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(from scrapbook 2, pages 18-19)

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Rockin' all over the Reich

Stranded at Heathrow...snowbound near Dortmund...a fan almost killed in Wolfsburg...lost near Essen. Well, what do you expect when Status Quo tour Germany? Harry Doherty reports

IT IS 5.30 on a bitter cold afternoon at Heathrow Airport, London. In Dortmund, it is 6.30 and the doors have just opened at the Westfalenhalle cycling stadium to let 10,000 German headbangers enter. They are expecting to see and hear Status Quo but now that looks decidedly optimistic.

You see, stranded at Heathrow Airport, the victims of a late-running schedule, are two members of Status Quo, bass player Alan Lancaster and keyboard man Andy Bown, along with manager Colin Johnson and yours truly. The British Airways flight scheduled for 4.30 will not now take off until three hours later, "weather permitting", leaving us at Dusseldorf Airport at 9 pm, the time Quo should be going on stage, but Dortmund is a one-hour drive from the airport. It's looking dodgy.

Why the thin line? Lancaster has just dashed from a prolonged court case where he is battling for custody of his child following the previous week's widely publicised divorce proceedings. Bown took advantage of the four off-days to return to his family.

There is no panic. Foreseeing the circumstances, Johnson has chartered a private jet to Dusseldorf in the event of a further delay. The news that the BA flight will take off slightly earlier than anticipated saves him £1,400, but it's still a touch-and-go situation.

In flight, we are told by a steward to come to the front of the aircraft as it taxis down the German runway. Apparently, a Phonogram executive has exerted some charm with a few ladies at the control tower to ensure that our flight gets priority treatment on landing. It's a VIP scene. At 9.10 pm, we go straight through customs.

There is still the question of an hour-long drive to the gig. The promoters have laid on a kamikaze pilot to ensure that their money is safe and we make the hairy, journey in 40 minutes. The collective sigh of relief as Lancaster and Bown walked in the dressing-room nearly knocked us over.

"Thank Christ," mutters tour manager Bob Young. "We were drawing straws to see who was going to tell them the gig was off."

STATUS Quo have cancelled only three gigs in ten years. You may wonder how they kept that number down to single figures after reading this. The band have been trekking through Germany in sub-zero temperatures, facing blizzards and reaching destinations literally minutes before going on stage.

Everyone knows now what Quo stand for, but the religion continues to grow. "Rockin' All Over The World," the single, has sold over 600,000 copies so far. The album of the same name is approaching the quarter-million mark. That's in Britain alone.

Over this past year, Quo's growth in Germany has been phenomenal with sales of over 200,000 copies of the new album. On this tour, they're packing venues out, capacities of 6-000 people.

As ever, Quo's build been slow. It's taken some time to reach this point in Germany but the band point to the advantages of that. It's more likely that the fans will stick with you.

Sweet, for instance, were hailed as the Herrenvolk of rock a couple of years back. On their recent German tour they pulled a total of 9,000 people at six gigs, a drastic slump.

Now it's Smokie's turn to hit the top. Their album sales touch the 800,000 mark and they're playing the same capacity venues on their current tour. Quo, the promoter reports, are pulling bigger audiences, however.

Quo, as you know, are very much an audience band. One depends entirely on the other to make the night out a success. Rick Parfitt talks about that later. A Quo Army is to be established in Britain, complete with their own pamphlet, and sergeants will be appointed in each area to look after circulation. You can bet it will be one of the most effective fan clubs in existence.

The band, you may not know, are not short on humour either. Phonogram, their record company, ran a competition before Quo's last British tour asking fans to say why they liked the band. To the kid from the North who answered: "Because they clear up my dandruff," a new Avenger.

And so Quo's rock and roll circus finds itself in Dortmund for the start of the German tour. The air of a big-business venture pertains; not surprising, since there are something like 25 people involved in the operation of getting the show on the road.

There are the four members of the band: Francis Rossi, Rick Parfitt, Alan Lancaster and John Coghlan, along with the fifth and sixth near-members, Bob Young and Andy Bown.

Young doubles his task as road manager with lyricist and takes the stage each night to blow harmonica on "Roadhouse Blues." He's also got a solo recording deal going with Magnet Records with partner Mickie Moody.

Andy Bown is a more familiar face, and many people are surprised when they find that it is indeed THE Andy Bown on keyboards with Quo. Bown was an original member of the Herd and when that split, after Peter Frampton's departure for Humble Pie, he formed Judas Jump.

That crumped too, and Bown set out on a solo career that saw some critical acclaim but considerably less hard success. His most popular feat in recent years - one that he doesn't exactly want to be associated with - is that he wrote the theme tune for Mike Mansfield's TV show Supersonic.

