Somewhere near the beginning of 1990, Tommy Vance broadcast a live show by The Quireboys as part of his Friday Night Rock Show on Radio 1. The live set – recorded at Wembley Arena when the still relatively new band opened for the legendary Aerosmith on their ‘Pump’ tour in 1989 – presented the boys in great shape. Numbers like ‘Misled’ and ‘Man On The Loose’ captured a Faces-obsessed swagger in a way that few bands had managed since 1975; ‘Seven O’Clock’ – already known and loved by Vance’s devoted listeners – and the soon to be released as a single ‘Hey You’ showed the crowd pleasing power Spike and the boys already had from the off, whilst the country strains of ‘Sweet Mary Ann’ suggested the Quireboys had the potential to stretch out if required. Although short, this live show was, and remains, a great document of the band firing on all six.

Unfortunately, since that tape remains in the clutches of the BBC – with no hope of being issued on CD decades later, and not much chance of even a repeat play via BBC Sounds, or wherever – it doesn’t have pride of place within this ‘Parlophone Years’ 4CD set…and more’s the pity. A show like that, or even the almost equally strong set from Donington 1990 – a legendary gig that, again, is buried somewhere within Auntie Beeb’s massive archive, destined to gather dust forever more – would give even the biggest Quireboys fan a cast iron reason to fork out for this box set.

As it is, ‘The Parlophone Years: 1989-1993’ is dominated by three official releases fans will already own, and very much geared firmly towards the more casual buyer, hoping to fire up a little nostalgia. But, on that score, it’s still a great set. If you want feel good rock tunes, the first two Quireboys albums deliver in spades. The debut, ‘A Bit of What You Fancy’, is shinier than the Wembley live show suggested it would be; there are tracks graced with female backing vocals, which certainly belie the material’s late 80s origins, but The Quireboys’ best songs – many of which can be found on this record – are absolutely stellar.

The album’s opening number, ‘7 O’Clock’, presents the band’s manifesto in a really effectively, with a combination of party rock flair and bar-room trashiness. Musically, it rests somewhere between a slightly heavy handed version of the Faces and mid-period Rolling Stones, with Guy Bailey and Guy Griffin’s three chord rock ‘n’ roll guitars providing the perfect accessory for frontman Spike’s whiskey-soaked rasp. With the addition of harmonica, it takes all of two bars before the swaggering riff grabs the listener. Moving through the body of the track, the marriage of grubby guitar lines and cheeky backing vocals sets a classic sound firmly in place. Although the dirty guitars dominate, it’s clear that the piano and harmonica add a much needed flourish, and in just four minutes, this supplies a near-perfect opening statement. The album’s other hit – the immediately anthemic ‘Hey You’ – follows suit, in that it values simplicity over musical showboating. Although the gang vocals and easy, sing-along hook will always be destined to be this track’s most memorable elements, heard years after release, it’s hard not to be impressed by the whiskey soaked vibes and the easy slide guitar work that rears up between Spike’s finest rasp. Naturally, due to years of being a classic rock staple, it manages to stay memorable a long time after the album has finished, and it’s hardly surprising that between these couple of singles and a lot of touring, The Quireboys managed to gain a substantial fan base of rock fans looking for something retro and familiar.

As great as those singles are, however, they’re nowhere near as good as a couple of other tracks on the album. ‘Man on the Loose’ takes the tried and tested bar room formula and turns it up a notch, adding gospel styled backing vocals and cranking the volume on the guitars. It’s here, perhaps more than anywhere else on this debut, that the sheer energy of the band’s early live shows is captured. This is a track that takes the Faces-on-steriods influence to extremes, and hearing Chris Johnstone’s hard edged piano work jostle against a fat sounding bass creates something every bit as exciting as the two Guys’ guitar work. ‘Whipping Boy’ represents a slower, bluesier band, but there’s no lesser a commitment from the musicians when it comes to sharing a great riff. In this case, the mix of moody piano, strings and acoustic guitars serves up something almost menacing. In some ways, the hushed vocal highlights Spike’s obvious limitation, but his almost whispered tones are brilliantly complimented by another backing vocal where Myrna Matthews and Clydene Jackson have clearly been instructed to channel ‘Gimme Shelter’. The swaggering ‘There She Goes Again’, meanwhile, adds another solid rocker to the album, and sounds almost timeless with its cocky Faces influence. Great use of a horn section makes this feel suitably different, once again, and a great melody coupled with a memorable (if somewhat simplistic) chorus makes it a standout.

