Post by 4th Chord on Jun 5, 2018 12:10:44 GMT
'Inspired' by another Quo forum, (no, not that one), thought it would be good to have a section dedicated to collecting interviews etc.
This is from the Guardian, Sept 2007.
Interview
Better the denim you know
By Simon Hattenstone
Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt walk into the green room, looking ashen. The eternal rockers have just won £50,000 for charity on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? but you wouldn't know it.
Rossi: "I lost weight there, I tell you. I can't believe it. Chess as the opening question."
Parfitt: "I had no idea - I've never played chess in my life."
Rossi is embarrassed. How many knights on a chessboard was the first question. He answered two. Wrong, they faced the ignominy of leaving with nothing. And that's when fate, or some kindly producer, intervened. Apparently this question had been asked before, so they had to scrap it and start again. Second time round, the boys did rather well.
"It was the most nervous I've ever been," Parfitt says. He's in his 59th year, his hair still golden-blond, lush and long. He is dressed in black, wears shades in the studio, a diamond earring, a watch that P Diddy would die for, bangles galore, every inch the rock star. He and his new wife (his third) are off to Spain, where they now live. Rossi isn't as stylish - thin, grey rat-tail trailing down his collar, leather jacket, white socks. He still lives in Purley. He says he's never been fashionable.
The same could be said of the band. But their history is remarkable - more than 100m records sold, 65 hit singles, and one of the most recognisable sounds of the 20th century. Only the Rolling Stones and the Who can match them for longevity. But whereas they have always been cool, Status Quo came to be regarded, somewhat unfairly, as kitsch and a little bit rubbish.
They have been blamed for most of rock's ills - the rise of the denim waistcoat, air guitars, Rockin' All Over The World as sporting anthem. And they've been ridiculed regularly - for suing Radio 1 when the station refused to play their singles, for writing the same song again and again, for starting the tradition of men dancing with their thumbs in their pockets while swaying like willows. Yet they rocked as hard as the best of them, and lived harder than most. After the drinking years, and the cocaine years, and Parfitt's quadruple heart bypass, it's incredible they're still here, let alone preparing for another European tour.
I was 10 when I got into the Quo. I was ill and confined to my bed, and thought they were about as cool as cool got, until Roy Wood and Wizzard came along. I was bought three of their albums in quick succession - Piledriver, Hello! and Quo. I loved the fact that their one-word titles had as much conviction as their heads-down, no-nonsense, mindless boogie. Most of the songs had only a handful of words ("Get down deeper and down/Down down deeper and down, down down deeper and down, Get down deeper and down") and I loved that, too, because it made them easy to sing.
The Quo have always prided themselves on being a band best experienced live and thunderously loud. Rather than touring to promote their albums, they release an album to promote their tour. The new record is called In Search Of The Fourth Chord - a wink to the notion that they know only three chords. When I tell Rossi about my old Quo collection, he nods and says, yes, they are regarded as the classics. "If you actually sit down and listen to them, there are some great moments, but there's a lot of shite, too." He has never had pretensions.
I've not been an active Quo fan since the 70s, but I have admired them from afar and with metaphorical earplugs in. How does a band keep going for 40 plus years? Where do they find the energy and will to perform night after night in different cities all around the globe? Doesn't constant touring screw up their lives and drive them mad? Or maybe it's the other way round - the constant touring is a manifestation of their madness. I'm going on the road with them to try to find out.
A week later we meet at 7am at the GMTV studios. The whole band is here to perform their single, Beginning Of The End. Aside from Rossi and Parfitt, the other three members are relative newcomers. Keyboard player/guitarist Andy Bown says, "For the first 20 years I used to say I was the new boy." He has been in the band 31 years now. Bassist John "Rhino" Edwards replaced original member Alan Lancaster 20 years ago, and has settled in nicely. The band have been through a few drummers - Matt Letley is still feeling his way after only seven years.
Everybody is looking for Rossi and Parfitt. Lyane Ngan, the band's PA and wardrobe dresser, reckons they've sneaked off for a fag. The boys are always sneaking off for fags. They return just in time, slightly giddy, hammily blowing smoke away from their mouths. Their manager, Simon Porter, is handing out copies of the new album.
I can't stop singing Rockin' All Over The World. Lyane hears me. "You're a closet fan!" she says. I think it's an accusation.
Was she a fan when she joined them? "Oh, no!" The band regard Lyane as their sixth member. She's always with them on tour. While waiting to perform on TV, they are discussing crosswords. Rossi and Rhino are disappointed with the Guardian's Saturday crossword - not big enough. Parfitt and Rossi spend most of the interview talking about how much they stank in the old days - they'd come off stage soaking, screw their clothes into a ball and wear them the next day.
We head off for breakfast at a greasy caff in London's West End. Two eggs on toast, sunny side up, for the boys. Occasionally people stop them for autographs. It's hard to miss Rossi and Parfitt with their hairdos.
They met when they were 16 at holiday camp where they were performing - Rossi with the Spectres, which later became Status Quo, and Parfitt with the Highlights. "People thought Rick was a bit flash, which he is. And a lot of people thought he was gay - a lot of that is that cabaret part of showbusiness when you've got to camp it up. He's definitely not gay. I like camp people, I like gay people, they don't seem to have the hang-ups of the rest of us."
They became friends, but Parfitt didn't join the band until they recorded Pictures Of Matchstick Men. It hit the charts in the UK and US, and it's still their only American hit. He started playing guitar at 10. His parents would take him to the working men's club in Woking every weekend. His mum played the piano well, his dad played the comb badly. "Dad would always say, 'Are you going to put your guitar in the boot?' and I'd say, 'Noooooah, I don't want to,' and he'd say, 'You don't have to play it, just put it in the boot anyway.' Of course, in those days everybody got up and did a turn. So I'd end up on stage." He won a number of talent competitions at Butlins, usually singing Baby Face. Was he really good? "No, not really good. I was a bit of a novelty - this 11-year-old kid playing a guitar that was bigger than him. I've still got the certificate - Butlins junior talent competition winner, 1960." Both Rossi and Parfitt left school without qualifications. Rossi was expelled on his last day, to his bemusement.
