WHATEVER YOU WANT

THE STORY OF

Transcript of broadcast on BBC Radio 2 - 24/3/01

 

Rick Parfitt: 55 Hit Singles

Francis Rossi: 100 million records

Rick Parfitt: 5000 live shows. Seven years on the charts.

Francis Rossi: Sex, drugs and rock'n'roll.

Rick Parfitt: And one pair of jeans. "Whatever You Want - The Story of Status Quo"

Francis Rossi: With me, Francis Rossi...

Rick Parfitt: ...and me, Rick Parfitt.

[Whatever You Want plays in background]

Rick Parfitt: The story begins in 1962, when Alan Lancaster and Francis Rossi put together The Spectres, with keyboard player Jess Jaworski, and drummer John Coghlan. The first step on the road to stardom came when they met South London gas fitter, Pat Barlow.

Pat Barlow: I was running a boys football team at the time, under 15's, and we'd won the News Of The World Junior Cup, and the Trojan Youth League. So at that time, in 1962, groups was all the rage. So I decided to give a party for the football team. I went to see them, and the first thing is I found the noise was so loud it blew my eardrums out. But once I got used to the sound, you could hear the quality musicians that they were. The band at that time consisted of John Coghlan, Alan Lancaster, Mike Rossi - as he liked to call himself, but I made him revert back to his own name, Francis - and Jess Jaworski. So, when I heard them I asked them how much it would cost to do a gig, and they turned and said, ‘Well, is five pounds okay?’.

Francis Rossi: We did our first gig in a place, the Samuel Jones Sports Club, near Lordship Lane, and I look at it now - it’s probably not much bigger than this room, and this is a small room. And, erm, as soon as we finished the gig this guy came up. He said, ‘I wanna manage you’. [pause] ‘Yeah, all right, then, if you like’. And he was of our parents’ generation, kinda, and he treated us like his own children.

Rick Parfitt: Drummer John Coghlan wasn’t keen at first...

John Coghlan: He appeared and I remember saying to Francis, Oh, we don’t need a manager. Why do we need a manager? We’re all right as we are, but I was proved wrong because Pat was great and he was a very nice guy, a very nice man - and I think he’s probably the only rock band manager that also ran a gas showroom at the same time, y’know ... wonderful if you needed a free gas oven, or something... and he used to let us rehearse in his basement in Lambeth Walk, underneath all the ovens and things upstairs, and that was great.

Francis Rossi: He was pushing all the time, no matter where he went, even if he was fitting a gas cooker for somebody, ‘Oh, you should see my group’, and lo and behold eventually he got us into all sorts of gigs, it got us into Butlins, well, got us into the audition for Butlins, it got us everything, you know.

Rick Parfitt: Butlins beckoned for the Spectres, but it was a season too far for Jess Jaworski, who left to continue his studies. Roy Lynes took up the keyboard duties and the task of modifying the amp so that the holiday camp was not totally levelled by the volume.

Francis Rossi: And who would have thought that Butlins Minehead would have been hosting so much glamorous talent that summer? Not only the Spectres, but The Highlights, featuring... Rick Parfitt.

[Background: I Who Have Nothing]

Rick Parfitt: I heard this almighty racket coming from the Rock Ballroom, and I thought, Well, I must go and check this out. So I nonchalantly sort of walked in and there they were, Francis, Alan, everybody, and I thought, ‘Well, fantastic’. And I’d been with The Highlights two-and-a-half years or something like that, and all of a sudden a door had opened for me. I wanted to be this rock star, pop star, now. I’d seen it, you know. This was the first band that I’d really listened to, and Wow, they were good, you know. ‘Yep, I wanna do that.’

Francis Rossi: Still Rickless in July ‘66, The Spectres signed a deal with Piccadilly, and in September the first single hit the streets. Well, not exactly hit... Ben E King had made the US Top 20 with his version of ‘I Who Have Nothing’; The Spectres’ cover, on the other hand, failed to chart.

Rick Parfitt: Keyboard player Roy Lynes remembers life on the road as being hard going, especially with John Coghlan on board.

Roy Lynes: I remember some hecklers called out when we stopped in between the songs, you know, and shouted some abuse out - it was out in the country somewhere - I think John had said, ‘Why don’t you go back to your tractors?’, you know, and erm, I think they were waiting for us outside [laughs] so we dashed for the car pretty quick...

John Coghlan: We just did it ‘cos we loved it, we loved to play gigs. Anywhere we could play we would just go and do it. We had a little Thames van, and I remember going over to France, and we drove all the way down to Avignon to play a gig, you know, good for a week. It was complete madness, but I think it broke down on the way back, ‘cos it rolled backwards down a hill. We couldn’t get up this hill and... it was just like Spinal Tap.

