Alan Lancaster
Status Quo’s mighty bass BORN 1949
Born in Peckham, in 1962 bass player Alan Lancaster met guitarist-singer Francis Rossi at Sedgehill Comprehensive in Lewisham. Their first band was The Scorpions; with the addition of drummer John Coghlan, guitarist Rick Parfitt and keyboard-player Roy Lynes, they later became The Spectres, whose 1966 debut 45 single Hurdy Gurdy Man Lancaster both wrote and sang. After a short period of being called Traffic Jam, in 1967 they changed their name again – forsaking alternative options The Muhammad Alis and The Queers – to The Status Quo. Beholden to phasing psychedelia, Rossi’s Pictures Of Matchstick Men was a UK and US hit in 1968, but they had to wait for 1972’s stripped-back, relentlessly bluesrocking album Piledriver, with Lancaster singing lead on a cover of The Doors’ Roadhouse Blues, for their ultimate breakthrough. Thereafter, Status Quo’s denimy, boogie’ing success was unstoppable, and Lancaster would swing hard on 16 Top 10 LPs (including four Number 1s) and 24 Top 20 singles, including Quo calling cards Rockin’ All Over The World, Whatever You Want and, their sole Number 1, Down Down in 1974. Lancaster, nicknamed ‘Nuff’, continued to write and provide numerous lead vocals for the group, though discontentment arose for 1983’s Back To Back, and when the group performed folk-tinged Number 3 hit Marguerita Time on Top Of The Pops, Slade’s Jim Lea appeared in
an absent Lancaster’s place. At 12pm on July 13, 1985 he went on-stage for a final appearance with Quo to open Live Aid. By now resident in Australia, in 1986 he reached an out-of-court settlement over the Rossi-Parfitt formation continuing to use the name without him. In Australia, Lancaster played in The Bombers with Coghlan and Aussie supergroup The Party Boys, among other bands, and in 2013 and 2014 rejoined Quo’s original ‘Frantic Four’ for reunion dates in Britain and Europe. Lancaster had suffered from multiple sclerosis.