In this video edition of The Quo-Cast, Jamie Dyer discusses Status Quo’s 2019 album Backbone, giving his thoughts. The album was released in CD and Vinyl editions.
Backbone is the 33rd studio album by British rock band Status Quo. It was released on the 6th of September 2019. It features the lineup of Francis Rossi, Andrew Bown, John Rhino Edwards, Richie Malone and Leon Cave. It is the first Status Quo album not to feature rhythm guitarist and singer Rick Parfitt, who passed away in 2016; The album is dedicated to his memory.
The tracklisting includes Waiting for a Woman, Cut Me Some Slack, Liberty Lane, I See You’re In Some Trouble, Backing Off, I Wanna Run Away with You, Backbone, Better Take Care, Falling off the World, Get Out of My Head and Running out of Time. The bonus tracks include Crazy Crazy and Face the Music.
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Transcript:
The following is a transcript of the featured podcast. Please note that some alterations have been made to ensure readability.
Backbone by Status Quo, first released in 2019, I believe, is a very, very good album. It is certainly a return to form, and for fans like myself, we thought we would never hear any more studio material under the name Status Quo. It is a tremendous effort by all the band. Everybody contributed to this.
And yes, I miss Rick as well on record, but Richie does an amazing job here on guitar, as well as many other things, including writing a couple of the best songs on this album. There are a couple of bonus tracks included, one of them, Face the Music, which I think is one of the best songs that Quo have recorded in years, plus Get Out of My Head, which has got Richie on vocals, which, in my opinion, has that darkness to it that Rick always tried to bring to much of his material over the years. Yes, he had that lighter side, but there was always that dark edge, and I think Richie does a great job of kind of channelling that here.
The album starts with Waiting for a Woman, with the build-up of the instruments, which, to me, sounds almost like the debut album of a brand new band. It’s like an introductory song, but it’s very cool. Okay, the riff is kind of repetitive at times, but I think it’s got a nice, cool vibe.
We’ve got Cut Me Some Slack, which I know to many fans has a very similar tune to Reality Check from the album Quid Pro Quo, and maybe that was intentional, maybe it isn’t, but there’s only so many notes out there. To be honest, I see Cut Me Some Slack as a completely new song. It’s got a great riff, it’s that Quo energy that we’re used to, and the thing is with Liberty Lane as well, my goodness, when that song came out, it was like, wow! They started playing it live, and the energy live was like, where has this band come from? The energy was amazing. Then I heard it on the radio, the recorded version, and I was slightly underwhelmed at first, but the more I listened to it, the more I loved it, and I think that is the case with this entire album.
Tracks like I See You’re In Some Trouble and I Wanna Run Away With You sound like typical Quo tunes, right? They’ve got that fast chugging or that kind of slow, shuffly type thing that we’ve heard them do on many occasions, like on the Rock To You Drop album, for example. Things like Backbone, that riff Francis had been doing during Down Down at the beginning, and I believe the story is that Rhino said, “We should do something with that,” and they have done. They’re typical Quo, and I think they’re marvellous. I will say here that Backing Off is probably my least favourite on it. I know that they love it, they think it’s one of their best.I personally, in my opinion, I don’t know, there’s just something missing here.
As for Running Out Of Time as well, the message is great, and I love what Francis said in a recent interview where someone said, “Oh, you’ve never done anything about nature and saving the planet and all that type of thing before,” and it was, “Yeah, never too late, anybody?” We’ve also got Better Take Care, written by John David. I think we’ve pretty much all heard the demo at this point that John David had recorded years ago, and I think they do a good job here. It’s nice to hear them sharing the vocal amongst themselves. I think that’s what I’d like to hear in future Quo material. I’d like to hear a little bit more sharing of the vocal. Let’s have some more Richie. I think Leon is in the mix there somewhere. Let’s have some more of him, some more Rhino maybe on lead vocals, so that he can have a follow-up to Run And Hide from Bula Quo.
I would like to see Andy take a lead vocal, especially as he’s now doing one of the main vocals in Whatever You Want in the live setting, and a couple of the other tracks. So yes, I’d like to see that. As for the production, I think Francis has done a decent job with modern technology, and of course, Andy Brook doing the mixing as well. The drums occasionally sit in the background, but on the radio they sound pretty good.
This is the thing, on the radio it sounds pretty strong, and the guitars are very much at the front. At times, the vocals are a little bit hidden away, but then we said that about Two-Way Traffic, and that’s one of the things that we liked about it. So it does have that signature Quo sound, but it brings it up to date, and I think this set of songs is extremely strong. It won’t be to everybody’s taste, but I do like the fact that they’ve dedicated it to the memory of Rick Parfitt, and I’ll be honest, there are moments here where it sounds like Rick is there. There are parts of Face the Music where I could hear them doing that in the late 70s, early 80s, and the kind of style that it would be in.
Crazy Crazy, okay, it’s sort of the Country side of Quo, and it’s something that Francis likes to do from time to time. I can imagine a couple of these songs, including that one, being around during the Under the Influence period, maybe that and Running Out of Time actually, very of that period. So yes, Backbone, if you haven’t heard it yet, I do highly recommend it, If you’re a Quo fan. If you’re not a Quo fan, you might want to go and check out some of the earlier albums, maybe even a compilation, something like Pictures. But this one, if you haven’t heard it yet, go and check it out. I’m going to go and listen to it now.
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