SUZI QUATRO - “Can The Can”
I’m pretty sure that the ‘ideal’ time for a pop songle has been revised up in my lifetime, the “three minute single” granted an unwieldy extra 30 seconds, which would make “Can The Can” a shot at perfection - except it stops, breathless, at two minutes five and has nowhere much to go from there. Quatro uses the breakdown to show her range, climbing from kittenish to kick-ass, and just proves what the first two peerless minutes suggested: nobody needs to hear her do soft and quiet. I’m simply not buying her mewing “can the can, honey” after hearing “SCRATCH OUT HER EYES!”. That moment is the song’s peak - it’s awesomely exciting, partly because the overdubbed Quatro-voices are so sharp and shrill and partly because of the way it barges into the song and just kicks aside the whole eagle/tiger/cat metaphor to show the violence in the glam dance. 7
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FT's Tom on August 3rd, 2007
Haha - the new layout/custom fields thing means that people have to click to see the mark. Sorry casual browsers!
“What new layout?” I hear you ask - check out http://freakytrigger.co.uk/populist/?group=scores - thanks to Alan! You can also order it chronologically.
Rosie on August 3rd, 2007
There’s a side to glam that I rather liked at the time and like even more now. The previous entry is a fine example, and there’s one coming up in the not-too-distant future that does even more for me.
On the other hand, there are things like this one that are inclined to turn me right off. The best thing about it, for me, is the little outbreak of funkiness just after the caesura. It’s something to cling to. Otherwise I hear an atonal shrieking that feels like toothache!
No more than 4 from me I’m afraid (Wizzard would have been 7, maybe 8.)
FT's Tom on August 3rd, 2007
Something for the stats buffs (though not of real interest to anyone except me - allow me a bit of self-indulgence of a summer afternoon)
The marks for Popular are intended to fall on a slightly flattened normal distribution, i.e. they’re meaningful relative to one another, and it should be (a lot) harder to get a 10 than a 9, then harder to get a 9 than an 8, and so on until 5 and 6 are the most common marks.
A quick look at the marks so far shows this has been broadly “working” - but also that various accusations of harsh marking are TRUE! After 331 (out of 1059 and counting) entries, we have:
Tracks getting between 1 and 4 - 34% of total.
Tracks getting 5 or 6: 36% of total.
Tracks getting between 7 and 10: 30% of total.
The first and last of these categories should be equal.
I’m not going to consciously try to correct this harshness though - I’ll just mark ‘em as I hear ‘em. I suspect that my growing up in the 80s will mean the odd sentimentally high mark though, so things will even up in the long run.
jeff w on August 3rd, 2007
The first and last of these categories should be equal.
Is that right, though? Given a bunch of pop songs from roughly the same era that might be true. But don’t you have to factor in that you have no context for many of the older songs marked so far? Or, to put it another way, once we get to the 80s isn’t it quite likely that the percentages will be skewed the other way due to the “I was there” factor?
…tho’ possibly the marks will have evened out once you reach #1059 and grumpy old man-dom prevails ;)
jeff w on August 3rd, 2007
(oops, you sort of said that in your last sentence, which I skipped over)
FT's Alan on August 3rd, 2007
“Haha - the new layout/custom fields thing means that people have to click to see the mark. Sorry casual browsers!”
arf. i’ve set it to add the score on the end when you are in the full article only. I think it will be simple to change it so that if the full article appears elsewhere without a “More>>” label it will be tacked on the end. I’ll have a look see.
Obv, if you prefer ppl having to click through … :-)
Rosie on August 3rd, 2007
I prefer having to click through. I like to get at least the gist of Tom’s review before I see what mark he’s given it.
Tom on August 3rd, 2007
I agree with Rosie actually - click through to mark is good!
FT's Alan on August 3rd, 2007
ok. i’ve reverted.
Doctor Casino on August 4th, 2007
“Can The Can” is great; I think a 7 is fair, because it would leave room for the non-qualifying “48 Crash” to have taken an 8 or a 9. Agreed about the role played by the eye-scratching interjection, also the slightly earlier “AH HAHHHHH!”
I discovered Suzi in a backwards way - a few years ago I kept seeing her records in the cheapie bin and eventually my curiousity won out: who was this woman with the funny name? Why was she surrounded by all these mutton-chopped guys? Boy, that’s a great outfit! etc. “Can The Can” was probably the first thing I checked out by her and it was enough to convince me to buy the debut record…which turns out to be a really good album, nice mix of glittery single-things and generic but enthusiastic bar-band material. “48 Crash” is the highlight for me, a little more singable, its chorus less woozy… (Woozy Quatro?) You can also pretend they’re saying “Party ain’t crashed” which is fun. Check this great, wind-machine-a-rific lipsynch video!
