People think that’s me being cold but it’s not. It’s me being me. I’m the same with birthdays. I don’t even give my own kids birthday presents. We might have a little celebration but presents – no. Why? Because every day is like a birthday for my kids: whenever someone in the family really wants something, they get it. There’s no waiting for the big day. Same with death. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. I don’t cry. I don’t mourn. I get up and go about my day. Same as always.
It was the same for me when Rick died. We dealt with it. We knew it was coming. Had been for years. If I really didn’t care, as some people have insinuated, then nothing would matter to me. But I’m not going to walk around wailing and moaning, tears running down my face. It’s all showbiz bollocks. Doesn’t mean anything to me. It’s not real. What was real was the lifetime I spent working with Rick and knowing him better than I will ever know anyone else in my life – and him knowing me.
It’s why I keep dreaming about him as though he’s not dead. He almost died so many times, then came back, it still feels like he could walk through the door again at any moment – at least it does in my dreams. In my dreams I never remember that he was cremated. I always believe he must have been buried, otherwise how could he come back? Yet there he is. Big smile on his face! In the dreams I say to him, ‘I thought you were dead!’ He goes, ‘Yeah, well, you know.’ And I think, yep, that’s Rick. Turning up even though he’s dead. Typical.
I don’t want to dwell on some of the negative things Rick’s family had to say about me after his death. They were grieving for their father or husband – or ex-husband. They didn’t know him like I did. They weren’t there whenever I would cover for him in the studio or there on the bus at night on the road while he moaned at me or got angry or started crying. And they weren’t there when the two of us were experiencing the best times of our lives together. From the perils of sharing a musty bed at Butlin’s to the impossible highs of playing to millions of people for so many years, selling millions of records, writing songs that are now beloved as some of the finest rock anthems ever.
The people I really feel for, after Rick’s family, are the Quo fans. Many of them still don’t understand why I kept the band going. What was I supposed to do – just vanish? Go away forever? I don’t understand that mentality. Other than a misconception on the part of some Quo fans about how the relationship between Rick and me actually worked. And how that relationship fitted in with the rest of the band. Don’t forget, Rhino has been a full-on member of Status Quo now for over thirty years. Andy Bown has been with us even longer. Were we all supposed to just throw the towel in and retire when Rick died?
If anything, Rick’s passing has left me hungrier than ever to carry on. Particularly after all the snide comments about how we would never be so good again. It’s just made us more determined to dig in. You never know how much time any of us has left. You would be a fool not to make the most of it. I also still have a family to watch over. Eileen and I had a couple more kids in the nineties: Kiera Tallulah, born in 1994, and Fursey, born in 1996. They are all grown up now but that doesn’t stop me worrying over them, sticking my nose in if I think I need to. I also reconciled with my daughter Bernadette. We didn’t see each other for years but we eventually got back in touch, and I was so proud to be a guest at her wedding in 2018. I want to stay alive and kicking for all these wonderful people.
And for the band. And for myself.
I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I have thought about retiring once or twice over the last couple of years, particularly with Rick going. I decided I’d definitely had enough at one point. Not just because Rick was gone – he’d already left the group months before he died. But then things changed again after Richie joined the band. Everything is different again now. Everybody had to pull their socks up when Richie joined. Suddenly it feels more like it did when we were younger. It feels like it’s us against the world again. Having to prove ourselves: like there’s something really at stake again.
All that said, you can’t get to my age and not think about your own mortality. I was lying in bed last night thinking: ‘I’m nearly seventy. This is a joke. What am I doing at nearly seventy?’ Sitting here now, though, writing this, the following morning, I don’t feel seventy. But then when I get up to leave and pass a mirror I’ll look into it and think: ‘Jesus, is that who’s been sitting here all this time? But he’s old!’
A friend of mine who’s older than me told me that when you hit sixty, it’s fine, because you begin to coast. He said when he hit seventy, things started to change, he started to slow down a lot more. After that, all bets are off …
You can’t torture yourself like that, though, or you’ll go mad. Or at the very least make all the wrong decisions. I know people much younger than me that have retired and seem perfectly happy. They ask me sometimes when I’m thinking about retiring. I think: never! Not me! But then I recognise that I am getting older and, yes, I do get more tired. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to still be in the game. I still have a ton of energy. I still exercise like a demon every day. I don’t drink. I don’t smoke dope any more. And the band feels like it’s got a new lease of life. So why should I worry about giving it all up to sit in a comfy chair by the fire?
It’s all about having that balance in your life, between going for the things that really make you feel alive, and not knackering yourself so that you can’t enjoy yourself any more.
Take Bob Young. Bob is four years older than me. We have been working together recently writing songs. The first time he came round I looked at him and thought: what happened? I don’t know if it’s something in him or something in me but whenever he comes round he starts talking about the past – and I’m not interested. I just do not want to talk about the past like some old man reminiscing from his rocking chair in front of the fire. I want to talk about the songs we’re doing together now, not what we did years ago. He says, ‘Yeah, but it’s our past.’ I say, ‘I’m still making my past!’ It’s like Bob has drawn a line under the past and he keeps getting further and further away from it. Like, there it is! The past! Isn’t it marvellous?
