Suzi Quatro: 'I didn't know I was breaking ground'

The 75-year-old grew up in Detroit, alongside fellow rock pioneers Alice Cooper, The Stooges and the MC5, and began her career fronting all-girl garage band The Pleasure Seekers alongside her sister Patti on guitar and backing vocals, later being joined by another of her sisters, Arlene, on keys.

Their song What A Way To Die is seen as a forerunner to punk with its chorus of “I may not live past 21, but woo what a way to die”, but the band never found mainstream success in the US and Quatro was spotted by producer Mickie Most, who brought her to England in 1971 to join his RAK label.

She was quickly welcomed by Britain’s record-buying public, with her music fitting in with the UK’s glam explosion in the 1970s, having four top 10 singles between 1973 and 1974, including two number ones in Can The Can and Devil Gate Drive, but Quatro herself dislikes being labelled glam.

The singer and bass player tells PA: “I was the only girl, so I was the odd one out, but then again I’m used to that.

“Mickie Most always said to me, even before I made it, ‘you are unique’. ‘OK Mickie, I get it.’ But I didn’t feel strange being the only girl, because I was brought up in a family of musicians, so I didn’t even think about it, I didn’t even think of myself as a girl musician.

“Sometimes they lump me in with glam, but I’m rock and roll-based, it’s only the fact that my hits started in the glam era that I get lumped in.

“The boys had on the makeup, I had on nothing, plain black leather suit, they were dressed up to the nines, so I was anti-glam.”

It usually takes at least a decade for artists to see their influence felt, but Quatro’s was immediate, with LA’s The Runaways, fronted by Cherie Currie and Joan Jett, taking on the singer’s leather-clad look from their first single Cherry Bomb (1976).

But Quatro says she had not realised her own importance until the premiere of a film about her life, called Suzi Q, in 2019.

She explains: “It was Mike Chapman who said on my documentary that every girl that came after me owed something to me.

“Now, I myself, did not realise it, and I’m very honest about it, I didn’t think of myself as a girl musician, I didn’t know I was breaking ground, I didn’t even see the door, because (I was just like) I’m going.

“And I watched the premiere of Suzi Q at London’s Regent Theatre, I wanted to judge it with the audience, wanted to feel it, the laughs, the oohs, the ahhs.

“And then I saw Debbie Harry (Blondie singer), Chrissie Hinde (The Pretenders singer), Tina Weymouth (Talking Heads bass player), Donita Sparks (L7 singer), Cherie Currie, Joan Jett, Lita Ford (The Runaways guitarist), at different times they all came on and said, basically, we would not have done what we did had Suzi Quatro not done it first.

“So that at that moment, I had that light bulb moment, I went, ‘oh, my God, oh my god’, I started to cry.

“Cherie Currie is a good friend, I called her the next day, and I told her the story, and I said, ‘Cherie, I just realised something’, she said, ‘what?’ I said ‘by me doing what I did, I gave women all over the world permission to be different’.

“There was a pause, and then she went, ‘and you just got that?’ But it shows you I was not manufactured, I don’t pretend I knew what I was doing, but it wouldn’t have happened, had it not happened to somebody with that attitude.

“You’re not going out there looking for approval, you’re just being who you are, and this is where the breakthrough came, and this is why, so now I see it.

“Now I take it proudly, thank you, but this is where somebody goes, ‘oh my god, she’s doing that, so can I’.”

Next year, Quatro will be returning to the UK, which she sees as a second home after moving there in her early 20s and marrying her British guitarist Len Tuckey, for a string of gigs which includes a show at London’s Palladium.

She says: “This is my fourth time at the Palladium, the first time was 1999 and they got me for This Is Your Life there after the show, so that has great memories.

“I did my last song, and people grabbed my hands, and I was going, ‘what are you doing?’, and then he came on with the red book, and I swore on the microphone.

“It was at the end of the show, and I was taking my end of show applause with my hands up in the air, and all of a sudden the audience went to another level, and I’m like a diva going, ‘oh thank you’, and then I realised Michael Aspel was walking out.

“So this is my fourth time back there, great gig, but all 10 shows are going to be ‘great’, I can’t wait, you know, 61 years in the business, and I just turned 75, and I absolutely love what I do, there’s still fire in my belly, always.”

The singer, who lives in Essex, said she first came to the UK because Most promised her he would make her “the first Suzi Quatro” and not “the next Janis Joplin” as Elektra Records had promised her.

She explains: “It was no option, I didn’t plan on staying, everything just rolled that way.

“You don’t know these things are going to happen, I got an English band together, took a little bit more time to make it, wasn’t until 1973 that I had my number one, fell in love with my guitar player, had my kids here.

“All of a sudden, you’re here, so I’m the girl from Detroit city and Essex.”

Quatro also has a new album in the making which she says will see her go “back to my beginnings” with her “original rock sound” crediting her son with allowing her to return to the artist she was in her youth.

She explains: “I started working with my son in 2019 and this is our third solo album (together), and he also did the Uncovered EP, and he also produced and played guitar on Face To Face with KT Tunstall, so he’s the one that’s turned me right round and made me be completely Suzi Quatro again.

“So he gave rebirth to me, I don’t know how he did it, he didn’t push or anything.

“Just maybe I’d be writing something and he’d say, ‘oh mum, that’s not organic’, and I think it’s because he grew up watching me be Suzi Quatro, so he’s got a very, like, blinders, ‘this is who you are’, which is good, and I’ve been enjoying getting back to me.

“I’m seeing myself through his eyes, which is incredible.”

Quatro will embark on her 10-date tour of the UK in April 2026 with dates in Glasgow, Southend, Birmingham, Bath, and Bournemouth, along with the Palladium show.