These were the – far-off and now unimaginable – days before the pre-recorded music video. On occasion a show such as Top Of The Pops would save money by re-playing a tape of the previous week’s performance (so long as the single being performed was still heading up the charts), but this wasn’t popular with the band. A trip to the TOTP studio was an event.
The other attraction of TOTP for John, as for many musicians, was the ‘house’ dance troupe Pan’s People. These girls were the focus of the sexual fantasies of the majority of the nation’s adolescent males, but the musicians regarded them as quarry to be chased and bagged. John did his share of the chasing and bagging; and possibly more than his share. His particular ‘friend’ in Pan’s People, as he describes her, was Ruth. Her dark, exotic looks particularly appealed. ‘I remember driving her home one night in London. She was pissed and I had to drive – in her black Morris Minor 1000, which wasn’t very rock ‘n roll as cars go. We got to the roundabout at Marble Arch and she couldn’t remember where she lived and we ended up going round four or five times.’
John claims that there was never as much sexual activity as rock ‘n roll mythology would have us believe, but at the same time he says cryptically ‘there was always something going on’. Then again, he adds that there were many occasions when the band couldn’t wait to go to bed and catch up on their sleep. But having said that, he then bemoans the fact that most of their earliest fans were guys, and the large female following didn’t really appear for a year or two. After that point it seems there might have been a quantitative rather than a qualitative problem; ‘Every town had its gang of girls, who would always turn up at our gigs. Probably turned up at everyone’s gigs. One night they all arrived at a single show – the girls from Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester, from everywhere – there were twenty or thirty women backstage for the five of us and they were rowing between themselves. We went ‘Oh fuck!’ and hid.
‘The worst ones were known as The Manchester Heavies. They used to get upset if they didn’t get shagged. They used to get so angry. They’d be going ‘We’d best see some action soon. The Move are playing down the road – we’ll go and see them!’ We used to compare notes whenever we could. That was when you found out that there was half a dozen other bands shagging the one you liked.
‘There were times when you’d be on stage and you’d like the look of a girl at the front of the audience. You’d have a quick word with a roadie and make sure she got backstage afterwards. The big problem was that you’d find they weren’t actually that good looking; the stage lights had done them a few favours. The lights that were there to make us look good worked on them too.
Before Quo had broken really big, when the band rehearsed at the Elephant and Castle, they had their own crew of female admirers – who called themselves The Elephant Mob, and used to hang around the rehearsal rooms and see how they could do. Bob thinks of them as the very first fans of the boogified Quo, and they worked hard at being their first groupies too. Without great success, apparently.
In both America and Germany the girls could be almost frighteningly persistent. They would turn up at the different hotels, one after another, and what they did was simply get in cars and follow the tour bus. They networked and shared information about where the band was going to be next.
That wasn’t always wise. Quo were on tour in the States with Bob Seger and The Silver Bullet Band or Blue Oyster Cult. Two girls had followed Quo for several days from their hometown of Chicago, and when they finally got backstage just before a show, and made their way into the band’s dressing room they were expecting something quite positive from their heroes. But that wasn’t what they got. John was in one of his moods, and didn’t want to know. ‘Fuck off,’ he roared at them. Colin Johnson explained to the drummer exactly how dedicated these girls were. ‘I don’t give a fuck. Tell them to fuck off.’ One of the girls started to take objection to the language, and told John that she wasn’t going to be spoken to like that. To which John shouted ‘Just get out off my fucking dressing room, alright?’
So she took a swing at him. He picked up a can of Coke and threw it at her, hitting her. Her friend picked up another and caught John a great shot right on the eyebrow. Then it got a lot worse. When they finally managed to get John on stage there was still blood trickling down his face.
‘We seemed to do alright with air hostesses’, John says. ‘I don’t know if I was attracted to them or they were attracted to me. We had a party with a British Airways Jumbo crew in a hotel room once, and everyone was seriously pissed. I thought ‘this is going to be fun’, but I know for a fact that no-one scored at all that night.
‘Me and the lads used to climb out on hotel balconies and look in through the windows – trying to find an orgy.’
Keith Altham remembers things slightly differently; ‘John was always a ladies’ man. Always had an eye for the girls. He wasn’t sort of ‘under the counter’ about it.’
‘John always liked to have a young lady around,’ Colin Johnson says, adding archly, ‘No matter what she looked like.’
Bob Young says that John was slightly more selective; ‘John certainly had his share, all shapes and sizes, but he definitely liked them to have big tits. If she had big tits she was okay by John.’
For a while John was involved with Sharon Arden – better known now by her married name as Sharon Osborne. John pre-dated Ozzie by a long time, but, it is said, he was so scared of her father – the greatly feared rock manager Don Arden – that he eventually, quietly, wandered away. If you displeased Sharon’s dad there was a strong likelihood that your kneecaps would be shot off. Coincidentally, at the same time Gillie West, who became John’s second wife, was working at NEMS which represented Black Sabbath, and was Ozzie Osbourne’s regular darts partner