As for “Can,” the great thing about it, aside from the overdubbed shrieks, is the sweaty, dead-serious conviction of the performance; it’s enough to make an unattentive listener believe the lyrics are something other than continual patent nonsense. In general I have a soft spot for hits that try to capitalize on the fleeting popularity of specific bits of slang - here, Quatro sings like she’s convinced “Can the Can” is or should be slang used by somebody, anywhere…rather than a completely and totally nonsensical phrase. It’s in this gesture that she manages to do something none of these other glammy glittery people have done for me: create the impression of being a “real” “rock” band. Obviously these are loaded terms, and I have nothing personally invested in rock “authenticity,” but I think in terms of showmanship it’s worth noting when someone manages to pull off “the look” - considering how many acts try and fail!
One time I sang this (badly) at karaoke to no reception at all; some weeks later I sang “Shock the Monkey” and afterwards Blount was mocking the lyrics: “It’s like, ‘Wow!! This noun is also a verb! Fox the fox…rat on the rat…’” (pause) “…can the can…”
Doctor Casino on August 4th, 2007
Trivia buffs may also take note, Suzi is one of the easily-overlooked answers when you’re trying to think of lead singers who were also bassists…!
Doctor Casino on August 4th, 2007
Addendum, I wonder if my preference for Suzi over, say, Slade has to do with not being around at the time - so the burly guys in spaceman suits has a sort of wacky charm to me, but I’m not pressing my eyes to the screen going, “Oh my god, what is this? This is exciting and new!” Suzi Quatro and co look more like what I expect a rock band to look like, so even if their song is considerably less addictive than the Sweet singles by the same team, it somehow holds my attention more? That seems like a sad appraisal of my unexpectedly conservative preferences, so I suppose I’ll have to muse on this some more….
Waldo on August 4th, 2007
I think the world of Suzi and shall always be grateful to Mickey Most for bringing her over from Detroit. The little lady is in addition the ultimate anglophile and you can find her these days doing a late night doo-wop show for Radio 2. Yes, she’s a geezer bird, but she also had a pert little botty (still does), which was only eclipsed when “The Good Life” hit our screens a year later.
As for “Can”, I think it rocks, a belting little number, but I get the impression that this is a “Marmite Record”. You either love it or you hate it. Spread it thinly, peeps!
Marcello Carlin on August 5th, 2007
I was slightly dreading the entry of Suzi Q (*insert punchline of your choice here*) since to talk about what she meant to me in my youth would I fear necessitate straying into waters (ahem) which are perhaps not appropriate for a public website. Suffice it to say that my response to her and her hits was, and remains, just out of reach of rationalism (although my, um, moment of revelation coincided with her second number one).
Just as Pete Waterman still moans that Bananarama were the most difficult of all the acts he ever worked with, so Mickie Most’s trickiest customer was Suzi; unsurprising for a Detroitee who once frogmarched Iggy offstage for being a pest - when discussing how she was going to be presented she was adamant about the black leather, Most yawned “It’s been done before” and Suzi retorted “Not by ME!” And with a low-slung bass guitar to boot.
Her hits were all (or mostly) Chinn and Chapman numbers but the working relationship was symbiotic and there is evidence that both Suzi and Len Tuckey contributed a fair amount of their own musical and lyrical ideas (they didn’t get credited, but usually got the B-sides for their own compositions, so they received the royalties anyway).
But anyway…”Can The Can” is monstrous and the alternating between stormbursting and sotto voce purrs is of course proto-TANTRIC glam; percussion heavy with the feel that the beat definitely came first and the tune added on later, and it is unruly in a way which goes beyond even Slade and Wizzard; there is a threat or promise of something new here and the final “over the top lads” yelling and shrieking, joined by Tuckey’s top-line lead squeal (so he’s eventually come too!), has been described as proto-punk a thousand times but I will do so again anyway because here begins Joan Jett and the Runaways, here two years before Horses come Women In Rock…
From my own “marking” viewpoint I find it impossible to escape a tendency to give “routinely” high marks to records which meant a lot to me in specific periods of time I lived through, because of course it’s impossible for me to be objective about them…there is another future year (and it’s not the one you think) where, three clinkers notwithstanding, I would be exceptionally inclined to give all the number ones marks between 8-10.
But yes, I lived through 1973 as a boy and in pop kept hearing and seeing things, ideas, people I could never possibly have imagined before, and so the year has always retained a high reputation in my mind. As I say, Suzi opened up things of another kind in me, so I’d give this an 8, two marks away from perfect because of (a) Alastair Neal’s slightly superfluous electric piano and (b) “48 Crash,” her number three follow-up, redefining the male menopause as apocalypse, and hey, hello Lydia Lunch…
Rosie on August 5th, 2007
I guess Suzi Q must be a teenage boy thing…
Brian on August 7th, 2007
I have a foggy ( or fogey ) recollection that Suzi Q appeared on ” Happy Days “….or was it Pat Benetar.
