Suzi Quatro

Susan Kay Quatro (born June 3, 1950) is an American singer, bass guitarist, songwriter, and actress. In the 1970s, she scored a string of hit singles that found greater success in Europe and Australia than in her homeland, reaching No. 1 in the UK, other European countries and Australia with her singles "Can the Can" (1973) and "Devil Gate Drive" (1974).

Quatro released her self-titled debut album in 1973. Since then, she has released fifteen studio albums, ten compilation albums, and one live album. Her other solo hits include "48 Crash", "Daytona Demon", "The Wild One", and "Your Mama Won't Like Me". 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 No. 4 in the US.

Between 1973 and 1980, Quatro was awarded six Bravo Ottos. 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, ''The Devil in Me'', was released in 2021 and saw the collaboration of her son Richard Tuckey who had already taken part in ''No Control'' in 2019. Quatro also remains active in radio broadcasting.

Early life and family

Quatro was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, United States. Her paternal grandfather was an Italian immigrant to the U.S. Her family name of "Quattrocchi" ("four eyes", meaning "bespectacled") 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. Her father, Art, was a semi-professional musician and worked at General Motors. Her mother, Helen, was Hungarian. In this environment, Quatro grew to be "extrovert but solitary", according to Philip Norman of ''The Sunday Times'', and she only became close to her mother after leaving the U.S. 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. Quatro has a brother, Michael Quatro, who 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 ( bongo or congas). 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 would sing and play bass in the band. The band also later featured another sister, Arlene. Many of their performances were in cabaret, where attention was (initially) focused more on their physical looks than their actual music. They sometimes had to wear miniskirts and hair wigs, which Quatro later considered to be necessary evils in the pursuit of success. However, they would become well-known fixtures in the burgeoning Detroit music community.

The Pleasure Seekers recorded three singles and released two of these: "Never Thought You'd Leave Me" / "What a Way to Die" (1966) and "Light of Love" / "Good Kind of Hurt" (1968). 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 moved to England in 1971, after being spotted by the record producer Mickie Most, who had by that time founded his own label, Rak Records. Most had been persuaded to see Cradle by Michael, the brother of the Quatro sisters who had assumed a managerial role for the band. In common with many in the record industry at the time, Most was seeking a female rock singer who could fill the void that the death of Janis Joplin had created. According to the ''Encyclopedia of Popular Music'', his attention to Quatro was drawn by "her comeliness and skills as bass guitarist, singer and chief show-off in Cradle."

She had also been attracting attention from Elektra Records and subsequently explained that "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 while being 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 No. 1 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 androgynous 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" (1973) which Philip Auslander describes as having "seemingly nonsensical and virtually unintelligible lyrics" was a No. 1 hit in parts of Europe and in Australia.

"Can the Can" was followed by three further hits: "48 Crash" (1973), "Daytona Demon" (1973) and "Devil Gate Drive" (1974). "Can the Can", "48 Crash" and "Devil Gate Drive" each 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 criticised 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. It would take another year for 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 No. 4 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 No. 11 in Britain, "Mama's Boy" (number 34), and "I've Never Been in Love" (number 56).

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 No. 11 in Australia, but only 68 in the UK due to distribution problems. It was clear at this point that the hit single career 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 No. 4 in the UK charts, becoming her highest-charting album there.

Independence

After Chapman's Dreamland Records folded in 1981, Quatro was left without a record label.

Her last UK hit for some time was " Heart of Stone" in late 1982. In 1983 another single "Main Attraction" was released. It failed to chart, but did become a moderate airplay hit. She commented in an article for ''Kerrang!'' in 1983, after playing a successful show at Reading Festival on August 27, that she did not care about being in the charts, but was more interested in releasing what she wanted to; commenting that she started in 1964, and did not become famous for nine years "I would never accept having my career molded by other people ... I've kept working consistently even though I've not been in the charts." Around this time, Quatro recorded a new album that was shelved until 1997, when it was issued as ''Unreleased Emotion''. Quatro briefly returned to recording for two more singles, "I Go Wild" in 1984, and in 1985 her " Tonight I Could Fall in Love"/"Good Girl (Looking for a Bad Time)" single reached No. 140 in the UK charts.
Quatro also collaborated with Bronski Beat and members of the Kinks, Eddie and the Hot Rods and Dr. Feelgood on the Mark Cunningham-produced cover version of David Bowie's "Heroes", released the following year as the 1986 BBC
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