Book excerpt: The story of Status Quo is essentially the story of two people: Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt. It is the story of two outwardly very different characters--Rossi, the moody insecure one, and Parfitt, the smiling, permanently at ease golden boy--who forged an unlikely yet enduring bond that would see them through the dizzying highs and terrifying lows of a forty-year career. Now they are prepared to tell it all--the groupies, the drug-taking, the marriage breakdowns, and Parfitt's brush with death when he was forced to undergo bypass surgery.