Status Quo's over-sharing supremo on the thrills and ills of going “dink-dadink-da-dink” for half a century. But what’s this about loving the Pet Shop Boys? And how’s the nose? “You wouldn’t want to see up it,” warns Francis Rossi.
1 Mai 2019 Interview by Mark Blake Portrait by Tom Sheehan
Status Quo’s eccentric boogie burgher on flying in the face of fashion, his poor old hooter, and life without Rick. “The show has to go on, “ he tells Mark Blake.
Francis Rossi recently caught an unexpected glimpse of his naked self in a bathroom mirror. “I thought, Who’s that old bloke?” he winces. “the trouble is I'm getting to that certain age.” Rossi is approaching 70, and worries about everything. Today, it’s the extra two pounds he’s acquired around his midriff. “got to get rid of it, “ he says, pointing to what appears to be an impressively flat stomach.
Status Quo’s beanpole-skinny bandleader is sat, fretting, at the mixing desk in his home studio in suburban surrey. outside, trees and shrubs frame the elegant family house he shares with second wife, Eileen, and some of his eight children. it’s not a bad life. “I had a terrible journey to work,” he quips. “it’s windy in that garden.”
Francis Rossi is full of contradictions. The laddish doubledenimed guitar hero of the 19705 seems at odds with to-day’s insecure model. “I'm a terrible worrier,” he sighs. “i get on my tits sometimes.” once a notorious over—indulger, rossi hasn’t drunk alcohol or snorted a drug in almost three decades. in 2019, he doesn’t smoke, works out daily, and has a new album, the very un-blokey We Talk Too Much, with singer hannah rickard. Many presumed the death of sparring partner rick Parfitt in 2016 meant the demise of Status Quo, but rossi takes the group back on tour this summer.
In the pre—punk ‘70s, Quo’s spit-and-saw-dust Approach was the antithesis of prog rock’s wizardly capes and keyboard solos (the teenage Paul Weller claimed to have had a musical epiphany during a Quo gig at guildford civic hall). so far, they’ve chalked up over 118 million sales, and every uK household once had a copy of their ubiquitous best—of 12 Gold Bars. things change, though. in 1982, status Quo headlined the Monsters of rock festival at castle Donington; a year later, they appeared on tV comedy graveyard cannon and Ball. By then, original drummer John coghlan was gone, soon followed by original bassist alan lancaster. rossi and Parfitt re-booted the band, scoring hits but embracing light entertainment and tabloid—friendly Pr stunts in the years ahead. in 2009, the sun newspaper held an auction to win rossi’s recently chopped-off pony— tail. one of his favourite sayings is: “it’s showbusiness — ‘show’ and ‘business ‘.“ An autobiography, titled i talk too Much ( supported by an evening With... -style spoken word tour), tackles all this and more. a recurring theme is the critical disdain heaped upon Status Quo. “the only critics who count are the people who buy your records,” says rossi, repeatedly. John coghlan once claimed, “Francis is never straight always joking.” so is this fretful, self-critical, piss-taking Francis rossi the real deal? if not, where is the real one hiding?
Why did you decide to write an autobiography at this time in your life?
I kept saying no, because I thought they would just want me to be sensationalist and tear Ricky [Parfitt] apart. But I’m terrible at saying no to things and then doing them. The publishers threw some zeroes with a number in front and, like anyone else, I went, “How much? Oh, OK.”
You grew up in south London with Italian Irish parents , but what was the first music that really made an impression on you?
There was always Guy Mitchell and opera being played, but it was probably The Everly Brothers’ Cathy’s Clown that first did it. Also Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis. Those two both physically committed to the music, and that’s one of the things Quo has — you physically commit to it.
You’ve said you felt like an outsider at school until you met Alan Lancaster.
I had a funny accent — a bit Italian and a bit Northern, because my mother was from the North. So it made me self-conscious. Alan Lancaster’s family were proper ‘Sarf’ Londoners and made me feel welcome, so I copied how they spoke. I became Jack The Lad to fit in, though — and that’s not really me.
