“I don’t do regrets and I have never have. I think the mistakes you make are there for a reason and they are meant to teach you”…
By Ian Woolley
Suzi Q at home (photo credit Quiz Britain)
It’s been an incredible 50 years for the leather-cladded singer and musician since she topped the charts with ‘Devil Gate Drive’. At the beginning of the year, Suzi Q did her 39th US tour. Yes, you heard that right, 39 tours!
“I’m now in my 60th year in the business, and honestly, it still feels fresh”, she tells me as we sip tea in her beautiful country home in Essex.
“I still go out on stage like it is my first time, so if you got that, how can you ever give it up? I’ve got that love of my profession. I’ve got that love of entertaining, and I’m always writing. Unashamedly, I’m an artiste.”
And writing more now these days?
“I’m on my seventh book right now and some of my best work is in those books. I’m a real people person and a big experience(r) of life, and I’ve always got something to say and I’m always being affected by something. I’m a tough girl but soft on the inside.
“It’s crazy. I spend half my life in the air”, she tells me. “When I got back from the latest one, we had three days when we get the demos out to the musicians. My vocals and bass is on it so that they can be creative and do what they want to do. Then we spend four days interacting on the tracks, and in April, we have a guy come over and have a listen to it all.”
I put it to her that collaborating with KT Tunstall has opened her up to a whole new audience.
“Yes, it has and for her too and it was a very natural thing to do. We wrote it here on the carpet (she points to the carpet in front of her baby white grand piano). “We were both spread out, barefoot, with my little bass guitar and tape recorder. I told KT that people just didn’t like the album, they LOVED it. I’ve never heard such superlative praise and they loved our voices and what we created together. I must have done something like 500 interviews for this album and I remember telling her when we met up for BBC Breakfast after we hadn’t seen each other for a while.”
“We can’t keep any secrets from each other after the emotional journey we had been on together and so I said to her did she realise when we were recording that our voices were blending? No, she said. I said me neither. Yet every single person is mentioning it but I’m glad neither of us thought about it because then it would have been manufactured. We were doing what we do and you don’t get a match like that – a sibling match.”
“We took an emotional journey. Someone asked me the question, what did you take from your experience with KT, and did she take from you? I am ‘in the fire’ is the answer to your question. If there is a problem with something, I go right into it. Burn and walk out. KT will go over there and observe the fire. I pulled her into the fire on some songs and made her burn. She was very uncomfortable but loved the songs, and she pulled me out of the fire and said you don’t have to be burning all the time. So, in that way, we traded the experience, but I’m a fire girl.”
We were sitting there talking about family and things in the past, some of which were a little bit embarrassing for us to share and awkward to tell each other secrets, and I said, hey, we got to write this. She got up and walked into the kitchen, and when she came back, she had some internal arguments and said OK.
“So we wrote “If I Come Home” and she said in interviews that that was the most difficult and emotional song she did with me. And so helpful because when you know you have a difficult subject, I always say put it on the table and look at it. It’s not so scary so bring it out. I’m a real truth merchant and it takes away it’s power when it’s out there. The power that is has is when it’s inside like poison and you build it up in your mind. It’s never that important.”
I asked her if there would be another joint venture.
“You know this one we enjoyed so much. It was album of the week on Radio Two, so you don’t get a better compliment than that. It was also picked up as album of the year by Jools Holland. Three weeks after the album came out, my husband, who is German and very critical as Germans are, called me up and said wow. He had listened to the album in his car, and he said that you can’t buy the blend we had on the album for all the money in the world. He commented on every song, and he said for him, “The Illusion” is like Paul Simon at his peak. You write one song in your lifetime and that’s it.”
“Yes, we could do another album.”
With such a busy lifestyle, I asked her if she had any time left to unwind. “It’s not easy, as I’m a go-go-go girl. At the end of the day, I watch a movie. I pick a movie depending on my mood, have a glass of wine and then ‘down’ time.
On top of everything she has down in her busy life, I asked her if there was anything she wished she had done.
“I don’t believe in regrets, and I never have. I think our mistakes are meant to teach us something, so I don’t regret them. I don’t set goals because once I reach them, the artistry is over. I’m always hungry for more and I’m constantly looking for the next big thing. That’s just my nature, and I very rarely rest. I’m working on my third poetry book and my second album. My poetry is not your average poetry as it delves deep into different themes. I have a natural affinity for words, and I believe in star signs because I’m a Gemini.”
So it’s written in the stars for Suzi Q, a tough cookie that’s not afraid to go into the fire and get burnt.