Rick Parfitt

"Famous in the Last Century" is the 24th studio album by the British rock band Status Quo, released in 2000 to largely negative reviews. According to the band's autobiography, the idea to record it came from their manager David Walker, who said that they should celebrate the millennium with an album containing twenty of their favourite hits from the last century. To quote leader Francis Rossi, "Or, put another way, another bloody covers album! We went along with it, as usual, but inside I felt like a fraud…for me it was the worst Quo album there had ever been - or ever will be!" Ironically it still reached #19 in the UK Albums Chart, a better position than the previous Status Quo album of mainly original material, Under the Influence.

‘Vol. 2 - Live In London’ was a hometown show recorded on 19 December 2012 on the band’s ‘Quo Festive’ tour. The setlist at the O2 Arena saw the line-up of Francis Rossi, Rick Parfitt, Andrew Bown, John ‘Rhino’ Edwards and Matt Letley [in his last UK show as Quo drummer] deliver an avalanche of classics, and even features a Christmas Medley, including “Walking In A Winter Wonderland”, “Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree” and Quo’s own “It's Christmas Time”.

The Deluxe Edition of the release includes the full concert and interview footage from Montreux but also boasts the extended version of the new Biography Channel documentary on 40 years of Status Quo, a single CD of highlights from the Montreux performance and a substantial booklet.

The Quo have basically recycled the same simple boogie on each successive album and single, yet their popularity has never waned in Britain. If anything, their very predictability ensured the group a large following. The origins of Status Quo lie in a London-based beat group called the Spectres. Francis Rossi (vocals, guitar) and Alan Lancaster (bass) were the core members of the Spectres from their inception; within a few years, the band had added drummer John Coughlan and organist Roy Lynes. The Spectres released three unsuccessful singles before changing their style to psychedelia, adopting the name Traffic Jam and releasing the unsuccessful single "Almost But Not Quite There." After it flopped, the group added Rick Parfitt (guitar, vocals), formerly of the cabaret band the Highlights. When Parfitt joined the band in August 1967, the group again changed its name, this time to Status Quo. At first, Status Quo backed British solo artists, including Tommy Quickly, while working on their own material. "Pictures of Matchstick Men," the group's debut single, was released at the beginning of 1968 and quickly shot to number seven on the U.K. charts; within a few months, it was number 12 in the U.S. as well.

Throughout Status Quo's six decades of rockin' and double denim, they have notched up 65 hit singles, sold over 100m records worldwide and have spent 415 weeks in the British singles chart, so it's no wonder Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt were awarded OBEs in 2010 for their services to music. And now, in a rare departure from their usual heads-down and boogie approach, they've gone acoustic!

Ain't Complaining is the eighteenth studio album by English rock band Status Quo. Initially released on the Vertigo label on 13 June 1988, it was the group's first album on that label to fall short of the UK Top 10, reaching no higher than its entry position of No. 12.

After the unfocused but commercially successful "Ain't Complaining" came this 1989 effort, commercially unsuccessful but more in character. "Perfect Remedy" is one of Quo's least known albums and scored just one minor hit but it features several fine rock songs that suggest the band were shaking off their previous pop foibles. There are however four songs here that prove they hadn't completely cured the tendency.

If albums were judged on their hit single yield, "Back To Back" would be one of Quo's best. There were four in all and the first two, ahead of the album's release, gave no hint of what was to follow. Alan Lancaster's "Ol' Rag Blues" and the cover of an Elvis hit, "A Mess Of The Blues", were standard Quo without being remarkable. As a whole however "Back To Back" panders more to the plastic pop of the era and suffers from a lightweight production.