I Talk Too Much

by Francis Rossi

  John was the same as Alan: he had to bring his wife on the road with him. It cost him money and all it did as far as I can see was add to his stress levels. Gillie, his wife, wanted John to stay in the band forever, and thought we’d all be much better off that way, even though John hadn’t had anything to do with the band for over thirty years. She said to me: ‘Why aren’t we going to Australia?’ I said, ‘What’s the “we” shit?’ The truth is the Australian promoters didn’t want the Frantic Four anyway. She said, ‘Surely some Australian promoter will take it?’ I said, probably, and that’s exactly why I’m not doing it. I don’t want some Australian promoter. I only want the best for the band, which is what we have on all our other Australian tours.

  Then Alan became convinced that if we made an album together we’d sell half a million copies in Britain. Based on what, Al? It was just figures plucked out of the air. Pipedreams. After a while it became tedious. Alan’s wife, Dayle, was lovely. But Alan upset everybody. Like certain occasions when poor old John would walk in the room and Alan would start to goad him.

  He was like that with everybody, one way or another. He probably didn’t mean it to come off that way. At first it was great being back together. It was like being kids again. But when he asked if I would do any more I said no. I just told him on the phone: ‘I can’t do any more like that, Al.’ At that point Alan said some very unpleasant things to me. I said, ‘Don’t start insulting me. We’re not kids any more and I shall just cut the line of communication off.’ But he wouldn’t have it. I hung up the phone and haven’t spoken to him since. I’m not eleven years old again where Alan can intimidate me.

  I would think to myself: is that how it was with us all those years ago? Is that why Alan and John are like that? I would talk to Rick about it but it was hard for either of us to properly remember. So much time had gone by. So many wives, children, band members, albums, tours … Besides, it didn’t matter what it had been like forty years before. We don’t do coke, get drunk and eat spaghetti hoops any more either. Time had moved on. Status Quo had moved on. Alan and John hadn’t. Or just didn’t want to. Almost to try and prove a point, I think. Like, we’re back now. We do things our way. Well, sorry, no, actually that’s not how it’s going to go. Even when it came to doing a soundcheck, Alan would want to use that time to just jam instead. I had to explain that we didn’t work like that any more. That the band and the crew and everyone else working on the tour had a schedule they worked to. And that, yes, we really did need to do a soundcheck.

  The important thing was that Quo fans enjoyed seeing the old band back together. I’m glad we did it for that reason. And also because now, with Rick gone, it can never be done again.

  Even when things haven’t always worked out in recent years, though, I’ve never regretted it. Not like I did in the nineties when it meant the gimmick hadn’t panned out. Now I take pride in the fact that this is me giving myself heart and soul. My 2010 solo album, One Step at a Time, was not a big chart hit. But it gave me such pleasure to make that record. Some critics wondered why I needed to do it. The answer is: I didn’t need to do it. I wanted to do it. For my own pleasure and satisfaction: for the good of my musical soul. The fact is I don’t know if a ballad like ‘One Step’ would have been a good fit for a Quo album. I just know it was a song that really meant something to me and one I didn’t want to worry about making ‘fit’ anything. It’s nice also to be able to step out of my role as Status Quo frontman sometimes, as when I did a couple of solo shows around One Step at a Time. Or like when I did a string of Rock Meets Classic shows on my own in 2018. It’s good to step out of your comfort zone occasionally – even if I say no to begin with. It’s fun and it keeps you fresh for the next Quo adventure.

  As I’ve been working on this book, I’ve been making another solo album, which I’ve called We Talk Too Much. It’s actually a shared album with Hannah Rickard. I first met Hannah when we did the first acoustic Quo album. I said to Andy Brook, our engineer, ‘I need a fiddle player.’ He said, ‘Well, luckily enough, I know one that’s coming down on Friday from Newcastle.’ I said, ‘I don’t care where he comes from, can he play?’ He said, ‘It’s a woman.’ I said, ‘Oh, yeah, well, good.’ I prefer working with women.