Rossi idolised Little Richard. "I think that's where we got the energy. To me it's synonymous with doing rock'n'roll. If you don't commit physically, rock'n'roll doesn't really work."
Rossi's father, who was second generation Italian, owned an ice-cream company, but they weren't as rich as his friends imagined. He often heard his dad arguing with his mum about the need to budget better. At school, he was a smartarse. "I was sat in a class, probably 11 to 12 years old, and they'd already moved me to the front because I had my feet on the desk, and my French teacher said, 'You're going to be a pop star?' And I said, 'Yeah', and she said, 'Well, if you're going to tour, and you go to France, you'll have to speak French', and I said, 'No, because I'll have somebody to do it for me.' I was dead right about that, but wrong about not learning the language. I've now realised I have quite a thirst for knowledge and particularly language." He's teaching himself Italian.
Both his parents are dead now. He misses his dad hugely, especially his food. "Some of the food he made. God! Italian. My favourite is pasta e fagioli, pasta with beans, soupie thing, gorgeous. The older I get, the more I'm into food." Has it taken over from drugs and alcohol? "When you grow up with Italians, food is important. I've always been like that with food. Apart from when I was doing cocaine - there was no food whatsoever then."
Radio 1 is celebrating its 40th birthday and Quo have been asked to record a message. "Happy birthday, Radio 1," Rossi says. "You're almost as old as us."
"You can sing happy birthday if you want," the producer says.
"You'd rather we didn't... You are awful... but I like you," he answers in his best Dick Emery voice.
"Thanks for your support, you've been great," Parfitt says.
But things haven't always been great with Radio 1. When Quo sued the station after it ruled that the band were too old hat for airplay, they lost and it cost them an estimated £500,000. Was it a good move? "In hindsight, probably not," Parfitt says, "because we were accused of attention-seeking. But it wasn't like that at all. We had to get it off our chests because it was really annoying us."
At the Beeb today, Rossi and Parfitt record slot after slot. They play a pop quiz with Ken Bruce, discuss Parfitt's blue, red, brown and gold pixie boots with Mark Radcliffe, and for another show are asked about their heroes over the past 40 years. Parfitt names sportsmen Michael Johnson, Colin Jackson, Jonathan Edwards and Carl Lewis. "Johnson is possibly the greatest 400m runner of all time. The beautiful thing is that he always wore gold running shoes. He never expected to come second, did he?" Rossi names Jeff Lynne, legendary producer and founder of the ELO.
They skive off to the loo for a sneaky fag, and return grinning. As we leave the BBC, an elderly man with a distinguished voice calls out, "Can you stop for one old fan?" It's the DJ David Jacobs, now in his 80s, the first man to play Quo on the radio in 1968.
"Still here, you? It's lovely - great that you're still doing it," Parfitt says.
"I've done my ankle in. I'm limping along like the old man I try not to be," Jacobs says.
"It doesn't show on radio," Parfitt says.
"No."
"Lovely to see you."
"Lovely to see you, too."
"Incredible," Parfitt says. "What a legend, David Jacobs. Fantastic! He is the David Jacobs! That's made my day, that has."
Parfitt's got a lovely, sunny disposition. He's a firm believer in karma, and says that after plenty of rough times he's never been happier. His daughter drowned in a swimming pool at home when she was two, and he has said he considered killing himself at the time. In 1997 he had tests for chest pains. As he was leaving hospital, he was hauled back in. "They told me that if I didn't have a quadruple bypass I could be dead in 24 hours." A few years ago, he had a throat cancer scare - the nodules were removed and turned out to be benign. Since then he has been trying to stop smoking (he is down to 10 a day from 50-60), and living more sensibly.
He got married for the third time last year - just two months after meeting Lindsay, a businesswoman in her late 40s. Was she a fan? "No. She had no idea who I was. She thought Status Quo had ceased many years ago." He shows off the diamond earring and two-euro bangle she bought for him. "Apart from being beautiful, she's very nice. It's nice to have a woman on your arm that you know you can take anywhere - no matter what the company is. She's brilliant."
Rossi and Parfitt are almost as well known for their sexual exploits as for the drugs. I ask Parfitt if he's been in love many times. "No, never. Not like this, anyway." Did his other wives know? "No, I don't think so. I always felt there was something missing, but I was never sure what it was. Now I know. When it does hit you, it's an unbelievable feeling." When he goes on the road, he's going to take Lindsay with him, he says. "We didn't get married not to be together. Life on the road takes its toll - it's a crime, really, to a marriage. It's asking a lot of any wife or partner to endure half their life alone."
Rossi roughly divides up the decades. In the 60s, their management convinced them that psychedelia was the way ahead, so they wore their gaudy colours and had a hit with the haunting Pictures Of Matchstick Men. They looked trendy and individual, but Rossi says it was a manufactured individuality. All the time, they just wanted to get down and rock. In the 70s they did just that - they turned faded denim into a uniform, grew their hair even longer and found heavy-guitar heaven. They had a series of huge hits, many of which sounded the same as the last one. Rossi loved the early 70s, but after that it was drink and drugs. In the 80s, they split up for a year. Rossi argued with co-founder Alan Lancaster ("He wanted to be really macho and its not ma thang"), regrouped and opened Band Aid with Rockin' All Over The World.
Rockin' All Over The World, a cover of a John Fogerty song, somehow defined them. Perhaps it was too ubiquitous for their own good. It became shorthand for naff, stadium rock - fans of every football team that reached a cup final would rock all over the world. That's when it became really unfashionable to like the Quo. In the 90s, the Quo discovered a new sensitivity and attempted to reinvent themselves. It didn't work. Now, as they approach their pension, they have gone back to their roots. Some of the songs on the new album are co-written by their former roadie, Bob Young, who with Rossi wrote many of the classics, such as Caroline and Paper Plane.
We're in Lille, France, at a venue holding 1,600 on the third floor of a shopping centre. Road manager Dave Salt has transformed the place into Quo HQ - Quo catering down the corridor, Quo internet cafe, Quo relaxing room, Quo sleeping room. They travel heavy with three huge coaches: one for the band, two for the crew. There are Quo signposts on all the walls, so nobody gets lost. Salt is ferociously organised, despite having to hobble from room to room - he's twisted his knee, which is in a brace.