Rick Parfitt: By November ‘67 the band were ready to release their first single under the name, The Status Quo. The Spectres had appeared briefly as Traffic, then even more briefly as Traffic Jam to avoid the wrath of Steve Winwood. Rossi, inspired by ‘Hey Joe’, had come up with ‘Pictures Of Matchstick Men’... obvious, really...

[Intro to Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Hey Joe’, which fades into ‘Pictures Of Matchstick Men’]

Francis Rossi: I’d heard it on TV, I Think, or on the radio... on something I’d heard it somewhere, and I thought, ‘That’s good, that’, but there was something about the sequence that I hadn’t heard before, it wasn’t used too much before -it’s used a hell of a lot these days. I wanted to make it weird, and so I sang it in falsetto (for those of you who don’t know what falsetto is it’s [speaks in high-pitched voice] ‘like that, you know, silly’) and I thought it sounded really kind of freaky, and then I had the intro and I had to tune the top string down because one string sounded a bit naff, plus my playing was useless - if I’m useless now it must’ve been beyond it then - then the engineer came up with the idea of phasing, wah-wah on the organ, it was all going into that record. It was destined to work, I think.

Rick Parfitt: Pat Barlow was sure he had a winner. In fact, he put money on it.

Pat Barlow: I then approached [Radio] Caroline, paid ‘em a thousand pounds to play the record six times a day. It could be six o’clock in the morning, or twelve o’clock at night, half past three in the afternoon, whatever, for four weeks. But fortunately the guy who was running Caroline loved the record, so we got extra plays.

[Background: ‘Pictures Of Matchstick Men’]

Francis Rossi: I think it went out in November ‘67 and it was a hit in February ‘68. That was such a lovely feeling! Oh, my God....

Rick Parfitt: On the crest of a psychedelic wave, ‘Matchstick Men’ reached number 7, and silk and satin were in. Bass player, Alan Lancaster...

Alan Lancaster: We were quite a rockin’ little unit before we had ‘Matchstick Men’ out, funny enough. As soon as we got onto this psychedelic thing and turned ‘Pictures Of Matchstick Men’ into a psychedelic tune we were some super-cool band from America all of a sudden, and we had every Tom, Dick and Harry in the music industry being experts in the way we should look and the way we should dress. And of course we were young boys at the time and, erm, we didn’t know any better and the music industry took a hold of us, and changed us.

Francis Rossi: A top 10 record was sweet, and the icing on the cake was an appearance on ‘Top Of The Pops’, but where oh where was Rick? Manger, Pat Barlow.

Pat Barlow: The only problem we had with ‘Top Of The Pops’ was that Ricky let us down by not turning up until the last moment, because he’d been seeing his two girlfriends who he’d been with at Butlins.

John Coghlan: The producer walked into the dressing room and said, ‘You’re bloody late. I’ve got a whole camera crew and team upstairs waiting for you, and it’s costing me money, and I’ve a good mind to throw you off the show.’ And I stood up and said, ‘You can’t do that because my Mum and Dad are watching at home!’ [laughs] So pathetic! And he just slammed the door and we got changed and went upstairs and went through the motions...

Pat Barlow: Everything went according to scratch, except when we came out there was a thousand girls waiting there, and as we’re going to the car, [the band] are running along like they’ve got divers boots on ‘cos they wanted to be mobbed by the girls, which they were.

Rick Parfitt: Pat Barlow, and I think I still have those boots somewhere....

Francis Rossi: The follow-up single ‘Black Veils Of Melancholy’ didn’t chart, but the next release, ‘Ice In The Sun’ went Top Ten.

[Background: ‘Ice In The Sun’]

Roy Lynes: I thought it was a great song, y’know, it was different again, y’know, it had a few sound effects in it - especially running the plectrum down the piano strings - I mean we had to get away from ‘Matchstick Men’ because we just couldn’t find another song like that, y’know. And anyway, I don’t think we could keep bringing out the same sounds, y’know? I think we were searching for an image, definitely searching for an image, which came later after I’d left the band.

Rick Parfitt: Roy Lynes. Following ‘Ice In The Sun’, of the next five singles only ‘Are You Growing Tired Of My Love’ managed to chart, reaching number 46. The first two albums also sank without trace. Lesser bands would have given up, but we were made of much sterner stuff. Alan Lancaster.

Alan Lancaster: I think the big, big change came when we realised ‘This is not an easy game to play’. The next single was a flop, of course it sounded very much like ‘Matchstick Men’, then the next one was even more poppier, ‘Ice In The Sun’. We said, ‘Hey, we don’t think we like the way this is going. We’re growing up.’ The big change was when we actually found the Steamhammer song, ‘Junior’s Wailing’. That was right up our street.

