STATUS QUO - Rocking All Over The Years 1990 (compilation)

  

I'm old enough to remember Status Quo before they were a 'boogie shuffle' band. Back in the 60s they were putting out the same sort of pseudo psychedelic stuff that Traffic and Small Faces were doing. 'Pictures of Matchstick Men', 'Green Tambourine' etc. In fact even before they were known as Status Quo, in 1967 they covered The Blues Magoos '(We Ain't Got) Nothing Yet', recording as The Spectres.

*editors note* I may be featuring The Blues Magoos sometime soon !

The Spectres were formed in 1962 by Alan Lancaster and Francis Rossi. In 1966 they became The Traffic, then Traffic Jam, then The Status Quo. Rick Parfitt joined in '67 and in '69 they dropped the 'The' and became just Status Quo. Phew !!

Going back to the song 'Pictures of Matchstick Men' Francis Rossi said "I wrote it on the bog. I'd gone there, not for the usual reasons...but to get away from the wife and mother-in-law. I used to go into this narrow frizzing toilet and sit there for hours, until they finally went out."

Too much information Francis.

It was 1970 when they got hold of a song written by Australian Carl Groszmann, 'Down The Dustpipe'. That's when the aforementioned 'boogie shuffle' style came in.

Perhaps the song they are best known for is 'Rocking All Over The World'. 

Written by John Fogerty (of Creedence Clearwater Revival fame) and featured on Fogerty's self-titled 1975 solo album, Status Quo covered it in 1977 as the title song of their album of the same name, then released it as a single.

Status Quo were the opening act for Live Aid at Wembley Stadium in 1985 and 'Rocking ...' was the song that set it off. Perhaps one of their strangest gigs was in 2005 when Rossi and Parfitt were in 3 episodes of the long running British soap 'Coronation Street'. They played themselves and ended up performing 'Rocking ...' as part of a fictional wedding reception.

My own personal version of Status Quo's 'Rocking All Over The World' is the attached video clip. When I was in Papua New Guinea, in Kundiawa, a street entertainer by the name of Kambra Kua used to come around playing tin cans and singing fragments of songs he'd heard roaming from town to town. He turned up outside one of the stores I was running and I offered him 2 cigarettes to take a video of him. Somehow, he'd remembered just enough of 'Rocking ...' to make it almost recognisable. Here he is in 1986. Enjoy.