In the room next door, Parfitt is dressed in a white towel and rock'n'roll medallions, and blow-drying his hair, which seems to stretch halfway across the room. He waves the hairdryer at me. "Hello, love." That would make a great photo, I say. "No, I'm too fat." He's also crocked, and feeling sorry for himself. He stumbled last night and has a nasty bruise along his instep. Everything is beginning to hurt. Lindsay isn't here, and he's missing her. The days are long and boring, and he occupies himself with talking to his family on Skype, talking to himself in his made-up language and telling jokes. He'll be halfway through a story before you realise he's simply building up to a punchline.
We're talking about the days of excess. "God, yeah," he says. "They were wild. I once went to one of those, you know, dressing-up parties and I went with a naked girl on me back. And the host said, 'What have you come as, Rick?' And I said, 'A tortoise.' 'A tortoise,' he said, 'but you've got a naked girl on your back?' 'Yeah, that's Michelle.' "
Actually, he says, he was horrible back then. He spent £3,000 a week on cocaine. "Through the late 70s and all through the 80s I was a bit of an ogre. I fell into the sex, drugs, rock'n'roll big time, and Richard, my eldest son, saw me at my worst. It was a big shock for him and he deserted me. I don't blame him 'cos I was just not with it, I wasn't here."
What was he like? "I was a maniac, just mad and wacky." Violent? "No, I don't think so much violent as just out of it most of the time. Coke makes you talk complete bollocks, you link up with people who want you for who you are rather than what you are, and because you've got the coke. Richard drinks socially, but he's never touched any drugs in his life because he saw what it did to me, so in one way it was positive.
"Richard has described me as turning into a Mr Hyde. He said, you just became a different person, and it was almost like being out of a movie where you'd wake up and all the facial hair had gone and the claws had been drawn back, and you wake up and you're this normal person for a very short space of time until you decide to drink the potion again. For three or four years he didn't talk to me, and he came back to me at about 14. Wisely his mother kept him away from me. In fact, it made Richard quite ill." He had bad nerves? "Yeah. He was frightened of me."
Richard is 32, in his own band, and the two are close. "We have a lovely relationship now."
Rossi is in the relaxing room, boiling over with frustration. There's one clue left on the Times crossword and he can't get it. "Forceful, intense. Blank e blank e blank e blank t. Forceful? Fuck it."
"Give me the clue again," I say.
"Same fucking clue, it won't help, will it?"
He spends the days listening to music, reading, doing crosswords, exercising and sleeping. He practises two hours a day on his guitar, often just going up and down the scales, playing jazz, keeping his fingers nimble. Despite the image, he is an accomplished musician. Does the three-chord taunting bother him? "Anybody who knows anything about music knows that we know five chords. It's not three, it's five. And what you can't do with five chords ain't worth doing, really. It's always been based round the old 12-bar boogie shuffle rhythm that Chuck Berry started off. I guess in the 80s it annoyed me a bit."
There are two high points to his day - eating and playing. Quo travel with their own catering team and twice a day they turn the latest crappy kitchen space in the latest crappy venue into an upmarket restaurant. Three courses, four options for the main. "Ravioli this evening, ah!" He sticks his fist in his mouth and chews on it. "Forceful, intense. Blank e blank e blank e blank t. I do crosswords all the time, that's how I learned English. I had no education."
"Can we cheat?"
"No."
At home, he can happily go months without seeing people or leaving the house. When he's in the mood, he talks 60 to the dozen - there is nothing he doesn't have an opinion on.
I'm on the phone to my partner, and she gets the clue. "Vehement," I shout at Rossi. He doesn't look pleased. "Vehe... you cow. I hate you," he shouts into the phone.
Late afternoon, and Parfitt's off on one of his surreal riffs. "I've got to get a haircut. What does that mean? It should be I've got to get my hairs cut. Hello, can I have my hairs cut? That's what it should be." He's bored.
Early evening, and the boys are even more bored. "It's the worst, waiting to go on, the last hour. If it was cancelled now I'd be elated," Parfitt says. "As soon as the lights go down and the drone starts, that's when it gets good. That's when we start cavorting. We talk about food constantly on stage... it's always about food."
Have the fans got older? "Yeah, they've got older. And younger. It's anything from eight to 80. Some nights it's like a crèche down the front. It gets to 10.30 and we're halfway through Down Down, about 860 decibels, and there are seven to eight kids asleep in the pit. Just asleep. Gone."
Actually, one beautiful little boy on the front row looks younger. He's wearing mufflers and leaning against his dad. A couple of rows back are an English couple who have been given the tickets as a 40th anniversary present from their children.
8.50pm, and Toot the road manager gives the 10-minute warning. "Still bored," Parfitt says. Then the five-minute warning. "That's your last piss, like your mum tells you before you go out." Two minutes. And they're on. The lights go down, the dry ice swirls, Rossi stands with his back to the stage, Parfitt is coiled, his guitar slung low at groin level. I'm to the side of the stage. He give me a thumbs up. And they're straight into Caroline.
It is unbelievably loud and tight, with elements of pantomime thrown in. "This is one from years ago," Rossi says. "Well, they're all from years ago." On the song Gerdundula, they play four guitars in two sets of pairs - each pair does the fretwork of the other guitar while strumming his own. It's quite a feat, and surprisingly tuneful.
I've become proprietorial about the Quo and want the crowd to love every song. I hear the insistent chug of an old hit, get excited because I recognise it, and invariably find it's actually a different song. Come on the Quo! Come on you medallion-clad, white-trainered, axe-wielding heroes.
At the end, they come off exhilarated. There are Marlboro Lights and wine waiting for them. "Feel this," Parfitt says. His shirt is soaked. The crew are waiting with dressing gowns and head towels, the shirts are whipped off and within seconds they look like post-fight boxers heading off into the night for the next city.
Rosenheim, in Bavaria, Germany. The hotel next to the venue is inundated with Quo fans. Bettina Mueller, 42, has come from Austria, and has been a fan for 27 years. "The madness started when I was 15 and I was on an exchange in Bournemouth. There I bought a single of Caroline, and that was it."