Rick Parfitt: When agent, Colin Johnson, went to see the new Status Quo he got a bit of a shock, but was so impressed he was soon their new manager.

Colin Johnson: The band had changed somewhat. Now they were these, er, instead of silk and satin and frilly shirts they were, like, jeans and t-shirts and no shave and long hair, and I went to see them at the London College of Fashion for the first time, when Roy Lynes was still playing with them - he fell asleep at the keyboards -and they were fantastic. I just had a chill go down my spine, standing at the back. And there was only about 200 people in the hall, but they were just phenomenal and just so exciting. And I said, ‘I’d like to do a deal’. They’d four dates in the date book, that’s all they had.

Francis Rossi: For drummer John Coghlan the whole psychedelic thing just literally went up in smoke.

John Coghlan: We threw away all the soppy shirts and stupid jackets. In fact, my jacket caught fire, standing by an electric fire in Pat Barlow’s house. We all said, ‘What’s that smell?’ and I looked round and the was a big flame going up may back! So, that was the end of that, fortunately, and erm, next thing is we grew our hair long, put on dirty old jeans, played blues and things like ‘Down The Dustpipe’ and it was great, and I thought ‘This is it. This is going to go well’, and what we did, we played every pub that had a gig.

Rick Parfitt: ‘Down the Dustpipe’ was the end of the road for keyboard player, Roy Lynes, who decided to call it a day, but featured the fifth Quo, roadie, writer and harmonica player, Bob Young. [‘Down the Dustpipe’ plays] And thanks to Bob Young, we have a Radio 2 exclusive with some never-before heard demo versions of Quo’s greatest songs, including this original acetate of ‘Down The Dustpipe’... [demo plays - sounds like Alan on vocals]. I think ‘Down The Dustpipe’ was probably the first indication of what Quo were all about, you know, the dunk-a-dunk-a-dunk-a-dunk type thing, you know, but around this time Francis and I had been spending some time in Germany, well, we were doing some gigs out there, doing clubs, and working our arses off. I would just work every day, go to bed about five, six in the morning, didn’t matter. Up, work - who cares? And we were in this club one night, in Bienerfeld, and we heard this track - ‘dee dedee dedee dedee’ - The Doors’ ‘Roadhouse Blues’, and there was this couple dancing on the floor. I shall never forget it. One of the first times I actually got my duck coat, you know, got goose-pimples. And it really freaked me out, and we thought, ‘Right, we must have a go at something like that’.

[Background: Quo’s ‘Roadhouse Blues’]

Francis Rossi: We’d gotten into this thing, we’d worked with Chicken Shack and Fleetwood Mac a lot in colleges, and we’d do our set and sit down at the side of the stage and they would start - doo dodoo dodoo dodoo; about an hour-and-a-half later they’re still going do dodoo dodoo dodoo, and we were going ‘Yeah!’. Dribbling, we were, thinking ‘This is marvellous’. We got into that blues thing copying those blues bands, and then later on people said, ‘Well, you’re sort of a blues... and who were you’re influences?’, and I used to hear Steve Marriott, all sorts of other people, Pete Green, they’d mention some obscure black people who I just...sorry, I never heard of them. So any of that, ‘We were influenced by white boys who were influenced by black boys’, you know, it was like second or third generation. So the first generation were copying the blacks and nicking their music, and we nicked it again! And I always thought we were a mix between a country band, a blues band and a rock band. All the sequences were very similar to me, the lyrical content is usually similar, and I like all three styles of music. I don’t have a problem with that.

Rick Parfitt: But the transition from pop to the underground scene wasn’t easy. Colin Johnson...

Colin Johnson: We crossed over, and I think that’s where the benefit that Quo had from that hard work they did with audiences where they could tell by looking at and working the audiences up and down the country, whether it’s 15 people or 1500, you know, they could get a feedback as to what was... ‘cos they worked harder than most probably any other band in the country at that time.

Francis Rossi: We were so unfashionable, worse than we are now, you know. And you could see them looking at you going, ‘Oh no, f**king hell, this is shit, innit?’ and that always made us think, ‘Right, we’re gonna have you, we’re gonna get you’ and I think that’s how we learnt our craft, that thing that a lot of younger people don’t necessarily know today, because there isn’t the circuit to do, or so on, and things are far more manufactured. You had to learn to go to an audience that’s looking at you, going ‘I’m gonna kill you in a minute’ and you gotta try and win them over. And we would win them over and we thought it was fantastic, so when you got to playing to 600 people that was fantastic!

