September 2024
Embracing a serene way of life after spending a few decades under the banners of rock ‘n’ roll may feel difficult for many an artist, yet it was par for the course for Neil Carter who seemed quiet, if not shy, back in the days of playing the Reading Festival. He was content to be teaching music at a college and spending time with family – and then his past came calling, first with Gary Moore wanting the veteran to come back to the fold, and then, after Carter effectively retired, UFO needing him to return to action. Given the pandemic which followed that, it could have been Neil’s last hurrah, playing-wise, but Phil Mogg‘s offer to help what build what would become an album titled "Moggs Motel" found him in creative mode once again – found him on fire in performative terms, too – although, when we decided to discuss the matters of last years, Neil Carter planned on doing something rather more fitting his charakter.
– Neil, you were going to be plane-watching during our conversation. Is it a hobby?
I live in the Canary Islands, we actually are a very small island, and I just nip to the airport and watch the planes. I enjoy it. I’ve always enjoyed plane-watching all my life. It’s possibly a bit of a sad thing to do, but I was born just next to the main London airport, Heathrow, so ever since I was a child I’ve been interested in planes. It’s a very busy holiday island, so we get a fair share of them here. It’s just relaxing.
– You also seemed to be relaxing when Phil Mogg told you about his idea of doing an album. When we spoke recently, he said that you had offered him some material. What was that material written for?
Well, actually, it was all brand new, it was nothing that I had before. When I went back to UFO, I didn’t own a guitar, I didn’t have any recording equipment, nothing at all, and I thought, “I’ll get some stuff, some new technology to record on”, and I just recorded lots of bits and pieces. So what Phil got from me was just all new material that I sent him, once I knew he was keen. That was just before the pandemic, in the beginning of 2020. But I had to learn how to operate all this modern technology, as I hadn’t been near a recording studio for years, and it was all new to me.
– So you wrote all this for UFO, not for “Moggs Motel”?
I didn’t quite know what was going to become of everything, but Phil had already been in contact with [bassist and producer] Tony Newton and had already arranged some stuff with him. Then, Tony would send him some things, Phil would send me some of Tony’s ideas, and I expanded on a couple of them. That’s really how it worked.
– I hoped you would say you were working on your solo album.
Oh, no! Like I said, it had been so long since I’d actually owned a guitar – it had been ten years! – so I had to go and buy one when UFO asked me to come and finish the tour, and I had no keyboards. Since then. I did put down lots of ideas, and I still have stuff from years and years ago that I could make into a solo album if I chose to. But it’s just really having the self-discipline to do it. It’s not a big thing with me, self-discipline, I’m afraid.
– You’re rocking hard on the guitar on “Moggs Motel”: that’s not something that I expected from you. How come?
Thank you very much. I have to say that working with Gary Moore tended to dull any idea I had of being a lead guitar player. I did a bit of that with WILD HORSES forty-something years ago, but I never really held myself up as a lead guitarist. How it worked out now was, I would send backing tracks to Phil and just put a guitar solo and say, “This is where the solo should be,” not really imagining that it would end up on the thing itself. (Laughs.) So I haven’t sat around for thirty years being a frustrated lead player, but I did quite enjoy what I did on the album. I’m not one of the twiddlers, I’m not someone that is a fast. Tommy [Gentry], the other guitar player [on the album] is a really fast player and he plays really technically on top of everything else, and that’s never been what I’ve done. I’m not a technical player; I’m solely a “feel” player. And the people I liked as a young wannabe were Mick Ronson, Paul Kossoff and, to a degree, Brian May and Ritchie Blackmore. Eddie Van Halen, that style of player, came after I actually started playing professionally so he didn’t influence me as brilliant as he was, he’s not someone I ever really listened to. And like I said, working alongside Gary for those years, you tend not to bother, not to think it’s a good idea.
– It’s interesting that you mentioned Ronson and Kossoff. Your solos on “Moggs Motel” have the same twang to them, they are quite muscular. But would it be right to say that I hear rockabilly influence there?
