Post by Cat on Jan 26, 2008 5:25:04 GMT -5
Interview with Suze:
www.beat.com.au/article.php?id=1153
Date: 16 Jan 2008
Issue: Beat #1098
Baby Animals
by Nick Snelling
Suzi DeMarchi is not your average soccer mom. Sure, over the last few years she’s lived in virtually obscurity as a typical LA suburban housewife happily married with two kids, but she was also once the smoky-voiced femme fatale of Baby Animals, a band feted in the early ‘90s as darlings of Australian hard rock, a band whose FM-ready muscular hooks held the record for highest selling rock album in the country (until Jet stole the crown only recently), and a band that toured with the likes of The Black Crowes, Van Halen and Robert Plant. But now, the Baby Animals are back, and DeMarchi is putting down her apron, and picking up her old guitar again. Metaphorically, of course.
As for cynics suggesting this is another predictable reprise tour meant to cash in on a band’s halcyon days, DeMarchi laughs huskily. “Hopefully, we will cash in,” she says. “I’m not gonna lie. I mean, let’s face it – this is how we make our living. But it’s never been the motivating force. Truthfully, the way Baby Animals worked out, we didn’t sell millions of records and we never made a lot of money from it.”
DeMarchi says the reformation has been a long time coming, and it wasn’t until she and the band finally caved into label pressure to do an ‘unplugged’ best-of, that the spark actually re-ignited within the Baby Animals. “I’d always said ‘nah,’ but finally it sounded like a fun thing to do,” she relates. “And then when we did actually get together, we had so much fun that we thought we better get working again.”
Late last year saw the release of Il Grande Silenzio, an acoustic revisit of the band’s past hits along with a few new songs. Next is a national tour, and then comes the long awaited new album. “As for ‘triumphant returns’,” the singer gives a self-deprecatory chuckle. “We’ll see if it’s triumphant, or not.”
Il Grande Silenzio is not an obvious unplugged affair, nor a lazy reworking of the songs stripped back into a few acoustic chords. “Nobody wanted to do that,” agrees DeMarchi. “We all lived with those songs for so long that we wanted to give them a new life of their own and give ourselves a bit of a challenge.” Indeed, in many cases, Baby Animals’ classic torch songs have been either completely re-interpreted stylistically, or rendered barely recognisable. “The songs lent themselves to be interpreted differently,” she says. “Really, they don’t sound like the Baby Animals at all.”
DeMarchi says it as much to do with the high level of musicianship in her old band, as it does to the life experiences they’ve all been through since the band’s slow demise. “It’s been quite a cathartic experience, particularly for Dave (Leslie, guitarist). He’s had a lot of recent life changes – his mum passed away and he went through a lot of other personal stuff - so when he played on that old stuff it was a really heartfelt performance.”
As much as any comeback entails a certain degree of expectation – after all, the fans will be hoping the new material can stand alongside the strength of songs like Early Warning, One Word and Rush You – DeMarchi says she isn’t feeling any pressure. “No, it’s really all about getting together doing something that makes us giggle.”
So, why did they break up, then? “The main reason was we couldn’t record. The label we were on lost its distribution, but they still owned the band. So even if we wanted to record they wouldn’t allow us to. We were pretty much fucked,” says DeMarchi ruefully. “We spent a few years trying to be released from the label, and in that time I had a baby, moved to America, and it became really hard."
Added to their woes, were DeMarchi’s ongoing throat problems. “Yeah, I had vocal nodes,” she admits. “I didn’t have any surgery, but I did have about three months of speech therapy. That was the beginning of the end of the whole touring thing. It got to the stage whereby I was having to cancel a lot of shows… and that’s traumatic in itself. It’s not just you, but it’s all the people working for you on the tour, the fans, and it’s awful. So I didn’t want to book anything from the fear of that happening again. I think that had a lot to do with me wanting to run away from it for a while.”
