Renaissance Detroit rocker Suzi Quatro could never be accused of freewheeling. Last year she delivered the album Face To Face (her well-received collaboration with KT Tunstall), right now she’s in the midst of an ongoing tour, and she’s already written the bulk of her eighteenth studio album.
From teenage 60s garage band The Pleasure Seekers, through hit-making leather-clad 70s glam icon, to tireless elder stateswoman, Quatro has proved herself uncommonly adept as a TV and West End musical theatre actor, radio broadcaster, poet and novelist. You name it, Suzi’s done it. But 60 years in the rock business?
Surely some mistake?
Everybody looks at me and goes: “How long?’ I turned seventy-four on June third. I started at fourteen and, because I come from a musical family, I’d already been schooled in classical piano and percussion when we started the band. Nobody wanted the bass, so I was given it, which was fine by me. My dad gave me permission to leave school, we went on the road, and I went professional immediately. We never had to fight to be a band, it wasn’t a rebellious thing, just accepted.
Before forming The Pleasure Seekers, you’d played with your father’s Art Quatro Trio from the age of seven.
I played bongo drums. I considered myself a beatnik, playing bongos and reciting poetry, and I’m actually the same now.
Much has changed since your arrival into the music business, not least the prevalence of female artists as industry moguls. You were something of a pioneer in taking full control of your career from the outset.
I’d no idea what I was doing was unusual. I was just being me, rocking out. It was [producer] Mickie Most - who discovered me and brought me to England - who told me I was unique. I was going: “What? Why is he saying that to me?” And even after the hits started, in 1973, I still didn’t get it. It wasn’t until I saw my documentary, Suzi Q [2019], and Debbie Harry, Chrissie Hynde, Lita Ford, Joan Jett, Donita Sparks, Tina Weymouth and KT Tunstall all appeared and they basically all said the same thing: we would not have done what we did had Suzi not done it first. That was the first time, at the age of sixty-nine, that I realised what I’d done.
You’re very active on social media.
I’ve always been a hands-on person. I don’t hide. I never did. Even when I used to get mobbed I didn’t hide. I made up my mind in 1973 that I’m either gonna go out in a baseball cap and glasses or go out as me, and I went out as me. And I have a life. If you’re not on social media today you’re dead in the water. You have to be on it. But once I got onto it I loved relating.
You’re back on tour later this year.
We’re filming at the London Palladium, always a challenge. Every gig’s a challenge, to tell the truth. I don’t rest on laurels, I’ve never gone out with the attitude: “They’re going to love me tonight.” Never. I go out with: “I hope they like me tonight.” Though it’s fair to say I’m at the top of my performing game. I’m doing a two-hour show with an interval, so I can play a song on the piano, a duet on the drums, a six-and-a-half-minute bass solo. And luckily my vocal capabilities haven’t gone down.
There’s a warm maturity to your voice, you’ve grown into a different Suzi.
When we were making the In The Spotlight album [2011], [producer] Mike Chapman, who probably knows my voice better than I, said: “Suzi, I love what life’s done to your voice.” You hear the experience. You hear the life. I always talk to the audience during my full-blown show, and the first thing I tell them is my age, because I’m proud of it. I’m not chasing twenty-four, I’m seventy-four, and still up there shaking my ass… That’s disgusting [laughs].
Not so long ago we lost your great friend Steve Harley.
Steve was such a nice guy. I remember he had a hit with Phantom Of The Opera, and he was supposed to play the part in the musical that Michael Crawford played. Steve Harley was at the premiere with me, and as we were talking backstage I said: “What do you think?” And he said: “Michael Crawford’s great. He’s only missing one thing.” And I said: “What’s that?” He said,: “A good limp” [laughs].
Whenever I ask you what’s next, I know there’s going to be a list – recording, writing, TV, radio, poetry and on and on. Are you the hardest working woman in show business?
I’ve been told I am by many people, so I guess I am. With no signs of slowing down. I don’t know where I get this energy from. I was just born this way. I’ve always had a lot of energy, and that’s not left me.
You must always have had a high work rate. While working with your dad and then The Pleasure Seekers you were presumably receiving some sort of schooling as well?
I did leave school early, but I’m extremely well-read. I can touch type and I can take shorthand.
Should you ever have to fall back on that.
No thanks. But it’s a god-send I can type; I’m on my second novel, my seventh published book, I’ve got nearly enough poems for my third poetry book. And we’ve fourteen songs ready for the next album. I always knew I could act, it’s a no-brainer. I could have gone into acting instead of music.
You’re an all-round entertainer – a golf-free Alice Cooper.
Alice and I have been very, very good friends since the age of fifteen. We’re very similar, Alice and I. In fact, he’s gonna do a track with me on my next album.
Suzi Quatro’s UK tour kicks off in London on November 13, and she begins a run of Australian dates on January 17.
