Pleasure Seekers Anybody with a slight interest in garage rock is assuredly familiar with 'What A Way To Die', a song that alleviated the "all-girl" group The Pleasure Seekers to a platform usually reserved for their all-male competition.  Led by the Quatro sisters, the group would carry their high octane brand of rock and roll to a later outfit known as The Cradle.  In support of fortchcoming CD retrospectives by both The Pleasure Seekers and Cradle, we were contacted by Patti Quatro Ericson, whom agreed to provide some excellent insight to what it was like for her group to make waves in the '60s rock and roll world. For more on Patti, The Pleasure Seekers and Cradle, visit here, here, here, and here. An Interview With Patti Quatro Ericson 60sgaragebands.com (60s): What inspired you to from an all-girl band during a time when rock and roll was primarily male dominated? Patti Quatro Ericson (PQE): I had gone to a concert.  I was watching my friends and the audience crying, screaming, and reacting to the group on stage.  I was sort of dazed by it all, and I had sort of an epiphany.  I think I was only one not reacting to the madness.  I knew in a flash that I wanted to go further with my nurtured musical training and start an all-girl band.  I went home, called my friends (Nan Ball and Diane Baker) and The Pleasure Seekers was born. We dragged in our sisters, Suzi and Marylou Ball, to round out the band.  My dad had given us all piano lessons and vocal lessons. He was a known band leader in our area, and had nurtured the musical genes in his girls and my bro Michael (who was a child prodigy on The Lawrence Welk Show.  He played keyboards, and was later the first huge promoter in Michigan, bringing in The Stones, Hendrix, etc.). Dad had a bass lying around house, and Suzi wanted to play drums (she was a bongo player already), but I made her take up bass, as my friend Nan wanted to be the drummer.  I was already taking guitar, and Diane (the daughter of my dad's horn player) was already a pianist. We were off and running.  Suzi had to quit school eventually, but dad knew this was her path. I ended up quitting college eventually, as music became our world. We never even thought twice about it being a male dominated world.  Our parents brought up the Quatro girls  to be very independent, and to go for what we wanted. That was a bit unusual for the times; there was no women's lib back then.  Our dad always wanted us to be happy, to follow our dreams, and he supported that always, especially in the performing area, which was his great love. He was quite the entertainer.  Suzi got that from him—the quick wit, jokester thing.  It was particularly difficult though on our journey through that world.  Everyone was always skeptical until we started playing.  We grew used to seeing jaws open, stares in disbelief, etc. The male musicians rallied around us usually; they loved the idea of women they could relate to as peers, playing hard rock, as no women did.  Most girl groups were very girly sounding.  We went the limit, as we evolved into Cradle, gaining huge respect from our mentors (Jeff Beck who wanted to record us, and Mountain—same thing) and other legends of the day. Our house was a meeting spot for the groups playing Detroit.  Here’s a funny story: Jefferson Airplane (Jorma and Jack on acid) was in our garage in the middle of the night.  We were jamming and our parents were asleep.  Dad came to the door in his boxer shorts...peeps out...and everyone held their breath—the guys were a bit freaked out.  Dad said, "Hey, do you guys know b flat blues?" and joined in the jam.  That was our house! 60s: What type of reaction did you first receive from other bands and from the audience? PQE: We boldly challenged (all bravado) Hideout owner Dave Leone by saying one night at the Hideout, “Some of these bands suck.  We are better so put us on stage.”  He took us up on that dare. We scrambled for two weeks, learning three tunes, and made our first appearance on his stage. The night was interesting:  Guys floated to the front, girls tried to pull them away, and were making fun of us.  Everyone was curious as hell.  We played ‘Louie Louie,’ ‘Little Latin Lupe Lu’ and ‘Long Tall Texan.’  It all went down a storm.  By the end of our songs, everyone loved it. Many reappearances followed, we gained momentum and our musical careers were born. It was a tough road.  The suits (record companies) always wanted us to go tits and ass, Vegas style and we were having none of it.  They wouldn't let us write (we did anyway), and we were misbooked at times into country club-type places were our rock sound was too much for the staid clientele.  