Colin Johnson: The music press didn’t want to know, I mean, we couldn’t get press for love nor money. It was dreadful, I mean, no-one wanted to know. I mean, one of our earliest supporters really, I suppose, was John Peel [Radio 1 DJ since 1967].

John Peel: This band came on and introduced themselves by saying something along the lines of, to us hippies, you know, ‘You’re not going to like us very much. We make hit singles and we’re very loud’, which indeed they were, and that was Status Quo. And I must admit I admired their attitude, ‘cos it was, you know, they made no attempt to fit in with the prevailing trendy kind of morality, or whatever, and during that time everybody was a little precious, a little pretentious and music was something that you sat on the ground and listened to and nodded your head, a lot of the music was based on barely digested notions of eastern religion and philosophy and things, and there was an incredible amount of plain old bollocks about, really. So when they came on and just played this dead straight forward, no-nonsense stuff it was curiously refreshing.

[Background: Paper Plane]

Colin Johnson: We did a deal with Phonogram in ‘72 and we released the first single November 17th 1972, Paper Plane. I got friendly with people like Robin Nash who was doing Top Of The Pops at the time. And he phoned me up on January the first and he said, ‘Did you have a good Christmas?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, fine thank you’. He said, ‘What would it take to make your new year?’ and I said, ‘You know what it would take’. He said, ‘Can you come and do Top of the Pops next week?’, and I said ‘Cor, dear oh dear!’. And that was it.

Rick Parfitt: Five years after ‘Pictures of Matchstick Men’ all those gigs finally paid off. ‘Paper Plane’ went Top Ten, and the album ‘Piledriver’ went Top Five. And for John Peel and his roadshow, Quo were a bit of a lifesaver.

John Peel: You’d end up doing wildly inappropriate gigs and there were a couple where I had to be escorted out by a phalanx of policemen, because I was so unpopular. There was one at, er, a place up near Carlisle called Silith, where I genuinely feared for my life. But in all of these places, if you put a Quo record on it certainly quietened the natives down.

Rick Parfitt: The next album ‘Hello’ reached the very top of the charts, and featured Andy Bown on keyboards who was later to join Quo in the mid-80’s. The first single from ‘Hello’ was ‘Caroline’. Bob Young... BY: Francis and I wrote Caroline down at a place called Peranporth. I remember sitting in the dining room of this pretty tatty hotel. We wrote the song, we came back to London and we demo’d it in R G Jones (in Wimbledon) Studios, and we did a slow version and a fast version.

[Background: Slow blues demo version of ‘Caroline’]

Francis Rossi: I think it might have started as a slow shuffle... [sings] ‘If you want to turn me on to...’, like that, and we were, like, smoking, going ‘Yeah, this is marvellous’, you know, and then realised, ‘My God! We’re not even into the second verse yet and it’s three minutes in or something!’.

[more of the demo]

Francis Rossi: Then we said, ‘Let’s try speeding it up’. We did this and we did that...

[Background: faster demo of ‘Caroline’]

Francis Rossi: Suddenly Rick said, [sings classic Quo rhythm guitar intro] and I went [sings lead guitar riff] and I thought, ‘This is good’ and there was always something about ‘Caroline’, I always see that as French, and I still do. I don’t know what it is about it. I love it!

[Background: ‘Caroline’ from the ‘Live!’ album]

Rick Parfitt: The next album ‘Quo’ reached number 2. The single ‘Break The Rules’ went Top Ten.

Francis Rossi: And within a year the album ‘On The Level’ and the single ‘Down Down’ both reached number one.

John Peel: What I liked about it was the same thing I like about ‘Zadok The Priest’ which is the thing they sing in Coronations. It’s the build up, you know, just that kind of feel, you know, ‘Wow! How much longer can we take this?!’ and you get the same thing now in some African music, Sukers in particular, where they deliberately just play the same phrase over and over and over and over again until you think you’re gonna go mad, and then they’ll suddenly explode off into something else, and when I first heard it I thought, ‘That’s the old Quo trick!’. [laughs]

Alan Lancaster: Once we got good people on our side journalists couldn’t say bad things about us because it’d be bad for their career. We were a real band, you know, we weren’t kind of playing or acting. We were actually doing it, we were actually performing to the best of our capabilities, and we were for real. Everything was for real, the music, even the poses on stage. They weren’t acted, they were ‘natural’. So when we got criticised it really was like water running off a duck’s back because we were doing the best we could and the people were responding, and we were responding to the people. So to criticise us in the ‘70’s was like, ‘Ooh, no no. Don’t do that!’

Francis Rossi: It wasn’t that we could do no wrong, it was we could do no wrong with the public. As you see with anything else that goes on today, particularly the music press, it’s ‘Ignore it. Ignore it...Oh shit - it’s big! WE REALLY LOVED IT ALL ALONG YOU KNOW!!’

