Obsession

Obsession, UFO's seventh studio album, came out on Chrysalis in June 1978, numbered CDL 1182 in Britain and CHR 1182 in the United States, and Music Week reported the two releases as simultaneous. Ron Nevison, who had produced Lights Out, was back as producer, and for the first time the band recorded in America, in Los Angeles. The line-up was Phil Mogg on vocals, Michael Schenker on guitar, Paul Raymond on keyboards and guitar, Pete Way on bass and Andy Parker on drums, with Mike Clink engineering. Speaking to Record Mirror that June, Mogg said the sessions began in February and stretched to nearly three months, partly because Nevison had to leave to finish an album for Dave Mason. The backing tracks were cut in an old 1930s house that had stood empty for years, and the rest was done in the sorting room of a vacant post office on a small industrial estate in Beverly Hills, the mobile studio letting the band record wherever they chose. Mogg rated the result a step ahead of anything they had made before, with a livelier, more concise sound. The sleeve credits C.P. McGregors in Los Angeles and the West 3rd Carrier Station in Beverly Hills, recorded with the Record Plant mobile; strings colour "Lookin' Out for No. 1", and a recorder is heard on "Arbory Hill". The album entered the British chart in the week of 15 July 1978 and peaked at 26, while in America it joined the Billboard 200 on 29 July and climbed to 41 in September; "Only You Can Rock Me" reached 50 on the UK singles chart, and the band toured Britain around the release. Schenker walked out for good in November 1978, and the live album Strangers in the Night, issued the following year, closed the era of the Mogg, Way, Schenker, Parker and Raymond line-up. Obsession remained his last studio album with UFO until he rejoined in the autumn of 1993. A 2008 remaster added three live tracks, and a 2024 deluxe edition paired a new remaster with a freshly mixed concert from the Agora Ballroom in Cleveland.