Those licks, particularly on “Sunny Side Of Heaven’, were meant to have a bit of rockabilly in them – well, not rockabilly, but rock ‘n’ roll feel, and therefore, you do get these Chuck Berry-esque type of things coming in. It probably suited me quite well, whereas some of the other tracks where Tommy – and Tommy does most of the leads on the album – are very much in need of someone with that technical flair and speed, which I don’t have.
– Would you attribute this sound to bass being your first rock instrument?
I don’t know. I’ve played many different things in my life. I started off as a bass player mainly because I liked the bloke who played in THE SWEET [link id='1389' text='Steve Priest']; – I thought he had a great character – but that was when I was in my early teens. But I loved the lead stuff more than the rhythm; that’s why one of my favorite albums is “Aladdin Sane” by David Bowie. I love the guitar playing Mick Ronson does on that, I absolutely love it! So I suppose you do get a bit of it if you listen to “Tinker Taylor” on “Moggs Motel”: that’s probably the closest I get to reliving my Mick Ronson fantasies. I nearly put a wah-wah in there, but I held back from that. But yeah, it’s very, very earthy and raw, which is what I like. The same with ‘Storyville’.
– Still, you somehow ended up playing a bit of a bass on UFO’s “Making Contact”?
Yes, a little bit of it. I can’t remember exactly the split between Paul [Chapman] and I, but I think I did four tracks. Paul obviously had more technical facility than I did, but I played it on “When It’s Time To Rock” and a couple of other things. It was just really who had the riff and who played it better; therefore, the other one would play the bass. Yeah, I do it quite occasionally when I record demos, but I’ve worked with some incredibly good bass players over the years, so I know where my limits lie, as I do with playing lead guitar.
– Years ago, I asked you whether it was difficult to settle down to normal life after being a rocker, and now I have to ask you the opposite. You settled down, you were teaching, you got married and then you decided to leave your husband at home, abandon your professor position and go back into action. How did it feel?
Yes, yes. (Laughs.) I had said completely said goodbye to that life, I never thought that I would do any of it again. But in 2010, when Gary [Moore] asked me to go and do the rock stuff with him, he caught me when I was having a very bad time at work. So I said, “Yeah, all right!” and I did the tour but, I must admit, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I’d hoped – mainly because I wanted to play more rhythm guitar. I’ve never been comfortable just being stood at the keyboard all night – I like to go and get down, interact with the crowd and all that – but it was good, it was very, very good to do. And I’m sad how that ended for Gary. After that, I said, “Never again. Never, never, never again!” About 2014 I left the school, we moved down to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, and I just retired. It wasn’t until Paul Raymond passed away that I got a call from Phil to see if I would do the rest of the tour with him: that’s how it all came back up again. I had been to see UFO on their final tour with Paul in London, and I thought it was fantastic, it was such great fun, there was such a good feeling about it, so I didn’t have any hesitation in saying yes. I was a little bit worried that I wouldn’t be able to remember everything but, as it was, it all came back to me really easily. And now I find myself doing another album all these years after the last album I did with Gary, in 1989. It’s a very, very strange feeling, but I’m very proud of it. I’m very proud for all of us of “Moggs Motel”: I think Phil sounds incredible, and Tony Newton has been fantastic. He’s a really good catalyst for everything, a very talented man, and I’m really happy to be involved with him.
– But on a personal level, what did your husband say when you decided to go on the road again?
He wasn’t really that bothered about it; actually, I think he was quite excited because we had a few years of not doing very much, although I still carried on music examining. He came out to a couple of shows in Germany, and he was very happy. He’s been living here with me all the way through doing the album with Phil, then I’ve been away a little bit, but I think both of us were quite surprised. So, yeah, it’s been surprising how it’s all turned out in the end, all very positive.
– Now let me quote Pete Way’s autobiography: “Neil was a nice bloke and talented musician, but he didn’t half do my head in at times…” What would you say about this?
