Suzi Q Recounts the Rise of Suzi Quatro from Suburban Detroit Kid to Glam-Rock Superstar

SUZI Q 
(Liam Firmager, Australia, 2019, 98 minutes)

There's something fitting about the fact that the definitive portrait of rocker Suzi Quatro hails from an Australian director, Liam Firmager, backed by an Australian film company, Screen Victoria.

It's not that Suzi didn't make a mark in the United States, but as her friend, Cherie Currie (the Runaways), notes, she isn't as well known among today's youth as she should be--and nor did she have as many hits in the US as she did in Europe and Australia. I'm skeptical that one documentary is going to do much to reverse that course, but that should never stop a director from making a film about a deserving artist. Plus, there are plenty of people my age--people old enough to remember Happy Days (1974-1984) as a first-run series--who haven't made her acquaintance yet. And they really should.

Like Iggy Pop, Suzi grew up in suburban Michigan, specifically Grosse Pointe, and she still has the accent to prove it (Detroit-born Alice Cooper appears in the film, but Pop doesn't). She credits her jazz-playing father for her love of music and her devout Catholic mother for her moral values. She saw Elvis on The Ed Sullivan Show when she was five, and that was it: she knew she wanted to be a musician. And it's precisely because she identified with a man, rather than a woman, that she would go on to craft an androgynous, leather-clad, bass-playing persona that hadn't been seen before.

She started by forming an all-girl band, the Pleasure Seekers, with her sister, Patti, and three others when she was 14. Things moved quickly. Because Suzi was tiny, she performed on a riser, so all eyes were on her. The first time she let out a yell, the crowd went wild. There would be more yells to come; it's one of her defining skills. The band got so many bookings that her parents let her drop out of school to perform full time. It didn't hurt that her brother, Michael, was an established promoter, and that the group was able to turn their regional success into a record deal with Mercury.

As good as they were, though, the (overwhelmingly male) sound emerging from Detroit and Ann Arbor by the late-1960s was moving in an increasingly heavy direction, and their success was short-lived, so they reinvented themselves as Cradle and switched out Suzi with Patti, but lightning didn't strike twice until Michael invited producer Mickie Most (the Animals, Donovan), who was working with Jeff Beck at Motown Studios, to see the band play. Suzi knew it was her shot, so she sang one of her songs—and ended up with a solo deal.

Wisely, Firmager lets both Suzi and Patti tell their sides of the story. Cradle kept going for a couple of years, and Patti later joined Fanny, but none of her sisters would become as successful (her niece, Sherilyn Fenn, would come close when she landed a role on Twin Peaks). Though Suzi, alone on her own for the first time, was sad and lonely when she first arrived in London, the resentment lingered. She was on her way, and they weren't.

Once she formed a band and started opening for glam-rock acts like Slade and Sweet, the American got a toehold in a very British scene, even though she didn't share their sartorial flamboyance. If she hadn't have been able to keep up, audiences would've been quick to let her know, but Suzi had the voice, the chops, and the stage presence (those high-flying kicks!). She also had a terrible puffball perm, which goes unmentioned in the film, but she seems to have figured out quickly that she'd be better off without it.

Granted, she didn't have any hits, but that changed when she joined forces with Australian-born Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn, aka Chinnichap (Chapman, who appears in the film, notes that Chinn was the business guy; he actually did most of the writing). They wrote 1973 single "Can the Can" to emphasize her bass-playing. For her signature look, she decided on a black leather outfit, like '68 Comeback Elvis, and then she was ready for Top of the Pops. The performance was a smash, the song was a hit, and she became a star. Had Suzi stayed in the States, it's hard to say what would have happened. Like Hendrix (in tandem with manager Chas Chandler), London provided the star-making machinery best suited to her gifts.

As adeptly as Firmager supports Suzi's on-camera narration with a well-edited selection of archival materials, I was moved more by the testimonies of the women who took inspiration from her work, particularly Debbie Harry (Blondie), Lita Ford and Joan Jett (the Runaways), Tina Weymouth (Talking Heads), and Kathy Valentine (the Go-Go's). Tina and Kathy say they didn't even recognize their potential as musicians until Suzi came along.

Nonetheless, the UK press turned on her once she got big, their infamous modus operandi. Because she worked with male musicians, songwriters, and producers, she was dismissed as a male creation as if she had no say in the way she dressed or the material she performed. She also disavows the term feminist, which is unfortunate, but she's hardly unique in that regard. Multi-hyphenate Dolly Parton never embraced it either, but that doesn't mean their achievements didn't open doors for other women. They clearly did.



