They had to put up with being mocked as the band with the three chords. That's why Staus Quo self-ironically named their 28th studio album "In Search Of The Fourth Chord". On the cover you can see the two protagonists Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt in an Indiana Jones pose and setting, grinning at each other. Self-irony, in other words!
»Pictures Of Matchstick Men« is the first single by the quintet Status Quo and they immediately entered the charts almost everywhere in the world. The song opens with a simple four-note riff that is repeated several times between the individual verses. In the chorus, the song uses what is known as 'flanging', in which two identical audio signals are mixed, with one of the two signals being delayed by around 20 milliseconds.
This mixture results in a song that immediately catches your ears and sticks in your head. A perfect recipe for success! The title »Pictures Of Matchstick Men« is a reference to the pictures of the British landscape painter Laurence Stephen Lowry , whose people were often referred to as matchstick men. The record is classified as psychedelic rock, which incidentally applies to many songs from the late 1960s. The follow-up »Black Veils Of Melancholy« followed the same principle, the same formula for success, but flopped, which prompted Status Quo to reorient themselves musically and turn to the hard rock / boogie woogie style. Francis Michael Rossi , author of the Matchstick Men song, later reported that he wrote the song on the toilet. He often went there, not to do his 'usual business', but to avoid his wife and mother-in-law.
In BRAVO No. 50 from 1968, Status Quo commented on their success: "We don't believe in waiting for success. We prepared for our pop career for a long time - and when the time came, we knew it would work. Some groups wait years and years for a hit. We would have been angry long ago. Of course, it can happen that our star sinks as quickly as it rose. Then we'll just go back to being bourgeois. But in any case, we made a big splash!"
Before they became Status Quo , they had already released singles under the names The Spectres and The Traffic Jam, but none of them were successful. The band was founded by Francis Rossi and Alan Lancaster , who had already formed The Scorpions in 1962. In 1963 they took John Coghlan into the band and renamed themselves The Spectres. Roy Lynes joined the band in 1965 and when Rick Parfitt joined the group in 1967, Status Quo was complete.
In the UK, »Pictures Of Matchstick Men« reached number seven; in the US, it reached number twelve, but remained Status Quo 's only hit in the US to make it into the top 40.
The song stayed in BRAVO 's Musicbox for twelve weeks and rose to eighth place. By 1986, Quo had placed a further 16 singles in the box, but never made it to the top position. Twice they reached number two: "Rockin' All Over The World" and "In The Army Now"; once they reached number three: "What You're Proposing". Status Quo subsequently went through several line-up changes and reunions. However, with the death of Rick Parfitt in 2016, the search for the fourth chord is still not over.