Biography
Rick Parfitt entered the world in Woking, Surrey during October 1948. His first encounters with the guitar arrived at age eleven, prompting him to exit school at fifteen and chase a musical path that began at the Hayling Island Sunshine Holiday Camp in Hampshire.
He assembled the trio the Highlights with the Harrison Twins, securing a season-long engagement at Butlins Holiday Camp in Minehead, where he crossed paths with Francis Rossi of the Spectres. The group adopted the name Traffic Jam and recruited Parfitt to supply additional vocals. By 1967 the outfit had become Status Quo. Early the following year they issued their debut single, the psychedelic “Pictures of Matchstick Men,” which climbed into the upper reaches of the U.K. Singles chart and registered on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.
After a string of albums, 1976 found the band entrenched as a fixture on British charts; their first U.K. Top Ten single, “Down Down,” arrived that year. Further releases marked the 1980s, during which Status Quo opened 1984’s Live Aid concert and Parfitt joined Rossi on vocals for the Band Aid single “Do They Know It’s Christmas.”
Parfitt leaned fully into the rock-and-roll excesses of alcohol and drugs until a 1997 heart attack led to quadruple bypass surgery and a stark medical warning that continued indulgence would prove fatal. He kept recording and touring with Status Quo until another heart attack struck in 2011. Undeterred, he resumed joint performances with Rossi and made his screen debut in the 2013 feature Bula Quo.
A European tour the next year brought a further heart attack and hospitalization, yet within months he was back onstage with Rossi for the release of the acoustic album Aquostic: Stripped Bare. In June 2016, during a Turkish leg of the tour, Parfitt suffered his fourth heart attack. Flown home to the U.K., he convalesced at his Marbella residence in Spain and used the downtime to lay down vocal and guitar tracks for solo material. An infection following a shoulder injury sent him back to hospital in December 2016, and he died on Christmas Eve.
The next year, members of Queen, Muse, and Status Quo, together with Parfitt’s son, completed the unfinished solo recordings begun late in 2016. The resulting posthumous debut, Over and Out, appeared at the start of 2018.
He assembled the trio the Highlights with the Harrison Twins, securing a season-long engagement at Butlins Holiday Camp in Minehead, where he crossed paths with Francis Rossi of the Spectres. The group adopted the name Traffic Jam and recruited Parfitt to supply additional vocals. By 1967 the outfit had become Status Quo. Early the following year they issued their debut single, the psychedelic “Pictures of Matchstick Men,” which climbed into the upper reaches of the U.K. Singles chart and registered on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.
After a string of albums, 1976 found the band entrenched as a fixture on British charts; their first U.K. Top Ten single, “Down Down,” arrived that year. Further releases marked the 1980s, during which Status Quo opened 1984’s Live Aid concert and Parfitt joined Rossi on vocals for the Band Aid single “Do They Know It’s Christmas.”
Parfitt leaned fully into the rock-and-roll excesses of alcohol and drugs until a 1997 heart attack led to quadruple bypass surgery and a stark medical warning that continued indulgence would prove fatal. He kept recording and touring with Status Quo until another heart attack struck in 2011. Undeterred, he resumed joint performances with Rossi and made his screen debut in the 2013 feature Bula Quo.
A European tour the next year brought a further heart attack and hospitalization, yet within months he was back onstage with Rossi for the release of the acoustic album Aquostic: Stripped Bare. In June 2016, during a Turkish leg of the tour, Parfitt suffered his fourth heart attack. Flown home to the U.K., he convalesced at his Marbella residence in Spain and used the downtime to lay down vocal and guitar tracks for solo material. An infection following a shoulder injury sent him back to hospital in December 2016, and he died on Christmas Eve.
The next year, members of Queen, Muse, and Status Quo, together with Parfitt’s son, completed the unfinished solo recordings begun late in 2016. The resulting posthumous debut, Over and Out, appeared at the start of 2018.
Albums
Singles
