''Force It'' is the fourth studio album by the British rock band

UFO An unidentified flying object (UFO), more recently renamed by US officials as a UAP (unidentified aerial phenomenon), is any perceived aerial phenomenon that cannot be immediately identified or explained. On investigation, most UFOs are id ...

, released in 1975. It was their first album to chart in the United States. The album was produced by

Ten Years After Ten Years After are a British rock group, most popular in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Between 1968 and 1973, the band had eight consecutive Top 40 albums on the UK Albums Chart. In addition, they had twelve albums enter the US ''Billboar ...

bass player

Leo Lyons Leo David William Lyons (born 30 November 1943) is an English musician, who was most notably the bassist of the blues rock band Ten Years After. Biography Leo Lyons was born in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire in November 1943 and became a professi ...

. Another Ten Years After member,

Chick Churchill Michael George "Chick" Churchill (born 2 January 1946) is an English keyboard player of the late 1960s to 1970s blues rock band Ten Years After. Career Churchill began playing the piano at the age of six and studied classical music until he wa ...

, played

Fender Rhodes The Rhodes piano (also known as the Fender Rhodes piano) is an electric piano invented by Harold Rhodes, which became popular in the 1970s. Like a conventional piano, the Rhodes generates sound with keys and hammers, but instead of strings, th ...

electric piano An electric piano is a musical instrument which produces sounds when a performer presses the keys of a piano-style musical keyboard. Pressing keys causes mechanical hammers to strike metal strings, metal reeds or wire tines, leading to vibrations ...

keyboard, the first use of that instrument on a UFO record. The CD reissue was

remaster Remaster refers to changing the quality of the sound or of the image, or both, of previously created recordings, either audiophonic, cinematic, or videographic. The terms digital remastering and digitally remastered are also used. Mastering A ...

ed at Sound Recording Technology in Cambridge in 1994.

Album cover

The somewhat controversial original album cover was designed by

Hipgnosis Hipgnosis were an English art design group based in London, that specialised in creating album cover artwork for rock musicians and bands. Their commissions included work for Pink Floyd, T. Rex, the Pretty Things, Black Sabbath, UFO, 10cc, Ba ...

, as were almost all other UFO album covers of the 1970s. The nudity on the cover verged on breaching decency standards and the genders of the couple in the bathtub were not known for several years. The models were later revealed to be

Genesis P-Orridge Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (born Neil Andrew Megson; 22 February 1950 – 14 March 2020) was a singer-songwriter, musician, poet, performance artist, visual artist, and occultist who rose to notoriety as the founder of the COUM Transmissions arti ...

and

Cosey Fanni Tutti Cosey Fanni Tutti (born Christine Carol Newby; 4 November 1951) is an English performance artist, musician and writer, best known for her time in the avant-garde groups Throbbing Gristle and Chris & Cosey. Tutti first performed under the name ...

, both later of the influential

industrial Industrial may refer to: Industry * Industrial archaeology, the study of the history of the industry * Industrial engineering, engineering dealing with the optimization of complex industrial processes or systems * Industrial city, a city dominate ...

band

Throbbing Gristle Throbbing Gristle were an English music and visual arts group formed in 1975 in Kingston upon Hull by Genesis P-Orridge, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Peter Christopherson, and Chris Carter (British musician), Chris Carter. They are widely regarded as pi ...

. The artwork was softened for the initial US release, making the couple in the bathtub transparent. The cover is a pun – there are multiple taps (

British English British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Lexico, Oxford Dictionaries, "English language, English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in ...

) or "faucets" (

US English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States and in most circumstances i ...

) in the picture, which is a play on the album's title.

Critical reception

Reviewing the LP in '' Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies'' (1981),

Robert Christgau Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most well-known and influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and ...

wrote: "Heavy metal that's not hard to take? What? Well, the whole first side moves to icsmartly you could almost mistake it for rock and roll." Eduardo Rivadavia, reviewer for AllMusic, wrote: "One of the band's best albums, Force It will not disappoint lovers of '70s English hard rock."

Track listing

Personnel

;UFO *

Phil Mogg Phillip John Mogg (born 15 April 1948, Wood Green, London) is the lead singer for the English rock band UFO, which he formed with longtime friends Pete Way and Andy Parker.Buckley, Peter (1999) ''The Rough Guide to Rock'', Rough Guides, , p. ...

–

vocals Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without ...

* Andy Parker –

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...

Pete Way Peter Frederick Way (7 August 1950 – 14 August 2020) was an English hard rock and heavy metal bassist. He was bassist for the rock band UFO from 1968 to 1982; Way rejoined the band briefly in 1988–1989, and full-time from 1991 to 2008. He ...

– bass *

Michael Schenker Michael Schenker (born 10 January 1955) is a German guitarist. He played in the rock band UFO and leads the Michael Schenker Group. He was an early member of the hard rock band Scorpions, a band co-founded by his elder brother Rudolf Schenker. ...

–

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

;Additional musician *

–

keyboards Keyboard may refer to: Text input * Keyboard, part of a typewriter * Computer keyboard ** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping ** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware Music * Musi ...

;Production *

– producer *Mike Bobak, Mike Thompson –

engineers Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the limit ...

–

cover art Cover art is a type of artwork presented as an illustration or photograph on the outside of a published product such as a book (often on a dust jacket), magazine, newspaper ( tabloid), comic book, video game (box art), music album (album art), ...

Charts

References

{{Authority control UFO (band) albums 1975 albums Albums with cover art by Hipgnosis Albums produced by Leo Lyons Chrysalis Records albums Albums recorded at Morgan Sound Studios