"Status Quo is a life philosophy for me," Bernd Reinhardt says, "a positive way of looking at life." The fans look different now - smarter, the denim less distressed, the hair shorter. Some even wear cords.
The boys have just done eight gigs in nine nights and they're knackered. Parfitt is picking up more injuries by the day and is feeling sorry for himself. "I'm a bit of a wounded soldier. My bad leg has put my back out which has put my neck out. And I've got toothache and my left arm's numb." Then there's the tinnitus - a ringing in his ear alleviated only when he can hear the crickets back home in Spain. "I'm not getting any younger, and to put in this massive effort every night, it does get to you. We used to say, 'When we get to 40 we'll have to slow down.' Here we are 20 years on and we still haven't slowed down, but I do feel it much, much, much more these days. We've had 90 shows this year, which is well over 100 nights away. So next year I'd like to spend some time at home and relax - maybe do around 60 shows."
He cheers himself up by telling me a new joke. It's an unusual Parfitt joke - it's funny. "The other day I discovered my dog was a locksmith," he says. "How come?" "I stuck a poker up his arse and he made a bolt for the door." He's still obsessing with language, and its correct usage. "You know how we say we'd like a cup of tea? Well, it's not a cup of tea, is it? It's a cup with tea in it." This thesis has evolved into a whole Quo language which involves breaking down words by their syllables and adding "with it" or "with them" in between. "It's immature, I know, but it amuses us. It's a load of boll with ox in them."
He plays me the Christmas single he's just written. It sounds a bit like Wizzard's I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day. "Sweet, isn't it? I always thought we should do a Christmas record. I wrote it in Spain with my mate Wayne." He thinks about it and he's off. "And lucky enough it didn't rain so it wasn't a pain, 'cos that would have driven us insane."
Everyone's raving about the supper tonight. I choose the halibut fillet with scallops, dauphinoise potatoes, veg melange and pesto tapenade. Lovely. Afterwards I sit down with "the other three". Drummer Matt Letley says he joined the band because Rhino the bassist told him to. What was he doing beforehand? "A bit of ironing." Rhino - who tells me within seconds of our meeting that his son is studying philosophy at Cambridge - won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music to play violin at 11. What does he like about being in the Quo? "They don't sound like anybody else. There's never been a band more aptly named than Status Quo. Changes are few and far between. I'm still pretty close with Rick, I'd say. Francis is quite an enigma. He's a nice man, but he's an enigma. You don't ever really know what he thinks about you. Francis doesn't go out. He's a very private man. He's got his own circle of friends and he chooses not to involve me with them, but that's all right with me."
Does it bother him that, after 20 years, he's just one of the other three? "Well, it's the brand. The brand is Francis and Rick." Is that annoying? "I don't give a flying fuck. When we're on stage, and that's the only time you're in the now in the whole day, there's five of us. Francis might do all the talking and the guitar solos, I don't give a toss because it wouldn't work otherwise."
Rhino is a man of strong opinions. He thinks the Quo have cheapened themselves recently with stunts. To coincide with the new album, a competition was run in the Daily Mirror to win gold pendants. "It's born out of necessity, I suppose. If people aren't playing your records, you've got to get it out there one way or another."
Andy Bown joined in 1976. That must have been when they were off their heads? He smiles. "Oh yeah." Was he as bad as the others? "I didn't go to their extremes. I'm a great believer in everything in moderation but, yes, I did introduce the band to a selection of controlled substances, yeah." So he's responsible for Rossi's damaged nostrils? "No, he's responsible for that. Never use a crappy dealer." Can he see the band retiring? "I just don't know any more. When I joined, Francis said, I reckon we've got three or four more years left."
Rossi has already completed today's crosswords. He offers me some of his beetroot, ginger and celery juice. He likes to keep fit these days. Is it true he can thread a cotton bud through his nose? "You wanna see it, do ya?" He winces, as he inserts the bud. It looks horrible. "I've got to show it to some kid that we know has started doing coke. I said, 'Bring him over because if we don't put him off, he's fucked.' "
Parfitt and Rossi are chatting, and I'm looking at the back of their heads. Even from behind, you'd know it's them. What's amazing about their relationship is not simply that they have stayed together so long, but that they have such a deep love for each other. Parfitt talks about his three marriages and "one long-term partnership with him", which has outlasted them all. Do they ever argue? "Not really fall out," Parfitt says. "We just go quiet on each other. Something happens and we don't talk to each other for a few days, then it's gone."
"Once we fell out," Rossi says. "He threw a towel at me and I threw it back at him. Seriously, if either of us got to the point where we hit each other, neither of us would come back from that. If we hit each other, it's finished. Simple. "
Rossi has eight children from three different partners, and is now a grandad. Is it the need to support the kids that keeps him going? "Partly. I need the money, I've got a lot of kids in education. We were ripped off a lot of years ago, so we're nowhere near as rich as people think. Plus there's something in me that needs to do it; that insecurity to show off in all of us. I think of those people who have integrity in terms of music, or like to think they have, but they still have to go and do it. Two people who come to mind are the grumpy old Irish fella, Van Morrison, the grumpiest fucker in the business, and Sting - he was a teacher, an intellectual. Now what does he go on stage for, love of music? I don't think so. It's just 'cos we want to show off. If you just love music, you'd stay at home, study music, make it for yourself. There's something in us that wants to go and stand in front of people so they can tell us we're good."
Even now, he says, he's trying to prove himself in some way he doesn't quite understand. "It's like this carrot's been hanging there for fucking years and I just can't reach it, whatever I do, and I keep thinking I'll get there, and it will all be all right... Maybe it's that my parents aren't here to say, 'Good boy, you've done well.' I have this thing that I'm gonna get there, then I can rest when I'm older. But I'm 58 now... 58, fuckin' hell. Come on, isn't that too much? Then Uncle Keith and Uncle Mick are still doing it, so I feel a bit better."
Has he ever cut off his ponytail? "Nah. I'm thinking about it because I think it looks stupid now. Whether I will or not is another matter because I suppose that vanity thing..."
8.50pm, and 10 minutes to go. Five minutes. Two minutes. The hall is packed. The lights go down, the dry ice swirls, 5,000 hands are raised, and those chugging guitars build towards a familiar intensity. Parfitt and Rossi grin at each other, contented.
