“The most of everything”: Suzi Quatro’s favourite soul album
What’s the first record you ever bought? It’s a question all of us have probably been asked repeatedly, and yet, somehow, it always seems like a question loaded with a whole lot more than just simply asking about seminal music tastes. After all, the first record we ever bought isn’t just something as simple as a random choice we made once, is it? Just ask Suzi Quatro.
It’s interesting, considering just how much it says about us as people, to consider the many whose first-ever records were one of Quatro’s, like Can the Can, or Quatro. It’s interesting, considering all the reasons someone might have reached for Quatro’s debut 1973 record instead of something like Dark Side of the Moon, or Aladdin Sane, knowing that this was far more them with more to offer than anyone else at that particular moment in time.
Still, at the time, it doesn’t feel particularly dramatic, does it? Thinking about the first CDs or vinyls we ever owned, it doesn’t feel like a decision we made with any kind of headiness, like if we make the wrong move, it defines our entire character. Or maybe it did feel that way, it’s just we’ve forgotten exactly what was going through our minds at the time. For Quatro, however, one of her first-ever vinyl purchases was far less casual in that it ended up significantly shaping her attitude towards her own music.
As a woman in rock, it would be easy to assume that one of her first buys was someone similar, someone overtly defiant who pushed her to consider following in the same footsteps herself. While there were those in spaces, one of the first times Quatro first felt endeared to a vinyl was when she bought Otis Redding’s Pain In My Heart, a record that affected her so deeply she went by “Suzi Soul” for a little while after.
Discussing the record with The Quietus, she explained how much it influenced her, especially when it came to “phrasing and spontaneity”. She also recalled her Suzi Soul days, and how all of her “big numbers” were his songs. “I just thought he was terrific,” she said. “I had the wonderful experience of doing a big radio documentary on him on one of my radio shows on Radio 2, and I got to meet all of his people and everything, and it was fantastic.”
Adding: “He was a great. When you think of it, he had not that wide a range of vocals, but what he did, he nailed it. That’s all you can say. He made the most of everything that he had. I talked to the drummer for a long time, and he said he knew what Otis was going to do before he did it. So when you hear those great live recordings, he’s always right there with the backbeat, you know. Excellent stuff.”
In a way, Quatro’s rebellious attitude and boundary-pushing feel like a direct line to Redding, maybe not specifically in the ways their approaches aligned, but in the energy Quatro borrowed from him. This came through even during her soul performances, both in her unrelenting charge and the way she pushed this mindset in the subtleties of everything she did. Suppose, for these reasons, it also makes sense why another person she grew close to was Elvis Presley.
Therefore, it was never about a specific genre or aiming to disrupt things like gender expectations. Those were big parts of her appeal at first, too, but, to Quatro, achieving those pillars came from a more visceral place, the inexplicable factor she carried as she absorbed the fervour of others, kind of like how buying your first record feels feels more like an instinctual pull, not easily explained by anything that makes sense beyond it just feeling right.
