It was announced this week that Status Quo has recorded a new album – a reworking of a lot of their most famous songs.  The difference is, they have stripped them back completely and have come up with an acoustic set (or ‘Aquostic’ as they like to call it!)

The Quo have put away the electric guitars, unplugged the amps and unravelled layer after layer so what is left are these songs that we know well as loud, energetic and amplified numbers and produced quieter, more melodic, ‘naked’ tracks.  I’m not suggesting that these weren’t melodic in the first place, it is just that this new approach allows you to hear so much more of what the songs entail.

These songs are well known and have been around for years.  Some may even be called ‘classic’ but the band has realised that by stripping these songs back to the bare essentials they take on a completely new meaning. The band is noticing new aspects of these songs that they’ve never noticed before even though they have been playing them for over 50 years.  They are hearing them differently and causing them look at the songs in new and exciting ways.  It is what they have described as ‘letting the songs breathe’.

Maybe they have taken the nakedness a little too far with their album cover though!  However, as Francis Rossi said in an interview recently, ‘it’s all about the marketing’ (music to our ears!) He said people/fans were so familiar with these songs, this new album needs to be marketed properly to make people look at it differently. So they got Bryan Adams in (yes, THE Bryan Adams, who also does photography in his spare time) to take a picture of them….you guessed it, naked, with just their acoustic guitars to cover their modesty!

It’s not the first time the nakedness has been used as a big selling technique, Jamie Oliver was famously branded ‘The Naked Chef’ all those years ago because of his preference to strip back his cooking and the ingredients and get back to the roots of how cooking should be.  There was no actual naked cooking involved obviously as that would just be dangerous!

But maybe this is what we all need to do with our every day lives and work.  For businesses, often getting back to basics, stripping back your brand or marketing plan, letting your company breathe and getting back to the grass roots could shed completely new light on how you see it and indeed how it is viewed by others.  Maybe we shouldn’t over complicate, mask all the layers and key facets of our business.  Lets all get unplugged. Not naked!

So for The Quo, this new album will be unveiled at an exclusive gig on 22 October that will be broadcast on Radio 2.  It will be the first time they have performed acoustically and after 50 years, it should be quite unique – who knows what they’ll be wearing!

Go The Quo, you rock!

Rick Parfitt and Francis Rossi on the cover of their new Status Quo album Photo: Bryan Adams/Status Quo