Status Quo - The Image That Made Me Weep

  by Malcolm Carter

published: 24 / 12 / 2020

intro

In ‘The Image That Made Me Weep’ Malcolm Carter reflects upon a photo taken at a Status Quo gig he attended with his son in 2009.

Music was always the most important thing in my life. I must have been about seven when I first became obsessed by it and waiting in those days long before the internet for your favourite song to be played on the radio was excruciating. While most of my friends were talking about the latest addition to their train set or Scalextric, I just wanted to listen to music or sit surrounded by my parents’ records while listening to them on their radiogram. Music was my life and heaven help any of my siblings if they so much as touched one of my record covers. When my son was born everyone, myself included, expected him to be as obsessed about music as I was. Maybe not letting him near my records for some time didn’t help but he simply wasn’t interested in music. Nowhere near as much as his dad anyway. One day when he was very young, he picked up an album of mine. “What’s this?” he asked. Growing up in the CD age he genuinely didn’t know what a vinyl album was. Although in recent years he’s attended some pretty cool gigs I don’t think he’s ever bought an actual album on any format. When he listens to music it’s via something called Spotify. And while I can appreciate that the type of music he likes would be perfect for a night out in a club and it does have its place, it’s hardly the stuff that moves me. Music for my son is a soundtrack to a party or a good night out. For me it goes a lot deeper. Every important event in my life, even now years later, I can remember what I was listening to at that point. So, it was a major surprise that in 2009 he came to me and announced that he was going, along with some friends, to a Status Quo gig at a local football ground and did I want to come along as he’d noticed that I’d had some of their albums and a photo of them had been on the wall in my room for years. I knew Rick Parfitt a little through the years and would have attended the gig anyway but of course jumped at the chance to go to my first gig with my son, one that he invited me to. It had only taken 21 years. Hanging out with my son at a gig for the first time by one of the bands I still feel give it their all wherever they are playing is a memory I still cherish. It was a great evening and seeing my son enjoy the music surrounded by his friends gave me some hope that he could enjoy real, live music after all! The gig was in Sweden. I doubt we were the only British people there in the audience but when Parfitt strapped on his guitar with The Union flag wrap, I was not only proud of my country but of my son who suddenly wasn’t ‘my little boy’ but a man standing next to me.

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