  So we met Hannah Rickard. She came into my studio and played on the track ‘Claudie’ and did some other stuff on the fiddle that was fantastic. I thought, I like you! She’s a proper Newcastle lass. Lovely person to be around, and what a singer and player. She also gets this look on her face sometimes like she’s got a bad smell under her nose and I just like her. She’s also very close to me in birthdays, very similar to me in a lot of ways. Kind of feisty.

  When we were at the Hammersmith Apollo on the Aquostic tour I was chatting to her backstage. I said something about Connie Francis, whose songs I quite often play on my guitar in the morning to warm up to. Hannah said, ‘So you still write songs?’ I said, ‘You cheeky cow, what do you mean?’ I forget that when people look at me they’re looking at an old bloke. I said, ‘Yeah, I still write.’ She was like, ‘Oh …’

  So I left and went back to get ready for the show, then I suddenly thought: wait, did I misunderstand her? Was she asking if I’d like to write some songs with her? So I texted her and asked. She texted straight back: ‘Yes.’

  I thought: well, you walked into that. She got me to say what she wanted me to say. But I really like Hannah. I get on so well with her. Then when I looked at her onstage I could see the old-school country music girl. She really is the real thing. Working with her in the studio I found out she can really sing too. She was in a band with a cousin of hers, Hannah Rickard and the Relatives, but it was all this rockabilly stuff. I said, ‘Why do that and not country?’ She said, ‘Well, my band don’t like my songs.’

  I got annoyed then. I said, ‘Wait a minute. You’ve got a band called Hannah Rickard and the Relatives – but they don’t do your songs because your band don’t like them? Which one of us is the fool here, you or me?’

  So she stopped doing that band and we started to write together. The first time we tried to write she wanted to be very American and we came up with something that reminded me of the Everly Brothers. Well, that’s me sold! So we carried on working and we have come up with a very nice album together that I’m very pleased and happy with, and that we want people to love. That’s the thing I got from showbiz. I want people to love the songs and think I’m wonderful, of course I do. But there’s some songs that I don’t give a fuck what people say about them and ‘Marguerita Time’ is one of them. Same with a lovely acoustic ballad like ‘Tongue Tied’ or ‘Rock ’n’ Roll’, with its whistling and lovely old-fashioned feeling.

  That’s where I’m coming from on the album. It’s called We Talk Too Much after one of my favourite songs on it, which is ‘I Know I Talk Too Much’. The track was inspired by the comedian-turned-actor Russell Brand. A lot of people don’t like him because they just see him as a mouthy geezer who enjoys showing off. Who does that remind you of? I was watching him gabbing away at Jeremy Paxman on TV one night and I thought, you know what, he’s got a point there. He actually reminded me of me. And the lines just came to me, ‘I know I talk too much, about myself and such, I know a thing or two, but I’m no better than you.’

  It’s about that feeling you get, that nothing ever really changes. That is, things change all the time but everything stays the same.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Here We Are and Here We Go

  Tuesday 14 June, 2016. We had just finished a show at the Expo Plaza in Antalya, Turkey. If Lyane hadn’t gone into his bedroom to check on Rick when she did he would definitely have been gone beyond the point of no return. We wouldn’t have known anything about it until the following morning. Instead, she found him lying on the bed, struggling. The venue was part of a hotel complex and as chance would have it an ambulance and its crew were nearby. The paramedics all rushed in the room and tried to revive him. As Rhino and I entered, one of them made that
cut across the throat gesture and said one word: ‘Dead.’ Then they went back to work on him with their bits of equipment. It was ghastly.

  Rick had more lives than a cat. Everyone knew that. When I saw him after that last heart attack, though, I knew what was going to happen. They pumped the fuck out of him. I saw what was going on and said, ‘Leave him alone.’ When I arrived in the room he was dead. That’s what I was told. Then they started messing around with him on the floor. They dragged him off the bed and his head hit the floor – bang! Then they started the defibrillator. Oh God. I remember uncrossing his feet.

  Then he was taken off to the hospital and we were sitting around talking about it. When he left the room he was dead on the trolley. Among all the shock and confusion, and concern for Rick’s family, we were all like: what the fuck are we gonna do? On the flight back from Turkey, we decided to get in a temporary replacement. We couldn’t afford to simply cancel all the shows we had booked. But when we landed at Heathrow, Lyane’s phone went off; she had a message. She read it and said, ‘Bloody hell! He’s done it again!’ I’m like, ‘What?’ She said, ‘Rick’s up having a cup of tea.’ I said, ‘He can’t be! He was dead when we got on the plane!’

