When Suze DeMarchi emerged as the frontwoman of ’90s hard-rock band Baby Animals, she proved that girls with guitars could rock just as hard as the boys. She wasn’t interested in being a pop star and didn’t pin her hopes on an idol that came before her. Here was an ambitious crop-haired rocker who liked her rock’n’roll served straight up.
As I meet DeMarchi for morning coffee, it’s hard to believe that almost a quarter of a century has passed since Baby Animals burst on to the scene with their debut self-titled album, which held the record as the biggest-selling Australian rock debut until 2003, when it was supplanted by Jet’s Get Born.
DeMarchi will be 50 next year, but she doesn’t look a day over 35 as she greets me with that same cropped hairdo. She has swapped her leather rock-chick look for a beautifully tuned rock chic – wearing a tailored flannelette shirt under a soft silk jacket, with signature scarf and fitted pants. She keeps fit doing yoga, Pilates and running, and says the odd injection here and there – pointing at her face – without going over the top helps, too.
We’re here to talk about the band’s first album of new material in almost 20 years, This Is Not The End, which sees DeMarchi and Dave Leslie reunite. This latest offering is as charged and dynamic as their debut and reminds fans Baby Animals didn’t so much burn out as just fade away.
DeMarchi, who grew up in Perth as the youngest of four siblings in a highly musical family, seemed destined for a musical career. Her mother, Shirley, was a soprano singer, her sister, Denise, runs a variety choir in Western Australia, her brother, Steven, plays bass and her sister Janelle owns a music shop. Her father, Walter, is the odd man out – DeMarchi says he’s tone deaf and can’t sing.
She’s a mix of Italian, Irish, German and French heritage. “Dad’s father was Italian and a soldier in the war, but I never met him. I have an Irish passport I’m proud of. I reckon that’s where I get my big drinking appetite from,” she says, half-joking.
DeMarchi cut her teeth on Perth’s rock scene as a curious teenager listening to her brother’s English rock records. She was inspired to join a band after seeing The Rockets play. “Punk rock and guitar-based music is what I was and still am about,” she says.
At 17, she joined Perth band Photoplay and spent the next three years discovering the tough world of pub rock. It was her introduction to the world of late nights, sticky carpet debauchery and travelling with blokes in a band.
When Photoplay ended, she moved to London to chase her rock ambitions. At 20, she signed a million-dollar album deal with EMI UK. The world was truly her oyster. It was the mid-1980s. Poison’s Every Rose Has Its Thorn was at the top of the Billboard charts and Phil Collins and Bobby Brown were household names. “I hung out and got crazy and had the best four years of my life,” she reflects of her time in London.
But the good times came to an end when the record company management wanted to steer her down the Stock Aitken Waterman, manufactured pop route, to follow in the footsteps of Kylie Minogue. “They wanted me to go pop, so I decided to get on a plane and come home. I wasn’t going to give up on my rock’n’roll dream,” she says.
In 1989, she returned to Sydney, where she shared an inner-city terrace with eight others. Australia’s live music scene was booming. While Kylie Minogue was busy doing the Locomotion, acts such as The Angels, The Divinyls, Beasts of Bourbon and Hoodoo Gurus were doing their bit for Aussie rock’n’roll.
It was against this background that DeMarchi formed Baby Animals with drummer Frank Celenza, guitarist Dave Leslie and bassist Eddie Parise. They signed to the prestigious Imago label and recorded their eponymous, record-breaking debut in 1991.
Despite the record-smashing success of the first album, for a multitude of reasons the band couldn’t maintain the momentum. “If I have one regret it was rushing to make our second album,” DeMarchi says of 1993’s Shaved & Dangerous. “I knew deep down it didn’t feel right. I didn’t want the songs to get too complicated and that’s what happened.”
Shaved & Dangerous was recorded in a top-notch studio in New York with producer Ed Stasium who, according to DeMarchi, wasn’t a song guy. She knew it didn’t feel right but the wheels were in motion. Not even a phone call to A&R in Sydney could halt the process.
The album featured musician Nuno Bettencourt, whom DeMarchi married the next year. Bettencourt was the main reason the pair moved to the US and why Baby Animals’ career was put on hold – the lights dimming but never going out completely. DeMarchi also had throat problems, which required six months of speech therapy. It made sense to take a break.
It wasn’t until 2008, when Baby Animals released the acoustic album – Il Grande Silenzio – that we were reacquainted with the band. Sure a few tours were tried and tested in between, but the ’90s were long gone and the ARIA charts were dominated by Timbaland, Rihanna and Pink. There was a new musical landscape.
As we talk, I can’t help but wonder if DeMarchi’s career would have panned out differently had she remained in Australia. Would she have continued to make music or would she have simply faded into the background as other rock stars took the spotlight?
DeMarchi’s marriage to Bettencourt lasted 15 years and they have two children – Bebe, 17 and Lorenzo, 11. She moved back to Sydney in 2009 after a stint in Boston and then Los Angeles, and bought a house in Coogee, where she lives just two blocks from her best friend Mary Coustas. The two met backstage on Hey Hey It’s Saturday in the early ’90s, exchanged numbers and remained best friends ever since despite spending much of that time living in different hemispheres. Bettencourt remains in the US and tours with Rihanna.
“Rihanna is the reason my marriage broke up,” says DeMarchi, alluding to the fact that her ex-husband’s busy schedule with an international star might have contributed to the demise of her family unit.
DeMarchi says she would never marry a musician again. “I don’t think I have ever been with anybody else,” DeMarchi says. “Well, I’m actually seeing someone now who is a designer. My advice is don’t ever date a musician. You get competitive with each other, and when you’ve got kids someone has to take the lion’s share of the work. He had the opportunity to earn more with his work and that’s when my life changed.”
Living in the basement of her mother-in-law’s home while Bettencourt went on tour with Aerosmith wasn’t exactly wedded bliss. DeMarchi kept busy building their family home – which took years – in the fishing village of Magnolia in Gloucester, Massachusetts.
“Being away from music sent me mad. I had to do other things to fill my mind. I lived where The Perfect Storm was filmed – in the middle of nowhere. I was surrounded by fishermen. It wasn’t entirely rock’n’roll.”
The name of the new album, This Is Not The End, refers to her marriage breakdown and was inspired by a song that never made the final cut. DeMarchi admits managing a relationship with someone for the sake of the kids is one of the hardest aspects of moving on.
“I came back to Australia because my daughter, Bebe, was about to start high school. I wanted my kids to have some Aussie upbringing, and I needed to work and get on with the band. I thought if I don’t do it now, I’ll be stuck in America forever,” DeMarchi says.
At first her kids didn’t like being back in Australia. They missed friends, neighbours and their dad. “Now my kids see how I am getting through the divorce and it’s not that bad,” says DeMarchi. “They see we have a new house and have made it work. Sometimes it’s going to be stressful and I might yell, and some days I will have the shits and other days I won’t. They both like it here now. They don’t want to live in LA.
“It was hard in the beginning. It was an adjustment for all of us, but we’re in a groove and it’s good to be back and working with my band again. I’ve really missed that aspect.”
With a new album also comes a new perspective. No longer interested in conquering the rock world, DeMarchi is happy to play music, and inspire fans to get out of the house and embrace a moment where time seems to stand still. If anything, she’d like to try design and architecture – another great love.
“I’d better hurry, though,” she says with a wink. “ I’m 50 next year.”
Baby Animals play at The Corner Hotel, Melbourne on October 31. Tickets: cornerhotel.com