Rick Parfitt: But despite chart domination in the UK success in the States eluded Status Quo. Manager, Colin Johnson.

Colin Johnson: We couldn’t get radio play, no matter what. We paid for it, we gave them drugs, we gave them prostitutes, we gave everything we could. And we couldn’t get onto radio. I mean most of the shows we did, some were quite good. I mentioned earlier about ZZ Top. WE played a few shows with them and we went down quite well. And we did shows with Fleetwood Mac, we did shows with Robin Trower, with, er, J Geils Band, you know.. Peter Frampton got booed off at the Peter Frampton Show in New York, but it was the wrong sort of music. It was too pop-py, too in-yer-face, no mystique about it. And Americans love two things, they love great voices, and they love guitar heroes, and we didn’t have either [At this point the BBC’s CD player jammed for a second]. They didn’t like being in America, they didn’t like touring in America, they were a very big band in the UK and in Europe and we would headline Wembley Arena, 11,000, no 10,000 people then, go to America and play to the Whisky-a-Go-Go to a crowd of 150 if we were lucky. You know, it hurts, it’s an uncomfortable feeling.

Rick Parfitt: We still toured America, albeit shuffling from city to city or town to town, you know, and playing our set, tearing the place up, of course, ‘cos live the band was hitting it, you know. Without any airplay, without a hit album, without a hit single, we were flogging a dead horse and we could have flogged it as long as we liked. And with all the treatment we’d been getting in Europe, you know, we were big in Europe by now, and the whole thing of getting dressed in the toilet and stuff and getting no treatment at all got to us and we said ‘Bother! Let’s go home’.

[Background: album version of Mystery Song]

Francis Rossi: And back at home it was work, work, work. There was hardly even time for a cup of tea.

Rick Parfitt: I got into the studio 10 o'clock that morning and we were sort of doing loads of drugs at the time, you know, we were scruffy, long-haired drug takers! And Francis ... I said I wanna cup of tea, so I had a cup of tea and unknown to me he put a spoonful of speed in my tea, stirred it up and said, 'Well, I've put a little bit in there...', and I thought, 'Fine', you know, to get us going in the morning. And he'd put this heaped teaspoonful in and of course, within five minutes I was the colour of a beetroot, speeding along like crazy. And I tried to make myself throw up and all that sort of thing - really rock and roll - which didn't work, but I mean, the whole day through I was going like a steam train. And I'd gotten this riff. I dunno, during one of the breaks, but I'd found this riff and I loved it, and I couldn't stop playing it. Whatever time it was that night they all said 'Right, that's it, we're off' and I said, 'OK. I'll just finish this, 'cos I wanna do something with this', and it's true - the next morning they came back and I'd been in the studio all night. I'm still there, on the stool, and I'd finished the song. I hadn't got the lyrics but I'd got everything else for the Mystery Song, and I was, er ... I was slowing down a bit by then!

[Background: 'Mystery Song' continues]

Francis Rossi: In '78 the band had a year out of the UK for tax reasons. Rick went to Jersey. [Slightly sarcastically] It must have been tough. Here he is writing with Bob Young in a Jersey hotel room.

[Background: demo of 'Living On An Island']

Rick Parfitt: You're living on Jersey, doing a tax year, and you're just longing to see somebody because it's just not the most exciting place in the world, it's a lovely place and all that - he said, covering his arse, because he's gotta play there soon! - but it's not the most exciting place to spend a winter. So I was getting kind of frustrated, you know, and I kind of vented my frustration with this song, and er, it's just a true song about doing a tax year in Jersey, and well... the song could have been a lot longer, I can tell you!

Francis Rossi: During the year out of the UK Alan Lancaster moved to Australia to get married. However, the success of 'Rockin' All Over The World' presented a problem...

[Background: 'Rockin' All Over The World']

Rick Parfitt: Well I'd been on the phone to Alan, saying 'Rockin' All Over The World', you know, saying 'You've got to get over here. The record's taking off fast and they want to shoot a video'. He said, 'Well, you can't shoot a video without me'. I said, 'Well... well, Nuff we're gonna have to', you know, I said 'Get yourself over here, y'know, like NOW!'. And he said, 'Well, I can't do that' and I said 'Well we'll have to go ahead and shoot the video'. 'You'd better not shoot the video without me'. And it was that kind of vibe, you know, it was a shame because he'd kind of changed his life, I think for the better. He'd married a very lovely girl, and had settled in Australia. It didn't make life any easier for us, in kind of situations like that. We'd handled it so far but then all of a sudden, it was a video shoot, and he had to be there, but he said he wasn't coming. He said 'Don't shoot it without me otherwise there's going to be trouble'... so there was trouble! We had to.

