Winter has the city in it’s grip as I’m on my way to meet Francis Rossi for our third interview near the river Elbe. Yes, the front man of Status Quo is in Hamburg! This time for doing some promo ahead of the release of his new solo record called The Accidental. And I need to admit, in the short time I eventually had to check out the record, I recognised, that this record is just fun!
Let me say this before: He still talks (too) much, but it’s always fun to hang out and have a chat with him. As I’m watching the sheets of floating ice on the river, Francis is raving about German Brötchen and the Rührei he had in the morning.
Yeah, it’s tough at the top and eventually I needed to drop two questions, but we had a ball! And I think by the end of the interview, I got the most important message: Do whatever you want! So be prepared for two pricks interrupting each other, joking around and just enjoy our talk, which is a wonderful accident, just like the record itself.
Francis Rossi looking at some old memories.
THE PHOTO ALBUM
Just to keep your memory fresh – this was the first time – with my little sister at the balcony of the Hard Rock Café. You were roasting me like chicken, you know? You were just making fun of me. This was in 2016.
Francis: And is something wrong with me making fun of you?
No!
He notices the leather jacket he wears on the picture and says:
I remember that jacket. I bought that jacket in Berlin, right? It’s on the main street of Kurfürstendamm, I think. Somewhere down by where the church used to be. And there was this big leather shop. I forgot to buy a blazer and I’m here, in Deutschland. So, I go in the leather shop, I’m looking and looking and looking. There was hundreds and I couldn’t find one. And this woman, she said: ‘Come with me.’ ‘Pardon?’ ‘Come with me.’ So, we go out of the shop, out of the back of the shop. And we go up a stairwell, get in the elevator, go up with the elevator, get off of the elevator and we go into this other room and I find this jacket. And I was in the hut thinking, where the fuck am I?! I’ve gone out the back door of a venue, just to get the jacket. I can’t even find that again.
The last time was with your friend Richie (Malone). That was in 2019.
Francis: Shit.
For the release of Backbone.
Francis: Yeah, I’m old. I’m old.
THE KING OF…
In preparation for our interview I checked out your first record as well – The King of the Doghouse, from the 90s.
Francis: That wasn’t fair, because I let somebody else do that, who was very good for a while. Then we had the song King of the Doghouse – it was fantastic. It wasn’t until after the event he decided to go on holiday and let somebody else mix the record. ‘What are you doing?’ He said: ‘I think he can do a good job.’ ‘But he doesn’t know what the record…, he doesn’t know what song…’ Anyway, the thing that came out, I was very disappointed with. And then I found that this guy, who was producing at the time, they had gone to a record company and said we could make a solo album with Francis Rossi. And he got a lot of money for it. And he was taking a lot of ecstasy at the time. So, one day he would be like: ‘Yeah, yeah.’ Next day it was aargh. He wanted to commit suicide – terrible. And I just learned a lot from that. But anyway, sorry to interrupt you.
You’ve been the King of the Doghouse. Now with the release of The Accidental, what are you now? The King of accidents?
Francis: I suppose King of the accident. The reason I called it The Accidental, there was so many accidents. The whole idea of making the record, Max asked me to make a Quo record. I said: ‘No, no.’ ‘Do you want to do a Rossi-Rickard album, like the Talk Too Much album?’ But she’s having babies… He said: ‘Well, do you want to do a solo album?’ I said, ‘Well, no. See, we can’t sell records like we used to. They cost fortunes to make. And I don’t want to make music and lose money.’ And he said, ‘Well, what about if I make sure you don’t lose money?’ I said: ‘Well, good. That’s not a bad start. I doubt I’ll make any money, which, okay, I can deal with that.’ And people keep saying this: ‘But you have a studio, you could make music.’ I said, ‘Well, I have a cock, I can play it. But I like to have sex with somebody else sometime.’ So, the idea of making music and just sitting there looking at yourself, it just isn’t good. And various people got that.
But my guitar tech, studio engineer, and the partner with me on the acoustics songs, is the guy that went to school with my son Kieran, my number three son. My children are all numbered. It’s easier. And Hiran, I wrote lots of songs with him on this album. He and number three went to school together. And one of the accidents in my life is, that they all suddenly appear in my life. You know, my son, the engineer, who’s really good to work with me. And he’s very good in the studio too. And then Hiran. We were writing something a couple of years ago for a project, which hasn’t come to fruition yet. And he came to my house. He comes and we talk politics and religion and shit a lot. And food. And he said: ‘Do you want to write some songs?’ I said that we have all afternoon, I don’t mind. And we wrote three sketches of songs, you know. And he said: ‘Do you want to come and record them?’ ‘No. Why would I want to do it?’ I said: ‘However, I have been asked by Max to do a project. If he wants to pay for it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.’ By the following day, I said: ‘Well, ok, we’ll go in the studio.’
