Status Quo
We collar Francis Rossi and Bob Young, once the ‘fifth member’ of Status Quo, to discuss early days, reunions, the ‘no Parfitt, no Quo’ debate and more.
We collar Francis Rossi and Bob Young, once the ‘fifth member’ of Quo, to talk about early days, reunions, the ‘no Parfitt, no Quo’ debate and more.
“The cocaine and arguments had made things horrible, so I told everybody what a bunch of dicks they were.”
Bob Young
Iwas a pretty hopeless roadie,” Bob Young admits, before sheepishly recounting the tale of his first ever unaccompanied chaperoning of The Status Quo (as they were then known) during a concert at the Top Rank in Bristol. On the night concerned, June 4, 1968, the new boy received an electric shock after unwittingly linking everything – lights, PA, equipment – to a basic five-amp plugboard.
“I was knocked right out,” he says, laughing. “And when John Coghlan saw me sparko on the floor, he went into the dressing room and said: ‘That lazy bastard is having a kip already’. But I ended up in hospital.”
Having encountered the band on a package tour with Gene Pitney, Young joined Quo’s payroll that same year, around the time of their first hit single, Pictures Of Matchstick Men. Up to then he’d been “doing some driving” for Amen Corner and The Herd. “When their management approached me I said I’d been offered a tenner a week to work for Jethro Tull,” he recalls. “They upped that to fifteen if I could start on Friday, so I did.”
With the band’s music toughening up, Young earned the title of Quo’s Unofficial Fifth Member, road managing the group, playing harmonica with them on
stage and joining in the often riotous post-show entertainment, although he never lost sight of professional obligations. Along the way he co-wrote some of their biggest hits, including Paper Plane, Mean Girl, In My Chair, Caroline and Down Down – all with Francis Rossi – and Living On An Island and Mystery Song with Rick Parfitt. More than 100 songs were written with various members of Quo, and these are just the tip of the iceberg.
Young declined the chance to buy a five per cent share in their fortunes; he just enjoyed being one of the lads. As a trusted friend and confidant to each of the so-called Frantic Four – Rossi, Parfitt, bass player Alan Lancaster and drummer John Coghlan – he helped Quo to navigate troubled waters. But by the early 1980s a whispering campaign brought him down, although not before the writing of a strictly confidential, unflinchingly honest letter to each of the group.
“The cocaine and arguments had made things fucking horrible, so I told everybody what a bunch of dicks they were becoming and why I should leave,” Young sighs. “And by not being with them any more we remained friends.”
However, he’s been back in the fold since the turn of millennium, and the friendship between him and Rossi couldn’t be stronger. Each calls or texts the other every few days and, of course, they continue to write together; Quo’s thirty-third album, Backbone, includes three tracks with the Rossi/Young credit.
Fifty-one years after his association with the band began, Young remains the common link between Quo’s three surviving members. With Rossi and Lancaster feuding once again, over the former’s years of refusal to continue the Frantic Four reunion, Young remains the only man able to pick up the phone to all three. He also had one of the final conversations with Parfitt before his shock death in 2016.
As Young sits with Classic Rock on a bench on Rossi’s perfectly manicured lawn in deepest Surrey while awaiting our host to finish his breakfast, he expresses disappointment that, having seen so many bridges rebuilt through the Frantic Four’s comeback, childhood friends Rossi and Lancaster are at loggerheads once again.
“It’s a sad situation, but I don’t meddle, and I never, ever went behind anyone’s backs,” he
“I never, ever went behind anyone’s backs. That’s why fifty years later Francis and I are still friends.”
Bob Young
insists. “That’s why fifty years later Francis and I are still friends.”
Later today, as the pair sit on a sofa in Rossi’s home studio and have 40 minutes of rapid-fire, riotous and decidedly un-PC banter, Rossi says mischievously: “I’ve just had cereal, and I really don’t like saying nice things about Bob while he’s here. Being nice makes me feel sick. Where did it get Mother Teresa?”
And we’re off…
What were your first impressions of one another? Rossi: I didn’t like the bloke. I talk too much, he drank too much. That hasn’t changed. He was bandy-legged and I didn’t like that either. Young: Quo were a bunch of lively young people in silly clothes.
“I didn’t like Bob. I talk too much, he drank too much. That hasn’t changed.”
