I feel like I have been WAITING for this documentary about Suzi Quatro – glam rock rock star Queen of the 1970s – who inspired generations. If you don’t know about Suzi Quatro, please see this wonderful documentary and get educated. You’ll get obsessed! I reviewed for Ebert. And of course: Elvis is involved. Because Elvis is everywhere.
Suzi Q is my kind of woman. She’s my kind of role model. There’s a lot of her 70s performances on YouTube and they’re always thrilling because SHE is thrilling. She’s still out among us, performing, touring! There’s still time to see her in action!
And for all you 70s kids out here … here’s a clip showing all of Suzi Quatro’s musical performances on Happy Days …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArUtqZxYF7I
It was seen as career suicide – but Quatro wasn’t gaining inroads in America for whatever reason – this brought her to a new audience. But then she was associated with a sitcom as opposed to being a gigantic rock star – like she was in Europe.
It’s an interesting story.
And here she is 2 years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=545K7itrCP0
I need to catch her in concert.
Once I’m allowed to leave my damn house.
If I have the timeline in my head, “48 Crash” was her second monster hit – but don’t quote me on that – feel free to correct!! at any rate, it’s a great song – here’s the original music video from 1973:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=545K7itrCP0
Well this is going on the must-see list….I don’t know if it’s in the doc, but Suzi had my favorite acting anecdote of all time. She was having trouble with a scene in Happy Days and the director sent her off set to get herself together. She couldn’t figure out what to do so she finally decided “I’ll just imitate Joan Jett imitating me!” Needless to say, it worked.
lol!! I hadn’t heard that.
LOVE the ego – I think the ego has saved her, kept her safe – sometimes the ego ruins people, but somehow with her her big ego has protected her.
In the doc, Joan Jett tells a funny story – when Suzi Q was on Happy Days – people would come up to Joan on the street all the time – calling out, “Hey! You play Leather Tuscadero!” after the 10th time saying “No. I’m Joan Jett. Suzi Quatro plays Leather’ she finally just got exhausted and was like, “Yeah! hey! thanks!”
and … would love to hear your thoughts on why you think Suzi Quatro didn’t really “hit” here – except for some ballad duet she did – where she DIDN’T play the bass…
Is it just the novelty of her? But she was huge everywhere else – Austria, England – she joked that when she had a baby she got as much tabloid coverage as Princess Diana – Japan – #1 hits over and over.
So … was America just fuddy-duddies? even though they embraced Joan Jett literally 5 years later?
I don’t get it – like I said I wish the doc had really gotten into that more.
MTV – and the music video thing that exploded in the 80s – pre-dated her, but really not by much. she did “have” music videos – but maybe if she had had that in her arsenal too – create some kick-ass legendary videos – and that would “translate” to America?
But again – Joan Jett EXPLODED. in my memory, it was Joan Jett and Prince, practically simultaneously – she was that huge.
why were “we” ready for Joan? Are we only allowed to have ONE hot tough chick playing an instrument at a time?
I don’t know … I’m asking. what do you think?
I think it’s hard to remember how fast things changed in the 70’s. (We’ve discussed this a little before I think….in my small town high school in 1977 a girl got pregnant and she got married, but OF COURSE she had to drop out. It wasn’t even a question. That was what you did. My nephew was the father so I knew a little about it, as they say. The following spring, I marched down the graduation isle with four pregnant girls in a class of 85 kids. In the space of a year, people learned to shrug at that sort of thing. That was the 70’s.)
It’s worth remembering Suzi didn’t come from nowhere. There’s a great interview she did on her radio show with Mary Weiss, the lead singer of the Shangri-Las, another of Suzi’s inspirations, and if memory serves they commiserated a bit about being ahead of their respective times. (Not sure if it was that particular interview, but somewhere Mary said when she went to England for the first time in the mid-60’s, it was in the middle of the Mods vs. Rockers thing: “I got off the plane wearing black leather. Nobody had to ask whose side I was on.”) And while the Shangs hit big for a moment, they were subsequently buried everywhere except oldies’ radio. Which meant Suzi had her sources of inspiration but still had to start over. And let’s also not forget that Joan’s first band, the Runaways, got a BIG push (like Suzi never got) from the media and the recording industry…and they still flopped. World still not ready.
