By placing Michael Schenker front and centre on the front cover, the only member of the band wearing his hair long and with features free of ball bearings, sleeve designers Hipgnosis highlighted the guitarist but also made him look troubled and isolated. How apt. Obsession, UFO's seventh studio album and their fifth with Schenker, was produced superbly by Ron Nevison, as was its startling predecessor Lights Out.
Released in 1978, Obsession cemented UFO in the American market, but its tour (recordings from some of the shows were immortalised on the double live album Strangers In The Night) proved too much for Schenker's mental state. Plagued by stagefright, a quest for perfection and his bandmates' banter, he quit. But what a swansong Obsession was for him.
