Why didn't they continue with Freddie?

I saw Freddie play live with the band three times and he is an excellent, accurate guitarist. He was also anonymous, soulless and incredibly dull with zero charisma or stage presence, so totally unsuited for the band. He was drafted in as emergency cover. Richie for me was much better, a guy who loves and understands the music and has really grown into his role, especially since he started doing lead vocals. You're never going to find another Rick so don't try, it would be an embarrassing pastiche, Richie is his own man and deserves respect for that.

Incidentally, he's also a very nice bloke   

From the skinny teenager in Rhino's band back in about 2006/2007, he filled out to become that big lad playing with Quo on stage. Must have been using Rhino's gym   

Incidentally, his brother Max is also a fine drummer, although I think he's packed it all in now. 

I first saw Freddie play Caroline on youtube and my first thought was oh no, he's trying to do a Rick and copy his guitar style exactly. As I said that just doesn't work and to me it looked as if he was trying way too hard and it sounded cold and clinical. Another reason he wouldn't have stayed apart from being totally unsuitable, is he's a skilled lead guitarist, albeit in a very different style to Quo, so why would he want to play rhythm guitar? When I saw him play live my impression was confirmed, it was a very "forced" guitar sound, not the superb natural rhythm work we got from Rick. Rhythm guitar is a difficult skill in itself, it's not to be seen as second rate to lead, think of Malcolm Young, Bruce Welch, vital to the sound of their respective bands just as Rick was. This for me is why Richie immediately sounded so much more part of the band without impersonating Rick than Freddie, who is probably technically the better guitarist, ever did. 

twentytwenty
I just wish he got more leads. Or, that they scrap songs like Rain etc and just replace it with Francis songs all together. I would think that Richie would do a better job than Rhino as the lead vocalist on Rain though.

Totally agree on this, Richie would do a great job on plenty of songs that were sung by Rick or Alan and haven't seen the light of day live in years. It's typical of Francis being awkward but to his own disadvantage in not splitting the vocals close to 50/50 with Richie. How many times over recent years have concerts on the winter tour been postponed because Francis had throat and vocal problems? Back then he was sharing vocals with Rick who by then was really struggling live with his voice, especially on the big rock numbers he was famed for. Now he could relieve Rhino of his "vocal" duties and have a much easier setlist on his voice if he chose to share the limelight. It will be interesting to see what setlist appears next year assuming with the vaccines that we can all get back to hopefully almost normal touring again.

I feel that I have to step in and defend Freddie here.

As one of the times he stepped in, he had had zero rehearsal and wasn’t even using his own guitars, perhaps he was just concentrating on each song as opposed to worrying about charisma etc etc ?

They flew him from a radio interview he was doing to the gig and without even a sound check went on and played.

To me that’s incredible.

So let’s cut him some slack for having enough on his mind playing the songs correctly at incredibly short notice and helping to keep the show on the road I the most difficult circumstances

I personally find these discussions hilarious.

Discussions about the merits of relative nobody's filling in for Rossi's tribute, novelty act as if it matters!!!

Who really cares?

Should this not be in the tribute band section?

(And Freddie probably had the more honest and authentic approach in all this: a job, do it and go back to my own band and music and not be involved in a fake pretence)