He lowers his voice: And I enjoyed myself so much. And I don’t know why, I don’t know why. Because that was the start of it. I still can’t quite figure what, whether something in me had changed, whether the fact I’ve done all those solo shows had changed the way I feel. And I don’t know what did it. But then we carried on making the album and wrote more songs. And I wrote some with Andy Brook and there’s two with Bob (Young). And one with an actor that I know sent me a song. And I think some of it is, because I wasn’t in that democratic thing, that we like to think most bands are. Which… (whispers) don’t work.
No?
Francis: No. And we always had quality control in Status Quo, in theory. But it never worked, because he gets 2 point to, he gets 2 point to, he gets 2 point to tracks. And so I would be recording songs that at the time I think: ‘Yeah, I like that.’ But now I realise I didn’t really want to record them. I’d rather me did all the songs. But I’m sure they would rather they did all the songs and we recorded them. I wanted to get to this. I didn’t have to do anybody else’s songs. I’d learned to sing a little better too, do vocal exercises.
YOU CAN TEACH AN OLD DOG NEW TRICKS
Francis: And we were doing a song called Things Will Get Better. The beginning… (He begins to sing): Have we been…
The voice was a bit different.
Francis: Yes. So well, I went in the live room to sing a bit and came back to Andy and I said: ‘That’s shit, it’s too low.’ The vocal’s too low. It’s okay when you’re sitting here. But when it’s kind of performed and suddenly you realise: Fuck, it’s too low. I came back in the control room. I thought – we’d done such great things to the track – shit! What are we gonna do? So I said: ‘Well, I could go – (imitates to sing): Have we been this way before,’ like that, you see?
I need to laugh.
Francis: Which made you laugh. And I’ve gotten over that now. And then he said: ‘That’s good, yes.’ I think I said that’s fucking stupid. You know, I’m always looking – at the studio – at the deck. So I said: ‘I’m singing (now in a high pitched voice): Have we been’ – did that as well. Jolly good, yeah. And then I said: ‘It’s fucking embarrassing.’ So we just left that. But that comes from being in a band, where…
You were waiting for the other guys to go like: ‘Ha, Francis, ha ha!’
Francis: Exactly. Right. And that’s what happened, particularly with English people. And then the following day listens. And then about a week or two later, you put it on and it’s just how that vocal is there. And then it goes back into (sings again) quite normally. So now it’s like this different timbre of vocal. And then I was doing (sings again!) the bluesy one, you know, that came in there and he said, that’s great vocal.
Francis now totally suprised: Is it? He said: ‘Yeah, it’s just got something.’ So I thought, ‘Oh’ and I remember years ago talking with Jeff Lynne, you know, Jeff Lynne of ELO. And he came to Birmingham many, many years ago. And he was at the hotel, or wherever we were playing snooker.
Francis refers to the microphone: ‘Is that uncomfortable for you holding this?’
A bit, but it’s okay.
Francis: Aah. And I was talking to him about, because I’ve always liked his records and what he does. I said: ‘How do you do that with your voice?’ He said: ‘Do what?’ I said: ‘One song, you sound like this and that song, you sound like that. And one song, you think it’s breaking your heart. Another song, you sound angry.’ And he said, ‘Well, I just pretend I’m somebody else.’ So I’m playing snooker, thinking: ‘Oh, okay.’ I said: ‘On the song Confusion, I said, were you pretending to be Roy Orbison?’ I carried on, he went: ‘No.’ I said: ‘Well, who?’ He said: ‘Helen Shapiro.’ I said: ‘You don’t sound anything like Helen Shapiro.’ He said: ‘I didn’t say I was trying to sound like Helen Shapiro. I just put myself in this position.’ And that’s what I discovered when I went (and he sings again): Have we been this way before… And what’s the other one I really like? (He can’t stop the singing): Is anybody there, does anybody care? And initially, because it’s not a natural thing for me to sing like that, because ever since I was very little, we kind of copy Americans. We sing like that kind of thing when we’re singing, don’t we? And then I just sing: Have we been this way before… Fuck, I’m 76 and I just discovered a new way of singing, should I need to. I can do a hymn or I can do… (And one more time: He sings!)