He emphasises that he was commissioned to do the job. "You don't think I write that sort of stuff all the time, do you?" In fact, he was given 24 hours to come up with the song, despite the fact the programme didn't materialise on the small screen for another five months.

About three years ago, Bown guested on Quo's "Hello" album and was slowly sucked into their stage set, initially to play keyboards on just a few numbers. Now he is featured on all the material and helps on backing vocals. In fact, he's all but a member of the band, to the degree that it has taken precedence over his solo career.

In addition to the favoured six, the band are usually accompanied by management, either Colin Johnson or Alan Crux - both were on this German trip.

Johnson is out for a specific purpose. The band are to fly on to Vienna, where Parfitt and Lancaster were arrested last year, and he wants to ensure no snags. There's also a road crew of about 18 people, there to erect and dismantle the £125,000 worth of equipment that is carried around Europe in two articulated lorries. The road crew travels in two mini buses and the band in two Range Rovers.

DORTMUND started off in the usual fashion, blistering opener with "Caroline," the over-the-top audience adulation and inevitably Rossi taking the microphone. How, one wonders, will a squad of Krauts react to his sharp East London dialect?

"Allo! You all ROIGHT?"

The auditorium erupts in 10,000 screams of of "Ja." So they understand? Well, maybe not. Every time Rossi speaks, they shout "Ja." He asks them to sing along to the jig. They shout "Ja." He asks them to sing the "Oh"s in "Dirty Water." They interpret that as him wanting to participate in the traditional "Quo-oo-oo-oo" chant. He gives up.

That aside, the German reaction is as fervent, sometimes more fervent, than the English audiences. There's not an unsweaty body in the house by the time Quo close with, surprise, surprise, "Bye Johnny" and before the kids have a chance to shout "Heil Hitler," the band are in the cars and on their way back to the hotel after a knackering two-hour set.

The next gig is a couple of hundred miles away at Wolfsburgh, two-and-a-half kilometres frm the East German border, and such a long haul that the road means that the road crew have an overnight journey to suffer.

That, it seems, is the penance of back-to-back gigging, and, when you're shoving tons of equipment about the place, it's no easy job. Quo have a friendly relationship with their crew and Rossi and Parfitt will occasionally stay on to help hump the gear into the trucks. Parfitt strained his back muscles the last time they meddled in the shop-floor activities a couple of weeks back.

If Friday night's incidents with late aircraft were an ominous warning of an eventful weekend, we didn't have to wait long on Saturday morning before that was confirmed.

Parfitt drove one Range Rover, Coghlan the other. The boys in Quo are into driving. It broke poor Rick's heart to sell his Porsche Carrera - one of the last five made - before setting out on tour.

Why sell it them? "It would have been a crime to leave it sitting in a garage for six months." You've got to laugh.

When we reach the Wolfsburg Stadthalle, it strikes me that Quo haven't done a soundcheck and I find that they subscribe to the Lee Brilleaux Manual For Touring ie. "Soundchecks is only for poofters and Mink DeVille." Francis Rossi, perfectly content in the company of his lovely lady wife Jean, usually gives guitars and drums the once-over just to make sure. That apart, it's left to chance.

No Dice, the support on the German segement of the European tour, are just finishing their set when we arrive and have gone down well with the Quo fans. As bass player Gary Strange philosophises later: "You've got to get on there, hit 'em hard and don't give 'em a chance to shout for Quo. Stop and you're dead."

That night, as it happens, turns out to have a pretty depressing end. A 6,000-capacity bowling alley has been converted for the purposes of rock and Quo turn in another high-energy, ballsy set, with "45 Hundred Times" standing out as the highlight, lasting a full 20 minutes by the time it has wound its merry way around a half a million riffs.

Half-way through the set, the promoter asks fans not to stand on the window ledges upstairs. He mentions casually - in German - that one person has fallen through the window. What he didn't say was that there was a 50-feet drop to the pavement and the poor kid who mysteriously smashed through the glass was a mangled mess when found. His chances of survival seem slim.

Not surprisingly, Quo are dejected by the news of the tragedy and anxiously await news of the kid's condition. This time, there's no quick getaway from the gig.

Andy Bown is examining his throat to find if he was marked by six-inch nails thrown at him during the Wolfsburg concert by some nutcase. Quo, apparently, do attract this type of psychopath on the continent. At one concert in France, a search of the audience revealed two revolvers and two daggers.

CUT to interview with Rick Parfitt, February 12, 1977. We last spoke to Quo over a year ago. Looking back, how do you think the last year has been for Quo?

"Last year was a great year, overall. We broke Germany, which is a feat in itself because we've done six tours here.

"Generally last year was a good year for the escalation of the band. It's amazin'. I can't handle it myself sometimes. Quo just maintains now.