Francis Rossi
Was Spinning Wheel Blues (on Ma Kelly’s Greasy Spoon) the first song you wrote together? Rossi: There were earlier ones. On the album before that [Spare Parts] he wrote Antique Angelique with Nuff [Lancaster], but Bob and I struck up a good relationship. Our closeness wound up everybody else, and we were asked to give [credits to] the other band members to avoid rocking the boat.
Talk us through the process of writing a Quo song together – who does what? Rossi: It all begins with a sequence or a basic idea. For instance I Wanna Run Away With You, from the new album, is our first bluesy shuffle in a while. I wanted one of those. Whoever is responsible for the lyric or the music tends to vary.
Bob, as road manager you were part of the back-room team, but you were also an unofficial band member. Did it sometimes feel like you were treading a thin line? Young: Not really, because I was always on the band’s side in just about everything. Rossi: That’s how Bob ended up getting shafted. Management would confide something he’d said about me, and he’d be fed some comment I’d supposedly made about him – divide and conquer. The same thing happened with Rick. What happened was really cruel to Bob… so I enjoyed it immensely [everybody laughs]. Young: The drugs had a lot to do with it as well. Rossi: Yeah, that was when the coke began.
Being the first person at the venue and the last to go to bed must have been tough, Bob? Young: Yeah, but I also told bedtime stories to send them to sleep. Rossi: It’s true! Once upon a time there were three bears… And he’d do other things, too. [Rossi imitates the act of masturbation]. Young: Those were just stupid stories I’d make up on the spot. That was when we were smoking. Rossi: Smoking, not coking. Coking was the ruination, really.
Bob, can you tell us about the confidential letter you gave to the band? Young: They were hand-written to you all when we were in Lyon, and I’ve still got the original. Basically, I told you how you were all a bunch of assholes for not getting on with each other.
Rossi: Honestly? I don’t remember that at all. Everybody was doing coke, including somebody I can’t mention in case we all get sued.
“It’s a sad situation, but I don’t meddle and I never,
ever went behind anyone’s backs.” Bob Young
Francis, without Bob’s diplomacy skills was the Frantic Four’s goose always cooked? He was the only guy talking to everybody. Young: [being serious] I was the one that always used to pull John [Coghlan] back. Rossi: Well, he did have a foreskin. [At this point, Bob laughs so much he begins to cry]. Alan Lancaster won’t agree, as I recently saw an interview in which he claimed I was the first person he recruited for Status Quo. Recruited?! We were eleven years old! But, no, the glue that held Quo together back then was the writing relationship between Bob and I. It upset the others so much, when they heard I was planning a solo album they sat me down and said I wasn’t concentrating enough on the band.
After the split, Christmas cards were exchanged but did you miss working with one another? Rossi: I didn’t at first, due to the coke and the bullshit I had been fed. I loved singing and writing with my next partner, Bernard Frost, and I have a really strong relationship with [current Quo bassist] John Edwards, which is strange as we are rarely in the same room together, but I write best with Bob. Which was the Rossi-Young song that should have been a hit but wasn’t? Rossi: You want them alphabetically? Fine Fine Fine [from Quo] springs to mind.
Bob, you went on to form the Young & Moody Band with ex-Whitesnake slide guitarist Micky Moody. A single, Don’t Do That, featured a stellar line-up including Lemmy, Cozy Powell and the Nolan Sisters and became a hit in 1981. Young: Yeah. We called Lemmy up saying The Nolans were gonna be there, and he replied: ‘I’ll be right over.’
Under what circumstances was the RossiYoung partnership revived? Rossi: After about twenty years apart I realised I’d been a c**t and been lied to.
As simple as that? Rossi: As simple as that.
Young: I was over the moon to start again. Rossi: Didn’t I bribe you? Wasn’t it a grand in readies? Young: [trying to be serious] We didn’t write again immediately, that took a short while. I came here [to Rossi’s house] and it soon felt good. We’ve written maybe fifty songs together since then.
Can each of you tell us a secret about the other one? Rossi: Of course I can. Bob likes a lot of chocolate on his biscuit. Young: Francis has the memory of an elephant. He remembers all of the right things… but not necessarily in the correct order.
Bob, what are your thoughts on a Status Quo without Rick Parfitt? Young: They’ve every right to carry on. I think the band is great right now. Rossi: [chuckling with delight] With me sitting next to him and him having three songs on the album, he ain’t gonna tell you we should stop!
