An Interview with Francis Rossi
By Victoria Holdsworth, July 2026
There are only a handful of people left on this earth who could be considered either living legends or part of rock royalty, but Francis Rossi is one of them.
After a career spanning decades, and as part of one of the most commercially successful and record-breaking rock acts of all time, Francis Rossi is going solo on another nationwide tour to talk about his life and lay himself bare to anyone who wants to listen.
As I sat down to speak to the man in question, he flashed onto my screen. He had jumped into the call early and was blissfully unaware that I was already waiting as he strummed out a tune on his guitar, laughing and chatting away to someone in the background.
Putting his guitar down, he turned to the screen and jumped, nearly falling out of his chair, before proclaiming in that familiar, cheeky southern voice: “Jesus! There’s someone there already!”
Good afternoon, Francis. How are you doing today? It’s been about two years since we last spoke.
Has it really been that long? You’ve changed your hair.
Not really, it’s just getting a bit greyer.
It was down the last time we spoke, though, and I’m quite liking the grey. It’s quite becoming. It suits you. See, I’m still awake [laughs]. Even though I’m getting old, I can still remember some things!
You are still as sharp as a tack, Mr Rossi, I’ll give you that. So, how has the tour been going?
Very well! I’m enjoying myself immensely. It’s like being reborn, if you like.
Any unexpected moments from performing or touring on your own?
Not really [laughs], but we were in Holland, and the Dutch really love their music. Sweden was good too, but in some parts of Germany, especially the east of Germany, there were so many times when you said something on stage and were just met with silence. There was just… [tumbleweed pause] nothing!
It wasn’t too alarming to me because, even in England, you can get the same sort of empty response. But you think fast on your feet, and it’s not like when you’re playing with the band, where you can turn to another member, laugh it off and plough through to the next tune.
It soon taught me, within a couple of days, that there was a big learning curve involving cultural differences, even within one country. We played Leipzig and Dortmund, and they were great. I love the fact that I still get to learn things.
I did think this whole solo thing was just a bit of a novelty to me. Not having the band and just playing an acoustic guitar has been another learning curve that I never thought would be there for me, but that’s part of the enjoyment.
“Everything becomes routine”
Your tour is billed as Songbook: Quo – Past, Present and Future and features a host of songs hand-picked by you, but how do you decide what to play from such a vast back catalogue?
That promotional line is a lie. I picked ’em with me teeth [laughs].
The title comes from Steve Homer, who I’ve known for years. He’s the main man at AEG, and on my last tour I would be standing at the side of the stage, listening to all the waffle before you go on, and he announced: “Ladies and gentlemen… blah blah… Francis Rossi: past, present and more…”
I was standing there thinking: “What the fu*k is ‘more’?” [laughs]. But then we came up with Past, Present and Future. It’s a better-sounding title, but as long as people come and see the shows, I don’t really care, because that will make me as happy as Larry.
This is going out across Yorkshire, right? I’m playing lots of dates there, and I especially like Scarborough. I love the venues in Scarborough. I remember waking up by the sea there last summer, or the time before, and someone had written “QUO” in big letters in the sand next to me! [laughs]
What’s the biggest lesson or home truth that you’ve learnt about yourself from touring solo?
I’m a di*khead! [laughs]
I talk too much, which is what led to the tour, and I’m dreadfully insecure, which makes me want to sit in front of people and believe that they like me.
I suppose it’s part of needing acceptance. It’s worse than drugs because I still need it at this age. I could just walk away, relax and do whatever at home, which I’m quite good at, and perhaps make some records, but there are lots of insecurities that are…
I had this conversation with someone yesterday, and I believe most people in show business are insecure, but they’re also little show-offs, so there’s this contradiction that goes on because I can show off by doing it, can’t I?
If a performer says he isn’t insecure, then he’s a fuc*ing bighead. In everyone’s defence, it is very tricky to balance that. If you start to believe your own PR, or you start to believe that everyone likes you, then it becomes a partisan crowd that just shields you from any negatives.
I was with Hannah Rickard recently, doing some writing, and she said: “You take on the negatives more easily than the great things.”
I replied: “You can’t believe any of them either way. You have to think you’re not fuc*ing fabulous, but you’re not a sack of sh*t. You’re somewhere in the middle.”
I find there is always that fine balance of not getting too carried away in either direction.
You’re already booked up for most of 2027. How do you keep things fresh?
There is that thing where one of the joys, and one of the negatives, is that I get off the bus in the morning and have a coffee and so on, and everything becomes routine: eating, resting, soundchecking.
Everything is going fantastically, and you’ve enjoyed everything in that day immensely, but even then, when you finish, you say to yourself that you’ve done your day’s work. It feels good, and you get the chance to do it all over again.
I wouldn’t have said that when I was cutting grass for the council at 15, but now I’m older, I’d probably love that job [laughs]. When I was doing that, I never used to think: “Work was great today, and I can’t wait to do it all again in the morning.”
