By Jason Barnard
Andy Bown of Status Quo reveals his highlights with the Quo, including playing Live Aid, writing Whatever You Want and Burning Bridges. We also cover Andy’s time in The Herd with Peter Frampton and key moments from his solo career. [Transcribed from Andy’s December 2021 podcast interview.]
One of the main reasons we’re here is to mention the Status Quo Christmas 2022 dates. Have you actually been able to get back together with the guys and start rehearsing?
We’ll start rehearsing in February, for probably a week, ten days. It depends how rusty we are, because there’s nothing like being match fit and we’re not like it at the moment. It’ll be fine.
Has it been two years since you last played together?
It is exactly two years. Yeah.
Must be the largest break of time for quite a period. Is it?
It’s my longest ever break with Status Quo, and I’ve been with the band, I don’t know, 45 years. 43 years. Yes. It’s the longest time ever.
Did you finish the tour that was supporting the Backbone album?
No, we finished in 2019 and we were set to start again quite quickly, I believe, in April 2020. And we took a view and just cancelled it because nobody was doing anything and the promoters were terrified. And so Francis, rightly judged that we stopped for 2021, because, well, we got a bad feeling about it.
Do you think you’ll get a chance to cover some of that material from Backbone, given the unfinished business, or will that be up to Francis, in terms of how he feels?
Yeah, I think we ended up doing a couple of numbers from it, and I think we will continue doing them. They went really well. They were good live. Oh, yes.
The album showed that there’s plenty of life in the band.
Oh, absolutely. There’s life in that one, definitely. It’s really good. I played Running Out of Time yesterday, and it’s good, isn’t it?
Yeah, it sounds like Quo, doesn’t it?
Yeah, well, it does. It has a sort of a slightly new edge to it, but it is Quo, yeah, it’s good.
What I want to do now is go back to the early days of your career and ask you a little bit about The Herd, which was the first group you had chart success with. How did The Herd get together? Because there’s a range of different lineups as things coalesce.
Oh, yeah. There were loads of line ups. Actually. I started in a band called The Preachers, which was run by Tony Chapman and had a wonderful guitarist with Steve Carroll, who was a great singer and a great guitarist. And he had an awful crash. We rented two vans because we just had to. Anyway, the van he was in crashed and he died and, well, the ass fell out of it really. The short story is we changed our name to The Herd and then went into about, oh, God, I don’t know, 20 different lineups. Wow. Loads of people. I could probably name some Louis Cennamo who later joined Renaissance. Mick Underwood who used to be with the Outlaws. I was impressed with that. And then he went on to be with Quatermass with John Gustafson. Loads of people. One day we had this organist, and I thought, well, that’s not very good. I can do better than that. So basically we sacked him and my father guaranteed the purchase of a Hammond. So I changed from bass to keyboards for the band at that time.
It’s interesting thing about your career is that you’re a man of many talents and you cover quite a wide range of instruments, don’t you?
Yeah, right [laughs]. Writing my memoir, it’s called master of none!
No, not at all. Did things shift in relation to when you got sort of management and support from Howard and Blaikley. That seemed to force the band into a new direction.
A new direction is right. They managed Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich. A bunch of very nice lads who had half a dozen big hits with songs that Howard and Blaikley wrote. And they were really a terrific vehicle for Howard and Blaikley’s songwriting. And they more or less did the same with us. They completely disregarded everything that we were doing, which was drawing a crowd up to seven or 800 people every Monday night at The Marquee. And they started saying, right, we’ll do this and do that. And of course, we wanted chart success, so we did what loads of bands did at that time. And I think we signed a recording contract which guaranteed us 1% or one penny, whichever was the least. So we had two and a half, three hits with that. And then we got fed up with being told what to do. We left them and Peter and I started writing a lot of stuff together and we recorded a single called Sunshine Cottage, and that missed. Peter was determined to go on and do something else, and as you know, he went to join Humble Pie.
Humble Pie?
