Renaissance rocker could never be accused of freewheeling. Last year she delivered the album (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 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? 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.
I played bongo drums. I considered myself a beatnik, playing bongos and reciting poetry, and I’m actually the same now. .
Sign up below to get the latest from Classic Rock, plus exclusive special offers, direct to your inbox! 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 i.