Well, yes, some of it. But that’s not the end of the story, surely. Not for me it isn’t anyway. Even when I do talk about the past with him, he gets his days wrong. I say: ‘You want to talk about the past but you don’t even remember it.’ Silly sod. I suppose it is just getting old. That’s why I work out every day exercising. Why I eat properly and don’t drink. I want to keep going without always hankering for the past like an old man. Bob will start telling me about the next holiday he’s going on. I’m like, ‘I’m not interested in your bloody holidays! Why are you so fascinated with going on holiday the whole time?’
Jordan Peterson, the psychologist, makes the point that the heads of all these corporations and such – men, particularly – are so driven they can be vicious. Not because they aren’t nice. But because they are so single-minded in one thing, so obsessed by it, they have to score. I saw him talking about it on TV and I thought, oh dear, that’s me. I realise I was lucky that Eileen let me be so single-minded. I got away with it with my first wife because those were very different days. But Eileen obviously had a choice and her choice was to let me pursue my obsession.
Keeping working may not necessarily keep you young but it keeps you alert. Alert is good. It frightens me to think of retiring if it means all you think about is putting your feet up and watching telly. I swim fifty or sixty lengths in the pool every morning. I push it as hard as I can. I have periods where I won’t eat bread but I’m on and off with it. I was saying to Eileen just the other day, I love white bread. There’s something about it that is an addiction for me. I’ll have white bread and butter with all my meals sometimes – or I won’t have any bread at all.
I saw Keith Moon a few days before he died and he was really bloated. There was about an inch of blubber all around him. In Keith’s case it was almost certainly for reasons other than eating white bread.
But the lesson was there: you can’t pretend to be a rock star and be a lump of lard. Even though I haven’t eaten any white bread for a few weeks, as I write this, and even though I exercise every day, I still have about an inch extra all over my body. I do not like it.
New ideas. New projects. It’s exciting. It’s what keeps me going. Something to look forward to doing tomorrow, not dwelling on the things I did yesterday.
I’m going back to work on new material. Will it be for a new Status Quo album? Let’s just say you ain’t seen nothing yet. I’m really enjoying the whole process again, making records again and playing concerts. I get tired at the end of the day. But I still practise every night on the guitar even when I’m feeling done in. I don’t intend to ever start dressing as an old man either. When I go out, I like to wear a well-made suit. Or I like to go out with a shirt and tie and I like my collar done up. No jeans or trainers. That sense of standing out without making it too big a deal came to me from knowing Rod Stewart. We both started out as mods before we were rockers in bands. Which means when I wear a tie it has to be with a Windsor knot. I like looking smart, even when I’m sitting around at home.
I wasn’t going to do a new Quo album. I didn’t want to be in a position where I’m trying to prove that this band can function without Rick and blah, blah, blah – overthinking everything. On the other hand, I’m definitely not comfortable with simply allowing the idea to develop that Quo are just no good without Rick, because that’s not true. The way the band is playing so well live with Richie proves that. Then I look at friends like Brian May, who goes out on these big tours with Queen – without Freddie – doing great shows, enjoying himself, and that inspires me too. Adam Lambert sings the first song, then tells the audience: ‘I know what you’re thinking: I’m not as good as Freddie. But that’s OK because I’m not trying to be Freddie.’ Everyone goes, well that’s a relief, and moves on and enjoys the show.
It’s not like it was in the 1970s or 1980s when having a new member of the band was such a big deal. Here in the twenty-first century nobody is hung up on that any more. As I have said, look at the Stones, look at Guns N’ Roses, look at AC/DC. In Quo, there’s only me left now from the original Frantic Four, but three of the line-up have been together for over thirty years. Rick would still be in the band too if he hadn’t become ill and then died. He wasn’t sacked. He left of his own free will because he wasn’t well enough to tour any more. So why shouldn’t we keep going? We have as much right as any other band.
It just takes that one little spark to be creative and I’m determined to keep that good feeling going while I’m working on the album. I’m spending this morning working on this book. Then I’ll be working on the new Quo album in my studio this afternoon. I will finish at 5 p.m., then spend an hour working out. Then I shall eat. Then I shall sit with my wife for half an hour. Then I shall go to a room and play the guitar for an hour or so. Then tomorrow I shall do the same thing over again.
One of the new songs Bob and I have come up with is called ‘Waiting for a Woman’ and right now, sitting here having just listened to it again in the studio, I love it. Sitting down with Bob, lyrically, we’ve been writing so well again, and with Andrew too. I hope this doesn’t upset Andy, but with Bob he and I know each other so well we can do things in our heads without having to discuss it first. With Bob and me, we’ve got rhymes and things that work automatically. Like me, he also enjoys making the words to the choruses different each time. Which is not supposed to be how it’s done and which you can shoot yourself in the foot doing sometimes. But when it works it’s marvellous. My aim is to make something that pleases the long-time Quo fans. But to also have a bit of who-gives-a-fuck? in there. You need that bit of daring to make what you’ve got truly exciting, not just painting-by-numbers.
