[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/2133174_5778.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:300:The "Frantic Four"[[note]]Left to right: Rick Parfitt, Alan Lancaster, John Coghlan, Francis Rossi[[/note]].]]
->''"Come on, sweet Caroline\\
Take my hand, together we can rock & roll.''"
-->-- "Caroline"

One of Britain's most consistently popular rock groups, Status Quo was formed in 1962 by school friends Francis Rossi (lead guitar, vocals) and Alan Lancaster (bass guitar, vocals). The classic Quo line-up, which lasted until 1981, was completed with the addition of John Coghlan (drums, percussion) and Rick Parfitt (rhythm guitar, vocals).

After brief flirtations with ProgressiveRock and PsychedelicRock yielded little success (aside from the still popular hit "Pictures of Matchstick Men"), Quo hit on the formula that's defined their sound to this day with the 1970 album ''Ma Kelly's Greasy Spoon'', the first to feature their [[ThreeChordsAndTheTruth straightforward, no frills]], [[BluesRock blues-based]] boogie rock style powered by Rossi and Parfitt's dual Telecasters.

Notably, they were the band that opened Live Aid at Wembley Stadium with the song that is probably their SignatureSong, "Rockin' All Over the World". When they were unavailable to play Live 8 twenty years later, Music/{{Coldplay}} paid tribute with a performance of the song when they opened that show.

So far, in a career spanning more than 50 years, Quo have recorded 64 hit singles, with 22 of them making it into the Top Ten. They passed the 100 singles mark in 2013 with "Bula Bula Quo". They have spent more 415 weeks in the British Singles Chart, made 106 appearances on Series/TopOfThePops (more than any other band), had 33 albums in the British Albums Chart (second only to Music/{{The Rolling Stones|Band}} in terms of quantity), and King Charles is known to be a fan - not many bands can say that now, can they?

Unfortunately Rick Parfitt suffered a serious heart attack in the summer of 2016 and had to permanently retire from live performances in October 2016 leaving the long time future of the band in some doubt. Irish guitarist Richie Malone deputised for Rick for the remaining 2016 tour dates. At the time the band said that no final decision on their future would be made until 2017 at the earliest, then on 24 December 2016, Rick Parfitt passed away. The band elected to continue with Malone officially joining the band as Parfitt's replacement and the band are currently on the road as of 2017.

'''The current lineup is''':
* Francis Rossi - lead guitar, vocals
* John 'Rhino' Edwards - bass guitar, vocals
* Andrew Bown - keyboards, guitar, harmonica
* Leon Cave - drums
* Richie Malone - rhythm guitar

'''Studio Discography''':
* ''Picturesque Matchstickable Messages From The Status Quo'' (1968)
* ''Spare Parts'' (1969)
* ''Ma Kelly's Greasy Spoon'' (1970)
* ''Dog Of Two Head'' (1971)
* ''Piledriver'' (1972)
* ''Hello!'' (1973)
* ''Quo'' (1974)
* ''On The Level'' (1975)
* ''Blue For You'' (1976)
* ''Rockin' All Over The World'' (1977)
* ''If You Can't Stand The Heat...'' (1978)
* ''Whatever You Want'' (1979)
* ''Just Supposin''' (1980)
* ''Never Too Late'' (1981)
* ''1+9+8+2'' (1982)
* ''Back To Back'' (1983)
* ''In The Army Now'' (1986)
* ''Ain't Complaining'' (1988)
* ''Perfect Remedy'' (1989)
* ''Rock 'Til You Drop'' (1991)
* ''Thirsty Work'' (1994)
* ''Don't Stop'' (1996)
* ''Under The Influence'' (1999)
* ''Famous In The Last Century'' (2000)
* ''Heavy Traffic'' (2002)
* ''Riffs'' (2003)
* ''The Party Ain't Over Yet'' (2005)
* ''In Search Of The Fourth Chord'' (2007)
* ''Quid Pro Quo'' (2011)
* ''Bula Quo!'' (2013)
* ''Aquostic (Stripped Bare)'' (2014)
* ''Aquostic II - That's A Fact!'' (2016)
* ''Backbone'' (2019)

'''Francis Rossi's Solo Discography''':
* ''King Of The Doghouse'' (1996)
* ''One Step At A Time'' (2010)
* ''We Talk Too Much'' (with Hannah Rickard, 2019)

