Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Within each of us there is the urge to have achieved recognition in our name, just even the once, we sit and believe and revel in the daydream of putting out a catalogue of work to live in the sense of the forever. To say when the time comes that something lives on after we pass away into the great eternity, be it a small pebble thrown to cause several ripples, or the building of a dam in which to change the course of the once lazy tide into a more productive surge and rush of water. Before we say Over and Out down the radio transistor of life, we should consider that we can at least achieve something good in our own name.

It is perhaps a dream that is always chased with more ferocity and intent when you have been part of the bigger picture all your career, when your name is attached to the billboard and advertising of the latest smash hit and fan loved spectacle. It is arguably a driving force that many don’t find the time for, consumed with keeping one truck on the road, not realising that a fleet can be taken care of if someone else steps in and allows you a side journey, a busman’s holiday, one in which the Status Quo can be maintained but in which your own journey is seen as something beautiful, something hopefully everlasting.

It is the epitaph, the final words in which we find comfort within, that Status Quo’s erstwhile Rick Parfitt offers Over and Out and a posthumous memory in which to be seen as more than just a part of something monumental, instead to have his granite fashioned into a testimonial, a tribute of all that is good about Rock music, all that is to be heard in the good times and in the dad moments.

When someone passes on, when arguably they know that their time is due, you always wonder what they were thinking as the clock starts to wind down; in Rick Parfitt the clock gathered pace, the required room to have another voice and set of feelings perhaps paramount, one last hurrah for the fans, for himself and who can honestly blame the artist for getting the brushwork down and framed in such a manner.

With contributions from the likes of Brian May, Rick Parfitt Jnr., Dave Marks, Tim Oliver, Alex Toff, Jo Webb, Shannon Harris, John ‘Rhino’ Edwards and Eike Freese, one of the world’s greatest rhythm guitarists leaves his characteristic mark in the songs Lonesome Road, Fight For Every Heartbeat, Long Distance Love, the beautiful and engaging Everybody Knows How To Fly and Halloween, a signal to the fans that the music never ends, not really, that even in the passing of genius, there is still more to be found and enjoyed.

This debut solo offering is a remarkable album in which to add further measure to the man, it may be Over and Out but the world will keep spinning to the sound of Rick Parfitt.

Ian D. Hall