"Unzipped" by Suzi Quatro

A few weeks before I read Kathy Valentine's memoir (reviewed here), I started seeing trailers for a new documentary called "Suzi Q" -- about 1970s rock star Suzi Quatro -- in my Instagram feed, with her 1973 anthem "Can the Can" blaring in the background. 

I hadn't heard the name Suzi Quatro in YEARS, so this was an unexpected blast from the past. I Googled her and saw that she had written a memoir a few years ago (published in 2007), called "Unzipped." And then, when I read about her influence on Kathy Valentine & Joan Jett (among others), I decided her book would be my next read. :)  

I remember Suzi Quatro from the '70s, dimly. She's one of those musicians that I knew OF, more than I actually knew their music. I knew she was huge in Britain (much more so than she was in North America), and assumed she must be British. (She's not -- she was born and raised in Detroit.)  I mostly remember her as Leather Tuscadero on the TV show "Happy Days" -- the younger sister of Fonzie's great love, Pinky Tuscadero -- which is how most of my peers (the North American ones, anyway) seem to remember her too, if they remember her at all. (I Googled, and she appeared in 7 episodes in season 5 & 6, fall 1977 through spring 1979, when I was graduating from high school.) Clad in leather, aggressively slinging a (bass) guitar, singing in a raspy voice, hair cut in a '70s shag, she was kind of (totally?) out of place in late 1950s/early 1960s Milwaukee with Richie Cunningham, Potsie Webber & Ralph Malph. Which didn't mean she wasn't worth watching...! 

Susan Kay Quatro was born in 1950 to a Hungarian mother & Italian father, the second-youngest of five children.  Like many kids of the 1950s, she was mesmerized seeing Elvis on TV, and after seeing the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964, she and her sister Patti formed an all-girl group with a couple of neighbouring sisters, called The Pleasure Seekers. They graduated from local clubs and high school dances to touring around the country and into Canada, and even went to Vietnam to entertain the troops. In 1971, she was "discovered" by British producer Mickie Most, and headed to London in search of fame, fortune and a band to back her up.  Not only did she find a band, she married one of her guitarists, Len Tuckey, in 1976. They had a son & daughter before they divorced in 1992. (She had fertility issues and two miscarriages over the years, as well as a teenaged abortion.) She's been married to Rainer Haas, a German promoter, since 1993. 

After "Happy Days," Suzi appeared in other roles on television in Britain, including hosting a talk show for a while. She's also hosted a long-running radio show. She starred in a West End production of "Annie Get Your Gun," and wrote & starred in a musical about the actress Tallulah Bankhead. She considers herself more of an entertainer than a rock star. Now 70 and a grandmother, she's still rocking (albeit waiting out COVID along with the rest of us). She has been quoted as saying, "I WILL RETIRE WHEN I GO ONSTAGE , SHAKE MY ASS, AND THERE IS SILENCE."  :) 

This was probably far more than I ever needed to know about Suzi Quatro (lol), but it was a fun, non-taxing read & a blast from the past (I listened to and was reminded of some great '70s music, by Suzi and other glam-rock bands of the era, as I read).  It's written in a distinctive voice, in a breezy, conversational style (sometimes almost as a stream of consciousness -- with asides in which "little Susie from Detroit" trades comments & observations with older "Suzi Q").  Lots of famous names get dropped  :) (and, unfortunately, misspelled -- like many other musical memoirs I've read, this one could have used a good editor/proofreader).  There are even some creepy ghost stories. 

If you're a fan, obviously, it's a must-read. 

3 stars on Goodreads, rounded up to 3.5. 

(I still hope to see the documentary someday!) 

This was Book #28 read to date in 2020 (Book #4 finished in August). I'm currently at 93% of my 2020 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 30 books, and am (for the moment, anyway...!) 10 (!) books ahead of schedule to meet my goal. :) You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2020 tagged as "2020 books." 

*** *** *** 

Here's Suzi & her band in 1973, when she was 23: 

And here she is in 2015, age 65 (!), same song, still killing it: 

