Suzi Quatro
Can the Can

Someone asked me which album revolutionized my life. Ultimately, there are many albums that have had an impact on my existence, or marked crucial moments, or even highlighted drama or happiness...
So I started thinking about the first album that revolutionized my daily life. This too was a challenging task, indeed, growing up in a family passionate about rock (both my parents and a plethora of uncles, that is, my mother's eleven brothers), the "revolutionary" was at home. However, despite the listening, my parents were rather strict, meaning girls like me and my sisters could indeed listen to rock, but we had to behave and be "good girls." A bit convoluted as an upbringing, but typically Swiss: liberal, yet with strict discipline.

In the early '70s, there was only one musical television show, which was "Top of the Pops," the German TV broadcast recordings made in London. I was ten years old, and my absolute favorite character on "Top of the Pops" was Suzi Quatro. She was rock. She was fierce. She was strong. She was always surrounded by ill-reputed men. And my father didn't like her at all.
Identifying with Suzi Quatro (I got my hair cut like hers by a reluctant accomplice mom) was my first rebellious act against the homeland authority, and this amused my Uncle Albert greatly: he gifted me Can the Can, which I could only listen to secretly, and on whose cover I fantasized for months. Holding this album in my hands, singing at the top of my lungs the hit Can The Can, fighting with my father over wanting jeans (my first jeans!) as tight as Suzie's... and then in my child's eyes, those three - my heroine's band - so manly, hairy, full of hormones... particularly the guy downing beer, with his hand tucked in his jeans, he disturbed me a lot, he was quite animalistic. And I think it was precisely this attitude of Suzi, and her henchmen, that made my old man frown. Too little - ahem - intellectual.
Suzi Quatro was brazen, direct, and very likable. She was a bomb on stage, quite good at playing the bass, and, to my childish eyes, wonderfully revolutionary and feminist, a queen in a glam world full of men who were too effeminate and overly made-up.

I wanted to remember this album, and my childhood thoughts in the mood for small rebellions, also because the other night I watched a German show, where today's Suzi Quatro sang one of her old hits (Daytona Demon). Goodness, I said to myself, how badly she has aged, and what cheap music... but I immediately regretted these rational thoughts from a "music expert." Suzi was the first, before Joan Jett and Blondie, before all the riot girls and various Courtneys. And if today I am who I am, it's also thanks to her and her tight jeans, the ones I finally got at 12 years old (again from the complacent uncle), and I had to lie down on the bed to put them on. Guys, I wore them every day, for two months straight without washing them. How proud I was of my first jeans!

"The guys in my band don't wear glitter, they're real men... Black leathers, sexy, and it's got interesting zips..."
(Suzi Quatro)