  We were stunned and also saddened because we’d been told that on the very slim chance he did come round he’d be badly damaged physically and mentally. So we didn’t know what to expect when we got the shock news that he’d regained consciousness. Later, when he was up on his feet again, talking about what had happened to him, he kept cutting down how long he’d technically been dead. Because he realised the longer he’d been ‘dead’, the bigger a chance there was that he’d suffered brain damage. The truth was he’d been out cold for quite a while and, in fact, he was brain damaged when he came round.

  Anyway, we’d worked out what we were going to do without him and suddenly the bloke’s alive again. Typical Rick. Always upsetting plans. All joking aside, though, we were all very relieved indeed. We paid for him to be flown back privately to England. That was another palaver. He was still somewhere else mentally and he kept getting up from the bed wanting to pilot the plane. When he got to the hospital in the UK, he phoned Lyane to tell her he’d had another heart attack. She said, ‘I know, Rick, I was there!’

  When Simon, Lyane and I went to visit him, Rick asked if it would be all right if he bought the new Rolls-Royce that had just come out. Simon asked how much it cost and Rick said something like ten grand. Simon was puzzled. Had Rick seen an old model going cheap? Rick said no, it was brand new. Eventually Simon figured it out. Rick was still so befuddled he thought it was 1973.

  Then he told me the nurse was up to no good. Now I was really confused. Until I realised that what he said the nurse had said and done, she actually hadn’t. Again, he was just confused, lost somewhere in the past. Then he told me about this new band he was forming. He said, ‘Because you and me, we’re no more, are we?’ By now I realised what was going on so I just humoured him. Then he told me all about this new motor he was getting. Presumably the Rolls-Royce he’d just spoken to Simon about. That was always Rick’s thing. ‘I’m getting a new motor.’

  These were the ‘cognitive impairments’ we’d been told to expect in the wake of his near-death. Rick was told he had every chance of recovering from them and he definitely seemed more like his old self as time went by, though still physically weak.

  A month after Rick’s heart attack, we were back on tour. Rhino’s son, Freddie Edwards, joined us temporarily. Then the young guy we got in to replace Rick took over. His name was Richie Malone and he had been the frontman in his own band Raid, based in Dublin. We already knew Richie through his father, who first took Richie to see us live when he was just thirteen. Since then he’d become one of those regular fans that come back afterwards and say hi. He was a big fan of Rick’s playing, to the point where he’d had a replica of Rick’s trademark white 1965 Telecaster made. He even grew his own curly blond hair long, though he cut it shorter when he joined Quo in order to not look so much like a young Rick.

  We still didn’t know for sure if Rick would recover enough in time to come back to us, so Richie and Freddie had done a fantastic job filling in until we could figure out what the longterm plan was. It became clear pretty soon that Rick would not be well enough to re-join us and that’s when we came to the mutual decision that he should leave the band. When I say ‘mutual’, we left the final decision up to Rick. The fact is he was very unwell for a long time after getting out of hospital.

  It was hard to get a true perspective on it at the time. Much like when John and then Alan left the band, at first many fans thought that we wouldn’t be able to carry on without Rick. If anything, this only spurred us on to prove them wrong. The main concern was that Rick should be all right. Once we set off again on tour without him, though, I would be dishonest if I didn’t admit to feeling a certain sense of rejuvenation about the band on a musical level and on a personal level. We were out to prove ourselves again and that is always a spur for any creative person, however sad the circumstances behind that feeling.

  Whether he would have come back and worked with us on any future albums was something we left open. We didn’t actually have any plans to make more albums at the time. We had quietly been discussing packing it in, in fact. That’s partly why the tour was called ‘The Last Night of the Electrics’. Though of course we’d had those discussions many times before. ‘We’ll be all right, won’t we, Frame?’ ‘Yes, Ricky, we’ll be all right.’ He’d been working on a solo album, Over and Out, and was planning on writing his own autobiography. He was even discussing making some new recordings with Alan and John. They asked me to be involved too but I wasn’t really interested. I showed interest mainly to cheer Rick up but it was never really going to pan out – not with me involved anyway.

