Clipping details
(from scrapbook 1, pages 6-7)

Clipping text

All systems Quo! by Geoff Brown

THERE'S something quite Biblical about this story. Status Quo humping round the land for the 13th time in their 13th year. The number 13 dominates. For the band, achievement comes in the shape of a baker's dozen. Most appropriate.

It's an unlucky number of which Quo have had a basinful. There's also a sense of The Common about the expression, and The Common Touch is what the band has in bulk.

They exaggerate it, in fact. They aren't as daft as they make out. Their knowledge is common sense, the sort of in-born savvy, which means they can communicate with each other almost without words, because their minds are at the same place at the same time, which means they do the right things, often without knowing it.

The Common Touch, exaggerated or not, cliched or not, is why their fans, the kids, identify strongly. It's why, last Thursday, Quo's legion filed and lurched and stumbled and sauntered into Wembley's Empire Pool for the first of Quo's two sell-out dates there, their last in Britain for a long time and meant to sit on their career like a walnut on a whirl.

Thursday and Friday. Heck, if they'd waited a week they could've played there on Friday the 13th and wouldn't THAT have capped it.

Why, then, Biblical? Well, Quo are the Prodigal Sons. Pop stars and hit makers ("Pictures Of Matchstick Men" and "Ice In The Sun")of the Sixties, cast out in the wilderness as fallen saints and, yea verily, they just kept preaching their simplistic faith until the flock returned to them.

What's more they still get crucifed most every time they're reviewed.

The plan is to spend the Important Day, Thursday, the first Pool gig, with the band. That's why at a little after mid-day we're in Woking Workingmen's Club where Rick Parfitt, Quo's second guitarist, is setting up the drinks.

He's a regular there. Used to play snooker for the team and won a cup one year for making the biggest break.

He's liked there. The local lad made good. His father talks about the time young Rick, then only ten, would sit on the edge of the stage ("not that one there, it used to be up the other end of the hall") and strum guitar.

Soon, says Parfitt Snr., his lad was earning £3 a week but that was 15 years ago. Now Rick, laughing, wipes his nose on a fiver. Upstairs, in the club is a snooker room. Two tables, no atmosphere at lunchtime.

Rick finishes off a game and starts to thrash this writer whose technique is somewhat rusty. But, strangely, Parfitt's game goes to pieces. "Nerves," he says, and for the first time doesn't smile.

We drive from Woking to Wallington to collect bassist Alan Lancaster. During the ride Parfitt (referring to himself and wife as Mr and Mrs Paraffin) yaps on brightly, reads a paper, barracks the limo driver, who is accustomed to Rick's earthy, sardonic humour as subtle as a wellington boot but sharp and quick in repartee.

Lancaster, when installed in the limo, is frustrated and edgy, it having been one of THOSE mornings. Late night, builders in from cock crow onwards.

He thumps the window often and also has frequent digs at the driver. "Only kiddin'," he always says.

Alan, known as Nuff atter the band saw a soft toy called Neuf Neuf in France which they likened to a pig but Alan describes more like a teddy bear. Conversation is of their major interests: cars, homes, families, boxing and What Are You Going To Write About Us?

Lancaster laughs: "Don't take much does it? Much like writing a Status Quo song. Just slap some words down on paper and stick 'em to a 12 bar."

"Make it,' says Rick, as we approach Wembley through some of the dingiest back streets London can offer, "the dirtiest, nastiest write up." The image is initially not their own, but once it took shape through the media's superficial observation they hammered it home.

At first all they were doing was standing there playing loud and simple and Francis Rossi's leery backchat was as normal as brown ale. Now the band is bigger and ballsier and Rossi's on-stage natter has reached the proportions of a Monty Python numbskull. It's hilarious really, one can't help but feel he's poking fun at himself.

That feeling becomes fact when you meet the man. "What's 'e doin' 'ere?" he says nodding at the writer. "get 'im out!" He jokes and mutters so you can't catch the gag to throw a line back.

BUT, whether he likes it or not, and I guess he does, he's a star to his fans. A workaday one though. As the limo drives through the Wembley car park gates, a birthday present for Rossi (he was 26 last month) is stuffed through the open window. It's a pile of ciggie coupons, neatly bundled with an elastic band.

After a sound check, ear-splitting in the empty hall, and a plate of grease, (flashback to an old album "Ma Kelly's Greasy Spoon") Quo socialise with support band the Pretty Things, fellow survivors from distant days, and Status' drummer John Coghlan talks with thumper Faces' Kenny Jones.

In a nearby room Lancaster chats. Separate from the band, not so cheery. Clearly nervy, he smokes a cigarette then toys with a second without lighting it for 45 minutes.

To analyse Quo's music is like artistically dissecting a pile of bricks. It's a pointless exercise. The music asks no questions and demands nothing of the listener other than he/she should get up off their butt and move around. Quo apply themselves to that rock with manic fury. If doesn't happen any one night it's not for the want of their effort - some nights it IS Just One Of Those Nights.