Odds & ends

• So, Joe Biden has chosen Kamala Harris as his running mate in the U.S. presidential election... anyone want to take bets on how long it will be before someone comments the fact that she's not a mother?? (She does have two grown stepchildren via her husband's first marriage.) 
• Lyz Lenz, the Iowa-based writer who authored the Washington Post article I took apart about the Wall of Moms (!), has a new book out today, called "Belaboured:  A Vindication of the Rights of Pregnant Women."  Despite my reservations about her Post article ;) I do like a lot of her other writing that I've seen, and her previous book, "God Land" is in my TBR pile. 
• Needless to say, I haven't yet read her newly published book, BUT, I did catch her in a live conversation earlier tonight with the fabulous Dr. Jennifer Gunter, fellow Manitoban :) and author of The Vagina Bible, sponsored by Books Are Magic.
• It was a lively conversation on a wide range of topics related to women & their bodies. I submitted a question asking whether pregnancy loss &/or infertility are addressed in the book, but the hour was up before they got to it. :( 
• Watch for the video to appear on the bookstore's blog. 
• Be forewarned: 
• Lenz is currently living in a hotel room, since a tree fell on her house after a windstorm swept through Iowa a few days ago (!), and children & a puppy are visible in the background. 
• Sensitive political issues are freely discussed, including abortion. 
• Several F bombs get tossed by both interviewer & interviewee.
• The other night, I listened to an 18-minute podcast/conversation on "What the Pandemic Might Mean for Conversations About Being Childfree." It featured Dr. Amy Blackstone, author of "Childfree by Choice: The Movement Redefining Family and Creating a New Age of Independence" (which is in my gargantuan TBR pile of books), and Samhita Mukhopadhyay, who recently wrote a piece for the The Atlantic on the subject, with the hopeful title of "One Legacy of the Pandemic May Be Less Judgment of the Child-Free." 
• As I commented on a childless forum, I'm not sure I saw any evidence presented in the article to convince me of that ;) but it's a nice thought. (We can always hope...!) 
• And, as usual, the focus was on childFREE versus childLESS women -- there was no mention of the fact that most women without children didn't actively choose this life, and might be struggling with loneliness while parents talk incessantly about the challenges they're facing while parenting during this pandemic. 
• Nevertheless, it's nice to listen to an intelligent discussion about women without children and the very real challenges they are facing during this pandemic (and outside of it). 
• Among the points made: 
• There's a (false) assumption among parents that childfree people have no responsibilities and endless free time. It's completely untrue, and it's something that divides us. We may not be facing the same pressures as people who have children, but we are taking care of parents, working full time, volunteering in our communities...
• There is no space in our collective imagination for what a woman does when she doesn't have children. 
• We need to try to understand and help each other. 
• Women without children are still asked to justify their decision to others. "You would think it would be parents we should ask to justify their choice...!" 
• We need to focus on our shared interests, e.g., work/life balance. The vision of that is "children," but the reality is that we all have lives outside of work that matter to us, and we all need and deserve balance. 
• The pandemic has opened up a space for parents to talk about the challenges of parenting. The decision not to have children has to be a part of that conversation, along with the recognition of why people opt out of parenthood, and why parenthood might not be the best fit for all of us. 

"All I Ever Wanted" by Kathy Valentine

 
When I heard that Kathy Valentine of the Go-Go's had written a memoir, it immediately went onto my to-read wish list. The Go-Go's were huge during the early 1980s, the years I was at university; I owned and loved their first three albums. They were -- and (almost 40 years later) remain -- the most successful female rock band of all time -- the first and only all-girl rock group to top the American music charts by writing and playing their own songs.  

Valentine is two years older than me (born in 1959), and "All I Ever Wanted: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir" covers the first 31 years of her life (up to 1990). The title is taken from a line of the Go-Go's hit song, "Vacation," which she wrote (with some later collaboration from the others)("Vacation, all I ever wanted..."). 

Her British mother and American father met when he was in England with the U.S. military;  they married and initially settled in Austin, Texas.  They split when Kathy was 3, and she and her mother moved back to Austin, renting housing in rundown neighbourhoods.  Mom was very much a laissez-faire parent, who did drugs with her daughter and slept with one of her teenaged male friends. (Yikes!!) Rules, boundaries and consequences were unknown in the Valentine household. Without few limits on her behaviour, young Kathy graduated from smoking cigarettes to drinking to smoking pot to harder drugs. She had an abortion at age 12 (!). She skipped school frequently, and her house became a hangout for other delinquents. 

While visiting her grandmother in England over Christmas 1973, when she was 14, Kathy saw Suzy Quatro on TV -- clad in a leather jumpsuit, playing a bass guitar and leading a band.  "...this was a female. Doing what I had only seen men do before... She was a fucking earthquake," Kathy writes in Chapter 8: 

I knew women existed in music. They sang in bands, they held acoustic guitars or sat at pianos. Years later I would learn that women had even played electric guitars in rock 'n' roll -- but I had never seen or heard of any of those women. Seeing Suzi Quatro had the same effect as lightning bolgs shooting through my grandma's house, with thunder blasting along. Where do I go, what do I do, who am I? Every question had an answer. All paths and possibilities suddenly pointed in one direction. 