You and Lancaster played your first gig in a sports club in Dulwich in 1963. Two years later, with Lancaster on bass, you became The Spectres, with Rick Parfitt, drummer John Coghlan and organist Jess Jaworski. Did you always have a plan?
No, I loved music, but I also wanted to escape. I didn’t want to go into my family’s ice cream business, and I wanted to get away from what these Brexiteers want to go back to now — the 1950s. I watch a TV channel called Talking Pictures and it’s nice to see old films where people park their cars anywhere — no restrictions , lovely. But who wants to go back to the ‘50s again? I can’t get nostalgic for that.
Growing up, where did you stand on The Beatles and the Stones?
I liked both but I loved The Beatles for their songwriting. Sgt. Pepper… was good, but I preferred Rubber Soul and Revolver. I like the Stones, too, but I still don’t understand how they’re considered so cool when Keith Richards looks like a paraffin [Cockney rhyming slang — ‘paraffin lamp ‘ meaning ‘tramp’]. But then he goes “Ga-daaang!” on the guitar and you think, Oh yes, that’s it.
The Spectres had a run of flops before changing their name to Status Quo. Your cover of the Blues Magoos’ (We Ain’t Got) Nothin’ Yet has a classic garage-rock sound.
But nobody bought it. I can’t believe we got lucky after three failures. There was I (Who Have Nothing), Hurdy Gurdy Man, (We Ain’t Got) Nothin’ Yet. Then — boom! — we became Status Quo and did Pictures Of Matchstick Men and it was a hit [in January ‘68]. How did that happen? You couldn’t make that up if it was in a movie.
Was it a relief?
Yeah, because it meant I didn’t have to go into the ice cream business. My dad had ordered the van for me; I was ready to pick it up and then we had a hit.
Did the band get on well then?
There were arguments and Alan was a little
er, but it was still us, the band, versus the rest of the world. Our parents supported us but they also told us, “What chance have you got?” So that made us dig in and fight.
You met Rick Parfitt when his group were on the same bill as The Spectres at Butlin’s in Minehead. It sounds like you became very close very quickly.
We did. We got Ricky in the band because he could sing harmonies, like the Everlys. That’s what drove me mad later when he used to sing in his gruff rock voice (makes a growling noise). The first night Rick played with us, though, he hadn’t learned the set and the others wanted to sack him. I said, (whimpers) “No, please, he’s my mate.” Then we became inseparable. We used to wind people up — walk around holding hands. It became me and Rick versus the rest of the band.
Pictures Of Matchstick Men was the Quo’s psychedelic moment. Did you ever try LSD?
No, never. I was anti—drugs then (laughs). We were always out of step, though. I remember us playing Be-Bop--A-Lula and Chuck Berry numbers at Butlin’s, then coming back to London and everyone else was doing [Lee Dorsey’s 1965 hit] Ride Your Pony.
! What’s this? It was the soul boom, so we jumped on that. If you listen to Ride Your Pony it’s got that guitar sound we started to use in Quo (mimes the familiar ‘dink—a—dink’ Quo riff ). We were [US soul singer] Madeline Bell’s backing group in ‘67, too. She was lovely, and me and her used to do a duet on It Takes Two. We did what we could to keep working.
There was also a brief go at a Cream-style trio with Rick Parfitt and the Small Faces’ Kenney Jones in 1969. Were you serious about leaving Quo?
We stopped having hits, so maybe. We’d toured with the Small Faces. Stevie [Marriott] was the first person to turn us onto dope, but we knew those boys because they were regulars at my dad’s van on Walworth Road. I remember ‘Kenneff’— as we called Kenney — coming round my house and saying, “ Hello Mr Rossi, I used to buy ice cream off you.” He’d say to me and Rick, ’’ There ‘ s something exciting about you lot on-stage.” So we did one rehearsal in a horrible room in south London. Rick on bass and Kenney just wouldn’t stop playing. He went on and on. Sounded terrible. Sorry Kenneff.