'''Rick Parfitt's Solo Discography''':
* ''Over And Out'' (2018, released posthumously)
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!!Tropes:
* AlbumTitleDrop: ''Just Supposin''' comes from a line in the first song, "What You're Proposing".
* AlliterativeTitle: "Long Legged Linda".
** The Frantic Four's last 2014 concert is known as ''The Frantic Four's Final Fling''.
* AscendedExtra: Andy Bown, who played on the ''Hello!'' album as a session musician, went on to become an official member of the band in 1977.
* AudienceParticipationSong: [[Music/ChuckBerry "Bye Bye Johnny"]] closes every concert, with the audience saying goodbye as well as the band.
* AuthorAppeal: Rossi’s love of country music means that the band will record a country-flavoured track every now and then (such as “Marguerita Time”, “Invitation” or “Blessed are the Meek”) — or, in the case of “Wild Side of Life”, cover one.
* AxCrazy: Alan Lancaster was noted for his very bad temper and arrogance. At the band's arrival at the airport in Vienna for the 1976 tour, since they were going to be involved in a perquisition, Lancaster picked up a fight with a police officer by slapping him, and the band got arrested for one night because of the fight.
* BigDamnMovie: ''Bula Quo!'', a comedy crime caper in which Rossi and Parfitt ([[AsHimself as themselves]]) find themselves on the run from black market organ traffickers in Fiji. Quo fans and film critics generally consider it to be either SoBadItsGood or just bad.
* CarSong: "Don't Drive My Car" is about a man wanting his woman to stay away from his beloved car.
* CoverAlbum: They have made three: ''Don't Stop'', ''Famous In The Last Century'' and ''Riffs''.
* DesignStudentsOrgasm: The cover of ''[[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b8/Quo_Status_Quo_album_cover.jpg Quo]]'', which features the band's heads growing on a tree.
** There's also ''Never Too Late'', which shows a giant disembodied hand coming out of space to stop a rocket from reaching Earth.
* EpicRocking: Each album from 1970 to 1976 (with the exception of ''On The Level'') includes at least one, usually as the album closer.
** ''Ma Kelly's Greasy Spoon'' has "Is It Really Me?/Gotta Go Home" (9:30).
** ''Dog Of Two Head'' has "Umleitung" (7:11) and "Someone's Learning" (7:08).
** ''Piledriver'' ends with an epic cover of [[Music/TheDoors "Roadhouse Blues"]] (7:31).
** ''Hello'' ends with "Forty-Five Hundred Times" (9:58). Live versions of this song go on for even longer, sometimes lasting for around twenty minutes.
** ''Quo'' ends with "Slow Train" (7:56).
** ''Blue For You'' includes the full version of "Mystery Song" (6.33).
* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: The band's first hits in TheSixties were examples of PsychedelicRock verging on ProgressiveRock, with tracks such as ''Pictures of Matchstick Men''. This aspect of the band was parodied in ''Film/ThisIsSpinalTap'' with "archive film" of the Tap's 1960's breakthrough hit, featuring flowing hippy music and those frilly shirts and distinctive period haircuts.
* FaceOnTheCover: A few of their album covers, including ''Quo'', ''On The Level'' and ''Blue For You''.
* FourTemperamentEnsemble: The original ''Frantic Four'' line-up:
** Sanguine: Francis Rossi, who is cheerful and charismatic, yet also a reserved family man and finally lives a healthy life.
** Choleric: Alan Lancaster, who was notoriously ill-tempered and self-righeous.
** Melancholic: Rick Parfitt, ThePerfectionist who had several issues with drug addiction and alcohol, even more than the others.
** Phlegmatic: John Coghlan, quiet and humble, and never wrote songs, just supporting with drums.
* GriefSong: "A Year".
* IAmTheBand: Status Quo was Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt. After Parfitt's retirement and death, Rossi is pretty much Quo as far as most people are concerned.
* {{Instrumentals}}: "Good Thinking" and "AB Blues".
* IronicName: "Rock 'n' Roll" is a slow SurprisinglyGentleSong.
* LiveAlbum: Quite a few. The most notable is ''Live!'', which was released in 1977 and is considered one of the best live albums ever made. There's also ''Tokyo Quo'' (which was also released in 1977 and, until 2014, only available in Japan) and ''Live Alive Quo'' (1992). For the Frantic Four Reunion in 2013, three live albums were produced, each one featuring recordings from a different show, followed by another featuring the final 2014 show.
