Suzi Quatro and AC/DC: punk rockers in Australia 1974/75

I don't think anyone who knows 1970s UK pop culture would argue with the fact that Suzi Quatro was one of the leather clad pop rockers who prepared the ground for punk. Still was surprized to see her being mentioned in relation to punk as far back as 1974 in the Australian press on the occasion of her touring there:

'She looks like the leader of a motorcycle gang, but pretty like the girls who run with the pack ought to look. She's 23, dresses all in skin-tight leather zippered down to her waist, off stage as well, but usually adds a shirt under the leather suit. Her eyes look out soft and warm from photographs. In real life Suzi Quatro is tough, but still soft underneath.

She's from Detroit, and in this country that says a lot. A harsh city, "Motor City," with the highest crime rate in the U.S.A., it is the birthplace of punk rock, the MC5 (Motor City 5, a once famous rock group.) Suzi continues the image though she does complain that "people who've only heard my voice expect me to be about 6 feet tall." In fact she's five feet. Wearing a small star tattooed on her right wrist, she explains, "I got the star four years ago 'cause that's what I wanted to be'  (Australian Women's Weekly, th May 1974).

From searching on the great Trove newspaper archive this seems to be the first reference to 'punk rock' in an Australian newspaper, earlier even than a 1975 mention of 'top punk rockers' AC/DC.

Interestingly, the AC/DC gig in question at the Harmonie German Club in Canberra took place on 7 November 1975, one day after the first Sex Pistols gig at Central St Martins art college in London.

Canberra Times, 7 November 1975

Haunted dancehall: the ruins of Detroit

The ballroom in the Lee Plaza Hotel, Detroit, from the excellent Ruins of Detroit by Yves Marchard and Romain Meffre.

Interesting article about this by Sean O'Hagan in The Observer yesterday.

Captain Beefheart RIP - Hard Workin' Fucked Over Man

RIP Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart, who died today.

He features on the soundtrack of one of my favourite films, Blue Collar (1978), in which a group of Michigan car factory workers (played by Harvey Keitel, Richard Pryor and Yaphet Kotto) revolt against the company and the union which is in cahoots with it by staging a robbery. I love the way in the title sequence that the sounds of the factory are built into the music, with Ry Cooder on guitar and Beefheart on vocals.

When I was a school boy,

teacher said study as hard as you can,

It didn't make no difference,

I'm just a hard workin' fucked over man

Incidentally I once saw this film at the Ritzy in Brixton and they accidentally showed the reels in the wrong order - beginning, end then middle, Godard style

Pervis Jackson and Detroit

Pervis Jackson, the bass singer in the Spinners (or Detroit Spinners as they were known in the UK) died last month. Jackson's family came from New Orleans to Detroit, where the Spinners started out singing doo wop before signing to Motown and then Atlantic records where they found success with the early 1970s Philadelphia soul sound.


Unfortunately I couldn't find any footage of my favourite track by The Spinners, Ghetto Child, but you can listen to it here: 'when I was 17 I ran away from home, and from everything I had ever known, I was sick and tired, living in a town, filled with narrow minds and hate'. Also check out their 1970 version of Message from a Black Man ('No matter how hard you try you can't stop me now') with Pervis Jackson doing the spoken word sections.

But here they are from 1975 singing They Just Can't Stop It (Games People Play), with Pervis Jackson singing the middle '12.45' part:

The Detroit music explosion of the 1960s was underpinned by the migration of black people (like Pervis Jackson) from the Southern states of the US to Detroit, partly prompted by the demand for labour in the Detroit motor industries - and the desire of those moving for a better life. By 1943, when a racist backlash by white workers led to major riots in Detroit, 200,000 black people had come to live in Detroit, most of them to work in the motor trade and its wartime spin-offs of bomber engine and other military production. It was the children of this wave of migrants who gave us Motown, and some of their grandchildren who later gave us Detroit techno.

It's interesting how the motor city aesthetic filtered down through the black and white musical cultures that emerged from Detroit. Just look at the names - Motown, The Spinners (apparently named after Cadillac hubcaps), MC5 (originally Motor City 5). Think of Underground Resistance's early characterisation of their sound as “Hard Music from a Hard City”.

Interesting too, how Detroit has exercised a particular place in Europe’s imaginary America: Gramsci in his prison cell dreaming of the modernizing wonders of Fordism sweeping away the dead culture of old Europe; the 1960s dream of the Sound of Young America inspiring boys and girls in London and Liverpool; the continuing love affair with Detroit techno.

The actual relationship between place and sound is very complex. Ultimately it is patronising to assume that people’s cultural expressions are just a reflection of their surroundings. Music doesn’t spring spontaneously from the soul - it takes creativity, imagination and effort. But of course it is influenced by the music makers' experience, including where they live. So once again, put your hands up for Detroit, as well as for Pervis Jackson and The Spinners.