Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube
    Nostalgia Central
    • Home
    • Blog
      • Lists
    • Television
      • TV by Decade
        • TV – 1950s
        • TV – 1960s
        • TV – 1970s
        • TV – 1980s
        • TV – 1990s
      • Comedy
      • Drama
      • Kids TV
      • Variety
      • News & Sport
      • Advertisements
    • Music
      • Music by Decade
        • Music – 1950s
        • Music – 1960s
        • Music – 1970s
        • Music – 1980s
        • Music – 1990s
      • Artists – A to K
        • Artists – A
        • Artists – B
        • Artists – C
        • Artists – D
        • Artists – E
        • Artists – F
        • Artists – G
        • Artists – H
        • Artists – I
        • Artists – J
        • Artists – K
      • Artists – L to Z
        • Artists – L
        • Artists – M
        • Artists – N
        • Artists – O
        • Artists – P
        • Artists – Q
        • Artists – R
        • Artists – S
        • Artists – T
        • Artists – U
        • Artists – V
        • Artists – W
        • Artists – X
        • Artists – Y
        • Artists – Z
      • Artists – 0 to 9
      • Genres
      • Music on Film & TV
      • One-Hit Wonders
      • Playlists
      • Online Radio
    • Movies
      • Movies by Decade
        • Movies – 1950s
        • Movies – 1960s
        • Movies – 1970s
        • Movies – 1980s
        • Movies – 1990s
      • Movies – 0 to 9
      • Movies – A to K
        • Movies – A
        • Movies – B
        • Movies – C
        • Movies – D
        • Movies – E
        • Movies – F
        • Movies – G
        • Movies – H
        • Movies – I
        • Movies – J
        • Movies – K
      • Movies – L to Z
        • Movies – L
        • Movies – M
        • Movies – N
        • Movies – O
        • Movies – P
        • Movies – Q
        • Movies – R
        • Movies – S
        • Movies – T
        • Movies – U
        • Movies – V
        • Movies – W
        • Movies – X
        • Movies – Y
        • Movies – Z
    • Pop Culture
      • Fads
      • Toys & Games
      • Fashion
      • Decor
      • Food & Drink
      • People
      • Technology
      • Transport
    • Social History
      • 1950s Year by Year
      • 1960s Year by Year
      • 1970s Year by Year
      • 1980s Year by Year
      • 1990s Year by Year
      • Events
    Nostalgia Central
    Home»Music»Artists - L to Z»Artists - S
    Artists - S Music - 1970s 5 Mins Read

    Suzi Quatro

    Share
    Facebook Twitter Pinterest WhatsApp Reddit Email

    Suzi Quatro was born Susan Quatrocchio in Detroit on 3 June 1950 – the daughter of Detroit jazz bandleader Art Quatro. She played bongos for her dad’s jazz band at the age of 8, dropped out of school at 14 and started her professional career in the mid-Sixties when under the name Suzi Soul she became a TV Go-Go dancer.

    suziquatro12

    She later teamed up with her two sisters to form The Pleasure Seekers, an outfit that remained together for five years and even at one point were flown to Guam to entertain US troops wounded in Vietnam.

    The Pleasure Seekers’ first single, Never Thought You’d Leave Me b/w What A Way To Die, emerged late in 1966 and the group was also featured on an album, Best Of The Hideouts (1967), along with other Detroit celebrities The Under-dogs, The Yorkshires and The Henchmen.

    A brief sojourn with her sister Patti’s band, Fanny – as well as her own band (Cradle) followed.

    It was playing with Cradle in a Detroit club in 1971 that the then twenty-year-old Suzi was seen by the top British record producer Mickie Most whose many production successes included The Animals, Herman’s Hermits, Lulu, Jeff Beck, and Nancy Sinatra.

    Most signed Suzi to his fledgeling RAK label, and her first professional appearances in the UK came in 1972 when she formed a band comprising guitarist Len Tuckey (subsequently Suzi’s husband), Alistair McKenzie on keyboards (soon to be replaced by Mike Deacon) and Keith Hodge on drums, and set off on a UK tour supporting Slade.

    suziquatro15

    After her debut single, Rolling Stone, flopped (except in Portugal, where it reached #1), Mickie Most put Suzi in the hands of Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn – who also wrote many hits for Mud, Smokie, and The Sweet.

    The Chinnichap machine provided her with her first hit, Can The Can, in 1973 which made up for any disappointment by reaching #1 in the British charts within four weeks and remaining in the Top 30 for more than three months.

    Suzi, dressed in leather jump-suit and wielding what seemed – given her tiny stature – a somewhat over-sized bass guitar, appeared on Top Of The Pops backed by her unshaven bruisers – Tuckey, McKenzie and Dave Neal, who had replaced Hodge on drums.

    A stream of similar-sounding, basic rock throbbers followed – 48 Crash (#3), Daytona Demon (#14), Devil Gate Drive (#1), Too Big (#14), The Wild One (#7), If You Can’t Give Me Love (#4), and She’s In Love With You  (#11).

    suziquatro11

    All were guaranteed Top Twenty status by the supremely silly bubblegum-boogie formula devised by Chinn and Chapman combined with Quatro and company’s bish-bash-bosh delivery and leather girl/boy packaging.

    Her success also spread to Europe (especially Germany) where she scored a huge hit single, duetting with Smokie‘s Chris Norman on Stumblin’ In.

