Music Monday: Status Quo

[post updated September 2021, following death of Status Quo bass player Alan Lancaster]

Status Quo were one of the most successful British rock bands from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, 'Rocking All Over the World' but with roots in Forest Hill and Peckham

Lead singer and guitarist Francis Rossi spent his early years in Forest Hill (Mayow Road and Perry Rise), where he attended Our Lady and St Philip Neri RC primary school. His Italian extended family ran the local ice cream trade with vans and a shop, Rossi's Ice Cream in Catford Broadway. In his autobiography 'I Talk Too Much' Rossie mentions going to 'Len Stiles Music on Lewisham High Street. This was a record shop that also sold musical instruments including electric guitars. Len Stiles was the place where you hung around smoking your Nelson cigarettes and yacking about music'.  Later Rossi moved to Balham where his family ran a sweet shop, but after getting married at Peckham Registry Office he set up home in Forest Hill.

Bass guitarist Alan Lancaster meanwhile grew up in Cator Street, Peckham. He and Rossi met at Sedgehill Primary School in Beckenham where they first started a band - initially in a Kenny Ball style trad jazz trio! Switching to guitars they played their fist proper gig at the Samuel Jones Sports Club in Lordship Lane SE22.

Rehearsing in a garage next door to the RAF Air Training Corps centre in Lordship Lane (not far from the Horniman museum in what is now Highwood Close) they poached drummer John Coghlan from another band rehearsing at the barracks. Coghlan was from Dulwich and went to Kingsdale school. Now known as The Spectres, the band played other local venues such as El Partido in Catford, the Bromley Court Hotel and in 1967 Abbey Wood park with Pink Floyd.

After hooking up with guitarist Rick Parfitt while working at Butlins in Minehead they became 'The Status Quo' in 1967, later dropping the 'The'.  Their first gig with new name was at The Welcome Inn in Eltham and their first hit 'Pictures of Matchstick Men' came the following year in 1968, a slice of English psychedelia-lite. In the early 1970s the band began adopting the denim-clad rockier image and sound that they became famous for.  

There’s a 1972 Status Quo photo shoot in Peckham, this one is by the Peckham Unionist Club which was apparently on corner of Peckham Hill Street and Commercial Way

Must admit I had an early teens Quo moment before I got into punk. Their style/sound became a bit of a cliche, but is is time for a critical re-appreciation? Some of their peak period stuff has this almost Krautrock drone like repetition and is pretty powerful.