Suzi Quatro, real name Suzi Quatrocchio, was born on 3 June 1950. She learned to play the piano and percussion in her childhood and youth. Her father gave her her first Fender Precision bass guitar (which she still owned in 2007) when she was 14. She founded her first group – Suzi Soul & The Pleasure Seekers – with her sisters in the very same year. One of this girl group’s tours was a tour of American military bases. Suzi later described unsentimentally how they had to wear miniskirts and wigs, and most of their performances were held in cabarets where it was more important how they looked, than how well they could play or sing.
In 1970, Suzi was invited to England by producer Mickie Most who won her over with a promise to support her in her own career and “make a new Suzi Quatro”. She had already received an offer from the director of the American Electra Records to become the “new Janis Joplin”, thereby filling the gap left by the diseased legend, but the singer refused. She gave precedence to her own career in Great Britain which brought her great success and a number of hits in the seventies: Can The Can (1973, Number 1 in the English hit parade), 48 Crash (1973), Devil Gate Drive (1974, Number 1 in England), If You Can’t Give Me Love (1978) and the duet Stumblin’ In with Chris Norman of Smokie (1979).
Suzi Quatro was the first woman in rock until that time to take over the exclusively male dominant role in a band as singer and musician. She was, in essence, the first rock frontwoman. Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders and Tina Weymouth, bass guitarist of the legendary Talking Heads, have stated her as their role model.
Suzi Quatro has appeared in a number of films and appeared in one episode of the detective series Dempsey and Makepeace and Midsomer Murders. She has also acted in the theatre and currently hosts her own roll and rock show each week on the British radio station BBC Radio 2.
