Time & Perspective Quote by Michael Schenker

It lands like a backstage anecdote until you realize it is a clean little parable about power, boundaries, and the ugly romance of rock mythology. Schenker sketches “Phil” as someone for whom fighting isn’t an exception but a lifestyle: “all the time” isn’t just description, it’s a warning label. In that world, conflict becomes a form of communication, even a twisted proof of belonging.

The key move is the ultimatum: “if he ever hit me then I would leave the band.” That’s not melodrama; it’s Schenker trying to impose a rule in a culture that often treats rules as weakness. Then comes the chilling line: “He wanted to find out if I was telling him the truth.” Violence here isn’t just loss of control, it’s a test, a way to assert dominance and measure how far the other person can be pushed. The subtext is that bands don’t only break up over music. They break up over whether basic respect is negotiable.

Schenker’s blunt sequencing - he hit me so I left - reads almost like a contract being executed. No bargaining, no legend-building, no “we worked it out.” That matters. Rock history is crowded with stories where endurance gets reframed as authenticity. Schenker refuses that framing; he draws a straight line from abuse to consequence. “That is how UFO split up” turns a messy interpersonal rupture into a simple causality, which is its own kind of narrative control: he’s not inviting debate about egos or creative differences. He’s naming the moment the band stopped being a band and became a liability.