Suzi also failed to make as much of an impact in her home country as she did elsewhere. It wasn't for lack of trying. She went on tour with Alice Cooper and made the requisite round of radio station appearances, but she didn't get airplay and she didn't sell records. All told, she's sold 55 million records, so there's no need to cry for Suzi Quatro, but most of those sales came from outside of the States. It's understandable that a woman who doesn't describe herself as a feminist wouldn't blame sexism, but I believe that's part of it. Debbie Harry and band mate Clem Burke claim that she was ahead of her time, which is more or less the same thing (Suzi's influence would lead Blondie to work with Mike Chapman on 1978's Parallel Lines).

Then, she lost her US deal, but again, it was hardly a tragedy, because she landed a three-year gig on Happy Days as Leather Tuscadero. It may not have been how she planned to conquer America, but it did the trick. She reunited with Chapman, and finally enjoyed some US chart success, though ironically, "Stumblin' In," a duet with Chris Norman, doesn't rock as hard as her previous singles. It's basically a power ballad, and there's no shame in that, but those sorts of things were a dime a dozen in the 1970s, while her signature hits weren't. Less surprisingly, it barely dented the UK charts.

Once again, though, her US success was short-lived. Despite their fractious relationship, Chinn and Chapman formed a label, Dreamland Records, signed Suzi as their first artist, released 1980's Rock Hard, placed the title track on the soundtrack to Allan Moyle's teen-punk fantasia Times Square, and…watched it wither on the American vine, due in part to distribution problems, and the label folded shortly afterward (on the plus side, Kino Lorber will be releasing a restored 4K version of Times Square later this year).

Joan Jett, meanwhile, would pick up where Quatro left off, and started to have the US hits she didn't. Her devotion to a similar leather-clad, bubble gum-punk aesthetic was so complete that she covered a song, the Arrows' immortal "I Love Rock 'n Roll," that had originally been produced by Quatro's mentor Mickie Most. As a fan of both women, I'm not about to take sides; the two freely admit that Suzi paved the way.

Firmager also looks at Suzi's life as a wife and mother, television guest star, musical theater performer, radio show host, poet, and novelist. For a woman who doesn't identify as feminist, it describes most everything she did. As times changed, she changed with them. Len wanted everything to stay the same, and their marriage came to an inevitable end (though Suzi would remarry, her second husband, Rainer, doesn't appear in the film).

If Suzi Q isn't about sisterhood in the colloquial sense, it's a film about sisterhood in the literal sense as she and her sisters continue to enjoy and endure a relationship marked by affection…and the kind of resentment that never really goes away. As she points out: one doesn't preclude the other.

All told, it's a good, solid documentary that lacks any shocking revelations or tear-stained redemption arcs, and that's kind of refreshing, really. Suzi Quatro's stock in trade was that she was an ordinary suburban kid who just wanted to rock, like millions of men before her--and millions of men and women since. If Firmager isn't able to accurately pinpoint the source of her hyper-relentless drive, beyond the fact that she didn't want to end up working in an automobile factory, maybe some things don't need to be explained, because talent, in and of itself, is never enough. Quatro did the right things at the right time with the right people--and lived to tell the tale.



Suzi Q premieres on VOD, DVD, and Blu-ray on July 3. On July 1, Cherie Currie and Kathy Valentine will interview Suzi Quatro for a Q&A after the virtual preview screening. A portion of the proceeds will support the Recording Academy's MusiCares in their efforts to provide COVID relief funds for musicians in need. Click here for more information and tickets.

As Two Women Battle It Out in Shirley, Josephine Decker Proves She Isn't Afraid of Virginia Woolf--or Shirley Jackson

Elisabeth Moss as Shirley Jackson / Neon

SHIRLEY
(Josephine Decker, US, 2020, 106 minutes) 






"That story was the most remarkable story I'd ever read. I knew I was going to marry the woman who wrote it."
--Stanley Hyman, Shirley's husband, on "The Lottery"

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

As Elisabeth Moss plays her, Shirley Jackson was kind of an awful person.

Josephine Decker's quasi-fictional portrait of the writer begins as a young couple in the bloom of love prepares to meet Shirley (Moss made to look older, much like Elizabeth Taylor in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) and her husband, professor and literary critic Stanley Hyman (Michael Stuhlbarg).

Decker's sun-blasted opening recalls the first sentence of Jackson's 1948 New Yorker story, "The Lottery," which ends as vividly as it begins: "The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green." From that bright beginning, Jackson plunges into darker territory, inspiring nightmarish entertainments about seemingly pleasant communities from Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man to Ari Aster's Midsommar.

The Nemsers (Logan Lerman and Odessa Young) / Neon

On the trip to North Bennington, Rose Nemser (Odessa Young, terrific) reads the story, and longs for Shirley to like her. At their first meeting, she shares her enthusiasm with the author, but Shirley couldn't be bothered. These fawning young women, her words and attitude suggest, are all the same.

Fred (Logan Lerman, whose casting seems particularly apt in light of his naïve college student in Philip Roth adaptation Indignation) has traveled to Vermont to teach, while Rose plans to audit classes, a sign that she wants to broaden her mind, but not to become something more than a helpmate.