Brian on August 7th, 2007
Foggy recollection confirmation : she was on Happy Days. Her character was ” Leather Toscadero ” !
That do anything for you , Marcello :-) ?
Marcello Carlin on August 7th, 2007
Sad to say, Suzi had been superseded in my affections by others by that stage, but she was very good in that show, directly before the Fonz indeed jumped the shark…
Billy Smart on August 7th, 2007
Suzi Quatro is also very good in a 1982 episode of Minder, ‘Dead Men do Tell Tales’. She plays a rock singer who goes out with Terry, until (Terry never has any luck with his girlfriends) he is appalled to discover her smoking cannabis.
Doctor Casino on August 8th, 2007
She sure seemed to have a knack for playing people’s rock singer relatives and girlfriends. Ironically enough, she refused a Leather Tuscadero spinoff show for fear of being typecast…
Snif on August 8th, 2007
She was also pretty good in an episode of “Dempsey And Makepeace” as a loopy ex of Dempsey’s.
intothefireuk on August 8th, 2007
I find myself in the position of concurring mostly with Marcello on this one. Suzi was radically different from other female artists of the era. Her ‘Girl on a Motorcycle’ image & primal shriek certainly spoke to me in more ways than an ONJ country girl next door in a flouncy dress type possibly could. Prior to Suzi (and pretty much for some time after) it was more usual to see pop princesses veer off into (or start in) TV variety show hell. I’m thinking Cilla, Lulu, Petula, Olivia, Dana, Hopkin etc. Although there were other women in rock (Joplin, Sonja Kristina etc) they were more hippy chic. Suzi provided a new blueprint which was simultaneously sexy & threatening and almost certainly influenced the likes of The Runaways & Siouxsie Sioux.
Having said all that Can the Can isn’t my favourite Suzi single, I still prefer the next few releases to this. A 7 from me.
FT's pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør on August 8th, 2007
“hippie chic” is a bit unfair on janis joplin, who pretty much invented her own style wholecloth (hippies copied her) — and tho koganbot seems off-radar currently, he will probbly on his return front for grace slick at this point, who wz also hard-as-nails (and proto-siouxsie-ish) in the early years, but the larger point is unarguable i think — SQ rocked the tomboy style before anyone else i can think of
semi-acknowledged proto-glam sexual fantasy as it coloured my pop love in these years:
i. bolan’s hot goblinism
ii. suzy’s grin and boyish figure
iii. SLADE — as an ultrabookish middleclass kid, i wz frightened of and excited by the idea that if i liked their gang too much they would come round and “visit” me :o
Marcello Carlin on August 8th, 2007
The irony was that she did eventually end up in West End musicals doing exactly the kind of song and dance routines that Lulu, Cilla &c were compelled to do at that period.
Marcello Carlin on August 8th, 2007
I can sympathise with Mark’s fantasy but the age difference meant that I was too young to appreciate Bolan that way, though even at seven I knew there was something “different” about his attraction; as for Slade, I confess to a thing (of sorts) about Dave Hill because he was girly and gormless but the mutton-chop faction never appealed to me in that sense.
FT's pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør on August 8th, 2007
IN DENIAL!
Marcello Carlin on August 8th, 2007
no i associated it with bernard manning frilly shirts ugh. holder top man and top voice but yeuch i’ve just eaten my breakfast twice.
Waldo on August 8th, 2007
Ah, Dave Hill! - Who can forget the scene from “Slade in Flame” when the goofy simpleton emerged from the place “Flame” were staying at in order to mingle with a crowd of girl fans outside? This was clearly supposed to be a treat for these young women but I could never see it. The inference, of course, was that Dave was the “cute” one, which is rather like trying to pick out the white guy in The Four Tops.
Marcello Carlin on August 8th, 2007
The late NME writer Tony Tyler once said that he was put off rock music for life after he saw an especially naff publicity photo of Mr Hill. Not sure which since there are so many to choose from…
FT's pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør on August 8th, 2007
CLOSETS ALL!
Brian on August 8th, 2007
Interview with Suzi Q - about her new thingy :
http://music.guardian.co.uk/rock/story/0,,2139779,00.html
Marcello Carlin on August 9th, 2007
I MUST see that Willie Rushton/Suzi Q musical about Tallulah Bankhead NOW!!!
Mark G on August 9th, 2007
again, what Marc said.