And then, all of a sudden, in the spring of ’82, in the blink of an eye, Joan was at #1 for weeks on end with “I Love Rock and Roll” and half of that time she was keeping the Go-Go’s out of the top spot at the very moment when they were becoming the first (and to date ONLY) self-contained all female band to hit #1 on the album chart. Why was the world suddenly ready? My best explanation is that culture, especially pop culture often works like a dam break…the pressure builds and builds just out of sight and one day the water rushes through and everybody says “Well, of course! I knew that damn was gonna break some day.” I probably got permanent high blood pressure from arguing with people who insisted that the Go-Go’s were “inevitable,” that the world had obviously and permanently progressed and now there would be a flood of female bands in the Top 40! My response was always “Not if they have to play like that there won’t be.”
Which kind of goes to your point about “one at a time.” In effect the answer’s always been yes. After Suzi, Joan. After Joan….well not so much really, even though the influence spreads in other ways. Same for the Go-Go’s and the Bangles. Somebody clears the ground…and “the system,” however defined, decides, okay, that’s enough of that. Just that far and no further!
Anyway, that’s my two cents on a subject worthy of a few books!
And, I confess, growing up in the 70’s, I never heard of Suzi before Happy Days and “Stumblin’ In.”
https://theroundplaceinthemiddle.com/?p=6560
The doc really gets into the whole Pleasure Seekers journey – and the world the band entered into – and how in a mere 2, 3 years – they were … passe. Everything had changed. The 60s, man!! Who could keep up? Interesting about the Shangri-Las – it sounds like the Pleasure Seekers had a somewhat similar journey.
I still remember when Joan Jett hit. I was a child – a tough tomboy child – and I felt like omg this is who I have been waiting for. I was LIVING on the 70s tomboys in movies (I wrote about that – https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/present-tense-tomboys/ ) – but once you hit adolescence … where do the tomboys go?? where are my role models? Joan Jett steps on the stage. and it was so interesting – because then a couple years later came Madonna – who I didn’t like at first – I was too young, it was too sexual – and now of course as an adult I see how sexy Joan Jett is – but her APPEAL was her sneer, her stance, her voice, how hard she rocked.
And speaking of Madonna – she kind of sucked up the Cyndi Lauper oxygen. I was always a bigger Cyndi fan. Madonna was a game-changer, for sure.
The grunge era – when I was in my 20s – was a glorious time. I still love all those bands – AND it’s so great because all of them are now getting back together and putting out albums. I should have put the Breeders on the list in the review. They were huge for me.
so there were all these different bands – not just ONE.
Then … along came the Lolitas. The Britneys and Christinas – whom I do like – but suddenly … being sexy was the only thing that mattered. Plus … teenagers, not women.
weird.
My reaction to Cyndi and Madonna was much the same…and it seemed like the same dynamic. Only one female superstar at a time please. So Cyndi became a “disappointment” because she only sold thirty million records…and of course waits and waits and waits on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame…just like Brenda Lee had to wait 16 years and Linda Ronstadt had to wait 22 years and Donna Summer and Dusty Springfield had to die, etc.
Madonna got more blow-back than any of them in the beginning and I think the main reason she DIDN’T have to wait on the RRHOF (or anything else) was because she was superb at manipulating masks, like Dylan or Prince. Nothing says you’re in control like being good at masks and the intelligentsia eat it up….once they’re clever enough to catch on.
Two good anecdotes on the Madonna/Cyndi dynamic:
Gina Schock was interviewed while the Go-Go’s were still together and when she was asked about Madonna (just then breaking big) she said “She’s probably undermining everything we’ve tried to do, but every time I hear ‘Borderline’ I turn up the radio.”
A thousand books and articles later that still might be the smartest thing anyone ever said on the subject.
Brenda Lee was once asked about women who came later who acknowledged her influence and she mentioned Cyndi, among others, and related a story about going to one of her concerts right after She’s So Unusual came out. Cyndi found out she was in the audience and invited her back stage during the intermission. She said “Oh you’ve got to come on and do a number with me. We’ll do ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’ and don’t worry, it’s real easy and I’ll teach you all the words.”
Brenda put her hand on her arm and said “Cyndi honey, I have a teenage daughter. I know all the words.”
One way or another the world moves on. Sometimes it even inches forward.
// So Cyndi became a “disappointment” because she only sold thirty million records //
I mean … right?
That Brenda Lee story brought tears to my eyes. Thank you for sharing it!
and I only knew the first part of Gina Schock’s quote – which always seemed to me to show that a lot of people did not understand what Madonna was doing – that her “Boy Toy” belt was ironic, a “vamp” – and not at all meant to be taken seriously. Like … Madonna may have been sexy but nobody was using her, she was nobody’s “toy.” I think a lot of people – particularly women – didn’t get it, or felt threatened, or like … Madonna was a “step back.” (Similar, actually, as I mentioned in my review – to the British press assuming Suzi Quatro was being manipulated by the men around her – nobody could believe that a woman would participate willingly and/or CREATE an image like that – all on her own. People are so weird about sexy women. I’m so freakin over it.)
