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 Ep. 38, the Pleasure Seekers had completed their 1968 summer-long tour in the Pacific Northwest and were heading back home to Detroit. Two gigs were booked on the road trip – one at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara, California and the other was in Denver, Colorado. Patti describes both in great and horrifying detail, including flirtations with the boys on the base and flirting with near death! Once they arrived back home to Detroit, the five band members caught up with friends and family since they’d been on the road for close to a year. It was during this respite that the band saw the seismic shifts in rock ‘n’ roll happening in their hometown and with their homeboys. This included the heavy sound of the music and the substance in the original songwriting. The Pleasure Seekers came back to these cultural changes in rock ‘n’ roll and were ready to take it on in their own independent musical progression, as well as their own independent musical vision of where they were headed next.