Biography
Hailing from a Detroit musical family that also produced rocker Suzi Quatro and the all-girl garage band the Pleasure Seekers, Mike Quatro maintained an extended presence on the Motor City club scene while releasing multiple solo albums across the 1970s. As the son of jazz bandleader Art Quatro, he started piano lessons early and, still a teenager, secured a performance slot on The Lawrence Welk Show in the late 1950s. Toward the close of the next decade he largely stepped back from the stage to work as a promoter, arranging concerts throughout Michigan that introduced closed-circuit video technology well ahead of its wider adoption in live entertainment. Returning to performance in the early 1970s, he soon joined the Evolution label and delivered his first solo album, Paintings, in 1972. Look Deeply in the Mirror appeared the following year, after which Quatro switched to United Artists for the 1975 release In Collaboration with the Gods. Although he retained strong local support, national recognition remained elusive, and later releases—1976’s Dancers, Romancers, Dreamers and Schemers, 1977’s Live and Kickin’, and 1979’s Getting Ready—registered minimal chart activity. After more than a decade away from public view, Quatro launched his own music and video production company, Quatrophonics, in the 1990s and, in 1995, issued Vision, his first solo LP in 16 years.
Albums