ABSTRACT
This chapter traces Status Quo’s innovative development of hard-rock music between 1973 and 1976 and examines specific tracks from the albums Hello!, Quo, On the Level and Blue for You. The band matured as composers during this period and displayed their mastery of re-contextualised 12-bar techniques, finely tuned dynamic control, epic, multi-structural forms, complex orchestral-type textures and modal writing. Those developments are illustrated through the analysis of key numbers such as ‘Roll Over Lay Down’, ‘Softer Ride’, Forty-Five Hundred Times and ‘Caroline’. The unique twin-guitar partnership of Frances Rossi and Rick Parfitt was central to the band’s adoption of a range of open-tunings during the same period, where a variety of standard and non-standard open-tunings provided a new means of developing their unique compositional style. Those innovations are illustrated through the analysis of key tracks such as ‘Down Down’, ‘Rain’ and ‘Backwater’. This chapter also contains further observations relating to the practices of 1970s music journalism and an original interview with Alan Lancaster.