You’re turning into an actor now – a voice actor.
Francis: In a sense, yeah. So that’s what I learned from Jeff Lynne. And I realised that, you know (sings (for one last time)): Everything I do, I do it for you. And you ask yourself: Oh, does he really sing like that? I don’t know now, I’ve got to go and ask him. And hearing people do their thing – oh, that might not be their natural voice. It might be this affectation. And so again, another thing I learned on that album was how to do things like that. And to dump any preconceptions about whom one is or what one should do and what this should be like, you can’t do that… And I now have a feeling if I can’t do that, I’m gonna fucking try. He’s definitely gonna give it a go. As long as it’s not football or anything. I don’t want to bungee jump, nothing like that.
I know, me neither. Let’s stay inside of this.
Francis: Yeah, I think so.
Thanks for the insight.
A Real ROSSI?
I stumbled upon two other Rossis on this record.
Fursey, he’s one of your sons, but Dominic also or…?
Francis: Well, Dominic’s my brother and he was working in the garden with the gardener. And the gardener is Dave Huxstep. And the other guy, Dave Tucker, looks after the house and does many things for it. In fact, he’s getting some scaffolders to look at the roofs. Anyway. And I just sit on Go Man Go (he sings again!) and they came in and sang that. And Fursey, he’s singing on… (checks the record) on Push Comes to Shove and on this one (shows on the record): Time To Remember. Yeah, he sounds like me, which I’m so pleased with, but then you think, what he would do? So it’s same thing being apparent, my wife says: ‘Oh oh, he sounds like you.’ That’s not very good is it?
(We’re both laughing) It’s like am I not special?
Francis Yeah, yeah. What the fuck am I gonna do? No, I’m very pleased with what he did and he’s now a studio engineer, he’s doing okay.
With Leon Cave and John Edwards you’ve also got some company from Status Quo. Members from Status Quo, some Rossi’s, a real Francis Rossi record?
Francis: Oh yes, I would use clearly on Cave anyway. I used him on two or three other projects that I did. So if I want a drummer, it’s gonna be Leon Cave.
Definitely, no one else?!
Francis: No, thanks. Until I find somebody else, but it’s unlikely. I got Leon. And John asked me, if he could do two tracks – and I got ‘Shit’. I wanted to do without the leaning on… which is what people have noticed: ‘Ah it’s nearly Status Quo, didn’t it?’ No, it’s me, thank you. The Status Quo stuff was the songs I wrote, the songs I sang, the songs I play guitar on. John Edwards and Leon happen to be on it and there’s other people, who were in it too. But I still wrote the songs, this is the point. And John came to the studio, he’s gonna do two tracks and again the learning curve – an accident – I’m sitting in the thing and I sit back in the chair, away from the desk and he sat over there, working with Andrew and I just say things from the back and with this I went: ‘He!’ So they stopped it, stop the tape and… I say tape, the machine and John said: ‘What’s wrong? No good?’
Francis: I said: ‘No, you’re overplaying.’
He said: ‘Ah, okay.’ Now if I’d said that in a Status Quo format, he has a right to do what he thinks. It’s the Status Quo. But he’s got his say, because he’s been there 40 something years, he is the bass player and he’s great. But I learned that and I learned with this and various other things: Not everybody will play the track, not everybody will listen to the track. John sometimes was so: ‘Bass sounds great on it.’ I thought you were listening to the record. I didn’t say listen to the bass, fuck’s sake. Rick was terrible at it, he was just: ‘I couldn’t hear my harmony on my guitar.’
That’s not the point.
Francis: There are many, many people who do that. Not everybody can produce, because they’re just listening to themselves. Ah, that’s difficult. But anyway, I said this to John and from then on he was just (a) fucking brilliant (pauses for a moment) bastard, oh he’s just brilliant. So then I’d say, just do all, for fuck’s sake. I would not have got there with Status Quo, because I wouldn’t have said that to him. I wouldn’t have said you’re overplaying. He would have said: ‘Well that’s what I think it needs kind of.’ Well if he said to me in this format: ‘This is what I think it needs,’ I’d say, ‘Well I don’t’ and that would be the end of it. So again there’s a little learning curve there.
You’re still learning.
Francis: Yeah, very much in the last five years.
