STATUS QUO

up on their feet, they don't sit down again until they the world. But go out and ask the people -see leave the gig. A Quo audience puts as much into a gig what they thought. They were there -we saw as the band themselves, and that's a hell of a lot. 'em, everybody else saw 'em. Critics say our From the balcony of the City Hall, the audience is music isn't original, but what is? It's all been like a seething mass of tentacles. Beneath, the Quo done before, everything." just pound out a relentless boogie. Rossi stalks It's been more than five years since Rossi the stage like he owns it, squeezing the last note wrote "Pictures Of Matchstick Men" and the out of his guitar and then, with a quick upward band joined the teenybopper ranks. He looks thrust, flicking his hair back to return to his "We got in back on it with mild amusement. "The fans had original position. Between numbers, he seen us on the box, and they'd come to gigs to achieves a cunning rapport with the audience. have a scream, touch you up and all that, mess "Has anybody got the Dog [0f7lvo Head] a bitof debt about, and pull your hair..." album?" he shouts. The audience responds He looks serious for a moment and adds, automatically. "I want yer all to dance up and - we were "And the place was dead - they weren't getting down and wiggle yer arses." any buzz off what we were doing." Audience reaction is already causing It's only in the past few months, since the promoters grief, as Rossi points out later: "We've earning very release of Piledriver, that Quo have made any had a lot of trouble with heavies. They think significant impression on the music business. we're taunting the audience. There's all sorts of For five years theywere virtually ignored. So it's messages come up from the side of the stage little money" significant that the four members of the band telling them to sit down, but it's pointless trying have stuck it out together all this time. to tell them. Says Rossi: "No point in breaking up, really. "Once an audience is up, you can't tell them to sit down again. At Leeds, If I'd left we'd either have had to go back to work, which none of us wanted all of a sudden, the audience just surged. I've never seen anything like it... anyway, or we'd have gone in another band and started again. At one gig this guy got up on stage with us and the heavies dragged him off "So it was sensible to stay together. We didn't actually think, 'We've got by his hair and just slung him out into the street. That's terrible. He came to stay together and make it', but on reflection that's how it was. I don't up to me afterwards and said, 'Sign this for me, man. I was the one who think we realised how down we were, because we always managed to got thrown out!' You knewwhich one he was because he was bald." maintain our self-respect and confidence." At St Albans, Quo encore with The Doors' "" and Financially, the band were in dead schmuck. "Johnny Be Goode". Only the house lights save the band from another "We got in a bit of debt -we were earningvery little money. In fact, I don't encore. As I make my way backstage, Quo freaks are already milling know howwe did it. Sometimes we came out with £5. We supported T. Rex round the dressing -room area. There's a kind of embarrassment about just before they had 'Ride A White Swan' -things like that -and just £5 the fans, mostly female, as they shyly ask for posters, programmes and was all you'd get for it. Funny though -even now it's costing us a hell of anything else which can be autographed. One young lady is even a lot to keep going. Ten times as much as it did a couple of years back." flourishing a No 6 cigarette coupon for signature. Rossi describes their way of getting back on their feet again as "going in Some nights, the band will have another blow in their dressing room the backdoor". So from supporting T. Rex they then went on tour with after the gig. But tonight it's just a case of unwinding, before joining their Slade, playing as many gigs as humanly possible. "Everything helped us wives for the drive home in the maroon limo. You just know that Status -yeah, the Slade tour helped." Quo have earned every inch of chrome on that car. Steve Clarke The yardstick of a band's success is when their old record company re-release their old material. So just when Quo had Piledriver (Vertigo) selling and in the album charts, good old Pye started putting old products - NME OCTOBER6 - on the market. Rossi was not unnaturally annoyed. DON'T CARE WHO you are..." A hand struck me across "It's all right for most of the cats who want to get hold of it, but it does ccIthe face. "You're not comin' in 'ere." Faced with a vision seem a bit of a con. They just sling product out and see what happens." of jobswort hiness as menacing as I'd seen for a long time, The band's new album, Hello!, is the second they've released with I countered with a burst of impolite advice on where my assailant Phonogram. Says Rossi: "It's a gradual progression from Piledriver. should make love and exited for a further assault. Everythingwe do is steady, ploddy. We plod on. Everybody says, 'Yeah, Security seems to be at premium at Status Quo gigs, it would appear. that's a load of bullshit and it's a bit of this and it's very riffy and it's all very Certainly it was at this one. There were jobsworths, as far as the eye could simple, but they don't really understand. We don't consciously sit down see. Fortunately the capacity crowd outnumbered them... thousands of and say, 'Let's be simple.' I mean, music is feel. The greatest musicians Status Quo freaks, easily recognisable because, apart from the obvious play from inside. giveaways like a Hello! album under left arm and pint of bitter in the right, "Really, we'd like some respect. Chuck Berry has respect, and he can be they usually walk around with heads bowed so that their faces are rough - he's just a feel merchant. I don't think people really listen to where covered by mountains of hair. we are at- they aren't being honest about it." Backstage it's noisy. is tuning his guitar; tries So conversation turns full circle. We're back on Rossi's paranoia about to rectify the situation by talking loudly and being friendly. the music papers again: "Yeah, they think, 'I'll have a go at that.' Sells sits and says yeah, he'll "be ready to talk in a minute". papers anyway, don't it." We repair to the next-door room, where we can still hear Parfitt tuning, Bar , every member of Quo contributes to the writing side. but a certain amount of sanity is retained. Rossi doesn't particularly like And "fifth member" , who has been known to join the band on interviews. Well, he likes talking, sure, but he doesn't always reckon on stage, co -writes material as well. the way they turn out. He's developed an almost paranoid state over the "John's got a couple of things coming along, but it's very difficult for music papers and their treatment of the band. him. You can't reallywrite a song on the drums. He can't sit at his kit and "Yeah, well before Status Quo made it again (laughs), the cats who were say, 'Yeah, that sounds nice.' writing about us were people who were interested in writing about us. Bob? Good boy, he is... Doesn't really like being on stage, because he They thought, 'Yeah, nice little band -I'll have a write on that.' They were feels silly. But he writes songs and looks after the band. He's mother. We into the band -whereas now a lot of them have to write about us because write all the time -the main problem is gross lack of time. But we're it's their job. So they figure they'll slag us off and see what happens. That's always plonking around." the way it reads anyway, and the way it feels. While the band's publicist would have it that Quo are settingAmerica "Any criticism hurts, because they are slagging somethingyou live alight, Rossi is not so exuberant. Again he uses his phrase "getting in the with and something you believe in. If there's a riff to the music, they back door".And he adds: "I knowAmerica is supposed to be important. think that's something terrible. Oh dear me, a riff -can't have that. But They say 'you've got to do it out there'. But I don't really like America, and if we are into it, it doesn't really matter. Like the whole Reading thing - I don't like the thought of going back. But we'll go back, go in the back we're supposed to have died a death there and been the worst band in door, not headlining. You've got to do it properly." Julie Webb

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