This, again, is the kind of thing where only one “kind” of woman is deemed acceptable. Women participate in this too. Madonna is a weird case because she became so huge her stardom was different than other people’s stardom. You can’t really compare her to anyone else. And so I guess I understand the threat she represented to people who DIDN’T want to “trade” on their sexuality and sexiness.
Anyway … I think the second part of Schock’s quote is excellent, and gives a deeper shading to her whole thought process.
If memory serves (and I admit, these days it doesn’t always) Gina’s quote was from an interview the band gave to a very small Boston magazine (which I got hold of in Florida by some miracle and then stupidly let get away from me somewhere along the line). I’m betting if you heard/read it elsewhere it was edited by someone who didn’t like Madonna–or more likely hated her!
Interesting on the British press assuming Suzi was some male executive or producer’s manipulated image and/or fantasy. That was DEEPLY baked into the cake at that point. The Phil Spector image was literally as far as “serious” rock critics had interpreted the story. Greil Marcus did a famous and highly influential essay on Girl Groups where he identified the key auteur-ish dynamic as White Male Producer/Black Female Singer….Then gave a list of examples, half of which didn’t fit his own definition (Either the singer was white or the producer was black or, in the case of Lesley Gore, both). Which I’ve always pointed to as Exhibit A for “And in other news…sex is destabilizing.” Men in particular seem to lose their hold on rationality in its presence, though, as you say, it effects women too, if in somewhat different ways.
Which is probably why, when Greg Shaw was interviewed about the Shangri-Las, all he could think to say was “They were the tough sluts.” He meant it as a compliment and it went without saying that this was an image perpetuated by male producers/executives and taken as gospel because the people involved behind the scenes (Shadow Morton, Jeff Barry, Leiber and Stoller, Artie Butler) were all industry legends. I mean, there was NO WAY a bunch of teenage girls who didn’t even write songs came up with all that had become implied by the phrase “The Shangri-Las.”
Except they did. When somebody finally talked to Mary Weiss at length, years later, she revealed that the Shangri-Las effectively had no management. That they named themselves, picked their own (iconic) clothes, arranged their own harmonies (they had studied the Everly Brothers), sang every note on every one of their records, choreographed themselves and, oh yes, looked out for each other on the endless tours where they were often the only girls on the bus…and likely the only act that had no manager. (How Weiss reverse-integrated a women’s bathroom on a James Brown tour in Houston is another story–there are lots of ways to be tough.)
Over the years, some version of that story has been revealed again and again by the “puppets” when they were finally given a chance to speak: Arlene Smith, Ronnie Spector, Nancy Sinatra, Martha Reeves and many others (and, like Mary Weiss, all SCORN the term Girl Group because they recognize it was designed to limit them) have all spoken about their frustrations at not being taken seriously as creative forces on their own records, and one of the patterns Madonna broke was the notion that ANY of this had to be accepted. Before her, it was assumed that any young female who didn’t write songs and wasn’t Janis Joplin, the standard exception who proved the rule (and, hey, wasn’t the fact that she drank herself to death a cautionary tale for anybody who wanted to go around breaking those particular rules?) , couldn’t possibly be in control of anything even as basic as what their own voices sounded like…it had to have been filtered by some wizardly male presence. After her, the dynamic shifted. Not entirely–I still have to explain that Britney Spears beat out ten thousand people for her job to people who got theirs because the other two applicants had criminal records (and I’m not even kidding)–but at least the idea that the sexy young woman might be in control of her own image is no longer revolutionary.
Anyway, one reason I thought about all of this so intensely back in the day (and retained a lifelong interest) was because I tried to write a novel in the early 80’s predicting the rise of a female superstar who would shift the ground by being uniquely herself in the same way that Elvis had been…and becoming almost as big as a result. I spent a lot of time studying the ways women had asserted themselves and what the reactions had been. And one reason I was so reluctant to accept Madonna in the beginning was because it meant admitting she had beaten me to the punch. I resisted all the way up to “Papa Don’t Preach”…and then, after five years and five hundred pages, I realized it was time to move on!
This is a great story. I love that Elvis called her. It was 1974 and the man was PAYING ATTENTION.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R16yPzfn9i8
Wow. So touching and so Cosmic! I’ll be sharing this with my nephew who’s my family’s other Elvis fanatic. He could use some cheering up.
Thanks to both of you. I thoroughly enjoyed your discussion, look forward to the documentary and now, must go and listen to Suzi’s “Singing With Angels.”
Because Elvis. And Suzi.