Season Three is here with Dr. Kristen Hillaire and Patti Quatro! We talk in depth about the groundbreaking all-female Detroit rock ‘n’ roll band, the Pleasure Seekers, formed in 1964.

At the ages of sixteen and seventeen, Patti and her two best friends, Nan Ball and Diane Baker, were hanging out together and noodling on their instruments in a basement in the suburbs of Detroit. Like so many other teens, the British invasion was having a huge influence on the cultural shifts occurring in music, and after seeing the Beatles live at Olympia Stadium, Patti was hooked on rock ‘n’ roll. She recruited younger sister, Suzi, and Nan’s younger sister, Mary Lou, at the age of fourteen, and the Pleasure Seekers were ready to go!

Also in 1964, Dave Leone’s and Ed “Punch” Andrews’ “Hideout” opened as a teen club in the suburbs of the city. It was an explosive time in Detroit – the music, the Motor City, the mayhem, and the magic! The Pleasure Seekers and the Quatro sisters were not only there to bear witness to it all, they helped to create the distinct and dynamic sounds of early rock ‘n’ roll in Detroit.

When the Pleasure Seekers (and Cradle) were inducted into the Detroit Music Awards at the Fillmore Theater in 2012, Dennis “Machine Gun” Thompson of the MC5 wrote, “The Quatro girls were the first all-female band that played instruments well, and forerunners for many bands to follow. One kick-ass band!”

On this episode, Patti and I talk about a harrowing gig on the way back home from the Big Apple to the Motor City. Joe Glaser of ABC had booked the Pleasure Seekers into a New Jersey club only to be met by mob punks who wouldn’t take no for answer. Leo Fenn, the band’s manager, had to handle the incident on his own, and by the next day the havoc wreaked upon the bar would go down as one of the scariest mob incidents the teen band had ever experienced. However, as Patti says, it did not damper the excitement of all that the Pleasure Seekers had accomplished on their first road trip to New York. Patti reflects on the pride of their parents, the thrill of coming home to playing more gigs with this new feather in their collective cap, and they were ready to play the Roostertail with Paul Revere and The Raiders overlooking the Detroit River. Being signed to ABC was a seismic shift for the Pleasure Seekers, and they were ready to take on the rock ‘n’ roll world!