By Ian Woods, Senior Correspondent
One of Britain's most successful rock groups goes back on tour later this week - but for the first time in three decades it really will be a return to the Status Quo.
Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt will be joined by the other two original members for a series of reunion concerts.
Drummer John Coghlan left in 1981 and bass player Alan Lancaster departed the band four years later, sparking a bitter and lengthy legal battle over the Status Quo name.
Rossi and Parfitt recruited replacements and have been touring ever since. But they've finally patched up their differences with their former band mates, nearly 50 years after they first began playing together.
Parfitt jokingly told Sky News: "I think the really positive thing is that if we hadn't split up we couldn't have got back together again. It's very nice to see everybody again, to get to know everybody again, because there's a lot of water gone under the bridge."
They've been hard at work in a rehearsal studio in Shepperton, trying to re-create the sound of a critically-acclaimed live album from 1977.
"In places it's really fantastic to play together again. In places. We've got a lot of work to do yet, but it feels very nostalgic. I'll tell you after the first night. It's going to be good. Or not. One of the two."
Rossi says it hasn't been easy.
"It's a different ball game than when those guys were here. The industry is different, our whole touring thing is more efficient. It's just completely different. Amplification is different. In-ear monitors they're trying to get used to. A lot of stuff they're trying to get used to that we just take for granted and there may be a bit of friction there because we're expecting it to be as it normally is."
But Coghlan and Lancaster are glad to be back after such a long break.
Coughlan and Lancaster join Rossi and Parfitt "It's great playing with them again in all seriousness." said Lancaster, who's now aged 64. "Fantastic. I'm enjoying it, anyway."
Coghlan admitted it has been hard work. "It is, yeah. Being an old man like, 66, but it's a groove and I'm enjoying it. It's fun."
Coghlan had already left the band when Status Quo played to their biggest-ever global TV audience, opening the Live Aid concert at Wembley Stadium in 1985. He admits he watched the performance with some sadness.
"We'd fallen out by that time. I'd like to have done it. I was in the Isle of Man at the time with my feet up, and I thought: 'Oh, well, I could have been there' but never mind. Move on."
Despite having more chart singles than any other British band, they only plan to play a couple of hits during this tour - concentrating on heavier album tracks favoured by diehard fans.
Lancaster told Sky News: "It's the thing that struck me, what band who've had so many hits goes on stage and plays no hit records? We're hardly playing any of our singles whatsoever."
After the tour is complete, Lancaster and Coghlan will return to retirement, while Rossi and Parfitt will resume working with the other Quo members they've recruited in recent years.
And not content with rocking into their mid-60s, in the summer they launch a movie career. They're starring alongside Hollywood comedy actor Jon Lovitz in an action film shot in Fiji called "Bula Quo!". Rossi says it has its roots in a guest appearance he and Parfitt had in the Rovers Return.
"When we were doing Coronation St, the guy who was brought in to teach him and I to fight on screen said I'd like to make a movie, and seven years later it came about. A most enjoyable experience. I'm not saying we're actors but we enjoyed doing it immensely."
Quo fans dub the original lineup the Frantic Four. Their nine-date reunion tour begins this Wednesday, March 6, in Manchester, and finishes at Wembley Arena on March 17.
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