Francis, you recently told Classic Rock that you view continuing with Quo without Rick to be a challenge. Rossi: Somewhat, yeah. But Rick would have carried on without me. That’s the agreement we had. And don’t forget that as we keep on playing the songs his estate earns.
Not too long ago you admitted to being unsure that you had another album left in you. Rossi: Maybe I didn’t. But what I really didn’t want was to make one the same way as before. That relates to recording technique, and is nothing to do with music. In order for it to be competitive, I knew that I needed to produce.
I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of Backbone, and also the fact that to a degree at least it harks back to the vintage era of Quo. Rossi: Thanks… I think.
The sessions were initially just to keep the juices flowing. How soon did you realise you had something worthwhile? Rossi: As soon as we did Waiting For A Woman,
“Rick would have carried on without me. That’s the
agreement we had.”
Francis Rossi
the first track. Even he [nods to Young] got to hear it when as a band we weren’t supposed to exist any more.
Cut Me Some Slack, Liberty Lane and the title track are three for the diehard Quo fans. It’s a rock album. Rossi: [sounding exasperated] Is it? Just because it’s a rock album, that doesn’t mean it’s a good album. To me this is a Quo album.
C’mon, you’ve spoken in those very terms – of making a rock album. I remember because I laughed. Rossi: Did I? That was probably a quote from the PR department. That’s the way the business works these days. It’s not about music, PR runs everything. [Talking into the microphone] “I think I’ll commit fucking suicide.” There you go, I bet that makes the front page of your magazine.
For all of the noise made by the naysayers, the ovation Quo got at Wembley Arena recently, as special guests to Lynyrd Skynyrd, suggested that nobody has the right to tell the band to stop. Rossi: [smiling] I quite like that. It [the sense of not being beaten down] is what drove Rick and I for many, many years. If everybody had said how wonderful we were – a bit like the X Factor generation – then maybe we wouldn’t have pushed quite so hard in the opposite direction.
Until that show with Skynyrd, during which the band unveiled two excellent songs from Backbone, quite frankly I was among those who felt it wrong for the band to continue. Rossi: As much as I take the piss out of you for being stuck in the 1970s with Quo, you were there and you saw it. In that sense you were lucky. If only all the other fuckers had done the same.
You’re aware of a sense of resistance, then? Rossi: Of course I fucking am. On the talking tour [his spoken-word tour on the back of his autobiography I Talk Too Much] I met people who said: “Oh no, I couldn’t possibly come and see [the current band] live.” They said that right to my face. I couldn’t believe it. To the people that call Quo Francis Rossi and friends… what an insult to Andrew [Bown, keyboards] and John [Edwards].
And yet the biggest problem with the live show is that none of the current group can sing the songs associated with Rick. Rossi: No, so you say. Maybe you should stand closer to the stage. The bottom line is that nobody is trying to copy him.
Richie Malone just about passes muster with Mystery Song, but John Edwards grappling with Rain and Again And Again is just painful. And while Andrew Bown co-wrote Whatever You Want with Rick, on stage he murders it. Out of respect, shouldn’t these songs now be retired? Rossi: If we did that, then people would complain: “Why isn’t Rossi playing Rick’s songs any more?”
You could put out a statement to explain why. Rossi: I believe we’re making a statement by still doing them. And I think the band plays them extremely well. Towards the end Rick wasn’t doing them any more. He was doing this with his voice [makes growling noise]. That wasn’t the Rick that I knew. Listen to the studio version of Big Fat Mama and it’s sweet with the odd growl, but forty years later his voice was screwed, poor sod, because he was trying to be this big, rock-style character. Rick was the archetypal blond rock star and he spent his life living up to that, he didn’t know that people were asking for their money back.
“I’d love Backbone to be our biggest album, but in this day and age that won’t happen.”
Francis Rossi
And now that the hurdle of an album without Ricl has been overcome safely, what of the future for Status Quo? Rossi: Truthfully, I haven’t a clue. I’d love to sell lots of pieces and for this to be our biggest album, but in this day and age that won’t happen. I’ve really enjoyed making it, so let’s see what happens. I might not make the end of the year, I might die. Or Andrew [Bown] might kick the bucket and we’d have to change things around again. Richie [Malone, new guitarist] might turn out to be a big-headed little shit and I’d have to punch him. Until these things happen I just don’t know. It’s rock’n’roll; it gets up people’s derrieres – that’s why we love it.
Backbone is released on September 6 via Ear Music/Edel. Rossi’s spoken-word tour returns for a 60-date run in 2020.