    Ironically, though, for an American-born singer, Suzi failed to break in any major way in the US. Can The Can peaked at #56 in the Billboard charts, although she had some success with All Shook Up. The Stumblin’ In duet with Chris Norman, however, reached the Top 10 across the Atlantic.

    quatro_003

    Hardly surprisingly, many critics found Quatro’s marketing angle irritating and/or offensive: “An image superficially bloated with potential but really just punk Penthouse fodder – all lip-smacking hard-on leather, free-wheeling hell-cat raunch projected via a bunch of ChinniChap readymades” wrote New Musical Express critic Nick Kent in 1975, while Rolling Stone just sneered “pop tart”. But there was no denying the commercial brilliance of the ploy.

    At a time when male popsters –Marc Bolan, The Sweet and the rest – were making fortunes out of simplistic rock played in lip-gloss, mascara, high-heeled boots and sparkly costumes, here was a girl coming on like a tomboy, being as unsavoury and obnoxious as The Rolling Stones, saying:

    “I feel funny in dresses and skirts . . . Girls identify with me because I haven’t got big tits . . . The guys in my band don’t wear glitter – they’re real men”.

    Black leather is sexy and it’s got original pose, perhaps, but in 1973 when the boys were like baby-faced girls and the girls were Olivia Newton-John or Lynsey de Paul, it was perfect.

    Suzi released a succession of albums including Aggro-phobia, If You Knew Suzi, and the eponymous Suzi Quatro.

    By the end of the Seventies, however, her chart career was on the wane and, perhaps wisely, Suzi moved more into the general entertainment area.

    From 1977 she appeared regularly as wayward, happy-go-lucky, would-be rock star Leather Tuscadero on the US TV series Happy Days (pictured) and also put in cameo appearances – again portraying ˜Suzi Quatro” – in the English crime/comedy series Minder.

    By the early Eighties, she had become as much a ‘personality’ as a rock musician and starred in the West End revival of the musical Annie Get Your Gun– a far cry from her days as a raunchy female rock star.

    She has also produced her own show, Tallulah Who?, about the life of American silent movie star Tallulah Bankhead, as well as appearing in other UK TV shows.

    Suzi also enjoys a successful career as a radio presenter in the UK.

    In 2011 Suzi reunited with producer Mike Chapman for the album In The Spotlight, which was as close to a true “return to form” as anyone could ever hope for.

    Suzi’s original keyboard player Alistair McKenzie passed away in June 2015.

    “You can have class and you can have excitement – but you can’t have them both together”. 
    Suzi Quatro. 1983

    Suzi Quatro
    Vocals, bass
    Len Tuckey
    Guitar
    Alistair McKenzie
    Keyboards
    Mike Deacon
    Keyboards
    Keith Hodge
    Drums
    Dave Neal 
    Drums

    Video

    Related Posts

    • Glam Rock
      Glam Rock
      Glam Rock laughed in the face of the pompous pseudo-intellectualism…
    • Steampacket
      Steampacket
      Because their ranks included a future superstar, The Steampacket have…
    • Slack Alice
      Slack Alice
      Fronted by the superbly-named Alice Spring (real name Sandra Alfred…
    • Maria Muldaur
      Maria Muldaur
      Maria Grazia Rosa Domenica d'Amato was born on 12 September…
    • Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman
      Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman
      "If you're going to be in the music business, you…
    • War
      War
      War traces its roots back to a Californian high school…
    • Brian Cadd
      Brian Cadd
      Instead of becoming a rock star, Perth-born Brian Cadd could…
    • Smokie
      Smokie
      Back in 1964, Chris Norman, Terry Uttley and Alan Silson…

    Glam
    Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest WhatsApp Reddit Email
    Previous ArticleStevie Ray Vaughan
    Next Article Stiff Records

    Comments are closed.

    Follow us
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • YouTube
    • Instagram
    You May Also Like
    • Amazon Women On The Moon (1987)
      Five directors contributed to this scattershot collection of […]
    • Prick Up Your Ears (1987)
      The life of doomed gay British playwright Joe Orton gets a […]
    • Gnip Gnop
      Parker Brothers designed and launched Gnip Gnop (read it […]
    • Oh! What A Lovely War (1969)
      In his first project as a director, Richard Attenborough […]
    • Now, That’s What I Call Music
      Compilation LPs of the hits of the day had been released in the […]
    • Bad Timing (1980)
      Bad Timing is seen in flashback after a traumatic incident sends […]
    Twitter Feed
    Please note


    Nostalgia Central covers the period 1950 to 1999 and contains some words and references which reflect the attitudes of those times and which may be considered culturally sensitive, offensive or inappropriate today.
    Popular Tags
    1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1975 1976 Action Figures Amicus Arcade games Australia Beach movies Beatles Blaxploitation Board games Britpop Canada Crime Disco Disney Doo-Wop Elvis Presley Girl groups Glam Goth Hammer Heavy Metal Irwin Allen Labels Merseybeat Mod revival Motown New Romantic New Wave NWOBHM Oi! One-hit wonders Power Pop Pub rock Punk Radio Scotland Ska Soul music Surf music
    Search Nostalgia Central
    Copyright © 1998, 2022 Nostalgia Central
    • About
    • Contact
    • FAQ

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.