“I dream of him a lot – only the positive stuff. But the negative stuff hits me in reality. The night he joined, he said, ‘I haven’t learnt the songs’”: Francis Rossi on the Status Quo groove, Kempers, and his relationship with the late Rick Parfitt

Francis Rossi makes his point to the crowd during a 2024 Status Quo gig.

Francis Rossi, as you might be aware, is a talker. By the end of our allotted hour with the Status Quo lifer, we have enough material to fill this entire magazine – and still he wants to keep going (“Until I tell you to fuck off, you’re fine”).

Most of it is unusable, of course, consisting of silly voices, off-the-record slander, and his sweet-but-infuriating habit of twanging a guitar to illustrate his point. But Rossi does want to get at least one serious message across: he is inordinately proud of his new solo album.