Maybe you’re never heard of Status Quo. Maybe you think you’ve heard of them—but dunno whether you have or not or who they are or even what they do. Or, maybe you’ve heard of them as one of the “limey bands” who got name-checked as an in-joke on that execrable series Vinyl—which hell, I rather liked. Well none of that really matters—because here’s your blind date intro to Status Quo.

Status Quo are a rock ‘n’ roll band. They’re maybe the best rock’n’ roll band still going simply because the best rock ‘n’ roll is based around four guitar chords. Status Quo know four guitar chords—perhaps they even know five but their best known songs are mainly based around four guitar chords.

But rock ‘n’ roll isn’t just guitars is it? It’s long hair. Check. Denim. Check. Awesome concert performances. Check. (Take a listen to Quo Live (1976)—one of the greatest live rock ‘n’ roll albums evah!) Big guitar riffs? Check. Humongous misuse of drink and drugs? Double check. (The two mainstays of the band lead singer/guitarist Francis Rossi and guitarist/vocalist Rick Parfitt claim to have ingested some $2.5 million of cocaine between them in the 1980s—to such an extent Rossi lost part of his septum to over-indulgence and can pop a cotton bud through his nose.)
 

“Pictures of Matchstick Men”

The Quo started off as a band called The Scorpions circa 1962 before becoming Traffic Jam and then Status Quo in 1967. They were hipped to psychedelia and had major hit with the single “Pictures of Matchstick Men” in 1968 and its accompanying album Picturesque Matchstickable Messages from the Status Quo. The next two albums kinda bombed—including one (Ma Kelly’s Greasy Spoon) which had a cover predicting The Smiths’ style of record artwork by a decade. These albums aren’t actually that bad. It’s mainly the sound of band moving towards the boogie rock that epitomizes the very best of Quo. This all happened when the band became four—or as it is known the classic line-up -of the Quo—Rossi, Parfitt, Alan Lancaster (bass) and John Coghlan (drums)—and released Dog of Two Head in 1971.

This album was the first in the series of Quo’s classic rock ‘n’ roll/denim rock/hard rock/boogie rock records that defined the group and in many was the steady unrelenting background music to the decade. For no matter what musical genre was in vogue—Status Quo were ever present pumping out their instantly recognizable rock ‘n’ roll. Bowie went soul. The Stones went disco. The Quo kept strumming the same old riffs.

Next year marks the band’s fiftieth anniversary. The mighty Status Quo are currently on another mammoth world tour—without Parfitt who’s come back from the dead more times than Lazarus and is currently recuperating after yet another heart attack earlier this year. Hopefully he will be recording with Rossi again very soon. That in five hundred words or less is all you need for a brief intro. For the best way to know any band is to listen to their music—and that’s what we have here: Status Quo in concert on Granada TV show Doing Their Thing from 1970 as uploaded by Makellys.

Opening with a cover of “Roadhouse Blues” (with Lancaster on lead vocals) before rockin’ onto “Down the Dustpipe,” “Spinning Wheel Blues,” “Is It Really Me” and “Gotta Go Home.” Try not playing air guitar to this. Dig it.
 

‘Roadhouse Blues.’
 

‘Down the Dustpipe.’
 

‘Spinning Wheel Blues.’
 

‘Is it really me?’
 

‘Gotta Go Home.’
 

The whole concert in one piece, but not with such good quality visuals.