This is from the Guardian, Sept 2007.
Interview
Better the denim you know
By Simon Hattenstone
Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt walk into the green room, looking ashen. The eternal rockers have just won £50,000 for charity on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? but you wouldn't know it.
Rossi: "I lost weight there, I tell you. I can't believe it. Chess as the opening question."
Parfitt: "I had no idea - I've never played chess in my life."
Rossi is embarrassed. How many knights on a chessboard was the first question. He answered two. Wrong, they faced the ignominy of leaving with nothing. And that's when fate, or some kindly producer, intervened. Apparently this question had been asked before, so they had to scrap it and start again. Second time round, the boys did rather well.
"It was the most nervous I've ever been," Parfitt says. He's in his 59th year, his hair still golden-blond, lush and long. He is dressed in black, wears shades in the studio, a diamond earring, a watch that P Diddy would die for, bangles galore, every inch the rock star. He and his new wife (his third) are off to Spain, where they now live. Rossi isn't as stylish - thin, grey rat-tail trailing down his collar, leather jacket, white socks. He still lives in Purley. He says he's never been fashionable.
The same could be said of the band. But their history is remarkable - more than 100m records sold, 65 hit singles, and one of the most recognisable sounds of the 20th century. Only the Rolling Stones and the Who can match them for longevity. But whereas they have always been cool, Status Quo came to be regarded, somewhat unfairly, as kitsch and a little bit rubbish.
They have been blamed for most of rock's ills - the rise of the denim waistcoat, air guitars, Rockin' All Over The World as sporting anthem. And they've been ridiculed regularly - for suing Radio 1 when the station refused to play their singles, for writing the same song again and again, for starting the tradition of men dancing with their thumbs in their pockets while swaying like willows. Yet they rocked as hard as the best of them, and lived harder than most. After the drinking years, and the cocaine years, and Parfitt's quadruple heart bypass, it's incredible they're still here, let alone preparing for another European tour.
I was 10 when I got into the Quo. I was ill and confined to my bed, and thought they were about as cool as cool got, until Roy Wood and Wizzard came along. I was bought three of their albums in quick succession - Piledriver, Hello! and Quo. I loved the fact that their one-word titles had as much conviction as their heads-down, no-nonsense, mindless boogie. Most of the songs had only a handful of words ("Get down deeper and down/Down down deeper and down, down down deeper and down, Get down deeper and down") and I loved that, too, because it made them easy to sing.
The Quo have always prided themselves on being a band best experienced live and thunderously loud. Rather than touring to promote their albums, they release an album to promote their tour. The new record is called In Search Of The Fourth Chord - a wink to the notion that they know only three chords. When I tell Rossi about my old Quo collection, he nods and says, yes, they are regarded as the classics. "If you actually sit down and listen to them, there are some great moments, but there's a lot of shite, too." He has never had pretensions.
I've not been an active Quo fan since the 70s, but I have admired them from afar and with metaphorical earplugs in. How does a band keep going for 40 plus years? Where do they find the energy and will to perform night after night in different cities all around the globe? Doesn't constant touring screw up their lives and drive them mad? Or maybe it's the other way round - the constant touring is a manifestation of their madness. I'm going on the road with them to try to find out.
A week later we meet at 7am at the GMTV studios. The whole band is here to perform their single, Beginning Of The End. Aside from Rossi and Parfitt, the other three members are relative newcomers. Keyboard player/guitarist Andy Bown says, "For the first 20 years I used to say I was the new boy." He has been in the band 31 years now. Bassist John "Rhino" Edwards replaced original member Alan Lancaster 20 years ago, and has settled in nicely. The band have been through a few drummers - Matt Letley is still feeling his way after only seven years.
Everybody is looking for Rossi and Parfitt. Lyane Ngan, the band's PA and wardrobe dresser, reckons they've sneaked off for a fag. The boys are always sneaking off for fags. They return just in time, slightly giddy, hammily blowing smoke away from their mouths. Their manager, Simon Porter, is handing out copies of the new album.
I can't stop singing Rockin' All Over The World. Lyane hears me. "You're a closet fan!" she says. I think it's an accusation.
Was she a fan when she joined them? "Oh, no!" The band regard Lyane as their sixth member. She's always with them on tour. While waiting to perform on TV, they are discussing crosswords. Rossi and Rhino are disappointed with the Guardian's Saturday crossword - not big enough. Parfitt and Rossi spend most of the interview talking about how much they stank in the old days - they'd come off stage soaking, screw their clothes into a ball and wear them the next day.
We head off for breakfast at a greasy caff in London's West End. Two eggs on toast, sunny side up, for the boys. Occasionally people stop them for autographs. It's hard to miss Rossi and Parfitt with their hairdos.
They met when they were 16 at holiday camp where they were performing - Rossi with the Spectres, which later became Status Quo, and Parfitt with the Highlights. "People thought Rick was a bit flash, which he is. And a lot of people thought he was gay - a lot of that is that cabaret part of showbusiness when you've got to camp it up. He's definitely not gay. I like camp people, I like gay people, they don't seem to have the hang-ups of the rest of us."
They became friends, but Parfitt didn't join the band until they recorded Pictures Of Matchstick Men. It hit the charts in the UK and US, and it's still their only American hit. He started playing guitar at 10. His parents would take him to the working men's club in Woking every weekend. His mum played the piano well, his dad played the comb badly. "Dad would always say, 'Are you going to put your guitar in the boot?' and I'd say, 'Noooooah, I don't want to,' and he'd say, 'You don't have to play it, just put it in the boot anyway.' Of course, in those days everybody got up and did a turn. So I'd end up on stage." He won a number of talent competitions at Butlins, usually singing Baby Face. Was he really good? "No, not really good. I was a bit of a novelty - this 11-year-old kid playing a guitar that was bigger than him. I've still got the certificate - Butlins junior talent competition winner, 1960." Both Rossi and Parfitt left school without qualifications. Rossi was expelled on his last day, to his bemusement.
Rossi idolised Little Richard. "I think that's where we got the energy. To me it's synonymous with doing rock'n'roll. If you don't commit physically, rock'n'roll doesn't really work."
