British guitarist reacts to Status Quo's misleading simplicity 

They ARE. Still going strong on stage. Status Quo IS the Status Quo on stage. It is the level you HAVE to achieve to be called at least fantastic as a live act. Quo is present. Always was, and always will be after they are gone one day. Just count the number of chamber orchestras, sorry, Tribute Bands, holding up their legacy and keeping it alive.

Saw them in 77…Hammersmith Odeon! Blew me away!

Mine too- DeMonfort Hall 1984, I was ten. As the lights went down you could hear the speakers buzzing and then- just wow. What an experience and a great start to my live music journey.

Exactly! Total energy - the sound parts your hair!

Haymarket theatre Basingstoke!!!! Incredible band live!!!! Stray as well there!!! Brilliant 😊

Fuckin Brilliant :)

Their albums from the mid-late 70's are the strongest in their back catalog, and there are some really good remasters of most of them, but you really have to see them live, actually be in the audience at a gig, to really appreciate the power of the Quo! I saw them several times in the UK, including on their "End of the Road" farewell tour in 1984 (the first rock concert I ever went to), but after moving the US I have missed seeing them for the past 20 years. I would really love to have seen one of their "Frantic Four" reunion shows, as the YT videos are great, and a very good representation of what the classic 1970's line up could do with modern audio and video recording equipment.

@Norm Meunier Naaaaah Billy Gibbons is in another league. I've been an SQ fan ever since the Piledriver album. This, "Hello!" and "Quo" are the best IMO.

You Found Them, Mate😄😄, That's The Main Thing 78!!! and I Still Enjoy Giving Myself!!!, A Jolly GOOD!!! Ear ringing With The Cans On😝😝😝😝

Welcome to the World of Quo! Check out the Live! double album from 1977 and the other Live! album from 1982, plus their back catalogue between 1970 and 1977. Their best years.

I was lucky to have other sources to find out about them. They got zero airplay in the States in the 70s.

Comedybuff4000 2 Couldn’t agree more, also Francis lead riffs, you try playing them, and he did it while walking around the stage talking to the other band members and the audience. Saw them many times back in the day, never felt like I’d been short changed.

Every serious guitarists knows that Rick was a monster player. Caroline is simple to play - but to make it sound like a steamtrain is not simple. Rick Parfitt is one of my inspirations

The stuff he used to play was not that complex. Problem is to get his sound you needed strings made out of left over rebar and a wrist strong enough to win a professional arm wrestling competition. And then do it for 2 hours lol

Right on Garfield. Francis can walk and chew gum, awesome. He'd be in the middle of a Lead break and he'd lean across and share a joke and a laugh with Rick.

@@garfield2279 I find that rossi solos are hard for the notes. They are all just blues scale/pentatonic. The hard part is his syncopation, the timing and rythym of his solos, I find it to be incredibly challenging to get the way he does. Also when he plays a shuffle in G or goes down to the F of the low E, it really hurts the hands. He has such a long pinky.

Arthur Romero I think I heard David Gilmour mentioned them in an interview

Yeah in the UK they are household names but in the US not so much!

I'm one of the minorities too. Although I'd take a Quo album to a party and have everyone rockin in short order. They'd say, "who is that band?"

You're correct

@@CaptainRon1913 Great you give'em a chance over there! - You should do the same with an old Cold Chisel Album .-) they're very underrated too - Thanks Phil for uploading this

Me too! Same age! Saw them when live album recorded and the best line up, the Frantic Four in Glasgow 2013 and 2014. So much energy and volume! People have to be there to appreciate it!

😛

Listen to the Allman Brothers Band at Fillmore East okay?

I have a collection in my music library called Better Cover Versions Of Great Songs. Roadhouse Blues by Quo has pride of place in it.

Thanks! Yeah I always say play a double time tempo to a half time click track, and see how difficult it is to get every strum accurate! It's deceptively difficult!

Cool!

My first concert as well, but 13 and not on my own. 1974 Hordern Pavilion Sydney Australia. Brilliant!

Same here. First concert, 14 years old. 1978 in Lund, Sweden.

👍

Totally agree ricks parts are not too easy to play.

With his back to the stack

And on one tour he even played it with his arm in plaster 👍

The grammar Nazi in me wants to say sights.

Cool!

Yeah theres some cool stuff there, like I say their sound was misleading when you delve a little deeper!

People who label them a "three chord band" have no fucking idea about music and you don't survive for over 50 years on the back of three chords - In the 70s QUO were huge all over Europe.

Always said he was the most underated British guitarist ever. Plays some great blues/ rock solos

@@damianbutcher8381 They really do demonstrate their complete musical ignorance when they say that. Condemning Quo for "three chords" (despite it not actually being true), they're also condemning the entirety of blues, rock 'n' roll, and the majority of folk and country music too...

