Francis Rossi is ‘very tempted’ to make another Status Quo album
Francis #Francis
Francis Rossi often gets “tempted” to make a new Status Quo album.
The legendary rock ‘n’ roll group’s co-founder admits he would love to record new music but he is adamant there is no money in releasing records after the group’s last LP, 2019s’ ‘Backbone’, was streamed by only 3.5 million people.
Speaking to Record Collector magazine, he said: “I get very tempted because I enjoy the creativity with the band and making new product, but it’s like banging your head against the wall. Far too much gets taken out of the cake before the band receive anything. I think our last album, ‘Backbone’, got three-and-a-half million streams which is apparently f***-all. Three-and-a-half-million records would have been, wow, but something’s wrong there, you know? So, without sounding too mercenary, there’s everyone involved in the recording, production and promotion and you just can’t make that money back. I grew up in retail and when I talk to my relatives about this, they just think it isn’t good business sense.
He added: “There’s something against the grain about the whole process: you can’t generate the income that the time and effort that go into writing and recording an album should get.”
The 73-year-old rocker previously said it’s “very disheartening” that artists are being underpaid by streaming giants.
He said: “The problem that everyone forgets is that now it’s all about streaming. People don’t buy an album anymore and the industry itself is trying to completely get rid of the CD so every time someone plays a stream of ours we get a quarter of a penny!
“That’s impossible; you just can’t function. There is something very disheartening about that. We can make an album, I think we did possibly 100,000 in the end [with ‘Backbone’], 3,500,000 million streams, lovely, but that means the band didn’t make any money on the 3.5 million streams.
“Unless the Status Quo shop sells what it’s got in the shop the shop’s gonna close.
‘It can’t not close and that’s where everybody from my generation, from McCartney to U2, the Stones and whomever else are going, hello, unless you do something.”