Five years in the making, Suzi Quatro and KT Tunstall’s new album sums up two entire lifetimes in music.
The duo first became friends after meeting at a tribute to Elvis Presley at Hyde Park in 2010 and started working on songs together some eight years later.
Plans to release a collaborative EP were loosely made back in late 2018 but it failed to see the light of day.
St Andrews-raised Tunstall had just completed her sixth album Wax at that time, while glam rock legend Quatro was preparing to unleash her No Control opus.
With tour commitments and the usual rigmarole of promotional activities swallowing up much of 2019 the EP was put on the backburner – and then, of course, the year zero that was 2020 happened.
Reflecting on their relationship thus far, Suzi, 73, reckons the pair belatedly coming together to record Face To Face, the duets LP that received its UK release yesterday, was always going to be.
“Nothing happens by accident and I think we were supposed to meet because she was a fan for a long time, which I did not know,” says the diminutive bass-playing frontwoman.
“We’re cut from the same cloth. She edges towards folk, I’m rock’n’roll, but there’s something similar about us and everybody has commented on the blend of our voices.
“We had no idea it was going to be like that. We just decided after meeting we were going to write a track together, which eventually turned into an album.”
‘The album’s our personal journeys’
Themes explored on the record include the experiences of love, loss, fear and triumph that have marked the duo’s separate but similar passages from unknown hopefuls to rock icons.
Detroit-born Quatro rose to global stardom fully three decades before Tunstall made people sit up and take notice with her 2004 debut album Eye To The Telescope, and it’s the wisdom gained by the pair across different eras that makes songs like the uplifting single Shine A Light unique.
“The album’s our personal journeys – we exposed our innerselves to each other basically,” adds Suzi.
“Writing together was the most natural thing in the world. We talked a lot and we opened up and a great song came out of each conversation.
“It really was creative. KT says we talked more than we wrote, but really as we were talking we were in our heads creating a song.
“I did a line, she came back with another line. And I actually said to her on the first sessions, ‘Oh what a relief – usually when I write with somebody else I have to wait for them to catch up’.
“And she said, ‘Not with me’. We both think quickly and we’re on the same track all the time, which is great.
“Unconsciously as artists, I leaned a little towards her and she leaned a little towards me, then we found the space that created this particular album.”
Album produced by Quatro’s son
Widely regarded as the first female rock’n’roll star, Quatro became a household name in the mid-70s with her wild child image and a string of hit singles, including the anthemic glam rock stompers Can The Can and Devil Gate Drive – both UK chart-toppers.
At the height of her fame she also appeared in Happy Days, one of the decade’s most popular US sitcoms, playing the cult character Leather Tuscadero, the younger sister of an old flame of the inimitable high school dropout Fonzie.
Meanwhile, the music-obsessed Tunstall, now aged 48, regarded Quatro and other female performers including Madonna and Kim Wilde as role models while growing up in the 80s.
In an act of inspired deference, the striking cover of KT’s 2007 sophomore album Drastic Fantastic, on which the California-based Suddenly I See hit-maker brandishes a silver-glitter Firebird guitar in a rock power pose, was a direct reference to the musical capabilities of her idol-turned-songwriting foil.
Face To Face, which is released on legendary American independent label Sun Records, has been produced by Suzi’s son LR Tuckley.
It was recorded in England – Quatro has lived in an Elizabethan manor house in Essex since 1980 – and while there are no plans at the moment for the two singers to tour together, both say they’re keen to include material from the album in their respective international live shows in the coming months.
Face to Face by Suzi Quatro and KT Tunstall is out now.
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