For a band who’ve become something of a byword for steady, water-treading reliability in the world of rock and roll, Status Quo have had a pretty weird old career when you think about it. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the fact that they’re still going as strong as ever, half a century after they started and a good few decades after the brand of boogie rock that they continue to play to this day became stale in the eyes of the record buying public. Yet, here they are, still able to sell out arenas across the globe, still able to to score top ten albums and still able to slay festivals in their sixth decade together as a band. Really, you couldn’t make it up if you tried.
I suppose it makes sense that the band formed in secondary school. There’s something profoundly “boys own” about the band and they’ve never quite lost that feel that they’re still schoolboy scamps who made good at heart. I mean, what else can you say about two sexagenarians who posed nude on their latest album cover with acoustic guitars preserving their modesty? Anyway, the band began in 1962 as The Scorpions, formed by lead guitarist and singer Francis Rossi, and original bassist Alan Lancaster. A year later they changed their name to The Spectres, added John Coghlan on the drums and by 1966 The Spectres were signed to Piccadilly Records. However, success would not come easily to the band, and their first couple of singles sank without a trace.
This would all change in the following year however, since back in 1965, Rossi had become close friends with fellow guitarist and singer Rick Parfitt. The pair had vowed to work together on some kind of musical project but nothing came of it until 1967, when Rossi completed the vintage Quo line-up by adding Parfitt as co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist. Not for nothing was this Quo line-up referred to as the “Frantic Four”. Also in 1967, the band discovered psychedelia, which was to be their making as a band. That’s right, Status Quo, them of the four chord barroom boogie rock, got their big break with a psychedelic rock song. Namely 1968’s “Pictures Of Matchstick Men”.
The song was an astonishing hit, reaching the top ten in the U.K and Canada, whilst also reaching number 12 in the U.S. However, try as they might, they failed to make lightning strike twice and after their second album tanked they went back to the drawing board. What they came up with would change their lives forever, and the band abandoned psychedelia in both sound and look, in favour of hard rock, faded jeans and white T-shirts. In 1970 they debuted this new look and sound in the album “Ma Kelly’s Greasy Spoon” but it wasn’t until 1972 that it began to catch on. ’72 was the year they signed to renowned hard rock label Vertigo, and with “Piledriver”, their first album on the label, they had a top five hit album, a run of three hit singles and the rock world was suddenly their oyster.
Since then the band’s only rivals have been legends like The Stones and The Who. Jagger and Richards’ band are to this day the only band to have more hit albums on the UK charts than them, and it’s estimated that they’ve played 6000 live shows in total to over 25 million people. However, what makes them so vital is that while members come and go, the band lives and dies with Parfitt and Rossi, whose friendship and collaboration has been the constant driving force of the band. Few other bands can lay a claim like that, just like few other bands can lay as convincing a claim to being true national treasures as Status Quo can. Highly recommended.
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Charli XCX
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