Everyone keeps saying they miss John, or they miss Rick or Alan or whoever. But I’m still here and I don’t wish to fuck off. I still write tunes. I still sing and play tunes and I still enjoy what I’m doing in Status Quo. Why shouldn’t I? I know Rick would have done the same if things were reversed and he was the one left alone.
People say I’m the lucky one. And they’re right. I have been incredibly lucky. I’ve also worked incredibly hard and planned incredibly hard and over-analysed everything incredibly hard to get to where I am today. Things have not always worked out for me. Right now, though, I’d say I’m as happy as I could possibly be – and I can be a grumpy sod when I want to be, as you will no doubt have noticed by now.
I finally sold The Glade, the house I’d bought for a song in the seventies when Quo was first taking off. This was about ten years ago. I bought Eileen and me a brand new place instead. Literally brand new as in newly built.
Truthfully, I liked The Glade more. Unfortunately, houses built between the wars didn’t have the best materials, the building regulations weren’t there, and so there were a lot of things wrong with the old place and parts of it needed rebuilding. But it had so much charm and character I loved it. Fortunately Eileen didn’t mind living there so we did for years. Never a word about any of the previous women that had lived there. No complaining about how old the place was. But all our children were born there. My mother died there. I was very sad to leave.
The house we live in now is very similar to the house I grew up in with my family. Lovely grey stone. Seven bedrooms. I spotted it when I was walking the dogs one day. I took Eileen down to look at it and we squeezed in through the gates and had a good look around. We didn’t like the driveway. There were no gardens at the front. But we went around the back and it was really nice. Spacious garden but still cosy somehow. There were no lawns or plants or proper landscaping but we fixed all that after we bought the place.
This all happened in 2007. Looking back, I see that we had to make our own home. Everything in the garden has been put there or planted by us. Everything in the house has been put there by Eileen. I wanted a home for her that really was her own. And no one has ever lived here before us. It really is all ours. I now refer to Eileen as Lady Greystone. We’ve been here for over ten years now and we have never been so happy.
When I bought The Glade all those years before, I remember thinking: how much money would you actually need to live on if the Quo thing suddenly ended overnight? Well, you’d need your house bought and paid for. You’d want your car paid for. I was always thinking: if we can just keep things going for another year or two …
I still am.
The immaculate conception – at least, according to my mother! Halo just out of shot. (Francis Rossi)
You can see by my face how much I believed in Father Christmas. Nice, though, to see my taste in clobber was already highly developed. Dig the double-breasted coat and hipster boots. (Francis Rossi)
One of the old Rossi’s Ice Cream vans, circa 1960. That’s me being given what looks like an empty ice cream cone. Thanks! (Francis Rossi)
Me with my son, Nicholas, circa 1976 on holiday in Climping. (Bob Young)
My mother, me, my maternal grandmother Alice (Nonna), and my younger brother Dominic. In the 1950s, all families were required to have photographs like this taken. (Probably on a Box Brownie.) (Francis Rossi)
Onstage with the Spectres in Catford, summer 1965. (Francis Rossi)
What did you do at school today? The Spectres were gigging around London when we were all still at school. Left to right: Alan Lancaster, me, John Coghlan and Jess Jaworski. (Francis Rossi)
Groovy, baby. A ‘psychedelic’ publicity shot from 1968. I look pissed off, probably because I’m the only one who didn’t get given a ruffled shirt that day. (Harry Goodwin/BBC Photo Library)
High-tech sixties style: Bob Young’s equipment list and stage plan for a gig in Newcastle, surrounded by some home snaps. (Bob Young)
Publicity stills from 1967. Try to look cool. TRY TO LOOK COOL! Oh, never mind. (Harry Goodwin/BBC Photo Library)
Yes, I think it’s fair to assume we had been smoking some ‘funny cigarettes’ the day we de
cided to get dressed up like this. (Status Quo Archives)
Polo neck sweaters, moccasins, purple shirts and stripy blazers … We are either extras from The Prisoner, or it’s 1967 in the Beatles’ Apple shop in London and somebody needs to tell John that no boy over five should ever be caught dead in bright green trousers. (Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo)
Some people went for the double-denim look in the mid-seventies. But I took it a stage further, rocking the fashion world with my unprecedented quadruple denim look. (GAB Archives/Redferns/Getty Images)
We went to Australia for the first time in 1973 – and had some very glamorous shots taken. This isn’t one of them. (Status Quo Archives)
1973 was the beginning of Quo amassing hundreds of gold records. You never forget your first though. (Status Quo Archives)
Written in a Los Angeles hotel room in 1974: the original handwritten lyrics to ‘Down Down’. John Peel always used to end his live DJ shows with that song. (Status Quo Archives)
I Talk Too Much Page 29
