I have a friend who insists that had Status Quo hailed from Düsseldorf rather than Catford, they would nowadays be as critically revered as Can, Faust, Neu! and those other hallowed Teutonic pioneers of unyielding rhythm from the 1970s.
Maybe so. Very probably not. Canned Heat and ZZ Top seem more reachable comparisons. But it’s true that ‘the Quo’ have been underestimated and unjustly derided throughout their six-decade career, not least by themselves. The band has happily perpetuated their position as rock and roll neanderthals: a 2007 album is titled In Search Of The Fourth Chord.
There was always a little more to it than that. Personally, I have always divined a terrible sadness at the heart of their music. Like most court jesters, Status Quo internalise great loneliness and despair. Consider the regretful pills-and-powder sentiments of songs such as ‘Marguerita Time’, ‘Living On An Island’, ‘Down Down’ and ‘What You’re Proposing’, made all the more doleful by the bleached stoicism of Francis Rossi’s pinched voice. Their prototypical heads-down Ur-boogie, meanwhile, is the cosmic hamster’s wheel made sound, a pitch perfect aural representation of the existential treadmill.
Inelegantly billed as ‘An Evening of Francis Rossi’s Songs from the Status Quo Songbook and More’, this two-man touring show offers a corrective to the established Quo-text, though I very much doubt that is the intention.
Having lost his brother in arms, Rick Parfitt, to a heart attack in 2016, Rossi is joined by second guitarist and backing vocalist Andy Brook. Supplied with nifty Fender Acoustasonic semi-acoustic guitars, the pair perch on a couple of red easy chairs, separated by a small table adorned with a green desk lamp.
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