Why I was ashamed to love Status Quo

I bought a record in a second-hand shop in the summer of 1981. A double album. I made sure nobody was looking when I handed over my money, and kept the purchase hidden in its brown paper bag all the way home. Back in my room, I locked the door to make sure my house-mates couldn’t surprise me — and plugged in my headphones. What followed was more than an hour of dirty bliss, a guilty pleasure before the term had been invented.

What I was listening to was a compilation album of Status Quo’s singles and most popular album tracks. I can’t remember what it was called — ‘Again and Again and Again and Again and Again’ would have been fitting, but too arch for the Quo. My housemates, if they had known what I up to, would have been both mystified and contemptuous. The music we were supposed to enjoy at the time was either the angular, dour and humourless post-punk of the Gang of Four and Echo and the Bunnymen’s portentous scouse warbling, or the glitzy cheap synth New Romantic dross which was rapidly becoming flavour of the decade.