Unspoken words sounds like peter green playing. Awesome song

In the uk their a stapel of the music scene. A bit like the grateful dead were in the US with just as fenatical a following that would fallow and attend miltable gigs on the same tour and your dad would very likely come along as well they crossed generations. Having said that the band that they became in the eighties when they started chasing the uk charts was not the band you see here after coghlan and lancaster left they became more middle of the road and the hard driving boogie and R&B became relegated to their back catalogue and now ricks gone ... well the quo of old is long since dead

@@rainblaze. Nice summary/synopsis. Still - respect.

@@rainblaze. Coghlan had already left two years prior to this video. The rot had already set in. Pete Kirscherr was a weak insipid drummer

Me too. Right up the front.

Rick Parfitt did a promotional stint at Harrods playing and chatting to a fairly small audience, it's on youtube. At one point he invited a member of the audience to play the intro to Caroline on Ricks guitar. The guy knew the chords but he sounded nothing like Rick, not even close to the driving force or rhythm.

Yes, he had up to .60 gauge I belive I've read.. That white telecaster is famous!

re - the high gauge. He didnt do bends and probably didnt break strings. He gave me a guitar pic - Jim Dunlop - it was perforated to give more grip

Used the wire for telephone lines on his telecaster

​@@leiper72 62 actually. 0.14 being the 'thinnest'! ..

Haha cool!

Well if you were deaf for four days you have definitely done some permanent damage

@@alexjohnston8889 was probably worth it, with Quo classical line up.

I remember seeing them at The Hammy in '84 when there was a curfew. Towards the end of Bye Bye Johnny Francis turned to Rick and said Sod the Curfew and they proceeded to jam for another 45 minutes. I missed my train and slept on a bench at Liverpool St station but that was worth it.

@@stephenbrown4211 yeah I remember, I was at Hammersmith Odean last night June 30th 84 and after they encored they came back and did bits from Caroline, RAOTW and Bye Bye Johnny again. Missed train from Euston to Northampton and got last train to Milton Keynes and paid £20 for taxi home, I was 220,great days.

😂👍

Please give me an example

this is so true.

Thanks!

Because of the common 12 Bar Blues.

Ive tried playing some of Ricks stuff, you need speed and elastic fingers....its a LOT harder than people think, and dont forget, his strings were so thick they were like playing girders...

Paper Plane, Matchstick Men and Lies come to mind.

From www.udiscovermusic.com/in-depth-features/so-what-is-psychedelic-rock/ Among the effects in question was phasing, arguably psychedelia’s single most obvious identifier - and, for once, The Beatles were only indirectly responsible. While holed up in London’s Olympic Studios in June 1967 to record the backing track for ‘All You Need Is Love’, their producer George Martin asked for “ADT” (automatic or artificial double-tracking, a technique originated at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios) to be placed on Lennon’s vocal. Unable to comply because Olympic’s tape machines operated differently to EMI’s, tape operator George Chkiantz pledged to devise his own outlandish tape effect - and came up with the sense-warping, harmonic frequency sweep which became known as phasing or flanging. "Pictures" was released in January 1968, so it's possible phasing was used. I'm not an expert so I can only go on what I've read on various websites. Cheers!

@garry smith 100% is phasing. I think it was done with tape reels with one out of phase (tape flanging as it is known but is closer to phasing) , some parts a Leslie maybe a univibe though u don't think so. It might not be a phaser like a phase 90 but it is a phasing effect.

As a matter of fact, "Pictures of Matchstick Men" was the ONLY song from the Quo I've ever heard. I thought they were a "one-hit-wonder". :-)

👍🙂

I very much agree. To have seen the tightness still there on footage of the ‘frantic four’ reunion tour after so many years apart shows how good these guys really are. RIP Rick.

It was the record company's decision to release "Break the Rules" as a single, the band wanted "Backwater" (by Lancaster and Parfitt) to be the single. I don't understand the part about Mystery Song vs Rain.

Those 3 AND Coghlan!!!, The ABSOLUTE BEST!!!!😇😇😇😇

I saw Rossi on stage earlier this year publicising his book. He was asked the age old question of the 3 chords, so he picked up a guitar and played 17 versions of the G Chord... a lot of the greatest songs in the world only have 3 or 4 chords, in fact Rolling Stones Satisfaction only has 3 chords and one of them is only played once... which is great as Im trying to learn to play guitar and it makes it so much easier..hahaha

well said

@@Rigstig1 I'd love to know who started the three chord thing so I could them the kick in the sack that they deserved. Anybody that repeats it knows bugger all about music. I bet if you asked them "what is a chord?" they wouldn't even know. As you say many great songs only have three chords, and many of Quo's songs contain more than three.

Thanks!

Thanks! Yeah!

👍

Merry Christmas Arthur!

Haha sounds cool!

As a fellow Aussie I recall the Coles Supermarket chain commandeering Down, Down for their ads. So successful as you say. To this day when I hear the song I still smile and think of Coles.😅

Amen.

Thanks for the suggestions!

And how could I forget the legend - Mike Stern!

Amen!

I agree ❤

Thanks!

Cool!