But I do now. It never goes away! It’s that drug thing. I get a bit more of it, but is it enough? I say no. Just do it again, please. Let me know. Tell me again that you liked it, or whether that track went well.
Between Andy Brook and me, we change little things each night or come up with little tweaks. We’ll say: “We’ll do this or that tomorrow,” or I might extend a story or tune, or do something silly, and he just goes with it.
There isn’t that much freedom in a band. I’ve never had that freedom in Status Quo because it was a democracy and that was just the way it worked. So, lots of the things that go on at the moment with this format are just a joy to me.
It’s been a long time fuc*ing coming to get to this novelty, though, but it’s been worth it and easy to get used to.
Longevity in any band requires friendship, professionalism and compromise, but which one of those has cost you the most over the years?
Compromise.
I realised that when we were younger, there was a unity and a naivety that we were going to conquer the world. Plus, the world was a different place then. We wanted to aspire to what the Beatles had done, but then time goes by, you get the success, and that just becomes day-to-day life.
When you release an album and it goes straight to number one, you’re asking: “What’s next? We need to stay at number one next week. But why wasn’t the other one good enough to be number one?”
It never stops. It’s like a carrot dangling from a stick in front of a donkey, and I’d be very saddened if I ever actually managed to reach the carrot. It’s the fact that you never quite get there that keeps you trying, and trying again and again.
As I said before, we improve things and change them ever so slightly each night, so that keeps things fresh.
I cannot impress upon you how enjoyable I find not having to compromise, and I never thought I would.
I’ve managed to see the audiences grow from 50 to 200 and so on. The audiences are getting bigger, and it feels like I’ve almost started again at the age of 77.
Going back to the thing about compromise, I realised over the years that it ends up being 2.2 tracks per person, per album.
We used to talk a good game about going for quality control, but it didn’t happen. So, when I made the album that came out in January, The Accidental…
Is that the album you never meant to write?
It’s true! I really, really didn’t.
There’s a guy I used to go to school with, Mr Brook, who I’ve always known. He was here one day after coming back from some travels in the Far East, and he asked me if I fancied getting together and doing some writing.
We wrote a couple of things and thought they sounded quite good. He asked if I wanted to record them, and I said no. He asked me why not, and eventually he convinced me to go into the studio.
We recorded three tracks, and I came back to the house and spoke to the wife in the kitchen. I told her just how much I’d enjoyed it, so she said: “Why don’t you do some more, then?”
So we did, and I just found it so amazing because there were no parameters.
I wasn’t sure if it was a project I was ever going to finish or whether I would carry on writing for it. I kept trying new things, and Andy Brook was just really good to work with.
We kept changing things up, trying new tweaks and saying what we liked about each change. Most days, we would comment on things we liked that were completely accidental in their creation, which led to the title.
The freedom on that album… I would never have, for whatever reason, previously gone and done certain things that I did on that record. In the old, old Quo days, Alan Lancaster would get so upset about some things, especially if they didn’t involve what he called “man bass”.
Poor little sod. Because he was quite short, we used to give him such a hard time because he always had to put on his man bass. With anything different, he would be like: “No, no, no! I can’t play anything more melodic, otherwise I won’t be able to go home and face my family!” [laughs].
So, when you’re in a band, there’s stuff like that which I don’t have to deal with now.
It’s another affirmation, kind of, that proves democracy doesn’t really work. That’s why people always end up at an impasse, not dissimilar to what’s going on in the world currently.
Half the country wants to go one way and the other half wants to go in a different direction. Then everyone plays on their own team and just thinks that they’re right.
“We were still fighting as one”
What part of your story do you think is the most misunderstood or overlooked?
You’re a bit deep and bloody meaningful, aren’t you? [laughs]
It would be somewhat pompous of me to think that. However, I am very grateful to have been successful in the first place, and I still feel like I might be discovered at any moment and they’ll think I’m just a pretender.
So, to think that anything had been underestimated or overlooked, it’s just… I’m just lucky. I’m lucky to be alive, I’m lucky to be talking to you today, and I’m especially lucky to be able to keep going back to places like Scarborough because I love those venues.
I’m playing at the Spa, the place that looks like a massive observatory. I love it!
While the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame concentrates primarily on American bands, do you think, like millions of others, that Quo deserves a place in there?
One of the things I discovered and realised from being very young is that showbiz looks fantastic on the face of it, but you don’t want to see around the back.
It’s like a hospital gown. You’re all covered up, but your bum’s hanging out. That, to me, is show business. Its bum’s hanging out.
I’ve found over the years that you can get this award or that, but it’s all kind of a game, so I’m not sure those things are truly honest.
It’s not dissimilar to the European City of Culture award, which is weird because some towns in this country get it every bloody year, and then one year they might not even make the list. When they ask why they didn’t make it, they’re just told: “You didn’t meet the criteria this year.”
But yes, we do deserve to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame [laughs]. It would be quite good for the ego and the image.
A quickly worded answer to this next question, please, Francis…
You’ve got some bloody chance [laughs].
