JASON BONHAM Talks About The New UFO Album

March 1, 2004

UFO drummer Jason Bonham recently spoke to Live 4 Metal about how the group's overall sound has changed as a result of his and guitarist Vinnie Moore's additions to the band's lineup.

"The way the [new] album ['You Are Here'] was produced was a little bit of getting an overall band sound. It wasn't meant to create… We weren't going for, 'Oh, I'm gonna stamp my sound on it and make the drums sound the way I particularly want it.' It's kind of a good sonically sounding album. There are like the snare drum triggers and this, which is not what I would normally do, but then we weren't going to make a Jason Bonham album. What we were trying to make was a good UFO album. I think on this effort definitely, I wasn't trying to put the Bonham stamp on it and get some ambient sounds. 'The Spark That Is Us' has got that kind of, the start of it, ZEPPELIN-ish kind of feel, but that's about as close as we got to that. Phil [Mogg] was very nervous about anything that I came up with or sang or a riff that had a little bit of ZEP in it, and he was like, 'No, no, no, let's not do that.' The press could have gone straight away, 'Jason's in the band, listen to this.' They would have been on it — they would have ripped us apart and say, 'Oh look, just because Jason's in the band now, they're gonna try to do a ZEP sound.' Phil was very good. Without taking the fun out of me, he was being the ZEP police [laughs].

"Vinnie's style and his playing… I'm watching him and hearing him play and shredding when we're playing the old stuff live, like the middle section to 'Rock Bottom'. We're doing all the breakdown stuff and between the keyboards and the guitar, close your eyes and you can be there back on the album and then some. Then occasionally Vinnie can just go off the wall and be Mr. Figure-this-one-out-in-theory. He's not just a shredder, if you know what I mean, from that era of the '80s guitar players. When I first heard, I was like, 'Oh no, it's gonna be dwiddly dwiddly, hammer hammer, and that's it.' He really has some great tastes for playing. On some of the stuff, like on 'Baby Blue', there is a lot of stuff on the album [where] he's got such a great flair and a great talent."

Read Jason Bonham's entire interview with Live 4 Metal at this location.

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