If ever there was a group that did exactly what it said on the tin it was Status Quo, who seem to have been playing the same song for half a century.

The blokiest of bands, their whole ethos is defiantly working class. The Quo approach the business of 12-bar boogie with the grim determination of manual labourers putting in a solid shift.

Legs akimbo in Alpha-male pose, and long hair flying, the denim-clad quartet use their instruments like roadworkers grasping spades and jackhammers, thrashing them mercilessly with the same three chords until the end of the working week. It’s a formula that’s brought them staggering success: their record of 60 hit singles has never been beaten and probably never will be (not even by Ed Sheeran).

Paper Plane, from their first Vertigo album Piledriver – by far the heaviest album I had ever bought in my embryonic record-buying life in 1973 – was the first hit single following the paisley-hued psychedelic era with which they began their career. Ditching the frilly shirts and frock coats, they reinvented themselves by ditching all the musical frills too and turning the amps “all the way up to 11” in the manner prescribed by Nigel Tufnell in Spinal Tap.

I saw them live on one occasion and even though the extreme volume helped numb the brain, the repetition and lack of variety got a bit much after an hour or so watching four men in a blur of dandruff and denim. I even met them, in 1996, when they brought a court case against the BBC because Radio 1 had decided not to play their records on the grounds that they were “too dull”.

They were certainly dull to talk to, with Francis Rossi, a grumpy grandad with his hair pulled back behind a balding pate into a limp ponytail, complaining that their latest single should be forced on to the public whether they liked it or not. It was obviously a publicity stunt and their subsequent case in the High Court failed but, while losing the battle, they won the war when the song (Fun, Fun, Fun) was a minor hit despite – or, let’s face it, because of – the ‘ban’