Suzi Quatro – Unzipped

This is a perfect title for an autobiography of the leather jumpsuit-clad 70’s rocker chick, which is told in a casual, unassuming way, giving plenty of personal as well as musical information along the way. Sometimes, especially as she tells of her early years, she gets a little overly cutesy, but not to the point of annoyance.

Suzi grew up in a musical family – her father was a working musician when she was a child (with all of the temptations and vices that come with that) and her siblings all played and sang – and consequently formed the Pleasure Seekers with her sisters and some neighbors. This all-female group recorded the 60’s garage classic “What a Way to Die” as their first single with Suzi singing and I get the impression that she has no idea that this is probably her most often covered song of her career! The band actually did far more than I suspected, lasting several years, procuring a recording contact with Mercury Records (which apparently did nothing), and touring the country before mutating into Cradle, an all-girl jam band, and then dissolving. Suzi was then picked up by producer Mickie Most, taken to England and given 18 MONTHS to get her act together! If only this kind of development was encouraged these days, who knows what kind of talent might emerge!

Of course her hey-day as a Chinn-Chapman glam rock leather girl was the highlight of her career for me, but then she moved on to even bigger success as Leather Tuscadero in the TV show Happy Days, and then had a couple of her biggest hits with some of the worst disco-pop-drek imaginable – shit that to this day I thought was someone like Olivia Newton John, not ricker-chick Suzi Quatro. I thought that her musical career had long been over by this time, but it was just because I would turn these songs off the second they came on the radio so I never knew they were hers!

Suzi is also a little over-the-top in her spirituality – including numerous ghost sightings, possessions and who knows what all. A bit much for this atheistic skeptic. She also gets somewhat whiny at times, not feeling appreciated, complaining about friends, family and lovers and generally not getting the treatment she felt she deserved (rightfully or not).

She moved on to acting – stage and TV – from music and actually seemed to prefer that, something that I find difficult to comprehend as a life-long rocker, who would have loved to have earned a living making music.

The book has a surprising number of typos, but I get the feeling that this is a small press. Otherwise, this is an engaging tale of a multi-talented - and certainly flawed - cult personality who has moved in many different media circles and never really gained major success or notoriety in her home country.