Music videos that feature EB0 to EB4 and SG variant basses...

[uwe]

Suzi was a real heart-throb. Not to mention other throbbing organs. Her poster graced the wall beside my bed.

[ilan]

Suzi was a real heart-throb. Not to mention other throbbing organs. Her poster graced the wall beside my bed.

Oh I'll bet it did.

[ilan]

This tiny bass looks like an extra long scale on her

[uwe]

Lest we forget, she had cross-gender appeal!

[Basvarken]

Too bad her music was so crappy 

[uwe]

Tsk, tsk, tsk, it wasn't all Chinn & Chapman which you so despise, Rob! Our resident Dutchman doesn't like music that is too conventional or - in hemelsnaam! - associated with anything camp or glammy/teeny bopper, it's all cheesy karaoke to him.







Rob can't even appreciate the utter brilliance of Racey!

[Dave W]

Rare to see bassists in that Tele forum thread, now another Gibson bass the same day.

In all the times I saw The Mamas and the Papas on TV, I never saw Denny Doherty playing any instrument. Now here he is playing an EB-2. Hal Blaine on drums. No idea when and where but obviously early days.

[westen44]

Too bad her music was so crappy 

Suzi was crappy, but David Lee Roth wasn't?  I would take her over DLR any day of the week.  He did okay on a few songs, but overall things were never too impressive when it came to his "singing."  He was a showman and I guess a lot of people liked that.  I wasn't one of them. 

[Basvarken]

Guess I'm a few years too young to have ever been impressed by Suzi.
When she had her heyday I was not yet interested in girls in leather catsuits.

Never cared for her voice. Too shrill.
Never cared for her bass playing. Nothing special.
Never cared for her hits. Can the can, 48 crash, Devil gate drive etc


But you gotta give it to her she's still out there playing bass.



I don't really see the parallel with David Lee Roth?

[westen44]

Being too young to have experienced something is actually a good thing, since obviously it's better to be young than old.  I never really kept up with Suzi Quatro too much, but I never kept up much with Van Halen, either.  The main reason being that I honestly couldn't stand David Lee Roth's vocals.  Still, I wouldn't go so far as to call him crappy.  He did have a few good moments and I think Suzi Quatro had even more.  In DLR's case, I try to be sympathetic toward him as much as I can.  Because I think he probably realizes he has very little talent. 

[Basvarken]

In Suzi's defense; I believe to remember her producers sped up the tape to make her voice seem higher. Which to my ears never sounded very pleasant.

[westen44]

Americans are at a disadvantage when it comes to Suzi Quatro.  Even to this day many Americans know her more for the fictional TV character she played on Happy Days than anything else. That's being seriously out of touch with what was going on with her on the international level.  But it was really no one's fault.  It's just the way things turned out. 

[Dave W]

Her only Top 40 hit in the US was Stumblin' In with Chris Norman, and that probably wouldn't have charted if she hadn't appeared on Happy Days. It was soft pop so didn't showcase her as a rocker but at least it showed that she could sing well without the high pitched shrill vocals.

Most of her singles never charted at all here.

[uwe]

The Chinn-Chapman hit factory was a European phenomenon - whether the assembly-line-manufactured-hits built largely on 50ies rock'n'roll style elements were performed by Sweet, Mud, Suzi Quatro, Smokie (less archaic rock'n'roll, more country rock influence) or Racey (back to 50ies rock'n'roll).

It's not like Chinn-Chapman didn't have hits in the US, they just didn't have that one continuous hit vehicle like Sweet or Suzi in her heyday. But these here were all Chinn-Chapman or Chapman by himself songs:


(This is basically a Hot Chocolate number written for a US act.)


(Pop hard rock version of the previous Smokie country pop number, see below.)





And of course Chapman was the man behind Blondie's stellar ascent from CBGB garage band to pop glimmerati as their stalinist, but highly effective producer.

Rob is right about the early Suzi Quatro RAK hits being speeded up for the screamy effect, but she was actually the first to grow tired of this and wanted a change of style which is why by her third album Detroit funk crept in and she sang in a lower register. That new style, however, did not repeat the chart success of the early singles. But it should find favor or at least mercy with Rob who generally likes any type of rock with black RnB influx. One day, Holländer, I tell you, we're gonna ask for that blood sample and find out how adventurous your ancestors really were!   





Suzi has beccome a lot more rootsy over the decades (she was never a cutting edge artist).


(The tall young man playing the Telecaster is Richard Tuckey - nowadays also her producer making her albums sound more contemporary and less nostalgia act -, her son from her first marriage with Len Tuckey who played guitar on all her 70ies hits.)

[uwe]

David Lee Roth was charismatic (if you liked his Jim Dandy shtick), but he was/is also tone deaf. He had a masculine voice, but couldn't sing (live even less so than in the studio). His screams were hardly ever in tune real falsetto screams like Ian Gillan in his heyday or Rob Halford, Geoff Tate, Sebastian Bach and Steven Tyler. DLR just made noises with his throat akin to random guitar harmonics over the melee. But none of that really mattered when he fronted VH - then he was the rock god incarnate. And Michael Anthony's excellent backing vocals were strong enough for people to recognize the songs. Plus at least half the audience came only for Eddie anyway. And DLR was the larger than life conferencier to all that. He was effective in that role, no doubt also helped by the fact  that in pre-youtube days not every VH performance was up to merciless post-gig scrutiny. (I don't think it is a coincidence that VH during their heyday from 1978 to 1985 never released an official live recording even as a stop-gap when they were low on new material as with Diver Down - there must have been concerns even with DLR rerecording his vocals for a "live" album in the studio. To this day, there is no official live recording from that era which for a band of VH's standing and commercial clout is outright strange.)

Musically, I preferred Van Hagar - they finally got the original singer from Montrose in, the band early Van Halen patterned itself so much after. But I accept that the DLR fronted band is to many people the legendary line-up - and it was DLR's (word for word and note for note painstakingly recorded in bits and pieces) voice that graced that pivotal VH debut which influenced heavy music forever. Eddie might not have liked that particular legacy, but basically all hair metal bands and very many AOR bands of the 80ies took inspiration from the original Van Halen blueprint.