My new single is called Suzi Quatro (Teenage Discos ’73). Well, to be honest, it was written as Suzi Quatro and that’s how I introduce it when we play it every week in Darkey Kelly’s, but on the very last day for signing off on the artwork for the single I had misgivings that some people might think it was by rather than about Suzi Quatro, so I added the bit in brackets. There’s a cool video here.
The Hot Press journalist Jackie Hayden has done an extensive interview with me for the new album (which I’ll share here when the album is released) and he thought it might be interesting to reach out to Suzi Quatro and see what she thought of the track, so he sent her management a link to the video. The worst case scenario was that “her people” would block its release on the grounds of unauthorised use of her name. The most likely scenario was that we’d never hear anything back. But the wonderful outcome is that she responded in a personal e-mail the very next day to say she liked the track, that it captured the feel of the sound of the ’70s and that she wanted him to thank me for the tribute. In football terms, a result!
Needless to say, Suzi’s endorsement featured heavily in the promotional material I’ve sent out for the single. It certainly helped me get an exceptional amount of radio play. It’s also my best performing single ever in terms of chart success. While I’ve previously had five Number Ones in the singer-songwriter genre iTunes chart, this time I hit Number One on the overall iTunes chart for all genres.
Thanks Suzi for the inspiration and for the generous endorsement,