Francis Rossi: Then manager Colin Johnson had to pull a few strings...

Colin Johnson: They said, 'Well Al, if you won't come over we're gonna have to either put a dep in...'. You can't do that, you can't put a dep in'. I said, 'Well you can't just play with three guys, we need a bass player'. I said, 'I'll put a dummy together. So, [giggles] he said, 'I'm not happy about that'. I said, 'Well, we'll see how it goes'. So Mike Mansfield put this dummy together which was just incredible, and if you ever see this video of 'Rockin' All Over The World' it is just so lifelike... in fact, his aunt phone up - she said she thought he looked ill!

Rick Parfitt: [laughing] It was really funny. Of course, Frame and me were going up talking to it, you know, stuff like that, and working with it. [more seriously] But I mean, I can imagine what that did to him, but I mean, it wasn't our fault. It wasn't our fault, you know, we... we had to shoot the video and he wasn't there. And that really was the beginning of the end.

Francis Rossi: Drink, drugs and rock'n'roll were beginning to take their toll. Drummer John Coghlan was the first to go. Alan Lancaster...

Alan Lancaster: There's a lot of stories about the band, having arguments, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and sure there was the odd one here and there but nothing to write home about. We used to live with one another, in one another's pockets day in, day out. We was never away from one another except for that '78 year. And there was a lot of pressure, being on top of one another all the time. And then one of these little arguments would break out over things, they'd seem more serious than what they were. This was just one of those moments when things went wrong, and it would've blown over in a couple of days, or even after the album it would've blown over, but things were taken to the extreme. The band was looked on now as being important. So decisions now for the outsiders, they kind of got involved and thought, 'Oh, we'll take over. We'll sort this out', and they certainly did sort it out. And of course, John went. But the thing is, he could have stayed. It got out of hand, and off he went. That was related to the drugs at the time; although I didn't kind of realise it then, I do believe it was related to that.

Rick Parfitt: If you smoke a joint, you go somewhere else, and you laugh at things that normally wouldn't be funny. But John couldn't see this, and I can quite understand it, you know. And I think he felt an awful lot of pressure and I was to find out the same thing myself in later years when I actually gave up smoking joints. And it was very weird indeed - you don't feel part of the crowd, you don't feel as if, you know, if you're in the circle. And I know what John went through, and it must have been really tricky, and I mean, he locked himself in a room one day and you could hear him crying. We were somewhere, in a hotel. And I knew it was the beginning of the end for him, because he was having a nervous breakdown, here just couldn't hack it anymore.

John Coghlan: Pressure got quite high, and I was feeling quite uncomfortable with it all, and I suppose because I wasn't really very happy with it I used to drink more, and I just got out of it one night in the studio and had a row, and couldn't get the song together, and I was just, I was on a real low, y'know, I was really down. And we had a big argument and the next thing... But the only thing I thought was quite bad news was that instead of having a meeting with all the band, they'd decided... Iain Jones came in - he was nicknamed the Axe Man, 'cos he was always going around sacking people, sacking roadies, you know, for odd reasons - and he came in and said, 'The band had a meeting last night after the fiasco last night and decided they want to use a drum machine', which was a load of crap because, you know, a drum machine really wouldn't work with that music, and Pete Kircher was already on the plane on the way out, so it was all, really, sort of planned, I think.

Rick Parfitt: With Pete Kircher on drums, '1982' was the fourth number one album, but morale was at an all time low. It was going to take a miracle to bring the band together. Cue, 'Saint' Bob Geldof.

Bob Geldof: As soon as I had the idea I couldn't think of anyone better, you know, 'cos it was just perfect, you know. One, they have anthemic songs - 'Rockin' All Over The World'. You know, I didn't think of this... it only fell into place bit by bit, 'Let's get Quo to do it', and I thought, 'Yeah'. Like, even if you don't 'get' rock, as soon as you see these guys, y'know, then the whole uniform is there. Their jeans, their shirt, their guitars, their hair, their music, you know? And even if you've never seen it before, even if you've just vaguely heard, you'll recognise this as being the archetype. And the song, 'Rockin' All Over The World', you know, which... it's so obvious now, you know. It wasn't obvious at all at the time.

Francis Rossi: We'd met Bob. We'd been in Phonogram's office for something, and Bob had been there. He said, 'Do you want to do it?' We said, 'Nah'. We went, just ignored it. 'No thanks, Bob'. We walked away, we weren't really getting on, and then a few weeks later we were in the same room for something else and he really did pus, you know. And we said, 'Well, we're not rehearsed, you know, we're not getting on very well'. He said, 'It doesn't matter a ---- what you sound like, as long as you're there'. We said, 'Mmm, you can't really answer that, can you?', and we were badly under-rehearsed, and we didn't think about it at all. But it worked.