Well, yeah. It was a funny time, really. We went along to Steve Marriott’s chocolate box cottage in Epping, which was about 100 yards from Ronnie Lane’s chocolate box cottage. And we just sort of hung out for a couple of days. And I think we stood in a couple of gigs with The Small Faces. But Peter later told me that he was sort of talking things over with Steve Marriott. He took me along to see him [Steve] because he really wanted me to go with him to Humble Pie. But Steve apparently didn’t like me. Didn’t take to me at all, and I didn’t take to him either. But that was pretty rotten of him for Ronnie Lane, wasn’t it? Not very nice, but it was quite successful. But in the end, after a while before they hit really big, Peter had enough of that as well. So he left Pie and then subsequently did jolly well.
To say the least. Looking back on The Herd material, you can see your personality there. And then you’ve got the disparate range of pop styles that Howard and Blaikley presented on you; some of which stand up, certainly of its own genre, like From The Underworld, which is pop psychedelia.
Yeah, it was very good. It was a great vision. I think it was the wrong band, really. They should have found a band that was a bit emptier. If we had banged our heads together, we would be much more 10CC than Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich. Lovely bunch of lads. They really were. But they were happy with their lot and we weren’t.
There are songs co-written with Peter, like Our Fairy Tale. So you managed to sneak a little bit of your own material in. But as b-sides and extra album material.
Yeah, they let us have the b-side occasionally. Our Fairy Tale. That was originally called, it sounds really weedy, it was originally called Halcyon Days. It’s a word I learned not very long before that. My mother had a moped and it was pale blue and she called it Halcyon and I thought, that’s a good name. Anyway, I digress.
No, digress away. It’s absolutely fascinating. Did you write much in that Herd period, either solo or with Peter.
We did write quite a few. I still get the odd hap’penny from Latvia or places like that for I Lied to Auntie May and On My Way Home and Sunshine Cottage. Quite a lot of titles. Of course, I can’t remember any more than that.
I Lied to Auntie May. There was a song with that title recorded by a band called Neat…
Neat Change, yeah.
Is that one of yours?
Yes, of course. It was covered. Yeah.
It’s a great song that’s quite obscure. I didn’t realise it was one of yours because that’s very popular now in cult circles in bubblegum pop. What they now call the toy town type sound of the 60s. That’s a really cool track.
This is news to me.
Neat Change.
Yeah. This is the way we really wanted to go, but it wasn’t going to work. I mean, we were quite green, really, and we didn’t fully realise the weight you have behind you to stand any chance at all. It wasn’t all about how good you are by any means. It was behind you who had the clout and they had clout. Howard and Blaikley.
I recall seeing some of the pictures of you and the Herd at the time and you were modelled as pinups and teen idols.
Yeah. It was a big teeny bopper band. We were the biggest working band in Europe for about eleven months. It was a really exciting time, but it didn’t really go the way we wanted it. But it was a great time for success. It was fabulous being pulled off stage and having clothes torn and stuff.
But as you were saying, Peter left in that end period of The Herd as things moved on. So tell us about Judas Jump then. What was the final nail in the coffin for the end line up of The Herd? How did you morph off to that?
Time is a bit of a blur. It would be an understatement. It’s almost a blank. I can only think that because Andrew Steele, The Herd’s drummer, had to stop playing because he was ill. He was very worried about his health and sure enough, 40 years later he died of asbestosis in Alaska. I spoke to him a couple of times just before that. Anyway he had to stop working and we auditioned 5000 drummers and one hit me straight between the eyes and it was Henry Spinnetti.
Oh, wow.
Exactly. Clapton’s choice couldn’t be bad. Anyway, I think it must have been through him because there was a big Welsh contingent in Judas Jump and Allan from Amen Corner, and the singer, Adrian Williams, he was Welsh. Henry was Welsh. And I think the guitarist was half Welsh as well, Trevor Williams. And there was Charlie Harrison. That’s a complete lineup. How about that? I got that right. But we didn’t really have a lot to say musically. We were sort of struggling to play properly, really. The only one who could really play his instrument properly was Henry. So it was a bit of a disadvantage on the melody front.
