Status Quo & Young and Moody & The Devil Went Down
- Place – Pye Studios – De Lane Lea Studios Wembley
- Time – 1970s
- Artist – Status Quo – Young & Moody
For over 50 years Status Quo, known today more intimately as Quo, have had over 60 chart hits in the UK, 22 of which have reached the top ten.
Today, after the sad passing of two members of the original band, Francis Rossi and John Coughlan are the only ones still rocking all over the world.
Pye – the early days
My early days at Pye were filled working with fabulous artists, I still couldn’t believe I was being paid for spending time following my dream.
I had been assigned as tape operator, recording an album with Status Quo, this would prove to be weeks of just pure enjoyment.
Quo, turned out to be the most fantastic bunch of guys to work with.
There were no arguments like some of the other bands, just great fun, down to earth guys who loved making their music.
Bands in those days were usually on the road most of the time building up a fan base, to earn just enough to keep going, doing what they wanted to do.
If you got lucky enough to get a record deal and get into a studio that was considered a major feat.
If you should then have a hit that was the cherry on the cake.
The sessions
The sessions were booked from 4pm until midnight.
After the first few days the session would start with a playback of the recordings from the night before, followed by funny stories from their gigs on the road which, even fifty years later, I don’t think I should go into.
John Schroeder
John Schroeder was the producer, who was at the time known as a British pop and easy listening composer, arranger, songwriter and record producer.
Schroeder started he career working as an A&R assistant to Norrie Paramor at Columbia Records, he also co-wrote, with Mike Hawker, Walking Back To Happiness by Helen Shapiro which reached number one in the UK charts in 1961
In the mid 1960s, Schroeder moved to Pye and formed the instrumental band Sounds Orchestral with Johnny Pearson They had an international hit with their version of Cast Your Fate To The Wind which reached No. 5 in the UK charts.
Although in 1968 he gave Quo their first hit with, Pictures of Matchstick Men he seemed a strange choice for a rock band like Quo but being a in house producer for Pye he did the gigs he was given.
Schroeder’s arrival.
John would arrive around 6pm. He was a very soft spoken, polite, unassuming man, with a hairstyle that looked like a bird’s nest had exploded on his head. He was very much like most of the Pye’s in-house producers at the time who, when they wasn’t working on their own projects, appeared to have too little or no interest in the bands they were producing. They were purely fulfilling their obligations to keep their contracts.
As he arrived he would say hi to everyone and ask to hear the previous nights recordings, then sit down and proceed to read his newspaper.
The recording session would always start with Quo going downstairs into the studio and start playing live together, not what they were about to record, but just jamming and completely enjoying themselves.
Part of my job as a tape operator was to go down into the studio and adjust final mic positions.
The volume in the room was so fucking loud it felt like your body would implode.
At about 10pm the band would be ready to record and the record light would go on.
This was the cue for Quo to perform what they did naturally, a classic rock-backing track.
Throughout the takes Schroeder, still perusing his newspaper, would whisper a few comments down the talkback mic to the band, like, “Try another one”. Or, “That one was OK, wanna have a listen?”
He had a completely different style of producing than I had witnessed with most other producers I had been working with.
Around midnight John would close his newspaper and go home, and the next day the whole process would start again.
Home James and don’t spare the horses!
One night at the end of the session the guys asked me where I lived, I told them Kennington South London.
Francis said, “We go that way we’ll give you a lift”.
I was thrilled. I climbed into the back of their maroon Bentley with Bob Young driving.
Bob, at that time, was the roadie, tour manager, co-writer, harmonica player and generally all round nice guy.
I mentioned how loud the band were in the studio and Bob told me,
“My mom told me that apparently loud music can kill you. She said something about death and me listening to too much loud music, but I couldn’t hear her.”
I felt like a member of the band as we headed down Park Lane with the 8-track stereo blasting out.
As we got closer to Kennington, Bob asked me where about’s I lived.
“Drop me by the Oval tube station,”
I replied, not wanting them to see that I lived in a block of flats that would be better if they’d been pulled down to build slums.
We arrived at The Oval station and Bob said, “Where from here?”
“Turn left and pull over I’ll get out, I can walk from here.”
With a little more tension in his voice Bob asked, “Where do you live?”
I directed him to take another left and a right then a left again and on it goes.
After 5 minutes we were almost back at the same place we started. “This is fine drop me here”.
Bob suddenly stoped the car turned to looked at me in the back and shouted, “WHERE THE FUCK DO YOU LIVE?”
I had no alternative but to direct him to the shortest route to my flats. It was about 1am when we arrived and the whole neighbourhood was deserted.
Now I was here, and seeing the band didn’t give a shit about what sort of place I lived in, I just wished my neighbours could have seen me, not just get out of a Bentley but also a Bentley with Status Quo inside.
They continued to drop me off every night after the sessions. I had no idea at that time they lived in comparatively similar accommodation.
I found out a short time later after meeting my girlfriend Sue (we are still married to this day) that she lived in a prefab, next door to Francis and used to babysit Simon Francis’s son.
Prefabricated homes were a major part of the delivery plan to address the United Kingdom’s post–Second World War housing shortage
Post Pye
After I left Pye Studios I ran into Bob several times over the next few years.
In 1979 Bob had teamed up with Whitesnake guitarist Micky Moody and were working under the quite brilliant name Young and Moody.
I played them a record called “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” by the Charlie Daniels band, which I discovered on a recent trip to the USA.
Being a country song which had not yet charted in America, there was no plan for a release in Europe.
The hero of the song was a fiddle player; so this was quickly changed to a guitarist and within days we were in the studio.
We had a limited budget and to my delight, Bob had asked his good mates from Quo to put down the rhythm track and help out with the backing vocals.
Quo was under contract to the Vertigo label so we couldn’t mention their contribution.
Once again I was back working in the studio with these crazy loveable guys who were as relaxed and funny as I remembered them from my Pye days.
With all the success they’d had since those early days they hadn’t changed at all and still just loved the music.
The Charlie Daniels band’s version did get released at the same time as ours and their original version rocketed to the top of the charts all around the World and ours didn’t. “C’est la vie”.
There Ain’t No Rules In Rock n Roll
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