Tragedy struck on April 13th when UFO keyboardist/guitarist Paul Raymond died of a heart attack at the age of 73. Raymond’s death happened just one week after the group’s first leg of their Last Orders Tour in the UK as they had major touring plans this year to celebrate their 50th anniversary by embarking on a final trek. While the band are still in mourning the loss of their bandmate, the group has decided to move forward with their touring plans as former bandmate Neil Carter has agreed to tour with the group.

The band issued the following statement:

“On April 13th 2019, the UFO family got the tragic news that our bandmate Paul Raymond had died of a heart attack. It had been just a week since we finished the first leg of our “Last Orders Tour” in the UK. While mourning his loss, sadly we also had to face the reality of what to do with the band. We feel moving forward with the tour is the right thing to do. We all know this is what Paul would have wanted us to do. We are therefore very pleased to announce that our friend and former bandmate Neil Carter has agreed to join us again and take over the keyboards/guitar and vocals slot for the remainder of the tour. Neil was already part of the family between 1981 and 1983, playing on the albums “The Wild, The Willing And The Innocent”, “Mechanix” and “Making Contact”. Before he joined UFO he was in Wild Horses, later he continued his career with Gary Moore. Together with Neil, we will bring our 2019 LAST ORDERS TOUR to a close. We want to make sure that all our amazing fans get a fantastic experience out of it one more time.”

This fall, UFO will embark on their final North American trek and you can check out the dates here.