Back in Texas, she started taking guitar lessons at the alternative school where she was a student and hanging out in Austin's many bars, where was encouraged by iconic local musicians such as Jimmie Vaughan (brother of Stevie Ray). On another visit to England a few years later, she briefly joined a fledgling all-girls band which later became known as Girlschool. 

Back in Austin, she and a friend formed a band called The Textones and moved to LA. In December 1980, she ran into Charlotte Caffey of the Go-Go's -- already a well-known local band with punk rock roots -- in the washroom of a bar.  The Go-Go's bass player was sick, and they had four shows booked at the Whisky-a-Go-Go over New Year's Eve.  Did Kathy play bass? She didn't, but lied said yes, went home, borrowed a bass and learned to play it and all the Go-Go's song over the next few days. The band decided to make the arrangement permanent, and the rest is history. 

The book ends in 1990 with the Go-Go's first reunion. (There's a brief epilogue that covers what's happened in the 30+ years since then.) There have been more reunions (and breakups... and reunions) in the years since then -- as Kathy sharply observes, the band members had a tendency to gloss over or ignore small problems until they became too big to ignore. Disputes over songwriting credits & royalties, combined with drug and alcohol abuse, were what initially tore the band apart;  sobriety helped bring them back together again. After one blackout too many, Kathy finally resolved to stop drinking in early 1989, and joined Alcoholics Anonymous. She has remained sober in the 30+ years since then. 

I gave this book 4 stars on Goodreads. There are lots of rock & roll memoirs out there, including a recent influx of ones by female rockers (some better than others) -- including Pat Benatar, Chrissie Hynde, Viv Albertine, Kim Gordon, Ann & Nancy Wilson, as well as Go-Go's lead singer Belinda Carlisle.  (Links go to my reviews on this blog -- have I covered them all??  lol) All rock & roll memoirs include the usual/expected elements of sex, drugs and rock & roll, and there's plenty of all three here (along with some great anecdotes where famous names are dropped liberally). What sets this one apart (aside from the female rocker angle) is the quality of the writing, the depth of the introspection, and Kathy's raw honesty and willingness to share her pain as well as joy. Well worth a read, especially if you're a fan of the Go-Go's '80s music &/or rock memoirs generally.  

A new documentary about the Go-Go's was just released on Showtime in the U.S.  I hope I'll eventually be able to see it here in Canada... 

This was Book #27 read to date in 2020 (Book #3 finished in August). I'm currently at 90% of my 2020 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 30 books, and am (for the moment, anyway...!) 9 books ahead of schedule to meet my goal. :) You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2020 tagged as "2020 books." 

#MicroblogMondays: A message from an old friend

Thank you for your good wishes on Katie's day (I don't especially like the term "anniversary" for sad events, and "birthday" doesn't quite seem to fit in this context). It was a quiet day that didn't seem to weigh on me as heavily as it has in some years. 

We had appointments for haircuts that morning in our old community, and after that, we picked up some flowers at the nearby supermarket (the one where we used to shop when we lived there) and took them to the cemetery for a short visit before heading home. A lot of the "traditions" & things we used to do on this day have kind of fallen by the wayside in recent years, and we already had dinner planned for that night, but dh asked me if I'd like to order in Chinese food on Saturday night, which we did. (The night we arrived home from the hospital 22 years ago -- along with my mother, who dropped everything to fly to my hospital beside -- we were all too tired and drained to cook, so we ordered in Chinese food -- and thus began that tradition...!) 

I posted a couple of photos from the cemetery on Facebook and Instagram, and had a flurry of lovely comments & reactions from friends & family members -- including an unexpected message on Facebook Messenger from a classmate (from both junior & senior high school) that I'm FB friends with. We weren't close-close friends in school, and I don't think I've seen her since we graduated (41 years ago!!), but we knew each other fairly well, and I always liked her. She's always been a very quiet, introverted person, so she doesn't post much, but she does "like" & occasionally comment on my posts, particularly those involving the dog & great-nephew. :) (She's married and still living in the town where we grew up & went to school together -- three adult children and a couple of grandkids.) 

Anyway, she wrote to say how sorry she was about my loss and then said "forgive me for asking this" but she had always wondered what happened, and would I mind telling her my story? that she did not want to pry and it she understood if I didn't want to share. It was so nicely worded. I responded "thank you for asking" and said I did not mind telling my story at all -- the hard part is usually watching people's reactions to it (especially if they had no prior inkling that I've lost a child). And that sometimes it's (still) easier to write about it than to talk about it. 

I gave her the Coles/Cliffs Notes version of my pregnancy story & my fertility issues and our decision to leave treatment when I was 40. I assured her that dh & I had a good life together, even if it wasn't the one we had planned or expected, and thanked her for her kind words. She wrote back to say she was so sorry we'd been through so much sadness, and that she could tell Katie is always in my thoughts, and she hoped she hadn't upset me. I assured her she hadn't. 

