John Coghlan

John Robert Coghlan (born 19 September 1946) is an English musician, best known as the original drummer of the rock band Status Quo.

The son of a Glasgow-born father and a London-born half-French mother, Coghlan grew up in Dulwich and was educated at Kingsdale Comprehensive School. He left school at 15 to begin an apprenticeship as a mechanic. He attended drumming tuition under Lloyd Ryan, who also taught Phil Collins the drum rudiments.

John Coghlan joined Status Quo, then called The Scorpions (latterly The Spectres), in early 1962 after a meeting with bassist Alan Lancaster, guitarist Francis Rossi and keyboard player Jess Jaworski. "The three of them were playing away through a single Vox AC30 amplifier," he recalled. "But it sounded amazing and that was the start of it all."

Coghlan played on the first fourteen Quo albums, including their first and most successful live album, Live! in 1977, and songs such as Caroline", "Down Down", "Rockin' All Over the World" and "Whatever You Want".

While Quo were recording what became their 1+9+8+2 album, Coghlan unexpectedly quit after almost twenty years of being in the line-up. According to Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt, Coghlan went into the studio, sat behind his kit, "tapped around" on it, "then he got up, kicked the whole kit apart, walked out and that was that."

"It had been creeping up on me," the drummer explained. "I always felt that we never got enough rest; there were parties every night… Also, things weren't happy for me at home in those days, and nobody in the band was too interested in anybody else's problems… It was such a shame, because the original band were shit-hot and we allowed it to fall apart… Alan [Lancaster] told everybody when I left the room that I'd be back the next day. In fact, I was on a plane, going home."