On tracks like Beer Drinking Woman there’s woodwind and different sounds. It’s a band with a unique sound.
Well, yes, I did try to sort of get that going because Allan played flute as well as sax a little bit, and I was trying to make it sound different, but I don’t know, what can I say? I can’t help it. I get done for telling the truth. I mean, that album that I was, in the end, mainly responsible for, is not very good, even of the time. It’s not good. I was worn out by then trying to make it sound like something. I sound up the Troggs tape, don’t I! It just didn’t work. And yet some of the songs are pretty good. They need a real kick. They needed a proper producer.
So how did you split your time between Judas Jump and solo releases in that period, like Tarot?
If it was at that time, which I guess it could well have been. I was introduced to Trevor Preston, the guy who wrote Ace of Wands. We wrote quite a few songs together, actually, some of which were recorded on later albums of mine. He was a great writer, and I was really quite in awe of him because he wrote quite a lot of The Sweeney series. He was pretty good. He was in there and he was good. And he had this idea for Ace of Wands, Tarot, and it was accepted. And he said, how about this? I’ve got these lyrics. Would you mind having a go at that? I said of course I don’t mind! So I did it and we went into a studio. I believe I played everything on it except the drums. Yeah, I just did. I don’t mean to sound clever. In those days you did because you didn’t need the quality to make it sound good. People weren’t used to things in time. [laughs]
That’s what gives it an edge in some ways to modern material as now things are a little bit clinical. And sometimes it’s a bit more interesting on the ear, those variances.
Yeah. I didn’t really think too much about that after the series ended. In fact, I think there were three series. Then about three years ago somebody told me that Tarot was being played as the last song just before REM went on stage every night. I thought, hey, wow, hey you hit the big time! [laughs] I was really impressed and since then it hasn’t really stopped. Somebody put it on a compilation and another compilation there and people keep mentioning it and saying what a great record it is. So I went in my shed and I had a look and you know what I’ve got two pristine copies. You want to buy one?!
I don’t know if I could afford it!
Oh to you, fiver [laughs]!
When I was recording Tarot I could have done anything for the b-side. I’d seen a couple of run-throughs of Ace of Wands and I’d fallen head over heels in love with Judy Loe who played Lulli, who is actually Kate Beckinsale’s mother. I was totally in love with her. I think I met her once and I just stood there with my mouth open looking like a complete twat, I’m sure. Anyway, I wrote this instrumental for the B side called Lulli Rides Again and I was so in love. It was pathetic, really. [laughs]
Was it unrequited in the end?
Yeah, I never met her again. Totally unrequited.
Did that give you confidence as a solo artist from then? You released a series of albums in that early 70s period.
Confidence, no. Tony Chapman, my manager at the time, and EMI Records, Nick Mobbs had, and I did my very best. My first two albums weren’t terribly good. They were with GM Records. But the second two solo albums Come Back Romance, All Is Forgiven; and Good Advice. First one produced by Tom Allom, and the second one by Chris Neil. They were good. There’s actually quite a lot of tracks on those two albums that I’m still proud of. But the tracks, I’ve written hundreds of songs and the ones that I’m really proud of could be counted on the fingers of three hands, I think now, looking back. But there we are.
Some of those albums that are quite hard to get hold of now. They deserve a reissue or something like that.
Well, I believe they’ve been reissued. Occasionally, I get given a copy of, say, Come Back Romance, All Is Forgiven and it’s a pristine CD and it’s in Japanese. Whether it’s legal or not, I don’t know, but I think they’re being released occasionally. But of course, they’ve all got to be digitised. They’re not on Spotify, so maybe they haven’t officially been digitised. I’ll look into that if you promise to buy a couple of thousand. That would be jolly good Jason!
How did you get into playing on other artists’ albums and session work then?
