Return to Quo

FRANCIS Rossi hasn't changed his mind.

He was less than enamoured by Status Quo's latest album when speaking to the Evening Press in the summer, ahead of their Dalby Forest outdoor gig. Now that Riffs is on the shop racks, he cannot bring himself to summon up any more enthusiasm.

"No, I'm still not too enthusiastic," he admits. "We recorded it just after we made Heavy Traffic, two tracks a day, finishing in the studio at Dorking at 6.15, and home by 7 o'clock. Very nice in the summer."

Status Quo are promoting the album nevertheless, even calling their November and December travels The Riffs 2003 Tour. Next week, the Quo play Harrogate International Centre on Tuesday, York Barbican Centre on Wednesday, Riffs at the ready.

Riffs is, in effect, an album of covers. Not only of the likes of Elvis Costello's Pump It Up, The Kinks' All Day And All Of The Night and the J Geils Band's Centerfold, but also "bang-up-date" new versions of Quo standards Rockin' All Over The World, Caroline and Whatever You Want, reinterpreted by the 2003 line-up of Rossi, Rick Parfitt, John Rhino Edwards, Andrew Bown and Matt Letley.

"We'd done two covers' albums before, and Rick and I had insisted to our fans that we wouldn't do this again, but we were coerced by one person at the record company to do it to save his skin," says Rossi.

The quick-talking Londoner speaks his mind. At 54, and with a run of hits that add up to more than eight years in the singles chart and nine years in the album charts, he can afford to be so frank. Yet in an industry with more spin than a Muttiah Muralitharan delivery, it is refreshing all the same.

"The tunes on Riffs are quite good; some of the jobs we've done on there are quite good, but we've always written our own material. With Heavy Traffic, I think 'I want to play that live'; with this album, I think 'It's OK but all the tracks are already well known," he says.

"It was quite fun doing Caroline and Rockin' All Over The World again, but it was just what we had to do. I can't defend the record, and for me, at the moment, it's better to be honest, though on other occasions I've had to play the party line. We all do that; sometimes you prostitute yourself and toe the line. Look, we're in showbiz!"

There are pragmatic reasons, he says, for recording Riffs. "If it means we keep the band going and it means we can make an album next year, then good. Look at the amount of bands that do these records. Even Aerosmith are doing one now, and Bon Jovi are covering their own songs on their new acoustic album. Why it's done is to keep bands alive."

Rossi will turn his attention to song writing in the new year. "I had writer's block when I had six weeks off earlier this year. Instead I was vegetating, bringing the kids home from school, doing crosswords. I just wanted to do that for a while. Hopefully I'll be OK for starting again in January," he says.

Mocking "real musicians for staying at home and boring the arse off things", he prefers instead to acknowledge that the venerable Quo are part of show business, warts and all.

"We're guys in showbiz, slightly introverted, insecure show-offs. So there's that contradiction, when part of me wants to go home, and yet part of me wants to be jack the lad and the front man on the mike, but then that's most of us in showbiz."

He hides that insecurity well. "I think a lot of us are insecure little show-offs. Probably it does drive you on, thinking 'Look at me, mumma, I'm on stage', but there are certain times when I think I don't know if I can do this again. Then three quarters of the way, you think 'Yeah, that was fine'... and then it starts again... the doubts... every bloody night," Rossi says.

Yet one of the abiding strengths of Quo is that they don't take themselves too seriously. Witness the back sleeve of the CD case with its corny pastiche of a garage calendar pin-up with a guitar failing to cover up her curves.

"Finding a girl like that wasn't difficult, they're everywhere," jokes Rossi. "It's like one of those Hits Now covers in the Seventies. We were saying 'No', but the record company managed to sneak it on there. We thought 'Oh just get it out there, do what you want with the cover. We'll get on with the next record'."

Updated: 09:21 Friday, December 12, 2003