insulting with me one day on the phone, exactly as
he used to be. So I cut him off. It’s finished. It seems
like I’m cold in that respect, but I’m done.And John Coghlan?
I’ve got other issues with John, and it’s probably not
his fault. On the tour, we tried to use click tracks,
and John kept saying the click was putting him out
of time. Are you reading that one correctly? It’s the
metronome that’s putting you out of time? Hello!Are you sad about how that turned out?
I was elated to get back with Alan Lancaster. He
was the guy I met when I was eleven, and it was
great when he stayed with me for a couple of
months before the tour. We had a laugh going
around South London
together, looking at the old
places. What we shouldn’t
have done is all play
together again, because
Rick and I had come so
much further forward.Do days go by when you
don’t think of Rick?
I knew Rick longer than I knew my parents. I have
a strange memory. It’s not way back in the past, it’s
there in front of me. So there are times when I can
see a picture in my mind: there’s Rick.Did you ever talk to him about what had gone
wrong between you?Later on he’d say to me: “Why don’t we
get on like we used to?” “I don’t know,
Rick. Not now. It’s fucking two in the
morning.” “Well I want to talk about it
now.” “No, Rick. It’ll be drunken talk,
we won’t remember in the morning.”
I just think they got to him with that
“You’ll always be number two” routine.
You could sow that seed of doubt with
Rick. You can with anybody.In June 2016, following a Quo gig
in Turkey, Rick suffered a heart
attack, and you witnessed him
being revived. Can you describe
what happened?
He was dead. We were
all standing there as
they dragged him off
the bed and he bounced
off the floor. They tried
every fucking trick in
the book, and I thought:
“Why are they doing
that to him?” It was
fucking horrible.Did anything change between you and him
after that?
When I went to see him, as much as his boys said
he was fine, no he wasn’t. He was completely
different. He was talking to me as though we were
back in 1984 or something. I think he realised thathe probably wasn’t going to live as long as me
because he kept having serious problems with his
heart. But that was something we used to joke
about – who would die first. Andrew [Bown]
used to say that Francis Rossi would die with
a joint in his hand and Rick Parfitt would die in
a Mandrax factory. It sounds morbid, but that’s
how we were. And then, on Christmas Eve, I got
the call: “Rick’s dead.”Had you prepared for this?
We knew Rick was going to die, but the reality
of it was such a shock. I heard Rick’s voice in
my ear: “See, Frame,” – he always called me
Frame – “at least I didn’t die on a show day.”
And I laughed. I thought, that would be Rick.
He knew if he’d died on a show day we’d have
had to cancel. And we’re too ‘show business’- we don’t cancel.
SSI
ONS; (^) IN
SET
: (^) KE
VIN
(^) NIX
ON
“I heard Rick’s voice
in my ear: ‘At least
I didn’t die on a show
day.’ And I laughed.”
Kings of the two-man 12-bar boogie:
Parfitt and Rossi at a London
rehearsal space, November 2015.
The ‘Frantic Four’ line-up
of Quo reunite for a tour in
2013 : (l-r) Lancaster,
Rossi, Coghlan and Parfitt.
48 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM