JOHN COGHLAN
TIMING IS EVERYTHING
Former Status Quo drummer John Coghlan admits his career is coming to an end, but he’s not quite ready to lock the door on it.
Words: Dave Ling
INSET: GETTY
During an almost two-decade spell that began in 1962,John Coghlan was the drummer with Status Quo – from their days as The Spectres until an abrupt departure during the preparation of their 20th-anniversary album 1+9+8+2. Known to fans as Spud, or The Mad Turk, Coghlan was a sullen, moustachioed and mysterious figure behind the kit, sometimes prone to volatile outbursts of temper but mostly keeping himself to himself.
As Quo’s popularity soared during the 70s and into the next decade, so did their drug intake. “We became the cocaine gang,” bassist Alan Lancaster told Classic Rock in 2002. “If you weren’t doing it, you were excluded.” With the madness escalating around him, Coghlan remained an outcast, resisting the lure of illegal highs, preferring to down a pint or seven.
One day in 1981 he just snapped, kicking his drums across the room then boarding a flight from Switzerland, where the group had been working, to his home on the Isle of Man.
Quo picked up the pieces by hiring Pete Kircher, the first of several replacements.
But for Coghlan, who had been virtually uninvolved in the writing process, things were not so simple. He continued to tour and record with multiple projects and bands before being readmitted to Quo, along with Lancaster, for the group’s reunion tours as the Frantic Four in 2013/14.
The losses of Quo’s rhythm guitarist Rick Parfitt, in 2016, and Lancaster a year ago hit Coghlan hard. Along with lead guitarist Francis Rossi, who continues to propel Quo onwards, Coghlan is one of the two survivors of the Frantic Four.
While Rossi and his rebooted Quo are backed by the machinery and finance to keep things moving, Coghlan’s own version of Quo – known as JCQ – have been hindered by lockdown, the closure of smaller venues and the passing of time. With his 76th birthday approaching, JCQ will undertake a farewell tour that ends in September at the annual Quo convention at Butlin’s seaside resort in Minehead, scene of the band’s first meeting with Parfitt.