Status Quo / Shanghai: Friday 5th March 1976, Bridlington Spa

Shanghai

The ‘Fallen Heroes’ tour

Cliff Bennett (vocals) / Mick Green (guitars) / Brian Alterman (guitars) / Pat “Speedy” King (bass) / Peter Kircher (drums, vocals)

I saw Shanghai three times in just five months in 1976; this was the first occasion. I knew of guitarist Cliff Bennett from his time with the Rebel Rousers and also Mick Green’s work with The Pirates (Johnny Kidd’s backing band) back in the late 1960s and I liked his type of material so I knew that I would enjoy this band – and I did!

It was a fairly easy and quick drive from Scarborough over to Brid, even though it wasn’t me doing the actual driving as I was still without wheels and licence, so I went with Steve Toal and friends. We were actually there to see Quo, but this was going to be a decent enough support band, that I knew.

In truth, as with pretty much every support band that I have ever seen, I really can’t recall anything of the gig itself other than the fact that I did enjoy the band, which is unusual as I don’t generally care for supports as they are usually way too far adrift of the type of music that I have gone to see a headline act perform.

The line-up that I have used is the one which cut the LP – their second – and it is more than likely that they made-up the touring band to promote it, but I could be wrong. There are no setlists at all for the band, so we can only presume that they would have played songs from that as well as from their eponymous debut album.

Setlist: unknown

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Status Quo

The ‘Blue For You’ tour

Francis Rossi (guitars, vocals) / Rick Parfitt (guitars, vocals) / Alan Lancaster (bass, vocals) / John Coghlan (drums)

The very first single that I ever bought was ‘Paper Plane‘ by Quo. I seem to recall that it had the Vertigo ‘swirl’ label and came in a ‘swirl’ sleeve too (see below) and I played it again, and again, and again, as you do with all Quo singles. It just has to be done. I don’t have it now as I probably passed it on once I had bought the album ‘Piledriver‘ from whence the track came; yes, I know that it was a mistake, but I was young in 1972.

Rossi, Parfitt & Lancaster

Anyway, I had to wait until March 1976 before I actually got the chance to see the band in the flesh, and it was thanks to my mate Steve Toal who, I think, organised a lift over to Brid Spa to see the band. Of course, denims and long hair were the order of the day and I was more than happy to comply, and had been doing so for three or four years by then. And what a great night we had!

The band were promoting their ninth studio album, ‘Blue For You‘, featuring the killer singles ‘Rain‘ and ‘Mystery Song‘, the latter being my all-time favourite Quo song, and whilst they played the former the latter sadly didn’t appear, although to cheer me up they did play several tracks from ‘Piledriver‘ which is still my favourite Quo album. For the record, ‘Mystery Song‘ wasn’t released as a single until several months later in July, so perhaps it’s not a surprise that they didn’t play it on this occasion. I was still disappointed though – it was clearly a cracker of a track and one that deserved live performance. Anyway, that didn’t detract too much from what was a great show. Quo delivered on exactly what they were always renowned for doing; good time, non-stop four-bar-blues boogie-rock which allowed us to ‘get down‘ and play lots of non-stop air guitar.

Ah, the good old days… 😊

Setlist: Junior’s Wailing; Mad About the Boy; Backwater; Just Take Me; Is There a Better Way; In My Chair; Little Lady; Most of the Time; Rain; Forty-Five Hundred Times; Roll Over Lay Down; Big Fat Mama; Don’t Waste My Time; Roadhouse Blues; Encore: Caroline; Drum Solo; Bye Bye Johnny

Edit: It seems that Steve Toal didn’t actually drive us on this occasion; it would appear that, like me, he had no wheels or licence at this point. He rather thinks that Neil’s cousin Derek did the honours.

And here’s a sew-on patch that I bought many years afterwards…