Suzi Quatro
Susan Kay Quatro[1] (born June 3, 1950)[2] is an American singer, bass guitarist, songwriter and actor. In the 1970s, she scored a string of singles that found success in Europe and Australia, with both "Can the Can" (1973) and "Devil Gate Drive" (1974) reaching No. 1 in several countries.
For the 1973 album, see Suzi Quatro (album).
Suzi Quatro
Susan Kay Quatro
June 3, 1950
Detroit, Michigan, U.S.
- Singer
- musician
- songwriter
- actress
- radio host
- Vocals
- bass guitar
- keyboards
1964–present
- Mercury
- Rak
- Arista
- EMI Int'l
- EMI
- BGO
- Disky
- Razor & Tie
- RSO
- AIP
- First Night
- CD Baby
- Cherry Red
Quatro released her self-titled debut album in 1973. Since then, she has released fifteen studio albums, ten compilation albums, and one live album. Other songs, including "48 Crash", "Daytona Demon", "The Wild One", and "Your Mama Won't Like Me", also charted highly overseas. Following a recurring role as bass player Leather Tuscadero on the popular American sitcom Happy Days, her duet "Stumblin' In" with Smokie's lead singer Chris Norman reached No. 4 in the US, her only song to chart in the Top 40 in her homeland.
Between 1973 and 1980, Quatro was awarded six Bravo Ottos, an award given to musicians as voted in the German teen magazine Bravo. In 2010, she was voted into the Michigan Rock and Roll Legends online Hall of Fame. She is reported to have sold over 50 million records worldwide,[3] and continues to perform live. Quatro's most recent studio album, Face to Face, was released in 2023 and follows the 2021 collaboration The Devil in Me with her son Richard Tuckey who had already taken part in No Control in 2019.[4][5] Quatro also remains active in radio broadcasting.[6]
Early life and family[edit]
Quatro was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, United States.[2][7] Her father, Art, was a semi-professional musician and worked at General Motors. Her paternal grandfather was an Italian immigrant to the U.S. and her mother, Helen, was Hungarian. Her family name of "Quattrocchi" ("four eyes", meaning "bespectacled") was shortened to Quatro.[8] Quatro's family was living in Detroit when she was born. She has three sisters, a brother, and one older half-sister. Her parents fostered several other children while she was growing up. Quatro grew up to be an "extrovert but solitary," according to Philip Norman of The Sunday Times, and she only became close to her mother after leaving the U.S. for Britain.[9]
Her sister Arlene is the mother of actress Sherilyn Fenn.[10] Her sister Patti joined Fanny, one of the earliest all-female rock bands to gain national attention.[11] Her brother, Michael Quatro, is also a musician.[12]
She was influenced at the age of six by seeing Elvis Presley perform on television.[1]: 26 She has said that she had no direct female role models in music, but was inspired by Billie Holiday and liked the dress sense of Mary Weiss of the Shangri-Las "because she wore tight trousers and a waistcoat on top – she looked hot".[13]
Quatro received formal training in playing classical piano and percussion—her first instrument was bongos.[14] She taught herself how to play the bass,[15] after her sister asked her to learn it for her first band, the Pleasure Seekers.[14] Her father gave her a 1957 Fender Precision bass guitar in 1964, which she still uses in the studio.[13][14]
Career[edit]
Early career and the Art Quatro Trio[edit]
Quatro played drums or percussion from an early age as part of her father's jazz band, the Art Quatro Trio. Sources vary regarding whether her playing in the band began at the age of seven or eight, and whether the instrument she played was a drum kit or percussion (bongo or congas).[16][17] Subsequently, she appeared on local television as a go-go dancer in a pop music series.[16]
Songwriting[edit]
She started writing songs alone, then collaborated with other songwriters (such as Len Tuckey, Rhiannon Wolfe, and Shirley Roden), and now mainly writes songs alone once again.
Quatro's early recorded songwriting was deliberately limited to album tracks and the B-sides of singles. She said in late 1973, that "... [the] album tracks are a very different story from [the] singles. The two-minute lo-and-behold commercial single will not come out of my brain, but ain't I gonna worry about it."[55]
She describes creating a new song: "From sitting at my piano in my front room, writing down a title (always first), picking up my bass, figuring out the groove, going back to the piano ... working on the lyrics, playing electric guitar ... and finally I type out the lyrics. Only then is it officially a song. Next it goes down on my tiny 8-track, [with] me playing everything ... this is the version all muso's use to get into the tune ... then into the studio and we go from there."[56]: 2
Personal life[edit]
Quatro married her long-time guitarist, Len Tuckey, in 1976. They had two children together, and divorced in 1992. Before 1993, Quatro lived with her two children in a manor house not far from Chelmsford in Essex, England, that she and Tuckey bought in 1980.[57]
She married German concert promoter Rainer Haas in 1993. In 2006, her daughter and grandchild moved back into the Essex manor house.[1] Toward the end of 2008, Quatro's children had moved out of the house and she temporarily put it up for sale, stating that she had empty nest syndrome. Quatro continues to live in Essex and Hamburg, and sometimes in Detroit.[58]
Since 2011, she has published music videos on YouTube.[59] On March 31, 2012, Quatro broke her right knee and left wrist while boarding an aircraft in Kyiv, Ukraine, where she had performed the night before. As a result, she had to cancel her appearance at the Detroit Music Awards on April 27, where she was to perform and be inducted into the Detroit Hall of Fame along with her sisters. Had she been able to go, that would have been her first performance in America in over 30 years. Quatro also had to reschedule other concert dates, while some were canceled altogether.[60]
Legacy and influence[edit]
Views of journalists and reviewers[edit]
In August 1974, Simon Frith spotted a problem with the formula that was working outside the US, saying that
