Suzi Quatro
Susan Kay Quatro is an American singer, bass guitarist, songwriter, and actress. In the 1970s, she scored a string of singles that found success in Europe and Australia, with both "Can the Can" and "Devil Gate Drive" reaching number one in several countries.
Quatro released her self-titled debut album in 1973. Since then, she has released 15 studio albums, 10 compilation albums, and one live album. Other songs, including "48 Crash", "Daytona Demon", "The Wild One", and "Your Mama Won't Like Me", also charted highly overseas. Following a recurring role as bass player Leather Tuscadero on the popular American sitcom Happy Days, her duet "Stumblin' In" with Smokie's lead singer Chris Norman reached number four in the US, her only song to chart in the top 40 in her homeland.
Between 1973 and 1980, Quatro was awarded six Bravo Ottos, an award given to musicians as voted in the German teen magazine Bravo. In 2010, she was voted into the Michigan Rock and Roll Legends online Hall of Fame. She is reported to have sold over 50 million records worldwide, and continues to perform live. Quatro's most recent studio album, Face to Face, was released in 2023 and follows the 2021 collaboration The Devil in Me with her son Richard Tuckey, who had already taken part in No Control in 2019. Quatro also remains active in radio broadcasting.
Early life
Quatro was born and raised in Detroit. Her father, Art, was a semiprofessional musician and worked at General Motors. Her paternal grandfather was an Italian immigrant to the U.S. and her mother, Helen, was Hungarian and she died in 1992. Her family name of "Quattrocchi" was shortened to Quatro. Quatro's family was living in Detroit when she was born. She has three sisters, a brother, and one older half-sister. Her parents fostered several other children while she was growing up. Quatro grew up to be an "extrovert but solitary," according to Philip Norman of The Sunday Times, and she only became close to her mother after leaving the US for Britain.Her sister Arlene is the mother of actress Sherilyn Fenn. Her sister Patti joined Fanny, one of the earliest all-female rock bands to gain national attention. Her brother, Michael Quatro, is also a musician.
She was influenced at the age of six by seeing Elvis Presley perform on television. She has said that she had no direct female role models in music, but was inspired by Billie Holiday and liked the dress sense of Mary Weiss of the Shangri-Las "because she wore tight trousers and a waistcoat on top she looked hot".
Quatro received formal training in playing classical piano and percussion—her first instrument was bongos. She taught herself how to play the bass, after her sister asked her to learn it for her first band, the Pleasure Seekers. Her father gave her a 1957 Fender Precision Bass guitar in 1964, which she still uses in the studio.
Career
Early career and the Art Quatro Trio
Quatro played drums or percussion from an early age as part of her father's jazz band, the Art Quatro Trio. Sources vary regarding whether her playing in the band began at the age of seven or eight, and whether the instrument she played was a drum kit or percussion. Subsequently, she appeared on local television as a go-go dancer in a pop music series.The Pleasure Seekers and Cradle
In 1964, after seeing a television performance by the Beatles, Quatro's older sister, Patti, had formed an all-female garage rock band called the Pleasure Seekers with two friends. Quatro joined, too, and assumed the stage name of Suzi Soul; Patti Quatro was known as Patti Pleasure. Suzi sang and played bass in the band. The band also later featured another sister, Arlene. Many of their performances were in cabarets, where attention was focused more on their physical looks than their actual music. They sometimes had to wear miniskirts and wigs, which Quatro later considered to be necessary evils in the pursuit of success. They became well-known fixtures, though, in the burgeoning Detroit music community.The Pleasure Seekers recorded three singles and released two: "Never Thought You'd Leave Me" / "What a Way to Die" and "Light of Love" / "Good Kind of Hurt". The second of these was released by Mercury Records, with whom they briefly had a contract before breaking away due to differences of opinion regarding their future direction. They changed their name to Cradle in late 1969, not long after another Quatro sister, Nancy, had joined the band and Arlene had left following the birth of her child.
