019t real happy with the drum sound on the last couple of albums. You know, not for any particular reason, it just sounded to me to be a bit lackluster. <\/p>\n

Now the interesting thing is, although I did this with Tommy and it\u2019s still Area 51, it\u2019s actually a new studio. He moved right before we did this album. He moved to a new building and I actually recorded the drums in a swimming pool, believe it or not, obviously minus the water. It\u2019s just a building that he found that had an indoor swimming pool which just turned out to be a great room for drums, so they put a floor in the bottom of it and the drums actually sat down in the pool. <\/p>\n

It just gave them a really good sound. I think he\u2019s really on a winner with this. It\u2019s the best drum sound I\u2019ve heard him come up with in a long time. So yeah, I think it\u2019s a lot heavier. I think the material on the album is a bit heavier. It\u2019s still got that blues feel that was in the band when I came back in 2005 and did Monkey Puzzle, they moved into that bluesy vein, which is fine by me because that\u2019s kind of where the band started. It\u2019s kind of like full circle and it\u2019s very comfortable for me. This one\u2019s got a little bit more edge to it I think which\u2019ll please a lot of the fans.<\/p>\n

HRH: Well Andy, I want to thank you so much for sharing your time with us today. It\u2019s been a pleasure talking with you.<\/p>\n

AP: Thank you so much and if we ever come your way come out and see us. Come say hi and we\u2019ll grab a beer.<\/p>\n

For more information on UFO and Andy, please visit www.ufo-music.info<\/a> or www.mr-parker-rocks.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Steve Patrick Staff Writer — Andy Parker of UFO is No Bone Rider Eddie Trunk can end his hunger strike. British rock legends UFO have just released their most recent album Seven Deadly. On […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6817],"tags":[203,3074,3073,4316,1522],"class_list":{"0":"post-18735","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-arcint2012","7":"tag-interview","8":"tag-pete-way","9":"tag-phil-mogg","10":"tag-seven-deadly","11":"tag-ufo"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hardrockhaven.net\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hardrockhaven.net\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hardrockhaven.net\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hardrockhaven.net\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hardrockhaven.net\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hardrockhaven.net\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18735\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hardrockhaven.net\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hardrockhaven.net\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hardrockhaven.net\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}