This is a bootleg 2CD set of numerous versions of the titular track, but the meat lies hidden on CD1…

Much of the instrumental jiggery-pokery involved in the often 25 minute plus live versions of “45” derived from the track “Is It Really Me?/Gotta Go Home” on the marvellous “Ma Kelly’s Greasy Spoon” album. What we have here, though, is a totally brain-frying live version of this early classic, about 19 minutes long, from the Marquee in December 1972. 

The first few minutes are pretty much as per the LP, if clearly adrenalised. What happens next has only (possibly) been equalled by Ash Ra Tempel at their height. It’s a speedfreak rush of punk, psychedelia, spacerock, pure noise, metal, and just about anything else you care to name. It’s fucking astonishing. The first time I heard this I literally sat with my jaw dropping. It’s that good.

Messrs Parfitt, Lancaster and Coghlan keep up a fearsome tempo for the duration but the honours go to the young, untutored and clearly up for anything Francis Rossi. Perhaps “joyful abandon” might describe his deranged meanderings. Whatever, this is the high water mark of not only Quo’s career, but quite possibly British rock.

It’s never less than fierce and uncompromising. It’s beautiful. It’s bloody hideous. It’s everything the best rock’n’roll should represent. 

If you listen to ONE Quo song in your life, make sure it’s this one.

(The sound is a bit dodgy, to say the least, but it matters not one jot.)