"I mean, punk rock arrived and Quo slotted into it. It didn't ride over the top because we rock harder than any of 'em anyway. This band seems invincible somehow, even to me now. There's some sort of magic about it, which I'm only just beginning to realise after all these years."

What was your reaction to the whole new wave/punk arrival?

"Well, I must admit it frightened me a little bit. It might have got Quo into the Boring Old Farts bracket, which it has done to a lot of other bands, but that hasn't applied at all. On the British tour, there were quite a lot of punk rockers there, and really getting off because they are out, I realise now, for a good rock and roll time. They find that they can do that with Quo.

"Nothing can sink this ship. Maybe that sounds like famous last words, but that's the way it appears at the moment. You've seen the gigs, the band are working like bastards now. It's really, really good. We'll aim for a good 20 years."

Did you ever think that the band would last that long?

"We're not aware that the band has been together for 15 years. It's gone so quick, the last ten years. I can still remember sitting there mixing 'Matchstick Men'. That was ten years ago. It's gone so quick, mainly, I think, because we worked our balls off."

Do you have the same incentive to go out?

"I've said it before but there really is no audience like a Quo audience. I've seen other bands and the way the people react to Quo is just something different. There's a love there. There really is.

"We know there's power in the music and we know there's power in the combination of the four people in the band. We don't need to pull any stunts. We've escalated so slowly, it's been beautiful. Year by year and the band is now bigger than it's ever been. All over Europe. We'll outpull anybody in Europe now, including the Stones. That's a feat in itself.

A lot has been said about the changes on "Rockin' All Over The World" and that it was geared for America. How true is that?

"I don't see it as a different direction. It's not a down-the-line and roll album.

"Pip Williams (producer) helped us a lot. We felt we had run out of ideas on the production and we wanted somebody with a different way of thinking, which is exactly what he did.

"We wanted a more American-sounding album, and it's getting a lot of air play there. Four hundred stations are playing it at the moment and that's the same airplay as we got on 'Matchstick Men,' which went to number eight, so maybe the States is crackin' at last."

The last year has seen some radical changes with the new wave bands. Obviously, Status Quo wield more influence than most of those bands and kids would pay heed. Do you ever feel that you would like to influence those fans?

"If it made sense, I think a lot of the fans would go along with what we said but I don't think we will. Our lyrics are very free and easy. We talk about ourselves and our experiences and some of them are purely fictional. Let's put it like this: the words really are secondary. It's the power of the music that comes first. That still applies."

WE ARE in the reception of our Wolfsburg hotel in another freezing, snowy day, wondering once more what the day has in store for us. From London, we hear that Quo's office has been broken into and a stereo unit and gold albums for "Rockin' All Over The World" have been stolen.

We are heading back across the country, past Dortmund to Essen, which appears to be silly planning - but it was the only way the promoter could get the venue. What will go wrong? Somebody ponders that perhaps Germany will invade Poland. Colin Johnson jokes that he has something special in store for the Press today. You shouldn't joke about things like that, we found.

To be exact, we found out approximately 20 miles outside Wolfsburg, roughly 200 miles from our destination at Essen. The weather is slightly milder, the roads clearer. In the Coghlan Range Rover, there's Mr and Mrs Rossi, Alan Crux and myself.

In the other, being driven by Colin Johnson, are Parfitt, Lancaster, Bown and Young. Johnson pulls level to us, looking annoyed. He signals for us to slow down and stop. He has gone low on petrol and the petrol pump is playing up.

We scout ahead to the town of Celle for a petrol can, a tow rope and petrol. We head back towards the other Range Rover. We pass them. We turn off the autobahn. We are confused. We are lost. We get our bearings and find the occupants of CJJ 1 on the verge of freezing to death. We tow them to a service station and the decision is made to call two taxis to complete the journey.

There is the agonising tick of the taxi's meter for the other 200 miles, and the fare works out at something like £1 a mile for the two taxis.

Then the icing on the cake. As we arrive in Essen, the driver of one of the taxis, who we suspect to be a touch inebriated, pulls into a petrol station to ask the way to our hotel. He asks a dummy petrol attendant.

But, as ever, the problems of the day disappear at night and tonight's gig at Essen Grugahalle in front of 8,000 wild German fans, is a beauty. The audience is amazing, the venue is perfect for sound and the band are in positive mood, a rare combination that makes Quo gigs really special.

Parfitt chugs out his beefy rhythm licks, Rossi is actually itching to get on with it. Lancaster appears more really depends on it. As indeed he does. I joke not, it was one of the best Quo gigs I've ever seen.

The gig over, it's back to the hotel and Johnson is insisting on an early night for his boys. There's a 7 a.m. call in the morning to catch the flight to Vienna and he wants everybody bright for that. What will happen with these boys is anybody's guess.

Bob Young mutters: "Never mind. It settles down after two weeks."