Rossi's father, who was second generation Italian, owned an ice-cream company, but they weren't as rich as his friends imagined. He often heard his dad arguing with his mum about the need to budget better. At school, he was a smartarse. "I was sat in a class, probably 11 to 12 years old, and they'd already moved me to the front because I had my feet on the desk, and my French teacher said, 'You're going to be a pop star?' And I said, 'Yeah', and she said, 'Well, if you're going to tour, and you go to France, you'll have to speak French', and I said, 'No, because I'll have somebody to do it for me.' I was dead right about that, but wrong about not learning the language. I've now realised I have quite a thirst for knowledge and particularly language." He's teaching himself Italian.
Both his parents are dead now. He misses his dad hugely, especially his food. "Some of the food he made. God! Italian. My favourite is pasta e fagioli, pasta with beans, soupie thing, gorgeous. The older I get, the more I'm into food." Has it taken over from drugs and alcohol? "When you grow up with Italians, food is important. I've always been like that with food. Apart from when I was doing cocaine - there was no food whatsoever then."
Radio 1 is celebrating its 40th birthday and Quo have been asked to record a message. "Happy birthday, Radio 1," Rossi says. "You're almost as old as us."
"You can sing happy birthday if you want," the producer says.
"You'd rather we didn't... You are awful... but I like you," he answers in his best Dick Emery voice.
"Thanks for your support, you've been great," Parfitt says.
But things haven't always been great with Radio 1. When Quo sued the station after it ruled that the band were too old hat for airplay, they lost and it cost them an estimated £500,000. Was it a good move? "In hindsight, probably not," Parfitt says, "because we were accused of attention-seeking. But it wasn't like that at all. We had to get it off our chests because it was really annoying us."
At the Beeb today, Rossi and Parfitt record slot after slot. They play a pop quiz with Ken Bruce, discuss Parfitt's blue, red, brown and gold pixie boots with Mark Radcliffe, and for another show are asked about their heroes over the past 40 years. Parfitt names sportsmen Michael Johnson, Colin Jackson, Jonathan Edwards and Carl Lewis. "Johnson is possibly the greatest 400m runner of all time. The beautiful thing is that he always wore gold running shoes. He never expected to come second, did he?" Rossi names Jeff Lynne, legendary producer and founder of the ELO.
They skive off to the loo for a sneaky fag, and return grinning. As we leave the BBC, an elderly man with a distinguished voice calls out, "Can you stop for one old fan?" It's the DJ David Jacobs, now in his 80s, the first man to play Quo on the radio in 1968.
"Still here, you? It's lovely - great that you're still doing it," Parfitt says.
"I've done my ankle in. I'm limping along like the old man I try not to be," Jacobs says.
"It doesn't show on radio," Parfitt says.
"No."
"Lovely to see you."
"Lovely to see you, too."
"Incredible," Parfitt says. "What a legend, David Jacobs. Fantastic! He is the David Jacobs! That's made my day, that has."
Parfitt's got a lovely, sunny disposition. He's a firm believer in karma, and says that after plenty of rough times he's never been happier. His daughter drowned in a swimming pool at home when she was two, and he has said he considered killing himself at the time. In 1997 he had tests for chest pains. As he was leaving hospital, he was hauled back in. "They told me that if I didn't have a quadruple bypass I could be dead in 24 hours." A few years ago, he had a throat cancer scare - the nodules were removed and turned out to be benign. Since then he has been trying to stop smoking (he is down to 10 a day from 50-60), and living more sensibly.
He got married for the third time last year - just two months after meeting Lindsay, a businesswoman in her late 40s. Was she a fan? "No. She had no idea who I was. She thought Status Quo had ceased many years ago." He shows off the diamond earring and two-euro bangle she bought for him. "Apart from being beautiful, she's very nice. It's nice to have a woman on your arm that you know you can take anywhere - no matter what the company is. She's brilliant."
Rossi and Parfitt are almost as well known for their sexual exploits as for the drugs. I ask Parfitt if he's been in love many times. "No, never. Not like this, anyway." Did his other wives know? "No, I don't think so. I always felt there was something missing, but I was never sure what it was. Now I know. When it does hit you, it's an unbelievable feeling." When he goes on the road, he's going to take Lindsay with him, he says. "We didn't get married not to be together. Life on the road takes its toll - it's a crime, really, to a marriage. It's asking a lot of any wife or partner to endure half their life alone."
Rossi roughly divides up the decades. In the 60s, their management convinced them that psychedelia was the way ahead, so they wore their gaudy colours and had a hit with the haunting Pictures Of Matchstick Men. They looked trendy and individual, but Rossi says it was a manufactured individuality. All the time, they just wanted to get down and rock. In the 70s they did just that - they turned faded denim into a uniform, grew their hair even longer and found heavy-guitar heaven. They had a series of huge hits, many of which sounded the same as the last one. Rossi loved the early 70s, but after that it was drink and drugs. In the 80s, they split up for a year. Rossi argued with co-founder Alan Lancaster ("He wanted to be really macho and its not ma thang"), regrouped and opened Band Aid with Rockin' All Over The World.
Rockin' All Over The World, a cover of a John Fogerty song, somehow defined them. Perhaps it was too ubiquitous for their own good. It became shorthand for naff, stadium rock - fans of every football team that reached a cup final would rock all over the world. That's when it became really unfashionable to like the Quo. In the 90s, the Quo discovered a new sensitivity and attempted to reinvent themselves. It didn't work. Now, as they approach their pension, they have gone back to their roots. Some of the songs on the new album are co-written by their former roadie, Bob Young, who with Rossi wrote many of the classics, such as Caroline and Paper Plane.
We're in Lille, France, at a venue holding 1,600 on the third floor of a shopping centre. Road manager Dave Salt has transformed the place into Quo HQ - Quo catering down the corridor, Quo internet cafe, Quo relaxing room, Quo sleeping room. They travel heavy with three huge coaches: one for the band, two for the crew. There are Quo signposts on all the walls, so nobody gets lost. Salt is ferociously organised, despite having to hobble from room to room - he's twisted his knee, which is in a brace.