I have been doing session work ever since I could remember, really, I must be, because the fee was £8 a session when I started. And it was a big day when it went up to £9 and I thought that was pretty good. But I think it’s because as I said, I’m master of none, I was sort of a handy chap to have in the studio, so people did things that way then. I could get away on the bass or the piano or guitar or tambourine, maracas, stuff like that. And people didn’t seem to mind about the quality. They just felt the width, as it were!
So Blue Eyed Lady, from the Hello album for Status Quo. Was that the first time you actually played with the group?
I don’t know what I played when I first went to record with them. So you’re probably right, if you say it’s Blue Eyed Lady, it was Blue Eyed Lady. Even though I knew the chaps and everything, I was pretty nervous. I hadn’t done anything really like Quo before and I was quite surprised. They were very happy… Play on that note. No, go on! [laughs] That’s really good. That one there. No, those two together, yeah. Play that for a bit. So I played it for a bit and I went into the control room and they were right. It sounded right. It just felt a bit weird playing it but I learned quite a lot that day. Yeah, I also earned quite a lot as well so that’s good!
Did you feel that you got on with the guys because sometimes…
Yes, we always got on. I remember we did gigs together with The Herd. One particular one at The Dominion in Tottenham Court Road. It was quite a big event and Francis always remembers this. He was quite cheesed off because we had a roadie and they didn’t so we were big then, for a minute!
So by the time of Rocking All Over The World it wasn’t just the occasional session. You were playing with the band much more regularly.
Yes, I did quite a lot of sessions for the band. They started recording Rocking All Over The World with Pip Williams in a studio in Sweden. I think it was near Gothenburg, lovely studio, and they weren’t really getting anywhere. So Bob Young was asked to call me and say, can you come out. Instead of just putting overdubbing on, we’d like to have you in the studio to get a different take on this stuff because we’re not really getting anywhere. That was the basic message so I said, well, I don’t know. I have to look in my diary. Okay. I was on the next plane out!
And that was actually a really good album and a big album as well. I really enjoyed playing it. But Rocking was just one of those things. Richard found a song and he said we should do this because it’s a b-side for John Fogerty. Fogerty wrote it and Rick rightly thought it would be a big one. And yes, he was right. I think Pip turned around to me and said, yeah, this is going okay, Andy, Andrew, can you give an intro of some kind? So I played the intro. I just played it because I sort of heard it and that was the sort of way I played, which wasn’t really Quo actually. And he said, that’s great. Yeah, that’s good. We’ll do that. And that was it. And sure enough, later, we started Live Aid with it.
What was that like? Because basically the first bars, the first notes were you.
Yeah, I know. Part of my brain knew that there were up to 150,000,000 people watching and or listening. And the other half or the other three quarters actually said, this isn’t happening. Just play the bloody song. And of course, in those days, we didn’t have all the technology we’ve got now. There were no clicks. I had to actually count it in as well. Now if you’ve ever been really nervous and you’ve had to count something it’s too fast, it’s always too fast. But it came in right. I was just very relaxed. I don’t know why and I thank God for that, but it was a pretty good experience and we tore it up. That was really clever because our manager at the time, he was a professional to some extent a poker player, and all the managers with loads of managers together before this event, before Live Aid, were batting for their act and everybody wanted to be on last. Elton and Paul McCartney. They wanted to be on last at 11:00 at night. And in the end, David Walker, he got them on the line and he reeled them in and said, okay, all right, you’re right, I’ll give up. We’ll go on first. We’ll start. So they said, okay, yeah, you start. Yeah, we don’t mind starting.
And of course everybody was watching the start. That really kicked us off again.
When did you start collaborating from a songwriting point of view? Because one of the first things that many people will recognise you writing in Quo is Whatever You Want.
Yeah. That was a couple of albums in, I think. After Rocking All Over The World, we recorded in Holland. Lovely studio [Wisseloord], I was full time with the band, I was still a hired gun on the fiscal side, but I was full time with the band and we recorded If You Can’t Stand the Heat… and I wrote a couple on that like Oh, What a Night. So I was sort of almost straight in because I think they appreciated my writing. I was fast and good and I made immediate sense of what they were doing as well. So it came together very quickly and what came after that, was that Whatever You Want? After that, yes, probably, 1978.