Common-as-muck music from common men who now live in sumptuously appointed houses and good luck to them, but isn't there a double image suggested? "We basically come from working class backgrounds and we've got a feeling we believe in and that we follow. We don't try to impress anybody," says Lancaster. "Obviously we've changed slightly. If you do it properly you change for the better."

Alan thinks he has improved mentally. He hasn't changed, just matured he adds.

Their success can be counted in blisters. It's just like any worker says Alan, who slogs his life away to get a house, then he gets a better one, then a still better one. The only difference, presumably, being that in Quo's trade the rewards are higher.

It there's one word Status like to label themselves with it's Honest. It's an admirable quality, of course, and Quo's brand is basically the result of their early hits, a time of rip-off and misdirection, and the virtual death of the band in 1969, when they couldn't pay to get a gig.

The "honesty" is a mixture then of their inbred nature and a cynicism about the business. "When we didn't know any better we were being honest with ourselves. We were just playing what we wanted to do. It was a band getting work doing what it wanted to do.

"As soon as we got a bit of success we were too young to realise that we were already doing what we wanted to do. We had this success and people changed us. That knocked us right downhill again. I suppose we were all a bit big headed in a childish kind of way. Little pop stars all of a sudden. It knocked us down again and we learned the hard way. It was a good lesson to learn. We base ourselves on that period all the time."

Status Quo were formed in 1962 by Rossi and Lancaster adding Coghlan soon after and turning pro for a Butlins' holiday camp season. They were called the Spectres, Parfitt was at Butlins too and joined them not long after, being rescued from the clutches of a two girl and one boy vocal group called The Highlights.

A contract with Pye, four singles which did nothing. One, "Almost But Not There " lived up to its name. They became Traffic until Stevie Winwood's band happened. Added a word and were Traffic Jam. Then changed to Status Quo, still on Pye, and had a hit with "Pictures of Matchstick Men."

Their experience of the business had begun in earnest. John Schroeder produced the Spectres back then. "He asked me to write a song for the band and I wrote one. He was pretty impressed right away. I manuscripted it all out. I was all into that then." (Lancaster has a music "A" level).

"We were playing a Shirley Bassey arrangement of 'I (Who Have Nothing)'. That was our first record. He was knocked out with the arrangement on that and he recorded it," chuckles Alan. Even he says it wasn't too bad, "for a first time effort."

They'd gone in with "stars in our eyes. Thinking it's done overnight and it's obvious it's not. All those little dreams you had when you were a kid of what it would be like were completely shattered.

"If you went on stage 'Ah I don't really f*** playing this stuff but the kids like it so I'll do it' you're not achieving nuthin' You might as well not be there."

THE BAND'S personnel have stuck together tenaciously. Only one, organist Roy Lynes, fell by the wayside. "We was having hard times. I suppose he thought he was leaving a sinking ship. I suppose he regrets it now really... he phoned up the other day asked if I wanted to buy a leather jacket. Things like that. This was a while ago. Next I heard he was suing us for some money from Pye. Basically a timid kinda guy. Someone says to him. 'Sue 'em' so he does and then phones us up and says 'Hi didja get the summons?'

"One of the reasons he did leave was he was gradually being rode out the music. There was no place for an organ in the band. We were doin' things like 'In My Chair' and he wasn't even playin' on it. All the time we were sayin' we'd have to get an organ part on it but it didn't seem to go. He'd just stand there playin' sustained chords." Quo boogie was taking shape.

When Quo charted with "Matchstick Men" they were touring with Madeline Bell, she didn't use them as a backing band exactly, says Nuff. "She just sang the songs which we did and she knew. We were doing stuff like 'It Takes Two,' did that as a duo with her. She was great. She looked after us."

They also backed the Dixie Cups. He's talking with some enthusiasm. They were good times? "Hated it. We were only doing it just to get the work. We really didn't know how to track a person. When we backed the Dixie Cups they flew in, didn't even see 'em, went on stage at the Streatham Locarno, didn't have any music, didn't know what numbers they were playing, didn't know what KEY they was in. The first one happened to be the best one out of the lot!"

A string of managers led eventually to Colin Johnson, then of Gaff Management, who has since steered their career with a sure touch as the subsequent SRO halls, gold albums and hit singles state.

They left Pye for Phonogram's "progressive" label Vertigo. Under threat of writs, they did an album and it was a hit, says Alan, leaving their old label without too much of a case.

"They seemed to see the band in a different light. They never saw us, never saw what the band was after, what direction we were tryin' to follow."

Alan reckons that Quo have reached some sort of musical crossroads. They've become popular through doing what they're doing; should they "progress at the risk of the people not liking what we're doing or is it right to stay as we are just churning out the same stuff? I think we've got to progress but it's a little bit frightening now that we're got somehing now to cling on to. But you can't do that. You've got to satisfy yourself."