I think Pete meant the contentious thing about the saxophone on the UFO albums, and in hindsight, I actually one hundred percent agree with him. But using it on “Lonely Heart” on “The Wild, The Willing And The Innocent” was sort of an idea that was floated around, and I wasn’t actually a sax player. I didn’t even own a saxophone – I’d not played it since I’d been with Gilbert O’Sullivan – I played the clarinet. I agree with Pete about saxophones: it didn’t come out quite how I wanted to because I didn’t really understand the instrument, to be honest. I do now, but I didn’t back then. So I think Pete referring to me being a pain in the neck was mainly because he didn’t like the direction that “Mechanix” took, and there are a few things on it that are a little bit dubious. But I was only part of the band – it wasn’t my band! You do what you do at the time, and I was just doing what felt right. The producer [Gary Lyons] was a bit of a live wire – he was a little bit dominant, domineering, in some respects, and Pete was a bit frustrated by it, and I can sort of see his point. So it wasn’t all down to me. Having said that, the heaviest things on the album – “Dreaming” and “We Belong To The Night” and “The Writer” – were all riffs that I wrote; they’re not sort of pop, which was the direction that Pete thought it was all going.
– What was your brief when you joined UFO: to play primarily guitar and a bit of keyboards or primarily keyboards and a bit of guitar?
Probably, fifty-fifty, but I ended up playing more guitar out of choice because I prefer the heavier sound and I’ve got to be very truthful when playing live. I don’t really enjoy playing the keyboards: I don’t mind doing a few things, but I get most of a kick out of playing rhythm guitar. Also, Paul Raymond was probably more of a keyboard player and I’m more of a guitarist. Listening to UFO at that time live doesn’t really correlate with what we sounded like on “Mechanix” – live, it was a lot rougher, and we didn’t manage to capture it very well – but “Making Contact” is a heavier album, though the die-hard fans might disagree. In 2019 the ratio between guitar and keyboards was perfect – I was doing some bits to color it and then playing a lot of guitar, and that suits me more than anything. And I think “Moggs Motel” strikes a good balance of that as well: it’s a heavy and it’s got some keyboards – a little bit of it, not tons – but they sound natural. I don’t like synthesized keyboards these days, so we’ve got real authentic sounding strings there.
– Who suggested the arrangements for “Moggs Motel”? I assume the arrangements per se were done by the player, but was it Tony’s decisions as a producer as to what should be added where?
Tony is quite capable on the keyboard and on the guitar, but the tracks that I wrote or co-wrote tended to have the keyboards that I envisaged on them, and I added some organ to a couple of the songs – which, again, is more natural sounding than synthesizers. The only one that’s got something slightly synthesized in it that I co-wrote was the final track, “Storyville”: I wanted a sort of choir sound for it and a sort of stringy, but not quite an authentic stringy sound. I’m sure if I was actually in the studio and did some of these things, I could have drawn on more organic things or we could have used the proper strings, but I’m quite happy with the sound, particularly on things like “The Princess Bride” and “Harry’s Place” that was, believe it or not, all synth, apart from the flute and the bass. “Shane” has got some edgy ‘cellos on it which are cool.
– “Harry’s Place” is a great mood-setter, a great intro to “The Wrong House” that follows it.
I read a couple of comments on Facebook – I shouldn’t read them, but I did – that said, “Oh, I don’t like that! It’s a filler track!” But in fact, it was meant to be a pastiche of the things Lalo Schifrin did for [movies] “Bullitt” and “Dirty Harry” – and it is an intro. On the album, it segues from one thing to the other, but because Tony and Phil wrote the next song and I didn’t, we had to separate them. It was just to set up “The Wrong House” – and I think it works. I’m really pleased with it. I love it. I like the flute and I like the little “Mission Impossible” nudge. It’s meant to be humorously ironic, and that’s what I hope it comes across as.
– Did Phil ever actually outlined his cinematic, creepy, film-noir concept to you?
Yeah, we talked about it a lot. Phil is a very, very good at floating ideas – it’s like he gives me the match, and I light the fire. I can then be let loose on an idea. That’s how it was with “Harry’s Place”: he sent me the “Bullitt” soundtrack and said, “Could you do anything like that?” I went, “Hang on!” We discussed that things like “The Princess Bride” were intended to sound quite filmic, quite cinematic, and I wanted a huge sound for that to make that menacing. And then, you’ve got other things that contrast with it quite well: “Apple Pie” which isn’t like that at all, and “Sunny Side Of Heaven” which is something else. But at no point was there any plan, really; it’s just what came out, what we enjoyed and what we hoped everyone else would enjoy. This was new and very fresh, and very enjoyable to do. Totally, totally enjoyable to do!