And that was with Rick, wasn’t it?
Well, Richard and I were in a songwriting partnership and he was actually, as was Francis at the time, doing a tax year out of the country, where they could only spend 62 days or something in the country. Francis opted to go to Ireland and Richard went to, I think it was called the Atlantic Hotel in Jersey, so he said come over and we’ll do some songwriting. So I’d done a bit of prep and I recorded a cassette of Whatever You Want roughly, the verse and the chorus. And then I took it over and we went through a couple of things and he wrote all the melody to Your Smiling Face. That was another one we did at that particular time and I played the cassette I said, what do you think of this? He said, yeah that’s great. We’ll do that. And he didn’t hear it again until we got in the studio where Pip Williams turned to me and said, this is not long enough we need a solo. So by that time I was pretty cocky, I said give me a couple of minutes.
And I went into the iso room and wrote the solo on piano, because most of the stuff, everything I think I ever wrote for Quo, is on guitar. And you’ll probably be able to tell the chords, they’re off the wall for Quo in the solo. Anyway, I knocked that up in about five minutes and said, how about that? And Pip said, great, that’s it. Good. Let’s go. And he stood there in the middle of the room and cans on, screaming his head off. And we recorded it after about a dozen takes.
It’s such an evocative opening. One of the best openings for a rock track that’s ever been. And then when it finally comes into the riff, it’s just magic, isn’t it? How did that build up?
Well, that was actually on the cassette. I still got the guitar, actually. It’s a Les Paul custom that I swapped with Alan Lancaster for a fretless Fender. And I played it on that. I can remember it. And I thought, that’s good. I’ll tune down to D. That’s good. And to me, that was a throwaway intro, total throwaway. And there you are. It’s like Tarot, isn’t it? People really think, oh, that was great but at the time I thought nothing of it. It’s just a way of getting into the riff, the chug. But there we are. So that worked out nicely. [laughs]
I’ve spoken to Bob Young before and he talked about the Quo album Heavy Traffic as being an album that really reconnected you with your fans. Some of your material is on there, like Blues And Rhythm. What’s it like writing with Francis as opposed to Rick?
Completely different. When Richard and I wrote, it would usually be the five of us, Richard, me, two guitars and a bottle of scotch. And we might get something done or we might not get something done. When I write with Francis, we sit down and we work at it. We put the blank sheet of paper in front. We stick it up and we work at it. And when we worked at it, we say up to a point, we say, right, that’s it, okay. And we have a pepper sandwich, which he’s very good at making. That’s a fried green pepper sandwich. And then we go our separate ways and work separately on finishing certain bits off. Then we come together again and say, that’s it. And then usually we just record it roughly, and that’s it. It’s then sort of set fairly much in stone because we very much go for the format as well. Yes, it’s quite detailed, working with Francis, it’s good. Attention to detail, as they say in the US!
And Blues And Rhythm mentions formative influences. Were those lyrics Francis’ or yours?
Which influences does it mention? The [sings descending riff] is a very old blues steel guitar dobro slide thing, which I really loved. And that really kicked it off, and then we decided to do the story. It was influenced very much by the blues. The blues, I guess, like most of the stuff that Quo actually done. But this was pretty obviously influenced by Jimmy Reed on cocaine or something like that!
I have to mention because there’s been a reissue in the last couple of years, your most recent solo album, Unfinished Business. Some of the lead tracks there that have had quite a bit of attention, like Rubber Gloves. That was an album that I think was recorded about a decade ago.
Yes, I believe it was recorded in 2012. Yeah, that seems like a long time ago.
There’s quite a bit of a gap between that album and the material that you released in the 70s. Was it just that you were so busy with Quo, and it wasn’t a priority to get your solo songs out there?