One thing in particular has kept the vocalist grounded – her fairytale marriage to famed guitar hero Nuno Bettencourt, one-time axe-slinger for '80s hard rockers Extreme. As DeMarchi recognises, unions of their ilk are notoriously short-lived, so it makes her doubly grateful theirs has gone the distance. “I often wonder how it would have been if I had kept touring,” she says. “I think that part of why we’re still together and the relationship is so strong is that we got to spend a lot of time together. It’s one of those choices that you make in life, and it’s worked out for us. It was fate we met, and we have two kids now, Phoebe (11) and Lorenzo (5).”
And what do they think of their rock’n’roll parents? “Well, my daughter just rolled her eyes at me – she’s just at that age where everything is ‘mum, what are you doing!?’ But, my son doesn’t have a clue about it yet – he’s more interested in trains.”
Needless to say, it hasn’t been all tupperware parties and suburban hedge-trimming since she and Bettencourt tied the knot. DeMarchi released a solo album Telelove (1999) which boasted a strong single Satellites, and the singer was even briefly courted by INXS as a potential replacement for Michael Hutchence before the whole Rockstar phenomenon took off. “I did a lot of work with Andrew (Farris), and in fact, some of the songs on Il Grande Silenzio are songs I wrote with him,” acknowledges DeMarchi. “But it was just never meant to be. I didn’t want to commit to it, and I think some of the guys in that band might have been wary of having a girl singing for the band and it just didn’t happen. So yes, we were talking about it. It would have been strange, but interesting.”
That said, DeMarchi is feeling delighted to have everything come full circle. “Nuno’s really happy for me – he’s the one who has always been pushing me back towards it. And now, I think it’s the right time. There’s really only been one band for me, and even with my solo record it didn’t feel right. I missed everybody, I missed being part of this unit, you know? The Baby Animals has been such a great vehicle for me on every level – personally, musically, creatively. To have that kind of career where you really love what you do has been a real blessing for me in my life.
“Even if it’s also been a pain as well. You gotta struggle for your art,” she sighs. “You gotta bleed for it.”
Catch the Baby Animals when they play the Prince Of Wales on Sunday January 20. The show has SOLD OUT. Il Grande Silenzio – The Baby Animals acoustic album released through Liberation Blue is on sale this Saturday. Also on sale are The Baby Animals and Shaved & Dangerous, digitally remastered and reissued as a double pack through Liberation.
www.beat.com.au/article.php?id=1153
Date: 16 Jan 2008
Issue: Beat #1098
Baby Animals
by Nick Snelling
Suzi DeMarchi is not your average soccer mom. Sure, over the last few years she’s lived in virtually obscurity as a typical LA suburban housewife happily married with two kids, but she was also once the smoky-voiced femme fatale of Baby Animals, a band feted in the early ‘90s as darlings of Australian hard rock, a band whose FM-ready muscular hooks held the record for highest selling rock album in the country (until Jet stole the crown only recently), and a band that toured with the likes of The Black Crowes, Van Halen and Robert Plant. But now, the Baby Animals are back, and DeMarchi is putting down her apron, and picking up her old guitar again. Metaphorically, of course.
As for cynics suggesting this is another predictable reprise tour meant to cash in on a band’s halcyon days, DeMarchi laughs huskily. “Hopefully, we will cash in,” she says. “I’m not gonna lie. I mean, let’s face it – this is how we make our living. But it’s never been the motivating force. Truthfully, the way Baby Animals worked out, we didn’t sell millions of records and we never made a lot of money from it.”
DeMarchi says the reformation has been a long time coming, and it wasn’t until she and the band finally caved into label pressure to do an ‘unplugged’ best-of, that the spark actually re-ignited within the Baby Animals. “I’d always said ‘nah,’ but finally it sounded like a fun thing to do,” she relates. “And then when we did actually get together, we had so much fun that we thought we better get working again.”
Late last year saw the release of Il Grande Silenzio, an acoustic revisit of the band’s past hits along with a few new songs. Next is a national tour, and then comes the long awaited new album. “As for ‘triumphant returns’,” the singer gives a self-deprecatory chuckle. “We’ll see if it’s triumphant, or not.”