Soon we were well on cue with bro booking us, and playing the club circuit and every college, and then concert halls—graduating to major pop festivals, the major ballrooms, including The Grande Ballroom, etc., with the legends. Once we were playing the good rock gigs, we were very well accepted and moved up regionally, ending up in New York, where we were signed to Mercury Records in short order. We then went on to tour states, ending up in the Northwest for Pat O'Day of Concerts West.  Out there, we ended up headlining above who he had booked.  We received enormous response and he held us over for six weeks touring the Northwest with Eric Burdon and The Animals.  Of course, the male bands often were confused how to treat us; being women, they would want to try and pull--but we were also peers as musicians playing on a bill with them. That dicotomy always made for amusing and often interesting interactions between us and our fellow male musicians. It was great times in a great era! 60s: Reportedly, The Pleasure Seekers also toured Vietnam.  What was the reception like playing for the armed forces!? PQE: That was one amazing gig.  We were told we had to play in the hospital for the men that were airlifted off the field and full of shrapnel, injured, bloody—but not operated on yet.  We were asked to do an acoustic set—a walkabout through the halls for them.  It was the most rewarding thing we have probably ever done.  Here they are, half conscious, bloody, in pain, and we walked around trying to hold in our emotions and put a good face on.  We were very young and naďve; what a lesson.  On guy said softly, with his arms hanging in straps, “Can you play Try A Little Tenderness?’  Suzi did a bang-up job of that tune and we nearly lost it!  It was very tough.  At the end of tour, the men presented us with a plaque to thank us. The reception was amazing.  Our band had some nice looking girls, always, and we had enormous sex appeal in that department.  So we went over very well there. 60s: Did The Pleasure Seekers cross paths with any other all-girl groups while touring? PQE: We ended up stealing our drummer from another girl band; they were pissed, but we were way more rock and successful.  Drummers were always hard to find.  Our girl Darline was the first girl sponsored by Slingerland Drums back then, playing double bass drums—and she kicked ass. Her solo was amazing.  Nan was more a Ringo-type drummer and solid.   And Nancy Rogers (in Cradle) was very, very good and inventive.   We ran across other girl groups here and there, but as I said, they were mostly playing pretty girly and not heavy rock.  They were just different than us. We were very serious about our writing and contributions musically and really went for the gusto in all we did. And our costuming was great.  We had many looks. We were brought up to give the whole package:  Music, vocals and, always, a great show. We traded instruments, did an entire Sgt. Peppers review, a Motown review, and played everything from Motown to Cream to Zepplin.  We did it all.   Here’s another story:  In a New York studio in the dark (and in the mood).  We were playing Vanilla Fudge—‘You Keep Me Hangin On’—and the lights went on at the end and The Young Rascals were standing there with their mouths open at seeing "girls" playing the tune.  That was a typical reaction to us.  In fact, it used to make us a bit angry, as we never could quite suss out why not women playing music?  It made no sense to us why people saw us as a novelty.  We figured we had two hands to play instruments, same as any guy would!  The bottom line is…the other girl groups were always threatened by us—when we did run across the few that existed—as we played very heavy.  But there was also a rapport in that we all had a tough road in a man's world.  In fact in later years, I played with one of the gals (a dear friend bass player) in another girl group when I was in between groups.  And for Cradle II (after Suzi left), Nancy and I played with a very talented sister duo, Leigh and Lynne Serridge (bass and drums), for about a year. The good females were around, but hard to find.  There were some girl groups, but hardly any that early, that were really off and running, making a real stab at it.  They usually fell apart shortly therafter.    60s: 'What A Way To Die' is a garage rock classic. The song wasn't written by the band, but do you think it accurately reflected your sound and the image you wanted to portray? PQE: Our sound was still evolving in those early days, and we were wide open.  We were very influenced by the English Invasion in the beginning, and with Dave pushing us to record, we were pretty open to whatever would get us some product out, being impatient teenagers.  You have to remember that era was like a renaissance.  