UFO Singer Explains Bassist PETE WAY's Absence From U.S. Tour

UFO vocalist Phil Mogg recently spoke to the UFO fan site Strangers In The Night about bassist Pete Way's inability to obtain a working visa in time for the band's current U.S. tour.

"Since 9/11 there's been this knee-jerk reaction on the part of America, and the process for getting into the country is so long-drawn-out," Mogg explained when asked what went wrong. "We've done tours there for 20 years, but it's only since 9/11 that people have had to attend the U.S. embassy in London for interviews and all that kinda thing. The grilling is unbelievable. It's understandable, but it's unbelievable. You feel like saying, 'No... we're a rock band. We don't do terror...' When my own visa was turned down, I just couldn't believe it. As far as I was concerned, the embassy interview was just a formality. They asked me if I'd ever been arrested over there, and I remembered getting pulled up on a visa incident on the way into America from Canada, but when they checked my fingerprints against the police records it turned out that I'd forgotten about the much more rocknroll crime of 'baring my anus in a public place'. In 1982 I'd mooned in Lubbock, Texas. I'd completely forgotten about that!

"Pete had a load of problems for a while after his wife Joanna died, and one time he was driving through Kentucky and got arrested," Phil continued. "When it all came to court, he pleaded guilty and the authorities confiscated his passport. That was what caused the complication, because with no passport, he was forced to overstay. Pete's had three lawyers working on the case and they immediately appealed against the decision, so there is still a chance it could get overturned. But we just don't know how long that's gonna take. They could overturn it tomorrow, or in a week, or in a month or whenever. When mine was refused a couple of months back, my appeal came through within a week, so as far as the previous set of US dates were concerned, we could probably have gone ahead and done half the tour — but that would have been a risk anyway, cos at the time we had no idea how long the appeal would take. And it's the same for Pete. We can't keep cancelling, so we decided we've gotta go ahead with it.

Asked how the U.S. embassy's decision has affected the rest of the band, Mogg replied, "Of course we're all dispappointed - it knocked us a bit sideways - but we have to go on. We'd just got heated up with the first round of gigs, and obviously we were all very unhappy about it, but we have got to go ahead."

Read Phil Mogg's entire interview with Strangers In The Night at this location.