Their Rolling Stones fixation comes to the fore once more for ‘Misled’, which sounds like an imitation of something circa ‘It’s Only Rock N Roll’, but sang with a real rawness, Spike makes an obvious influence more of his own, and elsewhere, he gets to stretch out on the slower ‘Sweet Mary Ann’ and ‘I Don’t Love You Anymore’, a pair of numbers that further prove the early Quireboys could handle far more than their Faces/Stones-obsessed personae might suggest. ‘Sweet Mary Ann’ finds Spike adopting the role of country crooner, and although it supplies the album’s “cheesiest” melody, he sounds great accompanied by Johnstone’s rolling piano. A fan favourite, ‘I Don’t Love You Anymore’ rises above any vocal limitations by flaunting some superb production values. There’s a huge amount of reverb from Ian Wallace’s drums, filling plenty of space within the laid back arrangement; Bailey’s guitar work is subtle but adds plenty of colour, and taking centre stage, Nigel Mogg’s bass work is melodic yet muscular, bringing a huge weight to a piece that rewards repeated listens.

For lovers of the country-tinged Quireboys, ‘Roses & Rings’ runs rings around ‘…Mary Ann’. Here, the twang is matched equally by the stomping rhythm, taking influence from ‘Gasoline Alley’, but more importantly, providing a future echo of The Jayhawks circa ‘Tomorrow The Green Grass’. The blend of semi-acoustic guitar work and fiddle brings a classic sound, but the real star is Chris Johnstone, who supplies some great piano fills throughout. If it weren’t clear before, Chris was an undervalued member of this line-up and most of his contributions lend this album its more interesting colour and long-lasting charm. Even when ‘…Fancy’ plays for all-out fun on the rather tacky ‘Sex Party’, there’s a sense of a band who know they’ve got great chemistry, and on this particular number – arguably one of the album’s lesser tracks – the interplay between Guy, Guy, Chris and Nigel is so tight that, if you weren’t lucky enough to catch them live around the time of this album’s release, this rollocking number still gives a great sense of what you missed.

The studio versions of the songs that fill 1990’s ‘A Bit of What You Fancy’ might lack the rawness of the superior live cuts from the era – the female backing vocals fleshing out the sound are very much of their time, and are certainly a late 80s overspill – but in terms of song-for-song power, it’s a great debut. Following that record would be a tall order and it would take the band a fair while to deliver. When ‘Bitter Sweet & Twisted’ arrived in 1993, musical tastes had changed. The press were swept up with the grunge scene, and a lot of old school rock got pushed to one side. It didn’t stop Thunder taking the live scene by storm, and it didn’t stop Spike and the lads getting a more than favourable response from the fans.

Decades after release, ‘BS&T’ lacks the overall consistency of its predecessor, but when it hits the mark, it hits it very hard indeed. ‘Can’t Park Here’, in particular, is a perfect example of the band in full swagger – all choppy rhythms and dirty Ron Wood-esque soloing – whilst Spike spits a semi-angry lyric where the vocal takes on a near scattergun approach, and the lead single ‘Tramps & Thieves’, proving The Quireboys’ knack for an easy hook hadn’t diminished in those intervening years, make the record worth the price of admission. It’s actually a few of the deeper cuts that have worn especially well here, though, and if this box set helps to shine a light on a few of those, then this easy repackaging of the two albums without the sweetener of any unreleased material has still been worthwhile.

With a mix of bar room swagger and glam-esque power, ‘Ain’t Love Blind’ showcases the more commercial Quireboys, and the punch of the main riff combined with a drum sound that’s high in the mix provides a perfect foil for a bluesy harmonica, before a radio-friendly hook smashes through everything like grunge never happened. ‘Wild, Wild, Wild’ kicks off with a dirty Faces riff, initially sounding like a sped up rehash of ‘7 O’Clock’, and therefore sounds like an instant classic, but there are enough variations on a theme to make the track stand on its own. Spike’s vocal is one of the album’s best, and he sounds like a powerhouse of grit and sawdust against the sharp edged rhythms, but its a rowdy lead guitar break full of wobbling notes that steals the show. If you’ve had even a passing interest in the band over the years but have somehow missed this album, this track is a must-hear.