After Roy Lynes left in 1970, Dog Of Two Head trailered what we think of us as the ‘Quo sound’.
By the start of ‘68 we were a rock group with a soul set and a psychedellc single. It was destined not to work, so we went back to where we were in ‘65 — playing rock’n’roll. The Quo sound is a bit of blues, rock, country, Irish jigs.. . Our shuffie sound is also the [19th century] Scottish armies going into battle with the drummer boy upfront — (( Dum—da — dum — dadum ! “ — geeing up the troops and scaring the enemy. It’s us versus the world again, isn’t it?
Piledriver in 1972 was Status Quo’s first Top 5 album , but you ‘ re critical of those ‘70s LPs.
Three guys on the cover with their heads down — beautiful! But there were also some musical things that were not so good. It’s the same with [1973’s Number i. album] Hello. Everybody romanticises it, but listen to the instrumental section on All The Reasons. It’s all over the
ing place. I think [1975’s] On The Level is better. Better songwriting and less chuff.
The fans don’t care about the mistakes though.
I realised that when we did those ‘Frantic Four’ shows [Rossi, Parfitt, Coghlan and Lancaster’s reunion tour in 2013—4]. I didn’t think we were very good. But the noise from the audience when we walked on stage at Hammersinith. I realised then, “Oh OK, it’s for Alan and John.” Fair enough, I was wrong.
What do you think it is about Status Quo that people like?
I don’t know and I don’t want to know, ‘cos I’ll start
ing with it. One’s head gets turned. After a show last year [Quo bassist] John Edwards said, “You were great tonight,” and I replied, “
off.” He said, “You don’t like compliments, do you?” I said, “I love compliments, but I take them with me and that means tomorrow night I’ll be more unbearable than the night before, until I fall fiat on my face. “ I have to keep myself in check because my ego will go there.
What do you love about music, though?
When I hear a song I like it’s a physical thing (grabs his stomach). Almost painful. This happens to me a lot. Sometimes I don’t want to like a song but can’t help it. The Pet Shop Boys said something about Status Quo years ago so I always wanted to hate them. Then they did It’s A Sin and I couldn’t hate them any more. But at the same time I don’t like the way people over-intellectualise music.
You’ve always poked fun at Status Quo, beating the critics to it with album titles like In Search Of The Fourth Chord. Is that your defence mechanism?
It’s got to be, but a lot of it is true as well. I’m extremely lucky to have been in Status Quo and to have survived. I couldn’t be the main man in The Beatles, the Stones or Pink Floyd. I’ve seen so
many better players and songwriters than us. We’re not that good, but we’ve got something.
In I Talk Too Much, you claim “1977 was a high watermark” for the group.
It was great, but we didn’t realise it at the time. I still thought, This has got to end soon, surely? We had Rockin’ All Over The World out, but we just kept running and didn’t look back in case it all stopped. But the amount of money we were making also meant we got indulged. The whole rock’n’roll lifestyle was starting to take over.
Drugs and alcohol had become a large part of your life by then?
I became a dickhead. For me it was that manly thing — trying to prove something — and that’s not who I am. We were in a Mexican restaurant in Montreux with Queen, and everyone was shouting, “Have a drink! “ So I drank six margaritas. Everybody started cheering, so I did six more. That’s how I became a drinker. Then it was, “Have a toot. “ But I would never have taken cocaine if it wasn’t for drinking.
You got sober in the early 1990s. Do you ever regret talking so publicly about your drug use? Now the whole world knows you’ve got a hole in your septum.
No I don’t. I still do talks in schools and tell the kids that drugs make you feel fantastic and then this happens — and I get a cotton bud, stick it up one nostril, through the hole and bend it so it comes out the other nostril. I’m too scared to have the operation and get it repaired, so my nose is sore most of the time, it gets all dry and crusty. You wouldn’t want to see up it.