If his wife is initially dismissive of the pretty young woman, Stanley takes a shine to her, and asks if she'd like to help out around the house in exchange for room and board as Shirley is subject to "moods." As it turns out, Shirley hasn't left the house in two months. Instead of expressing gratitude for Rose's assistance, Shirley needles her at every turn. It doesn't help that she can tell Rose is pregnant, even though she hasn't begun to show.

Shirley is hardly idle. She's just begun work on a novel inspired by the case of a missing young woman (presumably 1951's Hangsaman, though Sarah Gubbins' script doesn't say). Stanley doubts she has the stamina to finish anything longer than a short story, but she won't be deterred.

"Can I trust you?," asks Shirley / Neon

With the men teaching at Bennington College (Fred serves as Stanley's assistant), the women circle each other warily. Despite Shirley's hostility, Rose doesn't crumple. If anything, she starts to see Shirley as more of a challenge than an obstacle. Soon she isn't just taking care of her, but running errands and doing research.

In the course of her combing through archival records, Rose finds out that the missing woman was pregnant. As in Decker's enigmatic 2013 feature debut, Butter on the Latch, she blurs the line between fantasy and reality, and it isn't always clear what Shirley is actually experiencing, what's she's imagining, and what her novel's protagonist might have experienced.

It's tempting to assume that she's suffering from depression or that she might have lost a child--or both--hence the preoccupation with pregnancy and the resentment of the young, healthy, and outwardly happy Rose, except by the end, it's clear that Decker had different intentions in mind (though not mentioned in the film, Shirley and Stanley had four kids).

If Decker's first two features, including 2014's Thou Wast Mild and Lovely, ended in murder, Shirley ends with a departure that could be seen as a murder of a kind. Once Rose crosses over from housekeeper to collaborator, her pristine façade becomes disheveled. Her hair becomes looser, her face shinier, her outfits less put-together--her perfectly-applied lipstick disappears. She also develops an odd relationship with food, just as the real-life Shirley struggled with her weight, including an addiction to diet pills.

Stanley, whose attentions to Rose have an uncomfortably sexual cast, becomes jealous that she knows more about Shirley's project than he does. The relationship recalls 2018's Madeline’s Madeline in which a charismatic director (Molly Parker) gets to know an actor (Helene Howard) in a way her mother (Miranda July) doesn't. In Decker’s third and finest film, July gives a heartbreaking performance as a woman who feels like a third wheel as an outsider swoops in and steals her identity, leaving her unmoored. And that’s Rose to Stanley: the person who has taken his place as his wife's companion and confidant, except July's Regina was sympathetic in ways that the controlling, womanizing Stanley isn't.

As Rose becomes more like Shirley, Fred becomes more like Stanley. Neither of these things is necessarily a positive, because Stanley is a lousy husband and Shirley is a nasty piece of work. Decker finds a way to tie all these threads together that stands in opposition to her first two features, because it isn't a tragedy. Nor is it as celebratory as Madeline's Madeline, which ends in a burst of cathartic, Beau Travail-like exuberance. In this case, things are simply put right. If it all makes sense once you realize her endgame, I still felt unsatisfied, because it's a sleight-of-hand story. What you think you're seeing, what you think is happening is more internal than external.

The real Shirley  / Erich Hartmann / Magnum Photos

Furthermore, Moss gives it her all, as she always does, but she can't quite get to the heart of her character. We're told what makes her tick, but I never really felt it. There's something both admirable and frustrating in the way Decker's women are never especially heroic or even all that nice. That doesn't mean they're bad, and there's no reason they should be likable, but she's worked too hard to turn us against Shirley. If Gubbins' writing had the wit and snap of Edward Albee or Harold Pinter, she and Stanley might make for perversely enjoyable company, but they're more of a drag than intended, despite a few good lines, like Stanley's take on Fred, "Terrifically competent? There's no excuse for that!" To his mind, it's better to be an utter failure.

It's to the credit of Odessa Young (Assassination Nation) that she provides a consistently compelling focal point, because Rose changes with every scene to the extent that she's a completely different person by the conclusion.

As for Shirley Jackson, she was only 48 when she died in 1965 after years of declining health (she published her final novel, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, in 1962). If Josephine Decker had stuck to the facts of her life rather than adapting a work of fiction, Susan Scarf Merrell's 2014 Shirley: A Novel, her fourth feature might have been a far bleaker affair. As it stands, Shirley fails to fully capture Jackson's brilliance--or even Moss's--even as it attempts to emulate the style of one of her famously spooky stories, but if it inspires greater interest in the writer and the filmmaker, I'd call that a win.

 

Support two great local film organizations and stream Shirley by way of Northwest Film Forum at this link or SIFF at this one for only $5.99.