Pictures of Matchstick Men was the song that gave Status Quo their first taste of success! It was the first single that was issued by the band under that band name, or The Status Quo as the case may have been (although it is widely accepted that the band still called themselves The Traffic Jam when they recorded it). It was also the first single to be issued on the main Pye label (as opposed to their Piccadilly subsidiary).
The Matchstick Men single was released on 5 January 1968, going all the way to #7 in the UK charts and #12 in the US. It was the band’s first Top 40 chart success. Since then, the total has risen to 61 – more than any other artist in UK chart history. And the Quo are (at the time of this writing) still an active recording act, unlike most of the closest challengers: Queen is still #2 with 52, Rolling Stones and UB40 have 51, U2 and Depeche Mode have 40, and Bee Gees, Pet Shop Boys and REM have 38.
Written and sung by Francis Rossi (or Mike Rossi as he was known professionally at the time), this song was originally slated to be the b-side to Gentleman Joe’s Sidewalk Café. Thankfully the songs were swapped at more or less the last moment.
The strident, but tremulous opening guitar riff is instantly recognizable. The heavy guitar use the same ‘wah’ and distorted sound quality as in Gentleman Joe, contrasting with the clear vibrato tone if the intro riff, which is actually played on a guitar with the two top strings tuned to the same ‘B’ note. This makes it sound as if two guitars have been overdubbed.
The song’s inception was unusual: “I wrote it on the bog,” says Rossi. “I’d gone there, not for the usual reasons… but to get away from the wife and mother-in-law. I used to go into this narrow frizzing toilet and sit there for hours, until they finally went out. I got three quarters of the song finished in that khazi. The rest I finished in the lounge.”
Rossi claims that he was trying to emulate Jimi Hendrix’ Hey Joe with the chord progression – some similarity can be heard in the chord structure, even though the bands’ styles are very different – and with Lennon-laced lyrics.
The song could have had a very different vocal delivery. Rossi wanted it to sound different and individual, and came up with the notion of singing it in falsetto. This idea was successfully discouraged by producer John Schroeder.
The “matchstick men” of the song refers to the paintings of Salford artist L. S. Lowry.
There is significant difference between the stereo and mono versions of the song, the mono version being the most known. That is the version with the ‘wah-wah’-guitar dubbed in between the vocal passages. This is missing in the stereo mix.
There has been some discussion over the years whether “the other guitar player” Rick Parfitt actually plays on the recording. He was a new band recruit when the song was written and recorded, but was definitely in the band at the time and as such in the studio for the recording of the song. But did he play? Author Graeme Stroud categorically states in his book Status Quo Song By Song: “The official story is that [Parfitt] had already played a few gigs with them before the single was recorded, but it is widely reported that he did not play on the actual recording.”
Rick Parfitt did recall this differently in the Quo autobiography XS All Areas. Now, it is known that musicians often mix up sessions and can’t always be trusted to remember things correctly, but I don’t want to dismiss it when Parfitt writes “We only played through it about three times before they had the take they wanted, and every time we played it tingles went up my arms.”
Looking at Rossi’s recollections of those sessions in the same book does not add anything on this either way, but it is interesting to see in Rossi’s book I Talk To Much that Rick nearly got fired after the first rehearsal as his playing was found to be lacking, at least as far as the type of music the band was playing. He was only kept at Rossi’s insistence, although for Rick’s first gig with the band at the pub Welcome Inn in Eltham, South London, Rossi writes “We did secretly keep his guitar unplugged from the amp for his first gig with us. It was the only time we had to do that though. Rick really saw joining the group as his big opportunity. He was determined to learn fast. And that’s exactly what he did.”
Given that the single recording was just a few weeks after said pub gig, he would have had to learn things very fast indeed, though. Was that enough time for the band and producer to feel confident about his contributions, or was Parfitt “unplugged” from the single recording sessions as well? It depends on what your source is and how much faith you place in it. As Parfitt was there, it’s likely that he was part of the band performance, which was recorded live in the studio as a band rather than individually as is done today. His contribution may or may not have been kept. In the end, it’s neither here nor there. Parfitt is still part of that time and that single no matter what, and is obviously part of every TV performance of the song.
Despite the single’s global success, the Quo were on such a punitively crummy contract with Pye that they hardly made any money out of it as musicians. Rossi made a lot more than all the others by virtue of being the writer, which ignited a bit of a scramble among the other band members to hone their writing skills.
The song remains the band’s biggest hit in the US to this day. Unfortunately, the deal with the US distributor Cadet Concept, a subsidiary of the Chess blues label, was utter shite. They made even less money there than in other worldwide markets. Their initial financial misfortune was close to stopping the band, but they soldiered on, and the future would indeed be brighter.
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