– As I understand, there’s a very little chance that this album will be taken to the stage for the crowds like you had at the Reading Festival in 1980, your first big show with UFO. It was your first gig that large, right?
I suppose so. I had done it the year before with my other band, WILD HORSES, but we played, like, fifteenth on the bill. The main thing about it for me was remembering everything as I had to learn a whole set of material in two weeks and to get used to playing with new people. I had to learn to work the keyboards too, as I’d never played a Hammond organ before, and I’d never played a Minimoog and didn’t know how to work that blimming thing. But it did work fine, as it was just really having to do the mechanics of it, the stagecraft of it, rather than going out and playing in front of that amount of people, because I love and always have done playing in front of large crowds. It’s great, I thoroughly enjoy it, it isn’t intimidating. What is intimidating is trying to do everything right: the crowd maybe wouldn’t always realize unless you fell over, unless it went radically wrong.
– And it did go wrong after “Making Contact” when UFO broke up. Still, you Paul Chapman and Andy Parker worked on something together once it happened. So is there any unreleased material?
Yes and no. It was a bit awkward because Andy lived in America, his wife and child were there, and he didn’t really want to be over in England much longer. We got together in this funny little place in the middle of the country and recorded five tracks, but when it came to it, I’d already got an offer to go and tour with Gary Moore, and I didn’t know what was going to happen with those tracks. It was a difficult time, and we all needed to work, because none of us had any money. I just had to take a job, and the job was going with Gary, which then turned into a very long association. Strangely enough, those tracks are on YouTube now. One of them became “Murder In The Skies” on Gary’s album [1984’s “Victims Of The Future”], and another became a thing called “So Long” which went to WAYSTED, and there’s a couple of things that didn’t go anywhere. I used bits of my ideas, and we just split it all between Paul and I. We just said, “Look, that was you. If you want to use it, use it!” (Laughs.) So yes, they do exist.
– But did you plan a studio album or a new band with Paul and Andy?
I think we wanted to see how we got on with writing songs and demoing them with the idea to go forward to possibly make a band. But we needed a vocalist. I mean, I did the singing on the demos, but I’ve never been keen on my voice, so I did say to them that we should get a singer and we could do it. But the way things panned out was that we went our separate ways – naturally because we had other things going: Paul went to WAYSTED and then so did Andy.
– And you went with Gary Moore and wrote a couple of very memorable thing with him. Do you remember how “Empty Rooms” came about?
I had a couple of ideas, when we were doing “Making Contact” one evening in the studio, and I slung them down on a 24-track, but they weren’t intended for UFO, and I kept it. Then, when I went to Gary, he said, “What have you got?” And I said, “Well, I’ve got this one,” and gave it to him. He took it away and created “Empty Rooms” on what I’d done, made it into the song it became. I was going through a very bad breakup at the time, and Gary drew inspiration from my misery.
– While we’re talking about misery… One of his most famous tunes is “The Loner” that was written by another keyboard player, Max Middleton. Was it you who created that great soundscape for Gary?
Actually, no, it wasn’t me. Sadly not. Gary used a session player who had a Fairlight [synthesizer], and a lot of the sounds on… “The Loner,” is on the “Wild Frontier” album, isn’t it? So, yeah, a lot of those very, very expensive sounds came from this guy, I think it was Andy Richards. He worked with PET SHOP BOYS and lots of other people. I don’t think I played a note on “The Loner”! Obviously I did when we played it live, but it not in the studio. I cannot hold any sort of credit for that.
– But you can claim credit for “Blood Of Emeralds”!
