Status Quo – Ingliston 2016

Status Quo – Ingliston Showground, July 23rd 2016

Sadly an era is coming to an end for me. The Quo are hanging up their electric guitars and are due to do their final dates as an electric band at the end of this year. I believe they have some ill thought out plan to continue touring as an acoustic act which would be such a sad way to go from a band that played such great hard rock boogie in the 70s. They were my first music love and will always have a special place in my heart.

This whole situation has now been complicated somewhat by guitarist Rick Parfitt suffering a 2nd (may even be a 3rd) heart attack in May which he is now recuperating from. In the short term the band have recruited the bass player Rhino Edwards son Freddie to take over guitar duties and on this date they had brought in Irishman Richie Malone, who I believe plays in a Quo tribute band, to do the honours.

I was in two minds whether to go as Quo without Parfitt & Rossi is not Quo for me. The real Quo, imo, is the Frantic Four line up including Lancaster and Coghlan but I’ve made do with the Rossi/Parfitt line up for over 30 years and only go to hear the classic songs up to 1982. Anything after that, apart from one or two exceptions is a bit crap.

Anyway I decided seeing as I had a ticket anyway and I was a bit curious I’d go. This involved a mad dash up the road from Blackpool after an unplanned extra day on our holiday which involved a Pleasure Beach visit and then an even madder dash from home to Ingliston. I made it with 4 mins to spare.

The familiar drone heralded the band arriving on stage and regular set opener Caroline pierced the air. All the chords sounded in the right place but it wasn’t right. Not seeing Parfitt standing legs apart, his arm a blur as he thrashed out the opening chords to Caroline was just wrong, wrong, wrong. If you closed your eyes it sounded ok but watching the stage you knew someone was missing. That said I tried to enjoy it for what it was, one step away from a tribute act. They did an excellent version of Paper Plane that saw my trusty air guitar get an airing. One other downside of Parfitt being absent is we don’t get my favourite Quo song Rain but Don’t Waste My Time does get a welcome return. The middle of the show is a struggle as it usually is as we are subjected to the ‘newer songs’ which do seem to be crowd pleasers but I really don’t like them and don’t come anywhere close to the classics. And we get a drum solo, its 2016 and people are still doing drum solos. Why?

The closing run of Roll over Lay Down, Down Down, Whatever You Want and Rockin All Over the World was pretty decent before the band go off and come back and do Burning Bridges. A song that encapsulates everything that went wrong with Quo when the classic line up split. It was my cue to get a burger and head for the exit pausing just long enough to watch the band close out with Bye Bye Johnny and thinking, this might be it. The very last time I see Quo on stage 37 years after I first saw them live and my life changed forever.

Overall, for what it was it wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be, the new boy did well under the circumstances. The show was kind of short though at just over 90 mins and I’d expect a bit longer for £45 although I got a ticket for £20 so can’t complain too much. I have a ticket for the Final Electrics tour in December but if Parfitt isn’t there then I don’t think I’ll go having now witnessed the Parfitless Quo. I hope he makes a full recovery and we can finish our live love affair with one final flourish and with Parfitt in his rightful place and me with my air guitar going for it one final time.