Which era of Quo would you say is your favourite? Which do you reminisce about most?
Probably the 1970s, and the early 1970s, because we were a band united and we were still fighting as one.
Then success came along, and it does diminish and start to fragment. I suppose it’s logical for that to happen eventually, but that era of Quo would be it.
Of all the lyrics you’ve written, which one still surprises you because it revealed something about yourself that you perhaps didn’t realise or understand at the time?
It’s actually quite a recent song that, at the time, I thought was really going to change things. It’s funny because you have these favourite songs, but it’s called Tongue Tied.
Lyrically, the first line that came out of my mouth was: “This is the way I feel.”
I was feeling tongue-tied, so it was like following my nose while doing the lyrics. Part of the last few lines says: “Why does living go so fast?”
At the time, I had been thinking that I felt like there wasn’t really that long to go.
At my age now, I think that even if I make it to 100, it’s not that long to go. But to a 20-year-old, it feels like you’ve got ages yet.
I’ll be 80 in less than three years. Surely it’s got to fall apart then.
At this stage of your life, what does success or fulfilment look like to you? Can you describe what retirement might look like for Francis Rossi?
Continuance, I suppose.
I’m making another album with Hannah Rickard, which we are working on now, and I’m working more than I ever did, really. When you’re touring with Quo, there’s all that time in between when you’re not really able to do anything.
As soon as I got back in November, I started working on the album.
I first retired when I was 35, and I would have been broke by now, of course, the way life and money go. But I unretired myself, and I’m not ready to retire again just yet.
If I did, I’d probably just vegetate. Right now, I exercise every morning and I’m going to start swimming again soon. I’ve got my daily routines, including my diet and watching what I eat and drink, because I have to go to work.
If you take all of that away, there is no reason for me to behave.
I love doing the promotional side of the work because I love talking to people and performing. If you take all that away, it looks pretty dull.
So I’m not retiring just yet [laughs]. I like the idea of retiring, but only the idea of it, because once you do that… I mean, at 35 it was quite easy for me to get back into work, but retiring at 77 and then coming back at 80? [laughs] Fuc*ing hell.
“I want to keep going”
It worked for Mick Jagger.
Well, yeah. I call him Uncle Mick [laughs]. He works his arse off to keep himself from bloating up because all men can do that over a certain age, you know [laughs].
If it all ends tomorrow, what would your epitaph and Status Quo’s epitaph read?
[Starts singing] “I’ve been getting away with it all my life.”
I told you, it’s that feeling that you’re going to get sussed out.
John Edwards, who’s been with the band for more than 40 years, 42 years now, was there at the advent of the internet and such. He said: “Check Quo online.”
I didn’t know what I was doing, but he told me to check out some Quo sites. On one of the first things I accessed, I saw a line somewhere that read: “Who is the biggest c*nt, Francis Rossi or Mick Hucknall?”
And I won [laughs]. I thought: “There’s an accolade for you!”
But, just going back to before, I want to keep going because I enjoy it so much. I enjoy it more than I did now that I’m much older and much more grateful for it.
I was trying to do a solo, the one I was messing about with when you called, for the fiddle part on the new album with Hannah. I thought: “I like that, but I have to learn it properly first before I give it to her.”
But it’s out there then, and I think: “What the fu*k did I do there?”
Sorry, I’m just waffling now because I’m thinking about all this new music.
Just going back to the tour title, you mention the word “future”, but what is the future for Status Quo?
I really don’t know about Status Quo. It remains to be seen whether we’ll do any more shows, and it also depends on whether the lads want to do any more shows.
When we did the last tour in 2024, they wanted to call it The Last Tour, and I said: “You can’t do that. We’ve already done that before. We can’t do that to ’em again!”
I felt it would be exploiting the fans in a way because I don’t know if it is the end of Status Quo. If I say it is, and suddenly we need to do a tour for financial reasons or whatever, then…
At the moment, I still don’t really know.
It’s always possible! But at the moment, I’ve got this sh*t to do [laughs] – sorry, stuff!
I suppose I’d better get this solo sorted and do some work now. And what have you got to remember? Don’t dye your hair. You’re growing old very gracefully, a bit like me [laughs].
‘Francis Rossi: Songbook Quo – Past, Present, Future’ visits the following Yorkshire venues:
Harrogate Royal Hall, 4th October
Hull City Hall, 8th October
Scarborough Spa, 15th October
York Barbican, 26th March
Leeds Grand, 3rd May
Bridlington Spa, 6th May
For full tour details visit: francisrossi.com/tour
Top image: Tina Korhonen
All other images: Lynn Frances Photography
Victoria is a former English teacher and lifelong musician who has successfully combined her two great passions: words and music. Over the past 20 years, she has written for a variety of publications, giving her the opportunity to witness outstanding talent and meet some truly inspiring individuals. With a deep love for rock, indie, metal, and all things weird and wonderful in between, Victoria also co-runs an independent record label.