In the room next door, Parfitt is dressed in a white towel and rock'n'roll medallions, and blow-drying his hair, which seems to stretch halfway across the room. He waves the hairdryer at me. "Hello, love." That would make a great photo, I say. "No, I'm too fat." He's also crocked, and feeling sorry for himself. He stumbled last night and has a nasty bruise along his instep. Everything is beginning to hurt. Lindsay isn't here, and he's missing her. The days are long and boring, and he occupies himself with talking to his family on Skype, talking to himself in his made-up language and telling jokes. He'll be halfway through a story before you realise he's simply building up to a punchline.
We're talking about the days of excess. "God, yeah," he says. "They were wild. I once went to one of those, you know, dressing-up parties and I went with a naked girl on me back. And the host said, 'What have you come as, Rick?' And I said, 'A tortoise.' 'A tortoise,' he said, 'but you've got a naked girl on your back?' 'Yeah, that's Michelle.' "
Actually, he says, he was horrible back then. He spent £3,000 a week on cocaine. "Through the late 70s and all through the 80s I was a bit of an ogre. I fell into the sex, drugs, rock'n'roll big time, and Richard, my eldest son, saw me at my worst. It was a big shock for him and he deserted me. I don't blame him 'cos I was just not with it, I wasn't here."
What was he like? "I was a maniac, just mad and wacky." Violent? "No, I don't think so much violent as just out of it most of the time. Coke makes you talk complete bollocks, you link up with people who want you for who you are rather than what you are, and because you've got the coke. Richard drinks socially, but he's never touched any drugs in his life because he saw what it did to me, so in one way it was positive.
"Richard has described me as turning into a Mr Hyde. He said, you just became a different person, and it was almost like being out of a movie where you'd wake up and all the facial hair had gone and the claws had been drawn back, and you wake up and you're this normal person for a very short space of time until you decide to drink the potion again. For three or four years he didn't talk to me, and he came back to me at about 14. Wisely his mother kept him away from me. In fact, it made Richard quite ill." He had bad nerves? "Yeah. He was frightened of me."
Richard is 32, in his own band, and the two are close. "We have a lovely relationship now."
Rossi is in the relaxing room, boiling over with frustration. There's one clue left on the Times crossword and he can't get it. "Forceful, intense. Blank e blank e blank e blank t. Forceful? Fuck it."
"Give me the clue again," I say.
"Same fucking clue, it won't help, will it?"
He spends the days listening to music, reading, doing crosswords, exercising and sleeping. He practises two hours a day on his guitar, often just going up and down the scales, playing jazz, keeping his fingers nimble. Despite the image, he is an accomplished musician. Does the three-chord taunting bother him? "Anybody who knows anything about music knows that we know five chords. It's not three, it's five. And what you can't do with five chords ain't worth doing, really. It's always been based round the old 12-bar boogie shuffle rhythm that Chuck Berry started off. I guess in the 80s it annoyed me a bit."
There are two high points to his day - eating and playing. Quo travel with their own catering team and twice a day they turn the latest crappy kitchen space in the latest crappy venue into an upmarket restaurant. Three courses, four options for the main. "Ravioli this evening, ah!" He sticks his fist in his mouth and chews on it. "Forceful, intense. Blank e blank e blank e blank t. I do crosswords all the time, that's how I learned English. I had no education."
"Can we cheat?"
"No."
At home, he can happily go months without seeing people or leaving the house. When he's in the mood, he talks 60 to the dozen - there is nothing he doesn't have an opinion on.
I'm on the phone to my partner, and she gets the clue. "Vehement," I shout at Rossi. He doesn't look pleased. "Vehe... you cow. I hate you," he shouts into the phone.
Late afternoon, and Parfitt's off on one of his surreal riffs. "I've got to get a haircut. What does that mean? It should be I've got to get my hairs cut. Hello, can I have my hairs cut? That's what it should be." He's bored.
Early evening, and the boys are even more bored. "It's the worst, waiting to go on, the last hour. If it was cancelled now I'd be elated," Parfitt says. "As soon as the lights go down and the drone starts, that's when it gets good. That's when we start cavorting. We talk about food constantly on stage... it's always about food."
Have the fans got older? "Yeah, they've got older. And younger. It's anything from eight to 80. Some nights it's like a crèche down the front. It gets to 10.30 and we're halfway through Down Down, about 860 decibels, and there are seven to eight kids asleep in the pit. Just asleep. Gone."
Actually, one beautiful little boy on the front row looks younger. He's wearing mufflers and leaning against his dad. A couple of rows back are an English couple who have been given the tickets as a 40th anniversary present from their children.
8.50pm, and Toot the road manager gives the 10-minute warning. "Still bored," Parfitt says. Then the five-minute warning. "That's your last piss, like your mum tells you before you go out." Two minutes. And they're on. The lights go down, the dry ice swirls, Rossi stands with his back to the stage, Parfitt is coiled, his guitar slung low at groin level. I'm to the side of the stage. He give me a thumbs up. And they're straight into Caroline.
It is unbelievably loud and tight, with elements of pantomime thrown in. "This is one from years ago," Rossi says. "Well, they're all from years ago." On the song Gerdundula, they play four guitars in two sets of pairs - each pair does the fretwork of the other guitar while strumming his own. It's quite a feat, and surprisingly tuneful.
I've become proprietorial about the Quo and want the crowd to love every song. I hear the insistent chug of an old hit, get excited because I recognise it, and invariably find it's actually a different song. Come on the Quo! Come on you medallion-clad, white-trainered, axe-wielding heroes.
At the end, they come off exhilarated. There are Marlboro Lights and wine waiting for them. "Feel this," Parfitt says. His shirt is soaked. The crew are waiting with dressing gowns and head towels, the shirts are whipped off and within seconds they look like post-fight boxers heading off into the night for the next city.
Rosenheim, in Bavaria, Germany. The hotel next to the venue is inundated with Quo fans. Bettina Mueller, 42, has come from Austria, and has been a fan for 27 years. "The madness started when I was 15 and I was on an exchange in Bournemouth. There I bought a single of Caroline, and that was it."
"Status Quo is a life philosophy for me," Bernd Reinhardt says, "a positive way of looking at life." The fans look different now - smarter, the denim less distressed, the hair shorter. Some even wear cords.
