Status Quo: We played Prince’s gig with Charlie
BAND ON COKE AT ROYAL DO
ROCK legend Francis Rossi has admitted he was his royal highness after snorting coke backstage at a gig for Prince Charles’ charity.
The Status Quo front man said he met the royal but was secretly taking drugs behind the scenes.
Rossi, 69, said: “We headlined the first concert for the Prince’s Trust, at the NEC in Birmingham, in May 1982.
“What a bunch of reprobates like us were doing being there, I can’t tell you. Only that we sold the place out and gave all the money to the Trust.
“So what if we were snorting coke off the toilet seats backstage? As far as we were concerned, that was our business. Raising money for charity doesn’t mean you have to act like you’re some angel.”
In his new book I Talk Too Much, Rossi reveals that he was buying so much cocaine at the time that he had to go to banks, as he couldn’t get enough out of cash machines.
He explained: “Casual cocaine users will buy a gram of coke and make it last perhaps a few days.
“But there was nothing casual about my coke use.
I was now buying it an ounce at Chief Reporter
a time: 28 grams. That would last me about a week, sometimes less.
“This was costing me a couple of grand a week, maybe more.
“Apart from the damage this was doing to my body – and, even more importantly, to my mind – the rigmarole of getting so much cash together proved to be a nightmare. “This was much more than you could just get out of a cash machine, so I would have to personally go into the bank and draw out the money.
“Even though I was that bloke from that pop group, taking this kind of cash out of the bank all the time aroused suspicion.
“Because I was always strung out on coke, feeling the world had its eyes on me, and because whatever bank I happened to be in, the eyes of the entire staff and customers were on me. I found the whole thing an ordeal. “I took to driving around looking for branches of the bank I hadn’t been in before, or branches I hadn’t been in for a few weeks. “Then, once I’d gotten hold of the cash, I’d drive to whatever coke dealer I was seeing that week.”