Songfacts®:

• "Doctor Doctor" is a UFO standard; co-written by lead vocalist Phil Mogg with their new recruit Michael Schenker, it was released as a single in May 1974 backed by "On With The Action" and "Try Me." The album version runs to 4 minutes 10 seconds, and it also appeared on the live double Strangers In The Night.
  
  She walked up to me
  And really stole my heart
  And then she started
  To take my body apart
  
  What sort of woman does that to a man? Perhaps the same "White Lady" a certain John Lees wrote about in "Hymn." As Phil Mogg told Michael Hann of the Guardian in March 2012: "We must have done a lot for Peru!" >>>

  Suggestion credit:
  Alexander Baron - London, England
• This didn't chart when it was first released, but it went to #35 UK in 1979 after a live version was released as a single.
• Iron Maiden uses "Doctor Doctor" as its entrance music at all their concerts.
  
  "Everybody knows we play 'Doctor Doctor' before we go on stage," lead singer Bruce Dickinson explained in his February 11, 2022 spoken-word show at The Vic Theatre in Chicago. "So, before the intro tape, there's five minutes of 'Doctor Doctor.' It's brilliant, so people go, 'Oh, quick.' Stop having a piss, drink the last pint, get to your seats. 'Doctor Doctor' is playing."
• Phenomenon was UFO's first album with teenage guitar prodigy Michael Schenker, freshly recruited from Scorpions. For vocalist Phil Mogg, bassist Pete Way and drummer Andy Parker - the North London core who'd been together since 1968 - it felt like a new beginning. Appropriately, it was Schenker who brought in the chugging, now-iconic riff for "Doctor Doctor."
  
  Using an old Watkins Copycat tape echo unit he'd kept from his Scorpions days, he layered harmonies over the melody on both lead and rhythm guitar. Excited by the result, he recorded a rough demo on a handheld cassette recorder and played it for Phil Mogg as they rode up an Underground escalator en route to a meeting at Chrysalis. Mogg approved.
  
  Mogg borrowed Schenker's cassette player on which the guitarist had recorded a very basic prototype of the tune. "I think Michael had been banging on cardboard boxes to give the effect of drumming," Mogg told Classic Rock magazine. "So I stood Michael's cassette player up alongside mine, and slapped down some words into the machine, then we had something to take into the studio."
• She walked up to me and really stole my heart
  And then she started to take my body apart
  
  The song's opening couplet sounds like classic heartbreak. According to Mogg, it wasn't. The lyric was inspired by Way and Parker's unfortunate run-in with nurses and the resulting road-induced urinary infections. Schenker, unaware of the backstory, once proudly played the song for his parents in Germany before later realizing what it was actually about.
• Schenker's demo was so complete that the band changed little in the arrangement. Producer Leo Lyons, the bassist of the blues rock band Ten Years After, rated it one of the strongest cuts on Phenomenon, though the band privately wondered if it was "a bit too poppy."
• Chrysalis chose "Doctor Doctor" as the album's first single in the UK. It failed to chart, a major disappointment at the time. Still, UFO kept it in their live set because audiences responded enthusiastically.
• Five years and four albums later, the song found its moment. By 1979, with the lineup expanded to include Paul Raymond on rhythm guitar and keyboards, "Doctor Doctor" closed Side One of the double live album Strangers in the Night. The live arrangement - introduced by a melodic interplay between Raymond and Schenker - transformed it into an arena-ready anthem.
  
  Released as part of an EP from the live album, it reached #35 on the UK Singles Chart, giving UFO their first Top 40 hit. Schenker credited Strangers in the Night - widely regarded as one of hard rock's definitive live albums - with elevating the track into a mass singalong staple.