‘Devil Gate Drive’: Suzi Quatro’s timeless teenage rebellion
Punk is all about rebellion, and when you have that sort of streak in you, who do you rebel against sooner than your own parents?
Why else do cranky old authoritarian figures refer to their naughty children as “little punks”? Something else that kids invariably love is loud music, shocking colours, bright lights and good times, all of which were in no short supply during the camped-up glam-rock movement which immediately preceded the punk scene, all of which Suzi Quatro knew a thing or two about.
Though Quatro’s 1974 hit ‘Devil Gate Drive’ was dressed up in glam and powered by her pre-punk energy, the song is really a 12-bar blues at its core. Add a little rhythm to that blues and you get rock and roll, which is the bedrock of everything that came afterwards. As a Detroit native, Quatro had a more intuitive feel for the real deal of rock and roll than any of the English pretenders who shared the scene with her during the glam rock years, or who came along later shouting and rebelling against any and everything they could think of.
Though the music of ‘Devil Gate Drive’ might have had historic roots, the lyrics are full of the juvenile charm and exuberance that comes with blossoming into a rebellious teen who is stepping out into the world on their own and deciding that they really know the way everything should be done. This song might as well have been a recreation of the greatest line delivered by Marlon Brando in The Wild One, when Mildred asks him, “Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?”, and he answers, “Well, Whaddaya got?” all set to music.
In fact, the music of glam rock was almost a perfect stand-in for the colourful, energetic and excitement of pre-teen youth, while the next big thing in rock, moulded in the UK partly by Quatro’s own influence, punk, almost perfectly personified that age-old transition of developing a perpetually angsty, us-against-them mode of rebellion that comes with hitting your middle-teens.
Quatro explains the difference in the ages through her lyrics, letting us know what happens to the young rebels at the age of five (“they do their jive”) and the age of six (“they get their kicks”), but it’s when they get into their teens that you really have to start to worry about them. She says it’s when they hit 15 that they start to “really get mean”, and even worse still, that’s when they head down ‘Devil Gate Drive’.
But where exactly is ‘Devil Gate Drive’ anyway? Well, that’s easy. We’ve all been there! It’s wherever your parents don’t want you to be. “It’s the place where you go when you’re a teenager, and your parents say, ‘Where are you going?’ ‘I’m going out.’ ‘Don’t you dare go to such-and-such,” Quatro once explained. “That’s ‘Devil Gate Drive’, and that’s where you go. Of course, as soon as your parents say, ‘Don’t go…’ that’s where you go.”