I thought you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
Francis: This came up this morning and somebody said: ‘So you can teach an old dog,’ well obviously you fucking can, cuz I’m definitely old.
Francis Rossi: ‘Hello there!’
And I need a few new tricks. You keep remembering my old tricks, you bastards.
Much Better
Much Better comes up with a nice guitar solo, but that’s just by the way…
Francis: That’s the first guitar, that’s Hiran (Ilangatilike). When we had a playback in London, some guy turned around, he said: ‘It’s not you playing.’ I said: ‘No, it’s him,’ who sat next to me. But I do the second one and there’s a solo on another track, which is Andy Brook and then I do the second one, stuff like that. But generally it’s usually me.
The solo is still great anyway, that’s not the question, see…
Francis: No, it’s great. When Hiran was really young, he was about 13 I think and he came to show me, I forget what the piece is called, Steve Vai plays it. It’s a hot classical thing. I thought: ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ He taught me that at 12 or 13 years old – still can’t play it properly, but he taught me that. But I subsequently realised, when trying to record him doing something else, when he was younger: ‘Oh you can’t play in time.’ He can play. Because he’s so busy practising in his bedroom, he’s never played with a click. He’s never played with a timing, so as soon as you put him in time, he just goes off where he’s going.
He’s like: Bye bye!
Francis: Yes, said you need to go and play with a click and for the next couple of years he kept rehearsing with a click. He was one of those kids that played for five hours a day and still – if we’re writing now – I’ve got some stuff on the phone, that we’re writing and because I’m watching, he slows down. I keep saying: ‘You slow down again.’ ‘What?’ ‘Yes.’ So that’s what I mean so when we work, we work with a click just to to stay in time. But it’s interesting stuff that’s happened. You go: Oh, you’re a such a fantastic guitar player, but you can’t play in time. It’s no fucking good, is it? You can’t play in time, oh shit, but he took it on board and learnt to, he does play in time generally. But if there’s no sort of direction, no drummer, no other people in the room, he starts slowing down. Which is Hiran, delightful boy. Hiran Ilangatilike, he’s a delightful chap.
To quote you, a line from the song Much Better: Crazy days, far away…
Do you miss the crazy days?
Francis: No.
Sure?
Francis: Positive. Why?
I don’t know, you went through so much fucking amazing stuff, like Live Aid and stuff, that’s crazy, wasn’t it?
Francis: It was pretty crazy, yeah. What’s even more crazy is, that people think it’s more important than anything else. Whenever I walk on stage, it’s ultimately important, apart from that inside scope – oh fuck me – because it’s always been that way. And when we did Glastonbury, people said: ‘Oh, what are you gonna do at Glastonbury?’ ‘Oh, we gonna do the Stones catalogue.’ What the fuck do you think we’re going to do – we’re gonna do our gig. ‘Are you gonna do something special for Glastonbury?’ What you mean, they’re not (special) the day before, or the day after, you mean – what’s the matter with these people? You’ve all got this thing, that’s the best, it’s not my problem. It’s just another gig and people think we are being funny, but it’s not, it’s just another gig. It’s no more or no less.
That’s fair.
Francis fooling around.
BACK TO THE 90s?
When I was listening to The King of the Doghouse I thought: ‘Yeah, this sounds like a 90s record.’ You know, wines and stuff. Yesterday I switched to The Accidental…
Francis (whispers): And it’s brass on there.
Yeah, Dead of Night and I asked myself: ‘Once again?’
I thought the 90s are over? Where did that come from?
I mean The Accidental is not just quoing along…
Francis: No, no, no. Brass has been around since I was at school. Before I was at school, I hated saxophones and brass generally. I played a trumpet in school and I used to hate the idea of them on records. And there’s lots of 50s music, where they put saxophone in it, because they’d say it’s sexy. I don’t get that. I like it. So to me, it was perfect on that track. What did you do that for? Because I wanted to, I like the sound of it. I don’t say: ‘I’m not gonna do,’ now. And which you may do within the parameters or barriers of Status Quo or any given band: ‘Oh no, we can’t do that.’ There are many times, people who said to me: ‘That’s not a Status Quo record.’ Really?! That’s funny, I wrote it, I sang it and I’m playing on it who’s…. It’s just weird, why would they say it’s not. So I believe and I’ve learned that people adopt a band, become a fan of the band and feel they own it and it says something about them – who they are. So they can identify, they wear those clothes, you might be a goth follower, you might be a heavy metal follower, so you wear a certain uniform. I no longer wish to wear the uniform, I wore this when I was 13. There’s a picture of me at one of our early gigs, (Alan) Lancaster wore brown and so did John Coghlan and myself and the keyboard player wore a light grey and this Windsor, they call this the Windsor knot.
