Ma Kelly's Greasy Spoon was unleashed on an unsuspecting public in 1970 by Pye Records.
It completely broke the mould that had made Status Quo a household name with their debut hit, the plastic-psychedelic "Pictures Of Matchstick Men", two years earlier, in fact this third album would be quite unlike any of Quo's output to date, except perhaps for an uncharacteristically hard-rocking cover of the Everly Brothers 'Price Of Love' which was issued in late 1969.
This is a not an album that wants to impress its audience with over-produced cod-psychedelia and frilly shirts like its two predecessors. The blueprint for the new decade was gritty, down-to-earth boogie, and the album cover says it all; a gingham-checked waitress looking twenty years older than she probably is stares from behind the counter of an eponymous "greasy spoon" café typical of its era, looking bored and positively reeking of vinegar, stale tobacco and cheap instant coffee. Piles of washing-up fester in the foreground. This warts-and-all cover is the neatest possible metaphor for the music itself, recorded as it is with minimal overdubs and production errors left in for good measure.
Ma Kelly is a refreshingly honest and unpretentious work. The moment you launch into the opening "Spinning Wheel Blues", you can smell the grease, the sweat, the faded denim. It sounds raw, perhaps like it was recorded in the back room above a pub: a twelve-bar blues that doesn't even call upon the services of a fourth chord, and Francis Rossi hasn't even bothered rhyming his lyrics! The song just chugs along nicely, doing its own thing, and by the time the guitar solo kicks in you're already hooked, and tapping your foot if not nodding your head.
Track 2, "Daughter", which bears some traces of the band's psychedelic history, is the one that will get you nodding your head. Rick Parfitt's guitar goes all baggy - you can even hear the strings rattling about, and Rossi's lazy drawl of a hookline is totally irresistible in its simplicity.
The band throw in a further surprise in the tender acoustic ballad "Everything", sung by Parfitt, with cello and acoustic guitars all the way, before totally letting rip with "Shy Fly", which, along with "(April) Spring, Summer and Wednesdays" and "Lakky Lady" sound way too cool to be Quo songs, which isn't to say they're not fantastic rock songs in their own right - they just don't sound like typical 12-bar Quo because the band dare to push the envelope out a little, something at which Quo would eventually become rather adept, even if it did mean releasing atypical tracks like 1983's "Marguerita Time". "Shy Fly" could almost be a Canned Heat track, and the funky "Lakky Lady" boasts the best lead solo on an album where Francis Rossi is still clearly finding his feet.
Apart from that, it's chugging Quo boogie all the way, with perhaps only one seriously weak link in the form of "Lazy Poker Blues". Highlights include a cover of Steamhammer's "Junior's Wailing", played with far more feeling than the original, and the album closer "Is It Really Me?/Gotta Go Home", which repeats a thundering great headbanging riff for nine - count them - nine and a half minutes. Quo apparently used to stretch the song out live for half an hour at a time, and to be honest you could probably sit there, shaking your head to it for a full half hour without getting completely bored, even if the melody doesn't really go anywhere.
"Ma Kelly's" is the template that Quo built their career on, and if, like many people I know, you think Quo are a bunch of one-trick ponies, then take a listen to this. Quo were at their most credible in the early 1970s, and this album is the perfect snapshot of a band at the peak of their powers.
2 comments:
You've missed the point about Ma Kellys being 'credible'. Quo never sought credibility, their whole stance was about not caring what critics thought. You just need to accept each album for what it is. If you want credible go and listen to Fleetwood Mac lol.
You misread me, Mark. I never suggested that Quo were trying to seek credibility; they were, as you correctly say, not bothered about that kind of thing. I was merely putting forward the suggestion that Quo were at their most credible (in the public's eyes) in their early rocking days than, say, the mid-1970s, when it became very fashionable to knock them.
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