She was once a Baby Animal, now Suze DeMarchi is
a solo performer in search of rock & roll perfection.

Reprinted from Pavement magazine (New Zealand/Australia)
Issue 33, February/March 1999

Story by Andrew Polson
Suze photographed in Auckland by Karl Pierard

Sporting sunglasses and sipping a latte in Pavement's offices, Suze DeMarchi looks as though she's still recovering from last night's promotional gig at Auckland's Classic Comedy Club, where, in between glasses of red wine, the former Baby Animal entertained the industry crowd with passionate acoustic performances of songs from her debut solo album Messages Delayed.   Today, shaking off the effects of the wine, she's somewhat more subdued, though she remains candid and good-humoured.

"Those sorts of things can be unnerving," she muses, reflecting on playing intimate acoustic shows, "especially with those lights in your face. You can't see the audience. But it was good. I was definitely having a good time."

So were the audience, who were effortlessly charmed by DeMarchi's off-the-cuff humour and in-your-face attitude. DeMarchi was just as comfortable during the gaps between songs, going one-on-one with the occasional friendly heckler ("Ask me anything!" she demanded at one point), proving that if she felt unnerved, she wasn't about to show any sign of it.

But this kind of confidence shouldn't come as any surprise. As both vocal and focal point in Baby Animals, DeMarchi has been displaying her confident rock & roll swagger since the band formed in Australia in the late 1980s. DeMarchi's songs, voice and charismatic presence helped Baby Animals achieve instant acclaim and almost immediate success. The band picked up Best New Act at the Australian Music Awards in 1991 and, by 1994, had chalked up two platinum-selling albums, released numerous singles and toured both at home and abroad with the likes of Van Halen, Extreme and the Black Crowes. Undeniably in her element as the lusty leader of such a rocking and rolling guitar band, DeMarchi would still be with Baby Animals had a few events not prompted her current solo status.

Firstly, there was an enforced break for the band due to managerial and distribution problems, causing the band to grind to a halt in 1994. "Our record company, Imago, lost its distribution through BMG," she explains, "so we couldn't make another record. Who wants to make a record for a company with no distribution? We asked to be released and, of course, they said no, so we had to fight that. And then our old manager was suing us for unpaid royalties, so we fought that as well, and won, after three years. But it was a struggle."

The band may well have picked up the pieces and carried on at that point, except several major personal changes were occurring in DeMarchi's life. In 1995, after a year-long courtship, she married American Nuno Bettencourt, ex-guitarist for proto-metal outfit Extreme, who played and sang on their massive early '90s hit More Than Words. The story goes that the two made initial contact through MTV after Bettencourt's attention was captured by one of DeMarchi's performances.

"He saw a video of mine on MTV Europe," she explains, "and his manager knew my manager, so we hooked up. He called me and we just had this kind of phone thing going for a few months. He'd call every now and then and we kind of got to know each other just talking on the phone. Then he invited me to go see him play in London with Extreme, about '91 or '92. So I went. They were very big at the time. They were doing Wembley Arena, I think. I thought, 'If it doesn't work out, I can just go and hang out with my friends.' And that was it."

The pair subsequently married and are now based in Boston, a city DeMarchi describes as a great musical environment.

"There are lots of students there and it's a very healthy, happening hub," she insists. "We go to see a lot of bands. Some of my favourite bands come out of Boston, like Pixies, and also older bands like Aerosmith."

A strong musical chemistry between the couple meant DeMarchi soon found herself writing and playing with Bettencourt, contributing to his album Schizophonic and other soundtrack work. It was this musical affinity, and, more tellingly, the birth of her daughter Bebe, now two years old, which forced DeMarchi to re-evaluate her career and finally leave her band, which broke up in January last year.

"It was a very hard decision to make," she admits. "I sweated over it for months. It had nothing to do with commercial reasons. My priorities just changed drastically with a child. It can't help but change you mentally, emotionally, physically. So it was just purely my decision to move on with my life and not waste any more time. Musically, I wanted to work with Nuno and different musicians and it just wouldn't have worked with the guys in the band. I wanted to make a record with guitars on it but I didn't want to make just a four-on-the-floor rock record."

Between court cases, marriage, child-birth, relocating to the US and finding a new record contract, DeMarchi has been kept busy writing and recording her first solo outing, aptly titled Delayed Messages, which boasts the impressive debut single Satellite. Keeping it in the family, Bettencourt has produced the new album, also writing and playing on several tracks. Anyone who has heard the album will instantly recognise that, despite the worthwhile addition of new musical elements such as synthesisers, DeMarchi's allegiance to rock remains undiminished.

"I have always been a guitar-head," she enthuses. "I've always loved guitar. My first bands were really rocky and the bands that I loved listening to growing up were rock bands. It's nice to hear the songs stripped down acoustically too, like we did last night. But with a band, it's always better. And I'm used to that, having that noise behind you."