Forty years after breakthrough hit Pictures of Matchstick Men, the Quo are still Rocking All Over The World, says NICK UTECHIN

When Status Quo come to town, you know what to expect: the sell-out audiences tomorrow and Sunday evenings at the New Theatre will see an expertly crafted show highlighting four decades of hit rock ‘n roll. When I picked the telephone up at an arranged time to interview the group’s front man, Francis Rossi, I had absolutely no idea what to expect. Would he be the same cheeky chappy he is on stage to the faithful and idolising fans, or would he merely go through the motions — after all, he and band mate Rick Parfitt hardly need publicity these days?

Three-quarters of an hour later, I replaced the receiver wearily and was still smiling. ‘I tend to natter a lot, I warn you,’ Rossi said at the outset. This is true: he could natter for England. He’ll be 60 next year, and the group’s breakthrough hit, Pictures of Matchstick Men, was released in 1968. There’s a lot to natter about.

"Influences on my first group, The Spectres (a very early ‘60s sort of name!)? The Everly Brothers, Johnny and the Hurricanes and especially Little Richard — that man’s still got the energy: he is rock ’n' roll. But it was the Everlys that made me first pick up a guitar when I was about seven. Rick was in a group called The Highlights, and they were, believe it or not, a cabaret act. He used to sing songs like Danny Boy and he’s a very good singer. What you hear from him now with Status Quo is different: back then his voice was very smooth, very nice and gentle! "Me? I don’t have a real voice at all; I just have a commercial voice."

Parfitt came along to see Rossi’s group and heard them do a sound check before a show: "He said, “''That’s what I want to do.' But it wasn’t until ’67 that we got together and he joined us after a fight with his band. Our first show was at the Welcome Inn at Eltham, supporting a group called Episode Six!’ I asked Rossi if he knew that Matchstick Men was going to be a hit when he wrote it: "I knew it was very unusual. When you write lots of two or three minute songs, you have a sort of feeling you can spot it. For me, it’s always the melody first, then lyrics: I’m not wordy or a literary type at all. In fact, it was my ex-wife who came up with the L. S. Lowry connection: I’d only got as far as starting with a “P-p-p-p” noise!"

That song, of course, had nothing to do with what quickly became the recognisable sound of Status Quo: they felt they were too constrained after this big hit, being told what to look like, what to buy and wear. They were also asked always to play their second hit, Ice In The Sun, as the opening number in every show.

So things had to change and when Caroline came along as a No. 5 hit in 1973, followed a year later by their first (and only) chart-topper Down Down, the way forward was clear. It should, actually, be pointed out that Quo now always use Caroline as their concert opener. It must be nice to be your own boss all these years down the line.

Certain things have remained unchanged during the intervening years, specifically the guitar Francis Rossi uses more than any other, a 1957 Fender Telecaster. He became ever more animated and enthused: "I used to play a Gibson Stereo and we were working somewhere with . . . oh, who the f… was it? They sang 'If you want it, here it is' . . . (later research proved this to be a song by the group Badfinger) and one of the guys had this two-tone deep green Telecaster and he wanted mine, so we swapped. I think he thought I must be mad. What’s important is to know how to play your instrument. Like the string gauges: some American player came over and I heard him and thought: ‘Why the f… can’t I sound like that?"

My strings were like tramlines, but he just had a thinner gauge and so could bend them. And then I was once with a famous guitarist who said: "What you need to do is tune this string to 'the . . . that one’ — he didn’t know the name of the music key!"

The Quo operation these days is a big one: for theatre tours such as this one — as opposed to big stadiums — "we only need 25 people — not many, believe you me.

"It’s lunacy, but, for example, European regulations mean we have to have three drivers for the bus. There are guitar techs for stage left and right (the one on the right also does keyboards), there’s the drum tech and the people out front for sound and lighting. Oh, and we keep them on retainers, so they’re always available. The Stones couldn’t do you a concert tomorrow, but we could!’ My son immediately asked me to book Status Quo for his nineteenth birthday. Rossi told me that for the first time he is going to be doing some solo touring next year: perhaps that would be the better bet.

Status Quo come with their Pictures — 40 Years of Hits tour to the New Theatre, Oxford, tomorrow and Sunday.