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Improved Status

"You know, when someone says something nice about us l get doubly embarrassed." Mike Rossi isn't laughing. He really means what he's saying. Status Quo have had a hard struggle, ever since the distant days of their hit single.

Things today are getting better, go along to a gig and audiences who might have been sceptical are standing up, dancing and rocking to Status Quo's hard driving gut music. They are finally beginning to shake off the pop group tag that followed "Pictures Of Matchstick Men." And they've done it without much help from the media. They can pack two thousand people in the Sundown, but you rarely see a mention of this in the music press. So if Rossi seems stand offish you can see why.

"The barriers? Yeah, we have a hard time getting across them. Now the kids, that's a different thing. They want to have a good time, you know get up and loon around. It's hard to explain. People are always saying that things are going to be allright [sic] to us. It seems all right, it's looking healthy."

For Status Quo the last year has been hard graft and five gigs minimum a week. But their album "Dog Of Two Heads " of a year ago was sold in steady numbers, and they live well on the money they earn from playing. In fact without an album on the market for a year, Status Quo have pushed up their earning capacity to about as much as they can now without a current record.

"Usually by the time we have started playing 'Roadhouse' we have got everybody leaping up and down, and that is a great thing when you can feel an audience bouncing.

"We've got used to getting encores now, but I remember when we would go out and play and if we got applause we were well pleased after the gig. It's been building for a time."

The feeling within the music business at the moment is that music is going back to almost Beatle days when excitement and tension were paramount and bands were out to dress and behave more extravagantly than each other. But Rossi, who went all through that with Status Quo, doesn't see it.

"We did the Sundown the other night, there were birds at the front screaming and trying to touch us. I thought I was seeing a vision of my past. But it was different to what it used to be. It wasn't little birds who had seen us on tele screaming at the real thing, it was just sheer excitement.

"I don't want to become a singles band again. I'd sooner not put out records than let that happen. There are so many bands that are having to put out singles to keep the name around.

People expect you yo make a string of hit singles once one takes off, but I don't need that pressure. I'm happy at the moment getting good steady gigs in." - MARK PLUMMER.

Image caption: STATUS QUO: don't want to be a singles band again.