Bob Geldof: Quo! Bang! It's a band! It's the definitive band! You want to think 'band', 'the lads', you know, there they go, you know, really 'the boys', isn't it? It's 'the lads', fast riffing and all that. It is all those things, and that was the right... absolutely the right space, it was the right moment.

[Background: BBC's Ricjhard Skinner inroduces Live Aid ' 'It's 12 o'clock in London...'

Bob Geldof: When they started, I really remember, I was crapping myself. I remember the guy - I thought it was naff what he said - 'It's 12 o'clock in London...'. I thought, 'Oh, Jesus, who is this [you know] DJ guy, he did it in a DJ voice. And I can't remember what they [Quo] say, it's just typical 'Allr right?!', I think it was something like that the ysaid, which was so brilliant, you know, 'cos it was so 'nothing'! The expectation was so huge, and so many people were watching this, and like the... 'All right?!', you know, something like corny, obvious rock'n'roll to the max, you know, 'Hello Cleveland!' Spinal Tap sort of thing, and even that was perfect. I just said, 'Yeah!'

[Background: BBC DJ Tommy Vance - 'And now, to start the 16 hours of Live Aid, will you welcome, Status Quo!' Francis does his 'How are you then, all right' to huge cheers from the audience, then they launch into 'Rockin' All Over The World']

Bob Geldof: And the chorus is the perfect way to get the crowd going! I mean, they're past masters at that anyway, you know, but I mean, great crowd songs, great rock, gets the whole crowd immediately up, you know, so they were perfect on the day.

Rick Parfitt: That was the last time Alan ever performed with us - it's even more significant for us. It was going downhill, very fast, though I don't think it actually notices when you watch the performance on Live Aid, but er, we weren't happy bunnies at all.

Alan Lancaster: I was always sort of the buffer, in the middle. If I spoke to Rick too long I'd get it from Francis. If I spoke to Francis too long, I'd get it from Rick. It was always someone in the middle trying to keep a balance, if you know what I mean, although I'm sure they would say the same about me [laughs] but I wasn't the one on drugs - they were. They just blew their heads away on cocaine, and everybody else had to suffer for it. And the split in the band was basically becasue Francis Rossi wanted to play his country music under the name of Status Quo which wasn't his property.

Francis Rossi: Alan could be a great guy sociably. We had lots of really good times together, and I really liked him. But he would go for situations...

Colin Johnson: Him and Parfitt had a fight on a plane once, we were on a Lear Jet going to Spain and they yhad fisticuffs on the flight, an actual punch up on this Lear jet. When lancaster said he was coming over on the 747 from Australia, in the conversation in the plane he said to Parfitt, 'Do you know we reached speeds of 850 miles an hour in this plane'. Parfitt said, 'Don't be silly, you can't', 'cos at that time Parfitt was just beginning to fly. He said, 'They won't do that. It'd break up'. He [Alan] said, 'I'm telling you, the pilot told us 850 miles and hour on this flight'. And he [Rick] said 'You're talking bullshit! It's a load of bollocks!' and they got so het up with each other the yended up in a punch up, and we were trying to separate them in this little Lear jet, you know, 'Come on fella's - stop it!'. Oh, dear, oh dear, it was unbelievable. But he would not let it go, he couldn't let it go he was like a Rottweiler - teeth into it, that was it. So that's Alan.

Francis Rossi: I just couldn't deal with it any more, and I thought it was me and I thought, 'Well... I'll leave', and I initially thought, 'Well, I'm sure we can still make records, and sell records, you know. And I thought that was gonna be okay, but I just couldn't.

Alan Lancaster: This came as a shot in the dark. I had no idea this conspiracy was happening behind my back. I turned up for the Live Aid concert, Rick and I was rehearsing for the new album just after the Live Aid concert and before, exchanging ideas. Francis didn't want to work, he just refused to work, and we were all under contract, and by Francis refusing to work he could have got us sued for everything we had.

Francis Rossi: I left it to Rick and him, and they were going to do it, I believe. And I don't think Phonogram accepted that. Then they came and they said the ymight... they'll take me and Rick. And it was either that or pay so much back in money that we'd had off them, so we said, 'Shit! You ain't gonna get the money back, we'll do the albums', and it was meeting John and Jeff and it changed again, it was all fine.

Rick Parfitt: With Jeff Rich on drums and John Edwards on bass, the next album produced a massive hit.