‘Don’t Bite The Hand That Feeds You’ joins the album’s top tier material, thanks to another grubby riff that sounds like The Stones circa 1975 coupled with a rough ‘n’ ready vocal that’s perfect for the job in hand. …And that’s before a huge Ron Wood inspired solo takes centre stage and the lead guitar underscores what was already a great hook. Sure, it’s Quireboys by numbers in many ways, but there’s an energy here that’s really infectious. Then, for lovers of the previous album’s ‘I Don’t Love You Anymore’, the band attempt to repeat that success with ‘Last Time’, a semi-acoustic ballad with hints of Americana that captures the subtleties within the Quireboys’ sound. Even if the end result isn’t quite as sharp, it’s certainly not a dud: the sedate organ work and string-led flourishes sound great, and a rather rootsy lead guitar break provides one of the record’s most sonically pleasing solos.

With the swaggering ‘White Trash Blues’, a Faces inspired rocker augmented with horns, the honky tonk ‘Hates To Please’ delving deeper into country with the help of a subtle steel guitar, and the sultry blues rock meets Black Crowes sound of ‘Take No Revenge’ also found along the way, a strong case can be made for ‘Bitter Sweet and Twisted’ being a more varied album than its predecessor. It doesn’t make it a better one, but it’s great to hear a band expanding their repertoire. Heard in tandem with the debut – or as part of a longer-form listen, as with this box set – it really works.

Joining the studio albums and their associated b-sides, a disc of demos recycles the bonus tracks on the expanded ‘ABOWYF’ from 2009. These come under the category of “nice to have” despite never offering anything massively different from the final versions. For the fan, the highlights here are supplied by a version of ‘Man On The Loose’ that sounds a little more like a garage band, a rough and ready ‘Misled’ which really brings out the interplay between Guy B and Guy G, and ‘Where You Been To’, capturing the more sophisticated Quireboys in a very natural setting, sharing something that sounds more like a Black Crowes ballad than any of their more typically raucous workouts. With twenty demos compiled, it’s certainly good value, but compared to the other three discs, the material feels far more like a fan-only affair.

Balancing out the feeling that a disc of demos will only play to a specific demographic, the disc of live recordings included here rivals ‘A Bit of What You Fancy’ in terms of essential listening. Subtitled ‘Live & Loaded’, this is essentially another repackaging of the 1990 rush release ‘Live Around The World’ augmented with several extra tracks sourced from hard to find CD singles. It isn’t a match for either of the previously mentioned BBC shows, but at its best, this disc is still amazing. The versions of ‘There She Goes Again’ and ‘Sex Party’ (from the ‘Bit of What You Fancy’ tour) still sound nice and raw; the huge amount of echo present on ‘Whippin’ Boy’ proves the source material is far more authentic than Thin Lizzy’s ‘Live & Dangerous’, and the slower ‘I Don’t Love You Anymore’ shares a great drum sound and a pleasingly prominent piano. The big draw here, though, is the inclusion of two non-album pieces. A cover of Sam & Dave’s ‘Hold On (I’m Coming)’ throws the spotlight on an impressively tight rhythm section, whilst Spike sounds like he’s having a ball chewing through the familiar lyric, and a raucous take on the Stones’ ‘Heartbreaker’ sounds even better with Nigel’s bass punching through twin guitars.

From the other assorted live cuts, a rather muted ‘7 O’Clock’ sounds very different to a lot of other Quireboys live tracks from the time, but the mix is still good enough to hear some great bass work, and revel in the dirty twin guitars, the ever brilliant ‘Man On The Loose’ plays even more like The Stones with extra muscle, and crowd-pleaser ‘Tramps & Thieves’ sounds like classic Quireboys from the get go, making the studio equivalent sound rather safe by comparison. With seventeen tracks and a disc filled to near capacity, this “bonus” provides great value here.

For the fan who has everything, ‘The Parlophone Years’ merely offers a nice box and some well considered sleeve notes – written in part by the legendary Spike – but taken on its own merits, it’s still a decent set. It works as a stock of material allowing the casual buyer an easy way to explore the early recordings; it works as a huge piece of nostalgia, and it provides a permanent record of how the Quireboys continued to be great after their debut, regardless of fashion. In terms of affordable box sets, it’s great. Of course, unreleased or rare material would have made it essential…but settling for what’s offered, there’s a huge amount here to keep the casual buyer entertained.

Buy the box set here.

February/March 2025