I can, yes. That’s probably the only totally fifty-fifty song that Gary and I have. It was a complete idea that I had, a complete song with the beginning, the middle and the end, with a little drum thing and the big keyboard thing at the beginning, and the guitar melody. I had in my mind the song “Black Rose” by THIN LIZZY, an epic thing, but I didn’t want it to be a copy of that. Then Gary did add some bits and pieces and wrote the lyrics for it.
– And of course, that Celtic feel came from him.
“Wild Frontier” was the first album that had the native Celtic instruments on it, and “After The War” developed those ideas. But then Gary was quite interested in Billy Idol, SISTERS OF MERCY and other modern bands – I don’t even know some of those – so we had the Celtic stuff with a couple of them, but I think that’s more of a rock album, while “Frontier” is the quintessential Celtic-flair, Celtic-feel one. They both go together, though.
– But there was nothing Celtic about WILD HORSES. I mean, there were two Scottish guys, Brian Robertson and Jimmy Bain.
Oh, yeah. But that’s something completely different. We never had any Scottish themes going through the band at all. They were just a rock ‘n’ roll band, and that’s what they wanted to be. Unfortunately, again, like a lot of bands, how it sounded live didn’t transport into the studio, which is a great shame because they were really quite a wild-sounding band, but it sounded very polite on record. And going back to “Moggs Motel” again, I’m really glad that it has a bit of a live feel about some of the stuff: it’s not perfect, it’s got a few little bumps in it, and I prefer that myself.
– How did you get along with Jimmy and Brian? As far as I know, they were great characters, rather rambunctious, and you’re quite quiet.
Yes, I think you could put it like that. I was very new and very green, and I was a country boy, so I didn’t really want that excessive lifestyle that some of them had, but I wanted to be in a rock ‘n’ roll band. And although I can’t say I was pure and snow-white in how I lived my life back then, I couldn’t come close to that in WILD HORSES. But when I got to UFO, it was twice as much and twice as bad. It became a little bit difficult, living after midnight, so going to Gary was very different because Gary was very, very clean, he didn’t touch drugs or anything like that.
– A couple of years ago, there was an attempt of the WILD HORSES reunion. Where do we stand with that?
That was [drummer] Clive Edwards trying to do that in 2014 or 2015, but I think Jimmy had passed away by that point. Anyway, Clive was going to get [guitarist] Laurence Archer and a couple of other people and try and get Brian to do a couple of festivals and that sort of thing. Only these things are great in theory, but the practicalities of getting everyone together and rehearsing just for one gig, it’s hardly worth it – which is probably why doing gigs with “Moggs Motel” is going to be a little bit more difficult. There’s a lot of effort involved, so I don’t think that reunion was ever going to be a real possibility, which is a shame. And it would only be myself and Clive, because I’m not sure how much Brian can do.
– So you didn’t plan an album?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! I wouldn’t probably want to do that. No, no, not at all.
– Earlier you mention Brian May and Ritchie Blackmore as your lesser influences. So how do you remember opening for RAINBOW and QUEEN?
Those QUEEN shows that we did were unbelievable, because I was such a fan, and it was amazing feeling. And they were big crowds, up to ninety-odd thousand, so I felt that it couldn’t get much better than that for me at the time. I was quite keen on RAINBOW too, but there were always problems when we toured with them, there was always antagonism between UFO and RAINBOW – I don’t know why, it must have gone back a little bit of time – and there were fights. I used to know people in RAINBOW, Don Airey and Roger Glover, very well, but Blackmore kept to himself, and I don’t think I’ve ever met him. We did loads of shows with them, headlining shows in America particularly, but I never met him.
– Did you listen to Jimmy Bain in RAINBOW?
I did. I went to see them at “The Rainbow” in London, the line-up that recorded “Rainbow Rising” – with Jimmy and Cozy Powell – as I was always a great fan, I really did love RAINBOW. And I liked THIN LIZZY as well, so joining with Jimmy and Brian was quite an incredible thing for me.
– And now for something completely different: did you really used to breed cats?
Yes, I did breed cats. And I was a cat show judge for thirty-something years, until I came to live in Lanzarote. Then, unfortunately, I had to stop because I don’t go back to England anymore. That was a passion of mine, and the guys in UFO used to take the serious mick out of me for that.