Ah ja, der Windsorknoten.
Francis: What?
Der Windsorknoten, in German.
Francis: Ah, Knoten, yeah. I was at one of the things at Buckingham Palace and the now King came past – you know – and he’s: ‘Nice to see you again Sir. Lovely.’ And he goes on and then he came back and he went (whispers) ‘I like the knot.’ Oh, it’s a Windsor. They call it a Windsor knot. Oh, that’s why they’re called a Windsor!
(We’re laughing again) Now you know.
Francis: Yes. You know I must have been 50-something. Oh, I thought it was a little Mod. Because when I was 13, it was very Mod to wear a Windsor knot. Oh, that’s why it’s a Windsor. I get it. I’ve got it now.
Like I already said, it’s a Rossi record.
No labelling, no quoing, you’re just doing your style.
Francis: No, I’m sure there’s stuff, where they say, it sounds quoy. I’m sure that Go Man Go sounds a bit quoy and certain other things sound a bit quoy.
But you’re not limited to it.
Francis: No. Beautiful World, we were doing that and I started it with Hiran and we finished it with Mr. Brook, Andy Brook. And I was doing it one time and I said it would be great if we suddenly do what we used to do in Status Quo then. Speed up, double it up and speed up like that, and so we did that. And it’s the closest thing in my mind, at the time, that was going on, I was saying to him, we used to do this in Quo. And it starts to get a bit, “boom”! It does, fucking hell, you know. But then it, (guess who sings): Beautiful, beautiful world, it’s like, Status Quo in 1968. Everybody was kind of singing like this, you know: Beautiful world, beautiful, beautiful world. See, you’re getting in there!
FUN, FUN, FUN
We’re having guitar solos, wines, background singers, spooky – kind of mysterious – sounds at the end of Picture Perfect and with Push Come To Shove a sad love song.
How much fun did you have creating and doing this record?
We’ve kind of been there before but… was it like liberating…
Francis interrupts: Yes.
That you could just be you?
Francis: Yes, to be honest, that’s with everything. Once you started doing – I didn’t go in every day thinking: ‘Wow this is liberating! Wow this is…’ But obviously like on (“plays” it) when it goes into Picture Perfect, that whole intro, I just wrote when I was coming walking from the house to the studio. (“Plays” it again), fuck it – that’d be good. So I go down to Andrew – got that for Picture Perfect – put that down there, let me try and copy on guitar, lovely. The joy in that.
You were just in the mood.
Francis: Yes! And you just follow that. Well as if you’ve been doing things in the band, there may be somebody else, if you had a producer, who said: ‘No we need to do this first.’ ‘No, I needed to do this now, fuck off.’ (laughs) Which I just do with Brook and he quickly goes with it for me. I said: ‘I need that shimmer.’ ‘Fabulous! But look at that later on today.’ And then when you come back: ‘Wow, that’s so good!’ And I don’t care, if people don’t agree or not, it’d be nice, if they do agree.
Last one: Interviews, photographs – pain in the ass or still joy?
Francis: Oh no, I’m enjoying them immensely at the moment, which is why I talk so much. I just keep… something again happened in the last five, six years, when I started doing the solo shows. Which first shows were just talking, you know, me talking for three hours. Which is quite fucking easy, because I keep talking and I go off on tangents, so I’m always going: ‘Oh this reminds me’ and off I go there, you see? And then we did Tunes and Chat, the first one and that overran by about two hours and they say you’re gonna have to tie it, because you’re just getting tired. But I really enjoy it, so coming out and doing this – I really did not want to come to Germany, because I did not want to go on an aeroplane. I did not want to go in the hotel. If I do it again, I will bring a bus and do the same. The idea, that I have to fly back to London tonight, oh fuck, I’m not looking forward. I hate it. I hate the whole thing, the rigmarole around flying. Which used to be so good, you get to the airport, get on your plane and fuck off. It’s likely to be late, isn’t it, because they’re always late now. So all of that, I very very much enjoy this last few days and I should look back on it.
Hope you enjoyed our chat!
Text, Interview & Polaroid pictures: René Biernath
Pictures: Jan Iso Jürgens – IsoluxX Fotografie
