SUZI QUATRO – "Devil Gate Drive"

I’m afraid that, once again, Suzi’s charisma is rather lost on me. I still can’t get past the atonal shriek that passes for a vocal. It doesn’t excite me at all, it gives me a headache.

Once again, it must be a boy thing.

I find this song spectacularly uninteresting. As a female bassist Suzi Quatro should technically be one of my role models but she has completely passed me by, poss due to SHONKY SONGS. Must do better.

KIM DEAL.

That’s all.

Editor’s Note: Mr Carlin has requested that his comments on “Devil Gate Drive” by Suzi Quatro be withheld from the public domain on the grounds that some things are too personal to express publicly even by his own puerile standards. However, he does wish it to be recorded that he would have given this song a 9, on account of “the number of times the first time”; this deliberately abstruse and impenetrable remark should be treated with the shuffling disdain it fully merits.

Hard really to know what to say about DGD that one hasn’t already said about CTC – as Tom says they’re drawn from the same well, although I do prefer this one – let’s say it’s one of her more coherent lyrics! I love the tinkling keyboard behind the build-up as well, although next time you see the clip (I can’t access YouTube so don’t know if the clip Jeff’s posted is the TOTP one) take a look at the keyboard player, about seven feet tall and a hopeless dancer!

We won’t be encountering Suzi again in this series, so let’s salute her contribution now – still entertaining us on Radio 2 as well. I can well imagine that Tina Weymouth for one would pip her as a role-model female bassist, but as the most TOTP-visible example of what would later be called Girl Power she must have inspired a lot of women to get into music. And there’s a batch of contributors on here who remember her effect on pre-teen boys as well. Mind you, for playing havoc with the hormones there’s another female vocalist coming up in a few months’ time who was even more effective.

Marcello, this is a debate that’s raged for 30-odd years, so we can wait a little while (four songs perhaps) to reopen it now, but… yes, in any other context her co-vocalist would have had the desired effect, but the woman I’m talking about was The One!

Back to Suzi for a mo – fond memories of her summer ’74 outing “Too Big” which turned the attitude and the Glitter Band drums up to 11 but was the start of her commercial decline. I enjoyed the B-side “In The Morning”, in the bridge of which Suzi and (I presume) real-life hubby Len Tuckey play a bickering couple – “Gee I sure would like some breakfast Gloria”; “neeaahhhh, why don’t you GIT LORRSST?” Happy days.

If you read her new autobiography, that was a fairly accurate picture of their marriage…

I enjoyed the cover of “Too Big” which Nigella Lawson should study for the genuine Bacofoil = sex equation.

The Great WHICH ONE? Debate will duly be reopened in the Popular post Tom is PH4ERing to write.

The crucial one for me had been having hits since ’72 but never had a number one so she won’t come up here, alas.

“I’ve got a gun so you’d better beware”…

Well, the first half of 1974 marked my brief heterosexual phase, but my particular Dream Gal was foxy, busty, corseted and suspendered Dana Gillespie. Suzi Q was more like one of the lads to me, but the androgyny didn’t push any buttons – clearly I liked my women to be women! (*embarrassed cough*)

Yes, I too prefer “Devil Gate Drive” over “Can The Can”, which left me cold at the time. This one’s warmer, poppier, more of a party record. I do love the way she’s progressively coaxing and urging and commanding, and the way the track ends in a groaning sweaty call-and-response climactic mess (“Come ALIVE! Come ALIVE! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! WOOOO-urrgh!”)

With DGD, “Tiger Feet” and “Teenage Rampage” all in the Top 10 at the same time, this has to mark the zenith of Chinnichap – again, followed by a fairly swift decline (but let’s not forget Arrows’ “A Touch Too Much” a few months later, whose rampant sexiness must have been instrumental in steering me away from the bosomy charms of La Gillespie, and back onto my true path).

Filial pride also commands me to mention that my sister won a local “Stars In Their Eyes” competition last Christmas, performing this very song (which I suggested she re-christen “Forest Gate Drive”).

And finally, in the Misheard Lyrics department, I initially thought that Suzi Q was singing “down in Dimbleby, down in Dimbleby, down in Dimbleby Drive”. That’s Medium Wave for you…

Heh! And wasn’t there quite a bit of unreconstructed Gillespie-drooling over at Disc, or am I muddling her up with Madeleine Smith?

Funny you should say that Marcello! I hoarded copies of Record Mirror for the latter half of the 70s, then, on being forced to cull them for the sake of my groaning wardrobe, I went through them one last time and compiled a scrapbook of highlights before chucking the rest. Looking through this scrapbook many years later I came across this gem from ‘76:

“I’ve just been to see the Sex Pistols in Manchester and they’re the best band to emerge since the New York Dolls. Why don’t you feature them in Record Mirror? Yours, Stephen Morrissey, Stretford, Manchester.”

Mozzer was apparently a frequent correspondent to the NME too.

Hmm – if the “Whiteside” is a United reference, Big Norm didn’t make his debut until 1982…

Winces at evident display of own ignorance!

Nobody should be expected to know everything, not even pop swots such as ourselves!

Devil Gate Drive is jolly enough, but seems a bit less necessary to its performers than Can the Can was, and is certainly no Tiger Feet or Ballroom Blitz. I have a feeling that if I’d been older than one at the time and had grown up learning the Devil Gate Drive dance with my friends, then I’d feel more indulgently towards it – like (Spoiler Alert!) the fun hit of Autumn 1994.

I’m surprised to discover that I only know 3 Suzie Quatro hits. Am I missing out on anything?

Another Quatro oddity is “He’s A Sports PA”: a re-worded version of her 1979 hit “She’s In Love With You”, as sportingly performed for the BBC VT department’s privately circulated Xmas comedy video, in which members of TOTP dance troupe Legs & Co gyrate suggestively around said Sports PAs in the control room. (I have no idea what a Sports PA does, mind.)

Listening to it now it doesn’t sound quite as good as it did then. The fact that it had the word ‘devil’ in the title was probably enough to attract me in, however, it’s not exactly demonic rock ala Black Sabbath is it ? The boogie woogie piano is enough to derail it of any real raw potential giving further proof that glam/glitter had moved into it’s second phase. It is, though, a good pop song and Suzi did have her charms, as did her zipped leather cat suit (but I don’t think we can go there) so 7 is probably about right. Stupid dance though esp. lurch on the keys.

Nestling a couple of places below is Bowie’s 4th track in the space of a year to peak at number 3 this time as covered by Lulu. His own parting shot to glam ‘Rebel Rebel’ would only manage 5.

…about whom the music press were decidedly sniffy from the off. I remember one journalist sighing with relief after “Seven Seas of Rhye” had been and gone: “Now that we’ve got rid of that piece of tacky glam trash from the start of the year…”

Little did they know.

Funny that the band in question should benefit from being a last-minute substitute. It’s getting ahead of the story, but that same band were due to appear on Thames TV’s “Today” programme on 1 December ’76 and had to pull out. As a last-minute substitute publicist Eric Hall managed to get another EMI band on the show. They turned up well refreshed, so did the presenter, and the rest is history.

& of course fun can freeze into orthodoxy pretty fast, which may well be what happened with the uncovering of 50s roots.

Precisely – I think pink s is dead on about SQ, though.

Historical note: by ’73 Viv and Malc’s Let It Rock shop had become Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die and they had more or less abandoned the fifties stuff in favour of introducing biker stuff and, gradually, the bondage stuff which led to Sex – possibly influenced by the stall that some guy called Freddie had at Kensington Market. I don’t recall their kitting out Showaddywaddy but they were certainly responsible for the costumes in the film That’ll Be The Day.