Album review : STATUS QUO – The Early Years 1966-69 (5 CD boxset)

BMG/Sanctuary Records [Release date : 15.03.24]

This 5 CD, Early Years boxset is one of the most interesting of the Status Quo back catalogue repackaging of recent times.

It tracks us through the band’s startup moments in the early sixties, when they were originally known as The Spectres, then Traffic Jam, before changing to Status Quo in 1967.

There’s a full CD here (CD2) of pre Quo tracks, 24 in all, some of them album material, others, esp the Traffic Jam tracks, are taken from BBC Radio sessions of good sound quality, just prior to the eventual name change.

More BBC sessions come later in the boxset.

A number of interviews – with Francis Rossi and Alan Lancaster – are spread throughout the five CDs, one with the late, great Brian (Saturday Club) Matthew.

The Spectres most notable single release was ‘I Who Have Nothing’, an English language version of an Italian original. Ben E King had a huge hit with the song in 1963.

The follow up single releases, ‘We Ain’t Got Nothing Yet’ (a cover of the Blues Magoos US hit) and ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’ (not the Donovan song) are here. The latter, written by Alan Lancaster, is a quirkily catchy pop song. Neither of them made a mark.

This was 1966, the same year The Beatles and the Stones were regularly the UK’s top charting bands.

Eventually, the band and its management noted that the music industry was in the commercial grip of psychedelic pop.

The Picturesque Matchstickable Messages album (CDs1 and 2), first released in 1968, yielded two UK Top Ten hits, ‘Pictures Of Matchstick Men’ and ‘Ice In The Sun’ (written by Marty Wilde). Despite that, and the cherry picked inclusion of two covers, one of the Lemon Pipers’ ‘Green Tambourine’ and the other of Tommy Roe’s ‘Sheila’ (both huge US hits), the album failed to chart. Follow up album, Spare Parts, suffered the same fate.

Time for a rethink. Ma Kelly’s Greasy Spoon was released in 1970, but that’s for another day.

Meantime, there’s a wealth of A-sides, B-Sides, Demos and Outtakes from the sixties on CD4. 16 tracks in all, inc alternate takes of ‘…Matchstick Men’, and two punchy cover versions of the Everly Brothers’ ‘Price Of Love’ (a no.2 hit for the brothers in 1965).

CD 5 is densely populated with the band’s several BBC Sessions during the years 1968 and 1969. 18 tracks in all.

Again, the band show sound judgement in their choice of cover versions. The Bee Gees’ ‘Spicks And Specks’, an Antipodean and European hit for the Gibb brothers; ‘Judy In Disguise’, a huge worldwide hit for John Fred, and a cover of Van Morrison’s (much covered) ‘Gloria’. There’s another interview and two more versions of ‘Price Of Love’.

Plus of course all the self penned stuff from the Spectres’ albums.

Let the statistics show that Status Quo have released more than 100 singles over the years, and have spent over 400 weeks on the singles’ charts. Plus of course over 500 weeks on the album charts.

This is where it all began. *****

Review by Brian McGowan

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