FT's doofuus2003 on August 9th, 2007
Not sure about the girrls in rock thing; I’m not accessing any database but an imperfect memory, but in the UK was not Maggie Bell already with Stone the Crows, maybe also Elkie Brooks with DaDa, pre-Vinegar Joe? Not that I like either of them any more than SQ, i.e. didn’t care for any of ‘em really. For the attractive female singers, I think one has to turn to the soul and r’n'b field, (but please exclude Tina Turner)
FT's pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør on August 9th, 2007
late 60s UK R&B not aimed chartwards, let alone at horny gender-confused teens, so yr point falls — also they were both singers, not bass-players
incidence of tomboyism in soul and R&B is interesting question, tho
“I think one has to turn” — yes plz note that yr libido is PARTICULAR TO YOU, and does not impact on the truth of mine — what you mean here is “I had to turn” (naturally i consider yr overbroad protestation to be secret admission of the scary hottness of noddy) :D
Waldo on August 9th, 2007
No rock chick could hold a candle to Clodagh Rogers. She looked just like the girlies who featured on the covers of all those “Top of the Pops” albums, the “Now…” of their day.
Marcello Carlin on August 9th, 2007
Noddy was neither scary nor hot to me; you’re not going to get me on this one…
Saw Denise van Outen the other day in that terrible TV ad for Morrison’s supermarkets and she now appears to be modelling herself on the aforementioned Clodagh. Again I was far too young to appreciate fully the sensuality of “Come Back And Shake Me” but now I can understand why it shot up, and so did the single, boom boom…
Waldo on August 9th, 2007
Marcello - Exactly right. And, as I have mentioned at another time, Clodagh’s Euro song, “Jack in the Box” went even further with her promise to “bounce up and down on my (ie: MY) spring…” Boom Boom indeed. And Woo-Hoo as well.
Erithian on August 13th, 2007
Waldo, I didn’t comment before when you mentioned Clodagh Rodgers, but I found that an odd taste – never did it for me whereas Olivia was an altogether prettier version of the same. Still, each to his own – as I mentioned a while back, my early 70s pre-pubescent crush was Eve Graham, and I’m not sure how many people shared that particular taste!
But Suzi – hell, now you’re talking. The sight of her in those leathers did things to me that I wasn’t quite sure about, being as it was just after my 11th birthday… And as for the actual song, I have to disagree with Tom’s assertion that it has nowhere much to go after the breakdown at two minutes five. For me what happens after that is essence of 1973 – the fat Glitter Band drums, the re-establishment of the riff, the slightly menacing vocal building back up to near-hysteria. Where other records of the era could and did repeat until fade, this did something else entirely, and was all the more memorable because of it. Fun, life-enhancing, and yet it was still basically nonsense. Like I said, essence of ’73.
Waldo on August 13th, 2007
Erithian - It’s a good job I’ve never mentioned my Joyce Grenfell fetish…
Marcello Carlin on August 14th, 2007
lets_not_even_go_there.jpg
Waldo on August 14th, 2007
Margaret Rutherford?
Marcello Carlin on August 14th, 2007
Results 1 - 10 of about 25 for “don’t drag me into your private hell”. (0.35 seconds)
FT's admin on August 14th, 2007
she’s currently doing the PR rounds (daytime telly etc) plugging her biog btw
mike on August 20th, 2007
Now available in your nearest HMV/Virgin/Woolies/Asda etc, on a 5CD comp called 101 70s Hits. Released today, priced around 15 quid, contains a large wodge of UK Number Ones, and is notably heavy on the Roy Wood: California Man, 10538 Overture, See My Baby Jive, Angel Fingers, Forever and Dear Elaine.
FT's Lena on June 15th, 2008
I just heard this on today’s POTP and thought I heard the first female punk!
DJ Punctum on June 16th, 2008
See My Baby Jive at 3, Rubber Bullets at 2 and Can The Can at the top; greatest top three ever?
wichita lineman on June 16th, 2008
Hard to fault, tho if it had been Angel Fingers, The Dean And I, and 48 Crash the hat would have been worn at an even jauntier angle.
Loved this too, even though I was a shade too young for Suzi’s leathers to mean much to me.
Intreeged to know exactly which ’soul/r’n'b tomboys’ lord sükråt was referring to… trying to think of a 1973 proto-Kelis. Could they really exist or are you just teasing us, Noddy lover?
Sadly predictable but the young ONJ was one of the first femme singers to make me “feel all weird inside”, as Harry Nilsson would have it.
FT's SteveIson on July 20th, 2008
48 Crash is her best for me too…that stop/start insane scream ‘Your-so-YOUNG’…Its got those neat chromatic chords like early GG (i didn’t know i loved you) and the Glitter band had in too-which Chinn Chapman rarely used..