Page 61 - Classic Rock (February 2020)

Songwriting
partners Nicky
Chinn and
Mike Chapman.

Suzi and her guitarist (and
then husband) Len Tuckey.

he just allowed you to be an ever-so-slightly
exaggerated version of yourself?
The image always was me. I found my image more
in Cradle, because it was tie-dye T-shirts and blue
jeans and really more tomboy. When I was in
London and I wasn’t having success right away,
I’d sometimes question what I was doing. And
I would always come to the same conclusion:
‘Mickie saw me in that band and saw something,
and if I can’t make it just like me, I don’t want to
make it at all.’ So I stuck to me. Mickie never
moulded me, he let me develop. There was no
blueprint, no Suzi Quatro prototype. I was the Suzi on Top Of
prototype, and a lot of people came after me. Joan The Pops in 1973.
Jett took a lot of stuff from me. She’d be the first to
tell you. And why not? She saw me, like I did Elvis,
and said: “Oh my God, I can do that.” As indeed
she could. But I had to be my own blueprint, and “Doing something brand new, you have to really
that’s lonely and scary. Doing something brand believe in yourself or you can lose yourself.”
new, you have to really believe in yourself or you
can lose yourself. But I didn’t, I stuck to it, no
matter how hard it was. and Nicky Chinn along to a show and see if they Chinn and Chapman a scenario to work with;
can write you a hit single?’ So they came, Mike saw they weren’t just writing for Suzi Quatro the
How did you come to work with Chinn and a rock chick boogie-ing, wrote Can The Can and artist, they were writing for Suzi Quatro
Chapman (an established hit machine Nicky pushed the bass right up. He saw me live and was the character.
Chinn and Mike Chapman had already taken able to translate that into a hit record, which That’s exactly what they did. And everything
New World, the Sweet and Mud into the UK Mickie Most couldn’t. from there on is history. Once Can The Can was
Top 10)? done, we had everything: the sound, the look, it
Before I finally formed the band in late 1972, I said When putting the backing band together, was all made sense.
to Mickie: “I’m going crazy here. We’re recording, creating a visual image of yourself surrounded
using session players, and I’m writing, but I gotta by a gang of physically robust men, but with And that sassy Suzi Q character endured as
gig. I’ve been doing it my whole you clearly in a dominant role, the central protagonist of 48 Crash, Daytona
life.” So I got a band and started a deliberate thing? Demon and Devil Gate Drive. It was timeless,
doing all my own songs. I was Absolutely. Start as you mean to yet very reminiscent of the fifties.
writing all the time, I’m a very go on. If you look at me as an artist, although I started
prolific songwriter. But then Mickie having hits in the glam period, I’ve never been
admitted he didn’t know how to get It was an interesting dynamic, glam-sounding, I’ve always been rock’n’roll, my
me on record. Then, after we casting you as the gang leader, love was for Elvis, and my love of rock stems from
GETTY x3 supported Slade on tour, he said: holding dominion over these that. There are some weird things along the way,
but that’s who I am.”
big, beefy guys, and it gave
“Why don’t we get Mike Chapman
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