I didn't tell her that her message totally made my day. :)  To have someone ask about my baby, to willingly listen/read what I had to say and offer their sincere sympathy, after all these years -- it's a rarity -- and a gift. 

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.  

22

22 years ago today...

Odds & ends

• I've been a longtime follower of the writer Joyce Maynard, & I've written here about the huge impact that her 1973 memoir "Looking Back" (published when she was just 19!) had on me when I first read it age 12. She has a new novel in the works and mentioned on Facebook that she is trying to find a new title for it, since her publishers didn't like the one she had originally chosen. It's the story of a family living through and after divorce (likely based on Maynard's own experiences). Someone helpfully suggested in a comment, "In this post, you talk a lot about the mother. Perhaps your title needs to have MOTHER or MOM in it?" (Capitalization hers.) I read that and practically screamed out loud, "NO!!!" Just... no!!!  
• (Maynard does write a lot about mothers, and motherhood. About this novel, she says, "It’s about marriage, and divorce, and the children of that divorce, but at its core this novel is about family. And one family in particular, whose story I follow over the years from 1973 to 2009."  So... NO.) 
• I noticed on Twitter that the "Wall of Moms" (in several U.S. cities) has changed its name to "Wall of Many." Said a tweet from the Wall of Many Bay Area CA:  "Our name has changed, but our focus has not. #BlackLivesMatter always and in all ways. We are not only moms anyway - dads, childless adults, all genders care about Black lives and the right to protest. Let’s get back to work."  Bravo! 
• (I suspect many people will continue to refer to it as "Wall of Moms" -- but, points to them for acknowledging that it's not just moms who care and are out there protesting.) 
• On her Gateway Women blog, Jody Day recently interviewed Australian writer Donna Ward about her new book, "She I Dare Not Name:  A Spinster's Meditations on Life."  It's a fascinating conversation -- video & transcript available to watch &/or read here!  
• Unfortunately, Donna's book is not yet available outside of Australia. If you'd like to read it, be sure to leave a comment on Jody's post mentioning that, to show the publishers there's a demand for it in other parts of the world!  
• Love this quote from Jody (near the end): "...I think childlessness is actually another part and singleness is another part of the intersectionality that the Fourth Wave [of feminism] needs to embrace and as yet, isn’t ready to do so. And… it’s interesting how scary, unconsciously scary our lives must be that so many people don’t want to look at them."

"The Weekend" by Charlotte Wood

"The Weekend" by Charlotte Wood was published last fall in Australia and was just released in North America on Aug. 4th. It was shortlisted for the 2020 Stella Prize, an annual literary award  for writing in all genres by Australian women, worth $50,000. And it's this month's pick for the Gateway Women online book club, where we read & discuss books in which pregnancy & children are not main focal points. 

"The weekend" of the title is three days over the Christmas holiday period -- and since (like "The Women in Black" by Madeleine St. John, which I read earlier this year ) "The Weekend" is set in Australia, this means it's the height of summer (slightly jarring to my North American-centric perspective!). Three longtime friends -- restaurateur Jude, academic Wendy and actress Adele, now in their 70s (plus Wendy's ancient dog, Finn) -- are spending the Christmas holidays cleaning out the beach house that belonged to their late friend Sylvie. Sylvie was the glue that held the group together, and without her as a buffer, tensions among the three women are running high.   

I will admit the book did not begin auspiciously for me:  Jude, lying in bed, contemplates death, her aging brain, and the look & taste of sheep's brains. Yuck. It built to a dramatic climax -- during a Christmas Eve thunderstorm, no less! -- in which all three women are forced to face the truths about their lives. I'll admit this part -- the last chapter or two -- seemed just a wee bit forced to me, and when I got to the end, I found myself thinking, "That's it? That's the end?" 

But in between, there were some great observations about friendship, ambition, creativity, aging and mortality.  

This is one of those books I probably would not have picked up (or even heard about) if left to my own devices. I'm not sorry I read it. (It was a pretty quick read, finished in a little more than 24 hours.) I will be thinking about some of the themes & the vividly drawn characters for quite a while, I think.  

This would make a great movie -- there are so few good roles for older actresses these days, and this one would offer opportunities for at least four or five of them! 

3.5 stars on Goodreads, rounded up to 4.  

This was Book #26 read to date in 2020 (Book #2 finished in August). I'm currently at 87% of my 2020 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 30 books, and am (for the moment, anyway...!) 9 books ahead of schedule to meet my goal. :) You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2020 tagged as "2020 books."