Piledriver

Product Information

AL: Piledriver was one of our natural albums. Our first big hit. We were playing that stuff on stage in concert and usually when you’re recording you’re making an album and you haven’t played the stuff before and you’re getting it all together and writing and then the album is made and then you realize when you’re playing them live that the recording was a lot better. But with Piledriver we were playing that stuff live and when we went into the studio we were ready to go! So that’s what I mean by natural, we didn’t have to work on the songs or write too much in the studio. AL: It was a lovely big room with high ceilings and it had a fireplace in it. It was a massive so you could all play in it together and the sound wouldn’t smash your ears when you played hard. We’d play in the soundroom together and we used to call it the ‘magic circle’, all facing one another with John behind us and the lovely high ceilings would just pass it out and we would play and play and play, and in a few takes we’d have it down. London Paris Theatre - this gig was recorded by the BBC and pressed onto a transcription vinyl disc in limited quantities. This is one of the rarest QUO recordings and has been heavily bootlegged, both on vinyl and CD ("Roadhouse Blues" and "It Was Just A Good Name - and One That we All Liked") The opening song, "Don't Waste My Time" was written by Francis Rossi and Bob Young in the soon-to-be trademark shuffle style the group would become famous for. The lyrics complain about a girl not being serious about a relationship and messing around. The song became a live favourite, and frequently got audiences bouncing around at gigs. [3]

Offiziellecharts.de – Status Quo – Piledriver" (in German). GfK Entertainment Charts. Retrieved 22 April 2018. AL: We realised we had to get out of it because they would always see us as the glammy pop band that we were being marketed as at the time. But it was such a natural change we probably would have made Piledriver as it is either way. But Vertigo came and they gave us a free hand to go into the studio and self-produce. JC: I’ve never smoked cigarettes in my life because I hated the idea of it, but I remember having a joint because in those days as far as I was concerned it was pretty mild and it was pretty harmless. It was part of that scene. But I had to be careful because if I smoked too much I couldn’t play! A much better album than any of the five preceding releases but still fairly average in comparison to the band's early seventies output. AL: I wrote ‘A Year’ with Bernie Frost, a guy that John had introduced us to. He had this one line, he played it for me once at my house, “da-da-daa-da-da-du-da da-da-la,” he says, “that’s all I’ve got”. I took it from there. It’s got a certain vibe, we thought about playing it live, but it’s quite a down sort of song. When you’re young the things you think about are sex or death, and I guess sexual death is what that song is about! Losing someone you love. ‘A Year’ was one of those one-offs, I was just trying to make a nice dramatic song.

The acoustic album comprises mainly songs from the seventies catalogue. There are enough good songs here to consider this quite an acceptable release even if somewhat pointless.

The second acoustic album suffers because the strongest songs were chosen for the first acoustic album. By the time of their next studio set, Hello, the new Quo sound was on its way to No.1, and the band were certainly making up for lost time. FR: We’d come to a point with Pye Records where we were kind of manufactured somewhat. We were taken out and told what to wear, what to play, how to do. We had a crossover with managers and we were doing something similar to what we’re doing now, but Pye really didn’t see it.Tour Crew: Bob Young (Tour Manager), Mal Kingsnorth (Sound engineer/Equipment), Paul Robert Lodge (Roadie/Stage Equipment) Management: Gaff Management Manager: Colin Johnson / Billy Gaff We deliver throughout mainland UK including England, Wales, Scotland (low lands). The delivery charge is fixed at: All songs published by Valley Music Ltd. except "Junior's Wailing" published by Artist-Musical Productions/Franklyn Boyd Music Ltd.; "Roadhouse Blues" published by Doors Music Company (erroneously printed "Door Music Company"); "Bye Bye Johnny" published by Arc Music Corporation All songs published by Valley Music Ltd. except "Roadhouse Blues" published by Doors Music Company (erroneously printed "Door Music Company")

JC: I love ‘O Baby’ it’s like early blues to me! We’ve been playing that one for the Frantic Four shows and it goes down great. JC: ‘A Year’, ‘All The Reasons’, ‘Big Fat Moma’, they’re great songs and those three guys are great songwriters, as is [Quo roadie and collaborator] Bob Young. a b Kent, David (1993). Australian Chart Book 1970–1992 (illustrateded.). St Ives, N.S.W.: Australian Chart Book. p.19. ISBN 0-646-11917-6. The friday gig at the famous New York Academy of Music with Savoy Brown, ELO andManfred Mann was cancelled.Lonely Night" (Lancaster, Young, Rossi, John Coghlan, Parfitt) (B-Side of "Break the Rules") – 3:16 John Coghlan: I remember we were in Germany in a club and this ‘Roadhouse Blues’ came on and the audience loved it, they were leaping about, having a good time, so we put it in our set and it paid off. RP: On our first European tour, Francis and I went out to a club. The Doors’ ‘Roadhouse Blues’ came over the sound system. There was this couple dancing really kind of slinkily to this dunk-du-dunk-du-dunk-du-dunk kind of rhythm and I just looked at him and he looked at me and the hairs stood up on our arms. We thought, well, we’ve got to play that! That was really the start of the Quo style of music, the 12-bar blues shuffle rhythm. Pennanen, Timo (2006). Sisältää hitin – levyt ja esittäjät Suomen musiikkilistoilla vuodesta 1972 (in Finnish) (1sted.). Helsinki: Kustannusosakeyhtiö Otava. ISBN 978-951-1-21053-5. Alan Lancaster: At Pye Records we were in our evolutionary days, if you like. We sort of graduated while we were on Pye and our producer at the time John Schroeder (a very good producer) realised it was going in a different direction, the bluesier boogie direction. He let us have a bit of free reign, and that’s when we made Ma Kelly’s Greasy Spoon, which was the start of the change, then we did Dog Of Two Head.