Work with Mickie Most
Quatro's brother Michael — who was managing the band — persuaded record producer Mickie Most to see Cradle. Looking for a female rock singer who could fill the void created by the death of Janis Joplin, Most was drawn by "her comeliness and skills as bass guitarist, singer, and chief show-off in Cradle." Quatro sang the background vocals on Barabajagal, recorded in May 1969 at Olympic Studios in London by British singer/songwriter Donovan.She had also been attracting attention from Elektra Records, and subsequently explained, "According to the Elektra president, I could become the new Janis Joplin. Mickie Most offered to take me to England and make me the first Suzi Quatro – I didn't want to be the new anybody." Most had no interest in the other band members, and he had no idea at that time of how he might market Quatro. She spent a year living in a hotel, where she was nurtured by Most, developing her skills and maturing. Most later said that the outcome was a reflection of her own personality.
Quatro's first single, "Rolling Stone", was successful only in Portugal, where it reached number one on the charts. This was a solo effort, although aided by people such as Duncan Browne, Peter Frampton and Alan White. Subsequently, with the approval of Most, she auditioned for a band to accompany her. It was also after this record that Most introduced her to the songwriting and production team of Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, who wrote songs specifically to accord with her image. She agreed with Most's assessment of her image, saying that his influence, at which some of his artists such as Jeff Beck and Rod Stewart balked, did not extend to manufacture and that "If he tried to build me into a Lulu, I wouldn't have it. I'd say 'go to hell' and walk out." This was the height of the glam rock period of the 1970s and Quatro, who wore leather clothes, portrayed a wild image while playing music that "hinged mostly on a hard rock chug beneath lyrics in which scansion overruled meaning."
In 1972, Quatro embarked as a support act on a UK tour with Thin Lizzy and headliners Slade. Rak Records arranged for her to use Thin Lizzy's newly acquired PA system during this, incurring a charge of £300 per week that enabled the Irish band to effectively purchase it at no cost to themselves. In May 1973, her second single "Can the Can" which Philip Auslander describes as having "seemingly nonsensical and virtually unintelligible lyrics" was a number-one hit in parts of Europe and in Australia.
"Can the Can" was followed by three further hits: "48 Crash", "Daytona Demon", and "Devil Gate Drive", each of which sold over one million copies and were awarded gold discs, although they met with little success in her native United States, where she had toured as a support act for Alice Cooper. Rak Records' artists had generally not succeeded in the US and her first album, Suzi Quatro, was criticized by Alan Betrock for its lack of variety, for its Quatro-written "second-rate fillers" and for her voice, described as "often too high and shrill, lacking punch or distinctive phrasing." Writing for Rolling Stone, Greg Shaw was also downbeat, saying that the album "may be a necessary beginning".
In 1973, Quatro played on the Cozy Powell hit "Dance With the Devil", a track written by Mickie Most while Cozy Powell was part of the Rak Records roster.
Musicians who acted as her backing band around this period included Alastair McKenzie, Dave Neal, and Len Tuckey, with Robbie Blunt also being listed by some sources. Tuckey's brother, Bill, acted as tour manager.
With the exception of Australia, her chart success faltered thereafter, as proven with her 1975 hit "Your Mamma Won't Like Me", which proved to be a moderate success in the UK. Further singles, "I Bit off More Than I Could Chew" and "I May Be Too Young", both failed to reach the UK Top 50. Quatro recorded the album Aggro-Phobia in 1976 and released a new single in 1977 called "Tear Me Apart", which reached the UK top 30, her first hit to have done so in three years. Another year passed before she had another big hit, this time with a change to a more mellow style giving Quatro a 1978 single "If You Can't Give Me Love" that became a hit there and in the United Kingdom. Later that year, "Stumblin' In", a duet with Chris Norman of the band Smokie, reached number four in the US. Both tracks were featured on the If You Knew Suzi... album. A year later, Quatro released Suzi... and Other Four Letter Words, but none of her other work had much US success. This featured the hits "She's in Love with You", which made number 11 in Britain, "Mama's Boy", and "I've Never Been in Love".
Mike Chapman and Dreamland Records
In 1980, after Quatro's contract with Mickie Most had expired, she signed with Chapman's Dreamland Records.In the same year, she released the album Rock Hard; both the album and title single went platinum in Australia. Rock Hard was also used in the cult film Times Square and was included on the soundtrack album. The single reached number 11 in Australia, but only 68 in the UK due to distribution problems. At this point her hit single career clearly was beginning to wane. A second single from the Rock Hard album, titled "Lipstick", was released in February 1981, but radio refused to play it, as they claimed it sounded too much like "Gloria" by Them. Suzi Quatro's Greatest Hits, which was released in 1980, peaked at number four in the UK chart, becoming her highest-charting album there.