Reviews

However, as the curtain fell, the beats kicked in and the aging groovers galloped on with their guitars, an irrepressibly cheesy grin spread across my face and remained there for the following two hours, so much so that I awoke the next day with face-ache.

Kicking off with Together We Can Rock n Roll - featuring, as ever, Ricky Parfitt on rhythm guitar and Francis Rossi on lead - they unleashed the wall of sound that has won them a faithful following since the early 60s.

Within seconds, the crowd were on their feet and whooping, holding blow-up guitars aloft. Rossi soon introduced two tracks from their new album, In Search of the Fourth Chord. It was the product, he said, “of many years’ research”. And true to form, their new single, Beginning of the End, was pure air guitar entertainment.

Creepin Up On You and The Oriental, highlights from the album Heavy Traffic, left gangs of 30-something men bare-chested and middle-aged women dancing like spring chickens, while
even sulky teenagers, dragged along by parents taking a trip along memory lane, were surreptitiously tapping their feet. It was just pure head-banging hip-wiggling brilliance.

An encore, introduced by the sound of circling helicopters, included You’re in the Army Now and, finally and inevitably, Rocking All Over The World, leaving fans fully satisfied and no doubt ready to queue for tickets for their next winter tour.

Flying in the face of the fourth chord and decades of criticism from a fickle music industry, the Quo were a triumph of pure macho entertainment. There is nothing complicated about their formula - but it works.