Walk on Water

Walk on Water, UFO's fourteenth album, appeared first in Japan, where Zero Corporation released it on 15 April 1995. In the autumn of 1993 guitarist Michael Schenker and Paul Raymond, on keyboards and guitar, had rejoined Phil Mogg and Pete Way, and founding drummer Andy Parker played on the record as well, so this was the first studio album in about fifteen years by the five men of the Strangers in the Night era. Looking back in 2021, Schenker said that Mogg had come to Los Angeles in 1993 to ask him to help put the band back on its feet, and he described the album as one that carried straight on from Strangers in the Night. Ron Nevison produced, recorded and mixed it, using Rumbo Recorders for the recording and the mix, and Doug Sax mastered it at The Mastering Lab. Mogg and Schenker wrote most of the songs together, and the album closes with new recordings of two of the band's seventies classics, titled "Doctor, Doctor '95" and "Lights Out '95". The first Japanese pressing was a limited edition with a UFO logo sticker and a guitar pick bearing Schenker's autograph, and its eleventh track, "Message for Japan", is made up of spoken greetings from each member of the band. Schenker left again partway through the tour that followed and went back to his own group, MSG. In Europe the album was released by Eagle Records in 1997 with three bonus tracks: "Fortune Town" from the album Mogg and Way made together as a duo, "I Will Be There" by the Michael Schenker Group and "Public Enemy #1" by the Paul Raymond Project. That edition entered the UK Official Rock & Metal Albums Chart on 8 November 1997 and peaked at No. 16 during a nine-week run. CMC International released a ten-track edition in the United States in 1998.