The boys have just done eight gigs in nine nights and they're knackered. Parfitt is picking up more injuries by the day and is feeling sorry for himself. "I'm a bit of a wounded soldier. My bad leg has put my back out which has put my neck out. And I've got toothache and my left arm's numb." Then there's the tinnitus - a ringing in his ear alleviated only when he can hear the crickets back home in Spain. "I'm not getting any younger, and to put in this massive effort every night, it does get to you. We used to say, 'When we get to 40 we'll have to slow down.' Here we are 20 years on and we still haven't slowed down, but I do feel it much, much, much more these days. We've had 90 shows this year, which is well over 100 nights away. So next year I'd like to spend some time at home and relax - maybe do around 60 shows."
He cheers himself up by telling me a new joke. It's an unusual Parfitt joke - it's funny. "The other day I discovered my dog was a locksmith," he says. "How come?" "I stuck a poker up his arse and he made a bolt for the door." He's still obsessing with language, and its correct usage. "You know how we say we'd like a cup of tea? Well, it's not a cup of tea, is it? It's a cup with tea in it." This thesis has evolved into a whole Quo language which involves breaking down words by their syllables and adding "with it" or "with them" in between. "It's immature, I know, but it amuses us. It's a load of boll with ox in them."
He plays me the Christmas single he's just written. It sounds a bit like Wizzard's I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day. "Sweet, isn't it? I always thought we should do a Christmas record. I wrote it in Spain with my mate Wayne." He thinks about it and he's off. "And lucky enough it didn't rain so it wasn't a pain, 'cos that would have driven us insane."
Everyone's raving about the supper tonight. I choose the halibut fillet with scallops, dauphinoise potatoes, veg melange and pesto tapenade. Lovely. Afterwards I sit down with "the other three". Drummer Matt Letley says he joined the band because Rhino the bassist told him to. What was he doing beforehand? "A bit of ironing." Rhino - who tells me within seconds of our meeting that his son is studying philosophy at Cambridge - won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music to play violin at 11. What does he like about being in the Quo? "They don't sound like anybody else. There's never been a band more aptly named than Status Quo. Changes are few and far between. I'm still pretty close with Rick, I'd say. Francis is quite an enigma. He's a nice man, but he's an enigma. You don't ever really know what he thinks about you. Francis doesn't go out. He's a very private man. He's got his own circle of friends and he chooses not to involve me with them, but that's all right with me."
Does it bother him that, after 20 years, he's just one of the other three? "Well, it's the brand. The brand is Francis and Rick." Is that annoying? "I don't give a flying fuck. When we're on stage, and that's the only time you're in the now in the whole day, there's five of us. Francis might do all the talking and the guitar solos, I don't give a toss because it wouldn't work otherwise."
Rhino is a man of strong opinions. He thinks the Quo have cheapened themselves recently with stunts. To coincide with the new album, a competition was run in the Daily Mirror to win gold pendants. "It's born out of necessity, I suppose. If people aren't playing your records, you've got to get it out there one way or another."
Andy Bown joined in 1976. That must have been when they were off their heads? He smiles. "Oh yeah." Was he as bad as the others? "I didn't go to their extremes. I'm a great believer in everything in moderation but, yes, I did introduce the band to a selection of controlled substances, yeah." So he's responsible for Rossi's damaged nostrils? "No, he's responsible for that. Never use a crappy dealer." Can he see the band retiring? "I just don't know any more. When I joined, Francis said, I reckon we've got three or four more years left."
Rossi has already completed today's crosswords. He offers me some of his beetroot, ginger and celery juice. He likes to keep fit these days. Is it true he can thread a cotton bud through his nose? "You wanna see it, do ya?" He winces, as he inserts the bud. It looks horrible. "I've got to show it to some kid that we know has started doing coke. I said, 'Bring him over because if we don't put him off, he's fucked.' "
Parfitt and Rossi are chatting, and I'm looking at the back of their heads. Even from behind, you'd know it's them. What's amazing about their relationship is not simply that they have stayed together so long, but that they have such a deep love for each other. Parfitt talks about his three marriages and "one long-term partnership with him", which has outlasted them all. Do they ever argue? "Not really fall out," Parfitt says. "We just go quiet on each other. Something happens and we don't talk to each other for a few days, then it's gone."
"Once we fell out," Rossi says. "He threw a towel at me and I threw it back at him. Seriously, if either of us got to the point where we hit each other, neither of us would come back from that. If we hit each other, it's finished. Simple. "
Rossi has eight children from three different partners, and is now a grandad. Is it the need to support the kids that keeps him going? "Partly. I need the money, I've got a lot of kids in education. We were ripped off a lot of years ago, so we're nowhere near as rich as people think. Plus there's something in me that needs to do it; that insecurity to show off in all of us. I think of those people who have integrity in terms of music, or like to think they have, but they still have to go and do it. Two people who come to mind are the grumpy old Irish fella, Van Morrison, the grumpiest fucker in the business, and Sting - he was a teacher, an intellectual. Now what does he go on stage for, love of music? I don't think so. It's just 'cos we want to show off. If you just love music, you'd stay at home, study music, make it for yourself. There's something in us that wants to go and stand in front of people so they can tell us we're good."
Even now, he says, he's trying to prove himself in some way he doesn't quite understand. "It's like this carrot's been hanging there for fucking years and I just can't reach it, whatever I do, and I keep thinking I'll get there, and it will all be all right... Maybe it's that my parents aren't here to say, 'Good boy, you've done well.' I have this thing that I'm gonna get there, then I can rest when I'm older. But I'm 58 now... 58, fuckin' hell. Come on, isn't that too much? Then Uncle Keith and Uncle Mick are still doing it, so I feel a bit better."
Has he ever cut off his ponytail? "Nah. I'm thinking about it because I think it looks stupid now. Whether I will or not is another matter because I suppose that vanity thing..."
8.50pm, and 10 minutes to go. Five minutes. Two minutes. The hall is packed. The lights go down, the dry ice swirls, 5,000 hands are raised, and those chugging guitars build towards a familiar intensity. Parfitt and Rossi grin at each other, contented.