“We used to wind people up — walk around holding hands. It was me and Rick versus the band.”
After 1976, Quo didn’t tour America again until ‘97. Does it bother you that you never broke the States?
I ‘ve always thought if Quo had broken the States, Rick and I would have died — without question. But I also worried if we concentrated on America it would go dead at home. Which is what happened to Slade. It’s that insecure thing, again. I was scared it would be all over.
You mentioned Slade, but who else was the competition in the ‘70s?
I remember reading in the British music papers that Status Quo were a pile of
, and then corning back from America and there was Suzi Quatro going “ Dink- da - dink-da - dink”. Pure Status Quo. Same with that Mud record, Tiger Feet, except it was “Dink—da—dink—da—dink” done faster. Thin Lizzy were great, but we tried not to take too much notice.
You talk about Rick Parfitt in the book more than your wife and ex-wife. Did the relationship dominate your life?
Probably. I loved him, and even when our relationship was at ist most contentious I never hated him. If it was genuine hate we wouldn’t have been together for so long.
In later years, though, you were critical of the way he sang and performed.
Somebody — not naming names — told Rick he had to be macho. Listen to his lovely voice on All The Reasons. That was the real Rick, not all that growly rock
—wearing sunglasses, pouting his lips and being drunk. I remember Rick staring at that photo of Keith Richards — the one where he’s lying there, comatose, looking like a paraffin — and going, “Cor! Look at that! “ Oh Picky, please. The sad thing is, he and I got on best when we were both coked up and drunk.
He comes across in your book as rather child-like at times.
He was like a kid and I took on the parental role. I remember our manager, David Walker, saying to us in the ‘90s, “It’s all over for you two in a couple of years, you do know that?” That freaked Rick out. He used to say to me, “We are going to be all right, aren’t we Frame?” — his nickname for me. I used to say, “Even if it’s not, Ricky, that’s what happens in showbiz.”
You broke the band up in 1984 but reunited for Live Aid. Is that what encouraged you to re-form Status Quo a year later?
No. Our manager at the time said we had X number of albums in our contract and if we didn’t do them I’d pay for it. It wasn’t true, so I got bull
ted into putting the band back together. I picked Rick up — he didn’t have a pot to piss in — and said, “I want us to get Status Quo back together, but I want to do this, this and this.” And he said, “I will do whatever you tell me to.” Of course, once we were right again, he started bitching.
About what?
Somebody got in his head and sowed this seed of doubt. He always complained about being Number Two — “Why do I always have to be Number Two?” He came up to me once on the bus and said, “I’m as good as you.” I said, “Wooah, What? Where has all this been festering?“
It was presumably your decision to reform Status Quo without Alan Lancaster, who then tried to sue you for ownership of the name.
Yes. The record company wanted Status Quo, and in their minds that was me and Rick. Alan always thought Status Quo was his band, but the public preferred the records with my nasally voice on. So Alan accused me of stealing his children’s inheritance by doing it without him. He also didn’t like the way the music was going. He hated [1983 hit] Marguerita Time. He said he couldn’t look his family in the eye after that (laughs).
Why carry on with the band after you’d fulfilled the contract though?
I got distracted. I was doing too much coke, I was besotted with this woman... (pauses) I wanted to do a cover of [Dutch duo Bolland & Bolland’s] In The Army Now before we split in ‘84. I thought it would either be a massive hit or a complete no-no. Also people said, “Oh, Quo’ll never work without the other two, “ which made me want to prove everyone wrong. So we did In The Army Now with the new band [John Edwards and drummer Jeff Rich] and it was a massive hit. Suddenly, it was all working again. Status Quo soon became famous for publicity stunts: playing Butlin’s, doing four gigs in four different cities in one day, suing Radio 1…
I stopped drinking and doing coke but David Walker was still flying high and came up with all these schemes. He talked us into doing this BBC gig to celebrate Radio 1’s birthday, saying the BBC would play our records. They didn’t play our single so I told him to get the money for the gig. We’d pulled 125,000 people, so it wasn’t just about a birthday, it was about making a profit. David didn’t fancy asking for the money so he said we’d sue the BBC instead. Ridiculous. It was a complete stunt, it backfired and we lost money.
Can you understand why these stunts put some people off?
Yes, but they kept us going. All acts have a certain way they work, and for us it became: “OK, what’s the con?” Half the people hear about it and go, “Great, love those guys.” The other half go, “What a bunch of ****s.” But they’re talking about us and that’s what’s important.
This upsets some of the audience, though, who think you’re only it in for the money.
Musicians get funny about me saying this, but if you just want to be a musician, stay home and play. Once you get on-stage, accept that you’re in business.
Alan Lancaster was keen to keep the 2013 reunion going and make a new album, but you weren’t. Have you spoken lately?
Not for a couple of years [Christmas 2016]. It was on FaceTime and he started getting insulting — saying I was ruining his kids’ lives again. I said, “Al, don’t or I’ll cut the call off.” He said, “You
...” I pressed the button and I’ve not spoken to him since.
It’s sad how these childhood friendships didn’t survive.
It is sad because he was my friend. But that’s what happens. It starts off as us boys against the world, then we become grown men, have wives and children and grow apart. That’s the logical thing. Rick and I were lucky to have lasted so long.
After Rick Parfitt died at Christmas 2016, you suggested he’d never been the same after a heart attack four months earlier.
His sons don’t like me saying this, but he wasn’t the same. For me, he died on the floor in that hotel in Turkey. When I saw him in hospital he thought it was 1984. He said he was putting a new band together with John Edwards who’d just played on his solo album [Recorded Delivery]. He’d done that album in the ‘80s. I thought, Oh
, he thinks it’s 1984. Sometimes, though, the old Ricky came back. He phoned John one day and said, “I’m sat on my sofa naked, watching sport on the telly.” That was Rick all over naked, on the sofa, watching TV.
Do you miss him?
I miss who he was, but the bloke I loved wasn’t there any more.
“I get annoyed when people talk about the rock’n’roll lifestyle. You mean being a dickhead?”
You replaced him with a new guitarist, Richie Malone, and Status Quo were back on the road in 2017.
Rick heard Richie play and said, “
, he’s good isn’t he?” He was the obvious choice. No, I’m not sentimental , probably because I was bred to go into retail. One of my relatives owned most of Deptford. When he died, the rest of the family were dividing his business up at his funeral — “OK, you can have numbers one to 37 on Friendly Street...” (laughs). That’s how it was. The show has to go on.
What motivates you now?
People telling me, “You’ll be no good without Rick.” Don’t say that to me, because I will try and prove you wrong. I was ready to go away ( laughs ) , but not now. I ‘ m toying with making another Quo album, but I’d also like to do another record with Hannah [Rickard]. I’ve finally realised what I love is the process. If people like it, great. But I‘m just happy to come here (points at the studio) for the day, finish at five, go back to the house to work out with my trainer…
It’s a far cry from the old days.
Yeah. I get annoyed when people talk about the rock’n’roll lifestyle. I think, You mean being a dickhead? You could say I’m OCD but that’s a current term. I’m just organised and regimented. I work out, I practise guitar every evening and do jigsaw puzzles. I don’t do them because I want to beat them, but because they relax me. I’ll go and sit in the orangery with Eileen, with a fire going, Talking Pictures TV on and a puzzle on the go. Lovely (rubs hands delightedly).
How would you like Status Quo to be remembered?
I never think about it. But I reckon the people who love us will remember us and the people who hate us will also remember us. Being remembered — that’s the main thing.
Francis Rossi & Hannah Rickard’s We Talk Too Much and Rossi’s autobiography I Talk Too Much are out now.