Riding on a big white butterfly

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

25/02/73 : Piledriver - Status Quo



Nine months before this, it's our second Quo album of the year as well.  And we know what we're going to get from a Quo album, don't we?  

But actually, there's a lot more variety here than I was expecting (that's doesn't mean it's any good though).  The opening track, "Don't Waste My Time" is very Quo indeed, but "A Year" has a surprisingly Eagles sound to it, "All The Reasons" is just some very odd noodling with downplayed vocals and "Roadhouse Blues" is just waaay too long.  I didn't mind "Paper Plane" but on the whole album Francis's voice really isn't the best - he's never reached great vocal heights in his career, but he was certainly still on the upward slopes here.  And the guitar playing isn't exactly great either - it all reminds me of the Faces album in terms of its ramshackle nature, but without any obvious skill involved here either.

We're at #7 in the charts this week on its seventh week of a fifteen week run, having peaked at #5 - which is very generous, but things only get worse when you see that it's managed another 23 weeks across a further ten runs, with it last being seen in 2014.  Mad!  The top five this week were Elton, Strawbs (up from #28), Focus, David Cassidy and the LSO and there are no new entries in the charts this week (but eight re-entries).  And Carly is the highest lady at the dizzy heights of #13 (we'll be seeing her very soon - honest!) and she's only got one lady friend - Carole at the not so dizzy heights of #48.

Wikipedia doesn't have an awful lot on the album except for the bizarre fact that this is the first album on which Francis Rossi is credited as Francis - apparently their previous label insisted he be referred to as Mike because that was "a real man's name".  And "Roadhouse Blues" is a Doors cover - not something I would have guessed.  The critical comments provided are "crowd-pleasing and moderately ambitious" and "boring" but it did OK commercially in Scandinavia and Germany, as well as over here.  Did you know they've released over 60 albums over their illustrious career?

"Customers also listened to" Slade, Sweet, Think Lizzy and Deep Purple - 70s sounds, I think it's safe to say.  This sounds to me like, despite it being their fifth album, they were still finding their way in the musical world with their signature sound more coming to the fore on their next album.

18/02/73 - Some 70s rawk
04/03/73 - Our second or third consecutive instrumental album

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