  Instead, we had gone ahead and recruited Richie Malone into the band full-time. We couldn’t have foreseen what a boost of energy he would give us. As a guitarist he’s just propelled the band into a new high gear. It’s his youth but mostly just his sheer exuberance onstage and off. He very quickly went from being ‘Rick’s replacement’ to his own distinct personality. Rick was also very happy with our choice to replace him. He sent Richie a note wishing him luck, saying, ‘You’re the one!’

  On tour with Richie, Lyane and I were going to meet Andy at this place for something to eat. Richie and John were going to come too. Richie said, ‘We’ll take a cab, it’s only about twenty shitters.’ I should explain: ‘shitters’ is what all bands call foreign currency, going back to the days when if you toured Europe you were constantly having to change currencies. To avoid confusion over what money you had, you just called them shitters. Don’t ask me why. It probably goes all the way back to the Beatles. So anyway, Richie said, ‘Let’s take a cab, it’s only twenty shitters.’ John, who was wearing a backpack, said, ‘No. If we take the bus it’s only four shitters.’ Richie: ‘There’s got to be a certain amount of the rock star when we turn up somewhere, surely?’

  And Richie was right. You’ve got to find the balance between being a star and being a pillock. Having found it, don’t let the fans down. Give them a little bit of the star when you’re out in public. That way it’s fun for everybody; just don’t turn into Elvis and have traffic stop for you. Don’t get carried away with yourself. Rick would get carried away. Rhino goes the other way and can’t figure out why it should be any different. But it comes with the gig. You have to have a certain amount of aloofness but don’t you dare shit on people. Balance. It’s everything. No one likes an arrogant arsehole. But you don’t pay to see someone onstage not put on a show.

  So that’s where we were up to our final show of 2016, at the Echo Arena in Liverpool, with Richie settling into the band and bringing his own personality. I remember waking up in my own bed the following morning for the first time in weeks. It was Christmas Eve, one of my favourite times of the year. Not because I’m a big fan of Christmas. I just love that whole winter vibe. I love t
he idea that the world isn’t allowed to intrude on you for a few days. I love the cold and the dark early evenings, sitting by the fire, doing the crossword in the paper.

  Not this day, though. It’s funny how you can sometimes ‘read’ the ring of a phone. As soon as my phone sounded I sensed it would not be good news. It was Simon, telling me Rick had just died at a hospital in Spain. From sepsis, a horrible infection that causes multiple organ failure and death if not caught in time.

  At first, I couldn’t process this information. Rick had already died once that year. He’d also been in and out of hospital with various life-threatening things for years. Now I was being told he was dead. Really? Were they sure?

  Yes, they were. He’d been complaining about his arm, being in constant pain apparently, so decided to check in at the local hospital, where he died forty-eight hours later.

  Do what?

  Do fucking what?

  I was numb. The news had been coming for such a long time that when it finally arrived it was hardly a big surprise. It was a shock though, mentally, physically. We used to joke, Rick and I, that he’d be found dead in a Mandrax factory. We used to joke about it all the time. It was always going to be that or dead in a car crash, or just from another heart attack. But not like this. Bad arm. Hospital. Infection. Dead.

  I didn’t cry when Rick died, something that was made a big deal of when it came out in the press. It doesn’t mean I didn’t care. It was the same when my mother died. I went over to where my mother’s body lay in bed and I touched her face. I went, ‘Oh, Annie.’ She was gone. It wasn’t her lying there. That was a good lesson for me. It’s like there’s a list of things people ‘should do’ – at funerals, at weddings, when a baby is being born. All these different things that people look at you as though you’re weird if you don’t do. But to me it’s all rubbish. I’m sorry but I’m just not having it. People said, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry your mother died.’ I would say, ‘Why are you sorry? You never knew the woman. In fact, she could be nasty when she went really religious at one point and you wouldn’t have liked her. So why are you telling me at her funeral that you’re sorry I’ve lost my mother? I haven’t. She’s in that box.’