Detroit was exploding with music, and all of us grew up on Motown, and the English Invasion was in full swing.  Nan loved The Stones, and all of us were into the English groups.   We were taking it all in, fusing a sound we liked between our Motown upbringing, the Detroit area homeboys we were playing with and that particular sound, and the English stuff—and also enjoying the "girl vocals" sound of the girl singing groups at Motown.  We were trying to find our niche.  We were lucky to have a variety of capable singers too, which was a real plus in our early sounds.  Our harmonies were great and Marylou was great on the girl group sounds.  Nan did the English stuff, and Suzi handled the soul singing.  She had a great low voice (she did Otis, etc.) completely opposite than her later very high voice that they used in England.  They shoved her up into a very high register for her pop hits in the ‘70s. Dave came to us with some lyrics but we all put the songs together. That was how it really went down. ‘What A Way To Die’ was a blast to record.  We had a lot of fun with that. Yes…it was a fan fave and it still is, having been covered by so many people/bands, and even in a movie.  As early efforts go, the songs were fine with us, and we were thrilled to have some product out. Actually, though little known, we were recorded by John Rhys earlier on Golden World.  We recorded a ‘He's So Fine’ cover, and an original tune much more reflective of our style, called ‘Long White Line—a motorcycle-type song.  We brought a motorcycle into the studio to record the sound effect, and smoked up the whole studio.  It was hilarious...and John's idea!  Somewhere hidden in some archive, is that tape.  I would kill to get my hands on it; it was a great song but was never released.  We did another session with two of our first originals (which will be on the Pleasure Seekers CD), both never released, plus other interesting songs.  Our image was still developing in the very early days.  We were pretty experimental and tried lots of things.  What I think was different about us from other groups is that we had a very heavily trained vocal sense.  We went into unusual harmonies in our writing...using sevenths, etc.—not done in that day.  Nancy joining our band changed our direction. She was known quickly as a female Robert Plant-type vocalist.  She had great pipes, and added a totally new element to Cradle as we evolved into writing many original tunes. And the combo of Nancy and Suzi's voice was terrific. The low and high, made an interesting mix on some duets we did. Vocals were definitely a strong suit in both bands.    Later, in Cradle, we even added horn at one point, with our drummer playing one handed drums, and blowing the horn in certain parts.  Nancy played a bit of violin in a tune, and timbales.  The Quatro girls sort of had no fear of trying whatever came to our mind in creating our music; if it meant quickly picking up an instrument for a small section, we did it.    60s: You’ve strongly alluded to this, but how would you best describe your rock and roll beliefs? PQE: I think for us the emotion was the thing:  A riff, bass hitting me in my gut, vocal melody, whatever it was, it had to take us there and take us on an emotional ride.  If we didn't feel a "high" off of what we were playing, something was off.  Our family was infused with music, always, so those genes were very alive in all the Quatro sisters, and we brought those beliefs to our groups.  The music had to kick ass and "take us there" or it wasn't worth playing.  And as to our beliefs...we were very driven to move to being respected as musicians—not girls; the music was the thing...not the novelty of being girls in a man's world.  That was everyone else's big deal—not ours.   60s: What is the source of the songs on the new CDs?  Will your Hideout and Mercury singles be included? PQE: The CD material was rescued by a very diligent and excited engineer from two-track reel-to-reels recorded at live gigs. It is amazing they survived and could be digitalized and brought back.  So the feel of the era is there—raw and live.  We will definitely be interested in including the Mercury singles and we’re checking that out now. The Hideout singles are owned by me, so no problem there. 60s: How many CDs are planned?  When will they be available for ordering? PQE: Two CDs will be released.  We are working backwards to the roots. Cradle: The History will be first out very, very soon now.  The Pleasure Seekers CD will follow in a few months.  Both are ready to go and mixed and done.  We will be setting up the order site very shortly; we’re working on that now.  The songs will be available in digital and CD, with merchandise to follow.  Stay tuned to the sites.  A sampler of the Cradle CD is already up on those sites.