Well, yes, absolutely busy with Quo. Really busy. As you probably know, we were doing 135 shows a year, which to some people might not sound that much, but when every other show is in a different country, it eats up your time. So there wasn’t that much time. Plus, which, of course, it’s not that easy to get a record deal. Recording even then was still very expensive. People were starting to do it in their bedroom, and actually some of them were having hits, but that wasn’t my thing. So I had to use the studio. And of course, I want to use Mike Paxman, and I’m very pleased with most of it, except, of course, I made a mistake that I made before, and that is the material. If I were to be critical, the material is really too varied. I’m sort of showing off.
Yes, you’ve brought in quite a lot of different styles of songs into that album.
As I said, it’s too varied. If I record again, which I may well do, I’m definitely going to bear that in mind. It will have a different vibe. I will settle on a vibe and write around that. I’ve actually got half a dozen songs at the moment. Do you want me to sing them to you? Ah, I haven’t got my guitar! [laughs]
The song Rubber Gloves. That’s got a bit of humour to it.
Yeah. Actually, Mike Paxman gave me that idea. When things in the studio get too tight, too clever, too polished, he says, oh, God, pull the old rubber gloves on for that and you start messing about with it. And then you keep messing, you tweak this and you tweak that to get it perfect. And in the end, you’ve blown it. The vibes are gone from the front, and you would never get that mix back again because this is predigital. You wouldn’t get the mix back. Surely the drums weren’t that loud, you never get it back. So you buggered it, really. So Rubber Gloves is very much tongue in cheek, but yes, rubber gloves will save the day. They said, watch this, I’ll sort this out. And actually it doesn’t sort it out at all. Turn it into nothing, of which I’ve been guilty of along with many.
To finish with Status Quo and Burning Bridges. It is one of your most notable tracks and there was an acoustic version recorded at the Royal Albert Hall. Do you remember the genesis of the song?
That was with Francis. My daughter Sophie was having recorder lessons at school and she came down the stairs playing Darby Kelly [sings tune]. I thought, that’s really good. I know that, of course I do. So I looked it up and I found it was in the public domain. So I thought, I’ll have that. So then I wrote a verse and I went around to Francis and said, what about this? He said, great. And then he more or less played the chorus like that and we thought, this is good, this is good. And it went on the album Ain’t Complaining, and it was poorly mixed. The album didn’t do very well. And the record company said, basically we’ll give you one more chance. And Francis said, right, let’s go with Burning Bridges, let’s remix it. So he and I went in the studio and remixed it and we must take some credit for this. It sounded like a single when we finished before it really didn’t. It was a watery album track. It didn’t kick ass at all. So that was another good thing amongst the litany of bad things! And that really goes well and people love it. They love it and it’s happy.
Quo’s done quite a lot of acoustic live shows over the last decade and that song fits the acoustic side, I guess because of its origins.
Absolutely. I mean, doing Quo acoustically to kick off with was a real challenge, but it came off very well. I mean, you wouldn’t think that Down Down will work acoustically. But I tell you, when we struck up, it was magic, it was just completely different. I was playing a high strung and it was just zingy. It was really good. It was great fun to do that. Yeah, I’d like to do some more of that, but I’m not sure whether we will. Anyway, you said that’s been recorded at Albert Hall.
Yes, there’s a live version which is on the Down Down & Dignified At The Royal Albert Hall live release.
I remember that gig very well, actually. That was great. Beautiful place.
It must be extra special selling out the Albert Hall and playing there.
Yes, I played there in several guises with The Herd. I think we supported The Move there and Lesley Duncan and various people. I’ve done quite a few gigs there, some just as a session guy. They’ve changed some kind of thing in the ceiling. It was horrible [before that].
Cavernous.
Acoustic it worked perfectly. It was really good and it is now. It was a good sound for us so that was an enjoyable gig.
Andy, it’s been an absolute joy talking to you not about Status Quo but The Herd, your solo material and The Neat Change! [laughs]
It’s a pleasure. It’s great to see you, Jason. Thank you very much.
Further information can also be found at statusquo.co.uk and andybown.com
A podcast version of this interview is available plus all the usual podcast outlets.
