The worst ever photo of Quo

Certainly competes with fans walking round in End if the road Satin Jackets 😂

I like it.

Reminds me of me in 1980 odd   

Pun intended 

It's hard to believe they went from a barnstorming NEC 'Charlie' gig to this incarnation in the space of six years!

I hope you rolled your suit jacket sleeves up.

After that appearance they went off to do a corporate lunch meeting appearance for some stock brokers in London

There were two problems at hand for Francis with this...(It was Francis, it wasn't anyone else)

1. Quo's image of jeans and t shirts, every day blokes, was as much of an attraction and as big a part of their success along with the music. You can't shake that off. Not even gradually. If you make that a big selling point of your brand, there's no turning back. He got it horribly wrong. Then again, management should have stepped in but, we all know the story there...

2. So he wanted to reinvent the band and do little strum along pop tunes and country songs...That's fine. No problem. Genuinely, it's every artist's right to grow, evolve and write what they feel and I love the Army album (except Speechless) and I like Ain't Complaining quite a bit. One issue though...Francis' songwriting contribution in those two albums are minimal. In The Army Now is a cover, Invitation was written 9 years previously, Don't Mind If I Do is apparently Rhino's song, Save Me was written years previously, Burning Bridges is knicked   I'm at a loss as to what he was hoping to achieve by this "reinvention" apart from stroking his own ego...
They were never going to continuously re-invent themselves like U2. They were never do a blues/rock to pop/rock transition in the style of Fleetwood Mac. They most certainly weren't going to be like The Eagles or ABBA. So, what was he hoping for? Pack out arenas up and down the country and continent with Tommy's in Love? Address Book? Magic? They were going to change the band for the better? 

So we now have the frontman of Status Quo, not wanting to be in Status Quo, not wanting to write Status Quo type music, wanting to do country and strum along pop music instead, who also wants In The Army Now recorded, in an 80s sound style and production, whilst wanting everyone to dress like Spandau Ballet but, will wear jeans and t shirts for live gigs, play louder than before and play nothing but heavy/hard/loud rock music and is one of two reasons why David Walker arrives

Whether he meant to or not, he fucked it up, fucked the band up and managed to alienate a lot of people (fans) who paid for his lifestyle

As Rick said, "We weren't real anymore"

I ain't having a pop at Francis here at all. I'm just speaking facts. He was so adamant that Alan was wrong, the band were wrong and he was right but, when it came down to it, by his own admission, he didn't know what to do.

He hated rock music, wanted country music so you repackage yourself Kate Bush's backing band? Baffling! 

Great posts Freewilly

I think Francis knows these things ,he says things like "maybe we'd sell more tickets now" (if they hadn't changed)

In fairness to Francis ,who else was driving the band ? Rick didn't seem interested. Management were awful and nobody in the band was going to question him. And as you say ,his ideas had dried up.

I genuinely believe the live set remained largely intact only because of Lemmy and the warnings he'd given the band re when motorhead radically changed the set after a line up change and the fans deserted them en masse.