H
e was raised a Catholic, and has
a confession to make. In his home
studio, Francis Rossi is recalling
the moment in 1967 that, at the
age of eighteen, he wrote the song
that became Status Quo’s first hit. He rises from
his chair beside the mixing console to pick an
acoustic guitar from a rack on the wall. “As
Lennon said, there’s nothing new under the sun,”
Rossi says with a smirk. After a quick tune up,
he strums the intro to Hey Joe, the mythic
murder ballad made famous in 1966 when it
was a hit single by the Jimi Hendrix
Experience. Then, with minimal adjustment,
he segues smoothly into Quo’s Pictures Of
Matchstick Men, singing in that familiar nasal
tone: ‘When I look up to the sky, I see your eyes,
a funny kind of yellow.’ He pauses and
arches an eyebrow. “Everything,”
he says, “has been nicked
from somewhere.”
In a conversation with
Francis Dominic Nicholas
Michael Rossi – a Catholic
name if ever there was one- there are many such
confessions. Some are
funny, some sad. All are
told in a manner as
unpretentious as the
heavy rock’n’roll that
made Status Quo one of
the most successful
British bands of all time.
The place where Rossi
lives, in Purley, South
London, is just 10 miles
from where he was born,
in Forest Hill, on May 29,
- The large, white-
walled house is on a private road, hidden
away behind tall gates. The recording
studio, in a wood-clad outbuilding set in
expansive grounds, is where the last few
Quo albums were made with rhythm
guitarist Rick Parfitt in the years before his
death on Christmas Eve 2016, aged 68.
It was also here that Rossi recorded his
latest album, We Talk Too Much,
in collaboration with
singer Hannah
Rickard. And the
album’s title is
echoed in his
forthcoming
autobiography, I Talk
Too Much, written
with Classic Rock’s Mick
Wall. “That’s how
I am,” Rossi says.
“Some people drink people
under the table. I talk people
under the table...”
On this dark winter
afternoon, dressed for comfort
in blue fleece and jeans, and
sipping coffee from
a Quo-branded mug, Rossi
spends the best part of two
hours telling the story of his
life with an extraordinary
degree of candour. At the heart
of the story is the band he has
fronted for 52 of his 69 years,
and in this his long andsometimes difficult relationship
with Parfitt.
Rossi has had his share of bad
press over the years. He refers to
a recent interview for a tabloid
newspaper in which he was
misquoted about money. “They
really took me apart,” he says. But
he concedes: “That’s the game, and I allow myself
to be part of it.”
Today, no subject is off limits: the rivalries
between Quo and other bands, and between
himself and Rick Parfitt; the good and bad in doing
drugs; the guilt that Rossi feels for putting the band
before his children; the bitterness that still lingers
between him and his former bandmates John
Coghlan and Alan Lancaster; the awful experience
of witnessing Parfitt suffering a near-fatal heart
attack; the accusations from many Quo fans that
Rossi was wrong to keep the band going after
Parfitt’s death.
But there is also much that he can laugh about:
the good times with Rick, the communal wanking
GET
TYx (^2) ,
KEV
IN (^) N
IXO
N
“I can’t be a good father, because I had
eight kids and my career came first.”
The classic Quo in 1973: (l-r) Rick
Parfitt, Francis Rossi, John Coghlan
and Alan Lancaster, and right in ’72.
Quo, circa (^1968) , with
keyboard player Roy Lynes
(second from right).
44 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM
FRANCIS ROSSI