[Background: 'In The Army Now']

Francis Rossi: I know some pople think it's not a Quo song, but we've been criticised for years for not changing, not doiung anything different, and whenever we did we got hammered for doing it. In other words, 'We don't want you whatever you do. Go away!'. Well, we're not going to go away, it ain't gonna happen.

Rick Parfitt: We sometimes say that taht's the only record, real record we've ever really made, 'cos it was so beautifully produced, and you know, Quo has always been a little rough round the edges - that's how it sounds best. But 'In The Army Now' was a really smooth, slick record, and really kind of put the band back on the map, I suppose, after the break up.

Francis Rossi: As the 80's gave way to the 90's the albums continued to make the top 20, but trouble was brewing in radio-land. Trevor Dann was head of production at Radio 1.

[Background: 'Fun, Fun, Fun']

Trevor Dann: I think Status Quo were making records in the early 90's that were not of their time. You could not listen to something like Status Quo playing 'Fun, Fun, Fun', for goodness' sake, with half the surviving Beach Boys and say that that was a record that was likely to speak to young people in the UK. It was just an absurd judgement.

Francis Rossi: They said we were suing the BBC because they wouldn't play our records, well that's ridiculous. That's part of the issue, we'd been into agreements with them and arrangements with them... I'll try and do it briefly... We were phoned by the manager who said 'Do you want to do this?' 'No', Rick said 'No, not intersted, tahnk you, no thanks'. He phoned again, he said, 'Well they're very keen', we said, 'Hmmm!'. 'Well, they've done a thing with their audience and the audience has voted as you're the band the ywant to see, with Del Amitri'. I said 'Oooh, I like Del Amitri'. We went to see them [Radio 1] and got an agreement, and we said, 'Look, there seems to be a preoblem every time our records come out. We get a blank'.

Trevor Dann: First of all they complained that the BBC's action in not playlisting their record was damaging them financially. So they sued us for damages for simply not playing their record.

Francis Rossi: And they said, 'Well, we'll play your records when they get in the chart'. I may be thick but if you don't play them, they don't get there, do they? You've got 21 million listeners across the country, and if you... Okay, all right, we can work with that.. So we went into agreement with them, did the show free of charge for 125,000 people. And we went into partnership with them on a live album of the show. The day after that show we couldn't get anything played, and each single after that, no matter what we did, didn't go anywhere.

Trevor Dann: Then they said that the ywanted a judicial review of the policy of the BBC, because they said that the BBC had always claimed that radio 1 was a quote 'Top 40 station' unquote.

Francis Rossi: I had no problem with that issue, other than the fact that we sat at the table, they said, 'No, you're records will be given fair... Then they got in the chart and they still didn't play them.

Trevor Dann: Now, I used the phrase, 'I know a publicity stunt when I see one', and so they then sued me for defaming them for saying it was just a publicity stunt.

Francis Rossi: [They said] We didn't fit the demographic of their audience. 'But 125,000 of them came to see us'. [They said] 'Not that 125,000, we're not talking about them'. So the goalposts kept getting moved and that's why we did it. A bad move, but there you go.

[Background: 'Fun, Fun, Fun' playout]

Francis Rossi: You've been listening to 'Whatever You Want - The Story of Status Quo', with me, Francis Rossi...

Rick Parfitt: And me, Rick Parfitt. In 2001, Quo will set out on another world tour, playing to half a million people across the planet. And after 35 years of Status Quo, maybe only one question remains. Will the original line-up ever reform? Judge for yourselves. Goodnight!

[Background: 'Agian and Again']

John Coghlan: I still feel, and a lot of Quo fans have said it to me, that we ought to get back together, even for just one tour, for the sake of the fans. There was lots of good times with the band, you know, and it's been a long time since '81, and I think things heal, wounds heal and erm, I mean, I went to see the band recently in Oxford Apollo; Rick invited me and my wife and we went down to see them. Francis didn't know I was coming, and he just... 'Hi, how you doing? What're you doing here?' and he just gave me a big hug, and it was nice.

Francis Rossi: I doubt it, but, as you and everybody else who's in this business knows if somebody gives you the right numbers of money, you take a mental adjustment, don't you? A slight mental adjustment.

Alan Lancaster: If it was for a worthy cause, a charity or something I'd bite my tongue and do it, for a worthy cause. But for money, for any other reason the answer would be, 'No'. I would never play with Francis Rossi again unless it was for something very special, someboy else's cause.

Rick Parfitt: There's no way it could happen. There's just no way, I mean, the way everybody's changed over the years, I think, immediately it would be an explosion if the four original members came back together. Something would go terribly, terribly wrong. And it couldn't happen in a million years. It will never happen.

- ENDE -