LIVE! REVIEWS
UFO
London Kentish Town O2 Forum
An emotional farewell for the veteran rockers (well, the audience at least).
So this is almost it. Not quite the last ever UFO show, but certainly the last show in the city that spawned them. The joy and sadness of finality hangs heavy in the air as the end of the road approaches. The tour isn’t called Last Orders for nothing.
In the pub around the corner before the show, the men and women who have followed them down the decades are comparing notes on past gigs and half-remembered glories. Inside the venue, pints are being hoisted high in celebratory farewell long before the house lights go down. It’s going to be an emotional night for everyone here. Well, everyone except one person.
“Nah,” says Phil Mogg casually. “I’ll miss the banter, the chat, all that. I’ve always viewed it as a bit of a laugh. But am I going to miss it? Not really.”
We’re sitting in one of the Forum’s tiny dressing rooms 90 minutes before his band are due on stage. The singer is the dapperest 71-year-old you’ll meet: charcoal peacoat and co-ordinated trilby, crisp shirt, head shaved to the bone. The cropped vests and striped spandex strides and were bundled away a long time ago, stuffed to the back of a metaphorical wardrobe along with any sense of nostalgia towards the last fifty years. Even with the prospect of retirement hoving into view, Mogg is refreshingly unsentimental about stepping away from the band he co-founded 51 years ago, in the atomic heat of hard rock and heavy metal’s Big Bang.
“Hang on,” he interrupts. “Who said anything about retiring?”
Well, you did.
“No I didn’t,” he says. “I don’t know where that has come from. I did one interview and I said: ‘I’m stepping down from UFO.’ That’s all I’ve ever said. Nothing about retirement. Fucking hell. Retiring? What would I do? Get an allotment? Join a knitting circle? Nah, never said that at all.”
Whatever the definition, Mogg’s view of the imminent demise of UFO is