A debatable point. I'd say Quo are at the stage where they've a loyal following who'll go with them where ever they are to take them.

WHAT DO their fans see in Quo? "I don't think there's a rock band quite the same as us in the sense that we really put everything into the heavy rock.

"We're getting off on the audience as much as they get off on us. I think they also see us as, er, we come from the same background as them we think basically the same and we play the kind of music perhaps that they would play if they could. They identify us with themselves."

That audience now is wide. Young kids, really young because of the hit singles, "Down Down" was a number one earlier this year, and late teenagers, early twenties and, now, married couples. "It's a new crowd to us now. We used to be able to walk around and talk to 'em. I don't know if we could now." Quo miss that.

For instinctively they're matey. After all, it held them together in 1969, when, recalls Alan, all the groups around were breaking-up.

"l don't think we realised how down in the dumps we were. We still looked at ourselves as 'Yeah, we've had a hit record' y'know? So we carried on and on and on and on until we realised that 'Hey we weren't 'alf down back then.' So we carried on a bit more."

The following built gradually, starting to tear places up. The Croydon Greyhound was an early breakthrough, followed by some festivals. "We weren't classed as a festival band. It was 'What they doin' here. They're not cool, they're teenyboppers. Get 'em off'." Quo went on in silence but came off to an ovation.

"We'd been playing like that for two years... we'd got on to the right path again. Even to get offered a festival was an achievement. To get offered a gig on our OWN was an achievement. Like the Red Lion, in Leytonstone, we used to pack it out but to get them gigs a few months earlier was not on. They'd offer to pay us expenses." Then they'd get asked back as support. "Bloody hard to get gigs."

Gigs are the essence of Status Quo's music and the hour to play Wembley is approaching fast. Lancaster is plainly tense. "I'm pretty wound up. When you get on stage it's a release.

"You're there to do what you're meant to do. You do it. Blast it out, wallop it out, put everything into it till sometimes my hands dropping off like 'I can't play anymore of these downstrokes' but you carry on, it aches but you grit your teeth, you unwind" (he starts to get excited) "get looser and gradually get through to the audience and then you come off stage and then it's relaxed and you start shoutin' about! I can see it all now!" he laughs.

A pause. "But if it's a bad gig although you're unwound you're hung up. You've done your best but you haven't achieved what you wanted. I think, to the audience, it's basically the same, but to us sometimes we play good, sometimes we play bad, the difference is a very thin line."

Quo's music takes no chances; the likelihood of failure is marginal.

"We are a live band. We play live to get the feel to record albums."

Quo are a band which strives on challenge. The States is the only goal they have left. Here "there's nothing to fight for." Though Britain, he adds diplomatically, is still best.

"It's a friendly feeling. We're not out there to prove we're great musicians or the greatest rock band. We just wanna please everyone. a hundred per cent."

Alan talks, maybe apprehensively, about gigs not satisfying their modest standards. It'll be alright, tonight, he grins hopefully, as long as they get that drive going.

As Alan says, they don't have to fight for an audience any more. As the lights dim in the Empire Pool (Quo played there last year, were banned through seat damage, but heavier security precautions sees their return) the "We Want Quo" chant goes up. The band walk on after a particularly laughable thick introduction.

The audience stands and cheers. The ritual is underway. Quo must've felt the rush of excitement from the audience.

They plunge headlong into the act. Rossi's switch box isn't working. Neither he nor Parfitt are in top vocal form; both sound croaky. Rossi's distinctive, whiny voice is the band's most recognisable weapon - a sort of wheedling, nasal, sound which rides the tune hard and fast. Lancaster's voice is gruff, throaty and aggressive.

They're attacking their tunes, hurling themselves at them as though there's a brick wall to be broken. They pace leggily around the stage. Striking raunchy poses, doing the Quo moves, heads down, then up with hair flailing, and more striding.

Yet somehow, despite the audience's mayhem, it's obvious that Quo aren 't sparkling. Rossi's guitar solos stutter for continuity and life; Quo are riffing as though their lives depended on it. There's a desperation in the playing which has perforce replaced the natural drive. But the faster Quo go, the more the kids like it, gathering fury, growing by the 12-bar.

And in the middle of the set Rossi sings a tune called "Claudie" which, I swear, would make someone a country and western hit. I swear it.

Quo finish. Inevitably, there's an encore mostly taken up with Coghlan's drum solo, which is unexceptional. After the encores, there's a sudden silence. Lights go on and the crowd file our swiftly. It has been THEIR concert. Not Quo's.

There is a sense of anti-climax.

Leaning against a corridor wall before braving the inevitable, stifling, milling post-gig party, Lancaster smiles and shrugs. He acknowledges that it wasn't their Finest Hour. He smiles wearily but is relaxed and cheery. "Remember what I told you about not" he balls a fist, "getting that real hard drive...?"

I did. I did.

Image caption: STATUS QUO: 'We play the kind of music the audience would play if they could'