Gig review: Status Quo

MUSIC

Status Quo

Hydro, Glasgow

JJJJ

This is Status Quo’s final electric tour. For the sake of their health, they’ve decided to wind down and unplug their axes for good.

Quo co-pilot Rick Parfitt recently suffered a near fatal heart attack, hence his understandable absence from this farewell jaunt. He’s been replaced by the incongruously fresh-faced son of long-serving bassist John “Rhino” Edwards, Freddie, who almost outdid spry frontman Francis Rossi when it came to Quo’s patented “sharing a suspiciously contrived in-joke on stage” shtick.

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Flanked by a row of Marshall amps and shorn of the bland production that’s blighted their post-1970s records, the Quo still rock like friendly thunder. Whenever they lock into a syncopated riff-tight boogie –that’s most of the time – it’s utterly grin-inducing.

Their genial, no-frills rock‘n’roll is immensely entertaining, as pure and unwavering in its atavistic vision as the Ramones, with whom they have more in common than dour punk purists would ever admit (John Peel loved them for a reason).

Rossi, an underrated guitarist, fired off refried Chuck Berry licks on his Telecaster and teased out the chugging intro to the divine Down Down –not only their best song but one of the greatest rock piledrivers of all time. Cheers, fellas. It’s been a blast.

PAUL WHITELAW

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