Status Quo: Six decades and more of long hair and denims

One hit single wasn’t enough to guarantee the group a lucrative career, even if the song’s writer received some £1,400 for his pains - a small fortune back then. The follow-up single flopped, as did the debut LP. The band, however, persevered, and went on to enjoy considerable chart success and acclaim in the Seventies and beyond.

The name of the group is, of course, Status Quo. They are now in their seventh decade, and still fronted by Francis Rossi - the writer of Pictures of Matchstick Men and so much more - who turns 75 at the end of the month. Perennial favourites with Glasgow audiences (of which more later), Quo play the Kelvingrove Bandstand on May 30 and 31, the first of these two dates having long sold out.

Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt (Image: free)

Quo were chart regulars in the Seventies when, with their long hair and denims, and irresistible, no-nonsense hard rock, they were one of the biggest bands in Britain - and one of the hardest-working, too, gigging extensively. As Colin Larkin puts it in the Virgin Encyclopedia of Seventies Music, the “much-loved” Quo have “carved a large niche in music history by producing uncomplicated, unpretentious and infectious rock music”.

Their run of hit singles stretched from Paper Plane and Caroline to a robust cover of John Fogerty’s Rockin’ All Over the World and the 1974 number-one smash, Down Down. Their albums were best-sellers, too: Piledriver, Quo, Hello, On the Level, and Blue for You (the three last-named all reached the top of the charts).

Such has been Quo’s continued commercial success that in 2015 it was announced that they had just recorded their 500th week on the Official Albums Chart, putting them into a very select band of artists.

They’ve since chalked up many other remarkable statistics.

Status Quo can trace its roots back to 1965, when Rossi first met Rick Parfitt. Both were in their mid-teens at the time, and were in separate acts that were performing at Butlin’s, Minehead: Rossi was with Alan Lancaster, John Coghlan and others in The Spectres, Parfitt was with identical twins Jean and Gloria Harrison in The Highlights.

The Highlights came to a premature end but at length Rossi and Lancaster invited Parfitt to join their band. By 1967 they were collectively going under the name of Status Quo.

As Colin Larkin notes, assiduous live appearances built up a grassroots following, and impressive performances at the Reading and Great Western Festivals in 1972 signalled a commercial turning-point.

Quo and the Glasgow Apollo were seemingly made for each other; their gigs in the Renfield Street venue were reliably rowdy and enjoyable affairs. According to the Apollo website, the band’s first appearance there was in May 1972, supporting Slade at what was then known as Green’s Playhouse, and they returned as headliners the following March.

They played a remarkable 25 gigs at the Apollo between September 1973 and June 1984, which more or less coincides with the Apollo’s own lifespan. Lots of the concerts took place over successive nights in order to cope with the sheer demand for tickets - three nights in May 1974, for example, and three in March 1976. Quo even released a live album that had been recorded at the Apollo.

READ MORE

There's more to Scottish films than Trainspotting: 10 forgotten gems

Meghan Markle's Suits comes to BBC at last

Quo, however, went on to have their lean spells, notably in the years immediately before their triumphant turn as opening act at Live Aid at Wembley in July 1985, when they got the extravaganza underway with Rockin’ All Over the World.

The passing of time has left its mark on Quo, as it has on other groups that have been working for decades.

Rick Parfitt himself died from sepsis after a shoulder injury, in a Marbella hospital, in December 2016. He was just 68. As a tribute on the band’s website has it: “Rick was one of the greatest rhythm guitarists in rock music. His tough uncompromising style of playing was the backbone of Status Quo's best rock albums and powered the band's driving live performances and their repeated success in the album and singles charts”.

He also, it adds, wrote and co-wrote some of Quo's best songs including Mystery Song, Whatever You Want, Backwater, Living on an Island, and Rain.

Quo now consist of Rossi, Andrew Bown (keyboards, guitar), John ‘Rhino’ Edwards (bass), Leon Cave (drums) and Richie Malone (guitar). Live, they are still a formidable proposition, as anyone who saw them support Lynyrd Skynyrd at the OVO Hydro in 2019, during the American band’s farewell tour, can attest.

Apart from their twin appearances at the Kelvingrove Bandstand at the end of this month, Quo are playing numerous other gigs across the UK and the Continent this year.

The Quo at the Glasgow Apollo (Image: free)

The band itself estimates that over the decades it has played in excess of 6,000 live shows to an audience of some 25 million people, travelling four million miles in the process and spending, all told, some 23 years away from home.

Globally, their total record sales exceed 118 million. They’ve spent the equivalent of seven and a half years on the British singles charts. They’ve had 43 hit albums in Britain. They even found themselves in Guinness Book of Records in 1991 when they played four British shows in 11 hours and 11 minutes, including one - of course - in Glasgow, at the SECC.

New and archive releases are still emerging, incidentally. Volume three of Quo’s ‘Official Archive’ series - a live recording made at Gloucestershire’s National Arboretum Westonbirt in 2008 - is on the way, while Francis Rossi has just released a vinyl edition of We Talk Too Much, his collaborative 2019 album with singer Hannah Rickard.

Status Quo play the Kelvingrove Bandstand on May 30 and 31. See statusquo.co.uk