* LongRunnerLineUp: They've had three of the second type described on the trope page. The first was Rossi, Parfitt, Lancaster and Coghlan, with keyboardist Andy Bown becoming increasingly integrated into the group, but remaining credited as a guest musician for a while for contractual reasons. The second was Rossi, Parfitt and Bown with new bassist and drummer Rhino Edwards and Jeff Rich. This one lasted for fourteen years until Rich left and was replaced by Matt Letley, who was with them until 2013. Leon Cave then took his place as drummer. This lineup lasted till 2016 when Parfitt had to leave the band for health reasons (and would pass away shortly afterwards) and was replaced by Richie Malone.
* LyricalColdOpen: "Good Sign" from ''Rock 'Til You Drop'', as well as "Tongue Tied" from ''In Search Of The Fourth Chord''.
* MinimalisticCoverArt: The cover of ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hello!_(album)#mediaviewer/File:Hello_StatusQuo.jpg Hello!]]'' consists of a silhouette of the band against a dark grey background. With older editions, the background is darker, which makes the silhouette only barely visible.
** ''[[https://fanart.tv/fanart/music/1884ed9c-6fe1-468d-a7f8-8d19c9c4e441/albumcover/1982-50f79cbc56df4.jpg 1+9+8+2]]'' as well.
** The cover of the remastered version of ''[[http://cdn.7static.com/static/img/sleeveart/00/012/356/0001235660_500.jpg Under The Influence]]'' (said to be the initial scrapped cover) also counts.
** ''[[http://www.sonicabuse.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Status-Quo-Aquostic.jpg Aquostic (Stripped Bare)]]''. In more ways than one.
* NakedPeopleAreFunny: The cover of the first ''Aquostic'' album.
* NewSoundAlbum: ''Ma Kelly's Greasy Spoon'' showed a move away from psychedelic pop and those frilly shirts towards a no-nonsense hard rock sound. ''Rockin' All Over The World'' was the album on which the band began experimenting with synthesisers, and ''In The Army Now'' took this a step further with an unprecedented synth-rock sound. Much later, ''Under The Influence'' saw them move back to hard rock, resulting in the sound of today's Quo.
* OneWomanSong: "Caroline" (as well as its B-side "Joanne") is an archetypal example. Others examples include "Long Legged Linda" and "Queenie".
* OneWordTitle: Many, including "Daughter", "Backwater", "Rain" and "Lies".
* ThePeteBest: keyboards player Jess Jaworski, part of the band for early hits like ''Pictures Of Matchstick Men'', but who was replaced by Roy Lynes and then Andy Bown in the better-known "classic" lineups. It could be argued that a keyboards player in ''this'' band is pretty much invisible and redundant anyway...
* ThePowerOfRock: They have a song by that very name.
* QuestioningTitle: "Is It Really Me?", "Who Asked You".
* RearrangeTheSong: The ''Aquostic'' albums.
* SelfDeprecation: Francis sometimes refers to himself as an "insecure show-off".
** Taken further in relation to ''Bula Quo!''. The film was critically panned, and at one of the concerts that year, Francis joked that "you either thought it was shit, or you thought it was ''really'' shit."
* SexDrugsAndRockAndRoll: By his own admission, Rick Parfitt has stated that his unhealthy hard drinking, smoking and rocking lifestyle finally caught up to him when he suffered a serious heart attack in the summer of 2016 leading to his forced retirement from the band and death within six months.
* SiameseTwinSongs: "Backwater" and "Just Take Me" from ''Quo'' are this, as are "Come Rock With Me" and "Rockin' On" from ''Whatever You Want''.
* SomethingBlues: "Spinning Wheel Blues" and the instrumental "AB Blues".
* TheSomethingSong: "Mystery Song".
* StatusQuoIsGod: Potential [[{{Pun}} bad puns]] aside, they've essentially been playing the same style for more than forty years, and any deviations from it don't last very long.
* StudioChatter: Can be heard on "What To Do", "Bye Bye Johnny", and the re-recorded version of "Forty-Five Hundred Times".
* TakeThat: WordOfGod has confirmed that "Down Down" is one of these against the band's critics and detractors. Many people didn't realise this and thought that the lyrics were full of sexual innuendo (Francis has speculated that people thought "Down Down" referred to down ''there''). But when you actually listen to the words, it's clear that this isn't the case.
-->I want all the world to see\\
To see you're laughing\\
And you're laughing at me\\
I can take it all from you\\
Again again again again again again again
* TextlessAlbumCover: ''Blue For You''.
* ThreeChordsAndTheTruth: Famous for it, so much so that one of their more recent albums was given the name ''In Search Of The Fourth Chord''.
* TruckDriversGearChange: Some of their later songs, such as "Everytime I Think of You", "Not At All" and "Running Inside My Head".
* UnpluggedVersion: ''Aquostic (Stripped Bare)'' features unplugged versions of classic Quo songs.
* VocalTagTeam: Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt. Originally, Alan Lancaster sang lead a few times as well.

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