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(from scrapbook 3, page 19)

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The selling of the boys in blue

IT'S NO great trick of the marketing tail to get a Status Quo album in the charts but the promotion men at Phonogram really do have some reason for giving it the Cheshire cat grin.

'Blue For You' is the third consecutive Quo album to hit Number One in the BMRB charts (as per SOUNDS and the Beeb) in the first week of release.

And nobody screamed at you on the box to 'Buy Blue, Quo for you - hear it!' and such-like commercial garbage did they? That's the very expensive but very easy way of shifting a vinyl mountain because for reasons that have nothing to do with our better judgment those TV ads always work.

The Phonogram boys still reckon it was their most costly promotion ever and yet the way they got the head-shaking public into such a fevered froth that nearly everyone who wanted the album was on the record store doorstep on the release date was an example of custom-building you might almost call beautiful.

Question: what do Quo fans like apart from Quo? Answer: football. The scarves, the 'You'll never rock alone.' So they bought into touchline advertising in a big way.

Not just any old touchline of course. The League Cup Final at Wembley last month was the launching pad and it's being followed up weekly wherever the 'Match Of The Day' and 'Big Match' cameras go.

Question: what do Quo fans wear apart from Quo scarves? Answer: denims. The initial publicity stills for the album caught Quo temporarily out of their pin stripes and clad by some strange coincidence in blue denim.

But that wasn't exactly planning. When they saw the pictures Promotional brains started to tick over and pretty soon there was a tie-up with Levis, taped ads in 6,000 boutiques and department stores, posters and window displays.

Those original shots had to be retaken because the boys hadn't had the foresight to buy just one brand of jeans and Mr. Levi-Strauss doesn't lay his dollars down for the benefit of Wrangler or Falmer. A minor problem - another coup.

Finally having saved themselves somewhere between thirty and fifty thousand pounds by rejecting TV they got a Viv Stanshall masterpiece of hilarity together for commercial radio.

No wonder they had the confidence/arrogance to put out a record sleeve with not a word on the front, just four boys in blue daring the world not to recognise them - and buy their album.

And maybe it's the kind of security bred by three bulleting Number Ones on the trot that has at last given Quo the breathing space to step outside the band for a while.

Drummer John Coghlan this week did his first gig (see news pages) with a large and loosely assembled band he's leading, called Diesel.

He must have been determined because it's taken a year to lix up. On the phone from a hideaway in the Isle of Man he said: "It came out of talking with Jackie Lynton. When Quo started 14 years ago everybody jammed around but it just doesn't seem to happen any more.

"The trouble was getting all the guys I wanted together at the same time. We've got a rehearsal fixed for Monday and we're at the Marquee the following night so you could call it a rehearsed jam.

"We'll play a bit of rock 'n' roll, a bit of blues, right away from the Quo thing. Not that I'm fed up with Quo in any way but it could be a good idea to let some fresh air into our playing."

He said there were no other solo enterprises on the way from his brothers in Quo but he wanted to do more gigs with Diesel, including an attempt to disturb the calm of his beloved Isle of Man. And there's an idea that Phonogram may record one of Diesel's lives on spec. - PHIL SUTCLIFFE.