Dec 14

Status Quo

Greatly Appreciated

STATUS QUO
 
 
Status Quo  are an English rock band whose music is characterized by their distinctive brand of boogie rock.  The group originated in The Spectres, founded by schoolboys Francis Rossi and Alan Lancaster in 1962.  After a number of lineup changes, the band became The Status Quo in 1967 and Status Quo in 1969.  They have had over 60 chart hits in the UK, starting with 1967’s “Pictures Of Matchstick Men”, and the most recent being in 2010, which is more than any other rock group.  Twenty-two of these reached the Top 10 in the UK Singles Chart.  In 1991, Status Quo received a Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
John Fogerty’s second solo album in 1975, John Fogerty spawned a minor hit “Rockin’ All Over the World”.  Also, Status Quo – a solid British rock band whose decades of blockbuster recording output are virtually unknown in this country (other than their 1968 psychedelic hit song “Pictures of Matchstick Men”) – earned a 1977 hit album, Rockin’ All over the World in the UK with Fogerty’s song as the album’s title track.  The song gained even wider exposure when Status Quo opened their set at the 1985 Live Aid concert with “Rockin’ All Over the World”; they were just the second band to perform at the London portion of the event (in Wembley Stadium), and the song was used by the BBC to promote their coverage of what is one of the best known rock concert events to this day. 
 
(January 2013)
 
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Unbeknownst to most of us, some bands stayed together for decades:  Status Quo is known in America only for their 1968 psychedelic hit “Pictures of Matchstick Men”; but over the course of their career, they have released 60 songs that charted in the U.K. (the most recent in 2010) – more than any other rock group – and 23 of these were Top 10 hits.  One of my long-time favorites, the Dutch band Shocking Blue released a huge hit in 1970, “Venus”.  Featuring striking lead singer Mariska Veres (though she was not an original member), the band released 25 singles and 11 albums, though I had to go to Europe to find their albums. 

 

(April 2014)

 

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The band started out with the name the Rising Sons and gained renown in the clubs around their home town of Oxford for their strong R&B sound.  After going by the surprising name of the Cornflakes for a time, they entered and won a local band competition in Northampton; the prize was a recording contract with Pye Records, home of Petula Clark, the Searchers, the Kinks, Status Quo and other prime British artists, as well as past UARB the Soul Agents.  The owners of the Plaza Theatre (where the contest was held) agreed to be their managers, and at that point, they changed their name to a more promising one, the Primitives. 

 

(May 2015)

 

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At about the same time as “I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)” by the Electric Prunes but on the opposite coast, a Bronx, New York band called Blues Magoos had a hit single with “(We Ain’t Got) Nothin’ Yet” that reached #5 on the Billboard charts.  Almost immediately after the song’s original release, in February 1967, a British band called the Spectres released their own version of “(We Ain’t Got) Nothin’ Yet”.  By the end of that year, the band had changed its name to the Status Quo (dropping “the” in 1969 to become Status Quo).  In January 1968, they released a psychedelic single of their own, “Pictures of Matchstick Men”, which was a #12 hit in the US and a #7 hit in the UK.  

 

(July 2015)

 

Last edited: March 22, 2021