He was born in Detroit, but success came to him from England, where he has lived for decades. Suzi Quatro triumphed with devastating singles, giving her exposure that enlightened many teenagers when they decided to make music. On October 12, he performs in Benidorm, where he is part of the program of the Iberia 2024 Festival.
At five and a half years old, Susan Kay Quatro saw Elvis on television and had an epiphany. Nearly twenty years later, when Susan was already Suzi Quatro, she was touring the United States to promote a single released exclusively for that market, a version of one of Elvis’s early songs. “When we stopped in Memphis, Elvis’s people contacted us – explains Suzi Quatro herself via videoconference – and they put me on the phone with him. He told me that my version of All shaken up It was the best I had heard since his and he would like me to come to Graceland to meet. I said no, I was very busy. It wasn’t because of fear. I was starting to have success and Elvis was my idol. “I wanted to wait until I was more settled and not meet him with a stupid face.”
During the interview, Suzi Quatro reveals more of the stories and thoughts that define an artist who strives to stay grounded. A creator who needs to separate the person from the character. A pioneer who took forty years to realize that she was one. And a woman of character who attracts attention when she sees that on the videoconference screen her name is written with a Greek i. “Every time I see this mistake on a poster, in the press, I go crazy,” she says of the recurring mistake of calling her Suzy Quatro.
His solo career began in the early seventies. Her image was that of a tough woman who played bass and performed songs that condensed the best virtues of pop and rock into powerful songs like Can The Can, Devil Gate Drive either 48 Accident, songs created by the crushing tandem of Mike Chapman and Mickey Chinn. The 70s were his decade, but Quatro managed to survive fashions and generational changes.
And there she continues, performing and recording for an audience that never stops demanding her, even if her albums have almost no meaning anymore. In a few days, he will perform in Benidorm, as part of the Iberia Festival, then he will undertake a mini-tour in England to celebrate his sixty years of career. “The first time I was asked when I was going to retire was when I was 35. Every time someone asks me that again, I remember it and laugh. I am 74 years old and here I am. On my website there’s a line that says I’ll retire when I get on stage, shake my ass and keep people quiet. Well, actually, I think it will when my butt moves on its own, without my help. He says this and laughs, one of many times he will do so throughout the talk.
Currently, Quatro is preparing what his next album will be. Like the previous one, it will be produced by his son, LR Tuckey, who must also ensure that the album becomes a return to the roots. He got his start in the mid-sixties in his native Detroit; The group was called Pleasure Seekers and had the distinction of being a group made up of female instrumentalists when it was usual for women to sing and men to play. “I always felt strange, like I couldn’t find my place in the world. Then I saw the Beatles on TV and thought I could do that too. I met my sister and some friends. I had studied percussion and piano, but I was given the job of bass player. We started in a club in Detroit playing only three songs. But when I saw myself on stage, I said to myself: I’m at home.
Throughout her life, Suzi Quatro did things motivated solely by instinct and the need to do them, only to later discover that these decisions were pioneering. In 2019 it was created Suzia documentary directed by Liam Firmager which tells his story. She went to the premiere and asked to see it in the theater, sitting in the audience. “Then I saw that Debbie Harry, Chrissie Hynde, Joan Jett, Donita Sparks, KT Tunstall were also there. They all appeared in the film and, practically, in their interventions, they all said the same thing: we wouldn’t have done this if Suzi Quatro hadn’t done it first. At 69, I realized that, unintentionally, I had inspired other women. And I burst into tears.”
Next, Quatro points out that when she started making music, she couldn’t find female references. “My father was a jazz musician and played Billie Holiday songs, so thanks to him I discovered her albums and fell in love with her voice. Then when I heard Janis Joplin sing A piece of my heart I thought I could do something like that too. But the people who inspired me were mainly men like Otis Redding, Elvis, Dylan.
What did Suzi Quatro bring to other women who made music after her? Among other things, he occupied land that seemed reserved for men. He appropriates the tones of hard rock and, once adapted to pop, creates universal and eternal hits. Suzi Quatro was a rock & roll patron saint who sang and played as hard as a man, but still a woman. Her songs infected the energy and were a lesson for the other girls. Joan Jett has repeatedly said how important Suzi Quatro was in the creation of a group like the Runaways. The Californian quintet is perhaps the clearest exponent of this influence, which is not only limited to music, but also to image. In her hit albums, in her television appearances and at her concerts, Quatro appeared dressed in a leather jumpsuit whose zipper was always suggestively open. “Have I appropriated an image and an eroticism that were until then the heritage of men? Of course! Of course! But again, I have to say that it wasn’t consciously. I never went out of my way to look sexy. “I was just being myself.”
Suzi Quatro’s artistic resistance has a secret. Although he defines himself as a stage animal, he has been able to diversify his creative needs. Between 1977 and 1979, he played a recurring role in a famous British sitcom, Happy days (in Spain, live fully), where she played a rock bassist, Leather Tuscadero. The producers asked him to star in a spin-off based on her character, but she refused, saying she didn’t want to be typecast. He did theater and radio; He has also published collections of poems, a novel and an autobiography, Unzipped (2007).
“I have to express myself as best I can all the time, no one surpasses me in that. I need to constantly create. Everything I have done is part of a whole. I am a communicator, an artist and a creator. And the day I can no longer be any of these three things, it will be because I will be two meters underground.” For the moment, Suzi Quatro does not seem to have any intention of stopping. The album that he is preparing will be a tribute to his roots in Detroit, and will contain a version of Eliminate jams of MC5 played with his friend Alice Cooper.
“I need to be in front of the public. Talent is something you are born with, something that cannot be learned from anyone because no one can teach you how to perform on stage. That will never leave me and that’s why, when I go out to perform, I never take for granted that the audience will like me. My philosophy is I have to win them every night. So I go out, I look at the audience and I think: I’m going to come after you,” he adds.