Il Grande Silenzio is not an obvious unplugged affair, nor a lazy reworking of the songs stripped back into a few acoustic chords. “Nobody wanted to do that,” agrees DeMarchi. “We all lived with those songs for so long that we wanted to give them a new life of their own and give ourselves a bit of a challenge.” Indeed, in many cases, Baby Animals’ classic torch songs have been either completely re-interpreted stylistically, or rendered barely recognisable. “The songs lent themselves to be interpreted differently,” she says. “Really, they don’t sound like the Baby Animals at all.”
DeMarchi says it as much to do with the high level of musicianship in her old band, as it does to the life experiences they’ve all been through since the band’s slow demise. “It’s been quite a cathartic experience, particularly for Dave (Leslie, guitarist). He’s had a lot of recent life changes – his mum passed away and he went through a lot of other personal stuff - so when he played on that old stuff it was a really heartfelt performance.”
As much as any comeback entails a certain degree of expectation – after all, the fans will be hoping the new material can stand alongside the strength of songs like Early Warning, One Word and Rush You – DeMarchi says she isn’t feeling any pressure. “No, it’s really all about getting together doing something that makes us giggle.”
So, why did they break up, then? “The main reason was we couldn’t record. The label we were on lost its distribution, but they still owned the band. So even if we wanted to record they wouldn’t allow us to. We were pretty much fucked,” says DeMarchi ruefully. “We spent a few years trying to be released from the label, and in that time I had a baby, moved to America, and it became really hard."
Added to their woes, were DeMarchi’s ongoing throat problems. “Yeah, I had vocal nodes,” she admits. “I didn’t have any surgery, but I did have about three months of speech therapy. That was the beginning of the end of the whole touring thing. It got to the stage whereby I was having to cancel a lot of shows… and that’s traumatic in itself. It’s not just you, but it’s all the people working for you on the tour, the fans, and it’s awful. So I didn’t want to book anything from the fear of that happening again. I think that had a lot to do with me wanting to run away from it for a while.”
One thing in particular has kept the vocalist grounded – her fairytale marriage to famed guitar hero Nuno Bettencourt, one-time axe-slinger for '80s hard rockers Extreme. As DeMarchi recognises, unions of their ilk are notoriously short-lived, so it makes her doubly grateful theirs has gone the distance. “I often wonder how it would have been if I had kept touring,” she says. “I think that part of why we’re still together and the relationship is so strong is that we got to spend a lot of time together. It’s one of those choices that you make in life, and it’s worked out for us. It was fate we met, and we have two kids now, Phoebe (11) and Lorenzo (5).”
And what do they think of their rock’n’roll parents? “Well, my daughter just rolled her eyes at me – she’s just at that age where everything is ‘mum, what are you doing!?’ But, my son doesn’t have a clue about it yet – he’s more interested in trains.”
Needless to say, it hasn’t been all tupperware parties and suburban hedge-trimming since she and Bettencourt tied the knot. DeMarchi released a solo album Telelove (1999) which boasted a strong single Satellites, and the singer was even briefly courted by INXS as a potential replacement for Michael Hutchence before the whole Rockstar phenomenon took off. “I did a lot of work with Andrew (Farris), and in fact, some of the songs on Il Grande Silenzio are songs I wrote with him,” acknowledges DeMarchi. “But it was just never meant to be. I didn’t want to commit to it, and I think some of the guys in that band might have been wary of having a girl singing for the band and it just didn’t happen. So yes, we were talking about it. It would have been strange, but interesting.”
That said, DeMarchi is feeling delighted to have everything come full circle. “Nuno’s really happy for me – he’s the one who has always been pushing me back towards it. And now, I think it’s the right time. There’s really only been one band for me, and even with my solo record it didn’t feel right. I missed everybody, I missed being part of this unit, you know? The Baby Animals has been such a great vehicle for me on every level – personally, musically, creatively. To have that kind of career where you really love what you do has been a real blessing for me in my life.
“Even if it’s also been a pain as well. You gotta struggle for your art,” she sighs. “You gotta bleed for it.”
Catch the Baby Animals when they play the Prince Of Wales on Sunday January 20. The show has SOLD OUT. Il Grande Silenzio – The Baby Animals acoustic album released through Liberation Blue is on sale this Saturday. Also on sale are The Baby Animals and Shaved & Dangerous, digitally remastered and reissued as a double pack through Liberation.
