That is a good point, Herr Carlston. Had UFO more to offer than ze Scörps and Def Leppard? On their good albums yes, there is only one Phil Mogg and one Michael Schenker. But what they lacked as a working unit was any form of consistency and focus. And those two traits are what made the Scorpions and Def Leppard so enormously successful. None of their members really had star or "deep artist" quality (I'm talking about the Scorpions sans Uli Roth, his new CD with reworked Scorps tracks is something to marvel at),
but they were good collectively and VERY DETERMINED outfits. Triumph of the will, so to say. When the Scorpions gave interviews in Germany around 1978 how they wanted to conquer the US and fill arenas there, people laughed at them and said: "Klaus Meine can't even sing proper English, yet wants to beat Americans at their own game." Michael Schenker once remarked "I'm all about the music, my brother Rudolf is about keeping a band together as a living breathing entity, it is the secret of the enduring success of the Scorpions". Finally, Joe Elliott, always a perceptive man, once self-realized: "Not one member of Def Leppard is really anything special and we all know that, but we just work extremely well together."
I only recently bought the last three UFO albums with Vinnie Moore to hear what they do now. Only heard the most recent/new one and was surprised how earthy they sound with him. Not Schenker, but way better than Paul "Tonka" Chapman who for his life could never play a meaningful solo.
So maybe there is something to the old saying "Success is 10% talent and 90% hard work." Phil Mogg obviously wasn't the type of caring mother hen to UFO that Rudolf S. and Joe E. were to their respective bands.