Why the Queen of Rock and Roll, Suzi Quatro, vowed to never say the F-word again
Ahead of her upcoming Rockin’ On tour in Australia, rockstar Suzi Quatro explains why she’ll never use the F-word again.
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A swarm of Hells Angels bikies greeted world-class rockstar Suzi Quatro the first time she toured Australia.
She wasn’t expecting them. It was 1974 and she was only 23, dressed in black leather and reeling from being mobbed by fans and press as she stepped off the plane.
The bikies were waiting out the front of the airport. As it transpired, they were there to escort Suzi to the hotel.
“All the bikies were with me all the way to the hotel, it was amazing. When we got to the hotel, all the bikies came into the lobby and I saw all the hotel people going ‘uh oh’,” Suzi laughs.
“They sat on the chairs, put their feet up on the table. One of them burped in the microphone – I always remember his name, it was Guitar-zan. He put his feet up on the table and I thought ‘welcome to Australia!’.”
Suzi is speaking to me from Spain. To make up for the time difference, she’s woken up early and I’m working late. Over video chat, morning light is peeking in from behind her, while at my desk the sun is setting before me.
Despite warning me she’s half-awake, Suzi is bright and alert. She has a warm laugh and an immediately likeable countenance, the kind that makes you feel more like you’re talking to an old friend.
Suzi is the consummate queen of rock and roll, effortlessly and timelessly cool. She is returning in January to play her 40th tour of Australia, several years after vowing to never say the F-word again.
Not that F-word.
She was performing what she thought would be her last tour of Australia in 2015, saying goodbye to Aussie stages in style. She played her dream shows, two-hour concerts, then went home to England.
But about two months later, she realised it could never be the last tour.
“When I came back to Australia about a year and a half later for my Leather Forever encore tour, I said to my audience ‘I will never use the F word again – final’,” Suzi tells me fervently.
“It’s never final. I will never say it again, never, I am gonna go until I can’t go anymore. This is who I am.”
On that first Melbourne tour in 1974, Suzi was presented with a custom-made leather bikini in Melbourne. She pulls a face and laughs when I ask her about it, as though she can’t believe what she used to get up to.
“They also asked if I had leather pyjamas and I said no. Then they said: if we make (a leather bikini) for you, will you do a photo session? I said yes, and oh my God,” she recalls.
Days later, when Suzi was backstage ready to perform in Melbourne for the first time, she said she had never heard a crowd like it.
“We had loud amps and a PA, okay, and the crowd was louder. I will never forget the noise that came up, never. I just went, ‘wow, you guys got some lungs on you!’,” she says.
So fond of Melbourne Suzi is that if she were to move to Australia, it’s the city she’d pick. Initially, I think she may just be telling me what I want to hear – but there’s something unmistakably genuine about her. I can’t help but believe it.
“Melbourne is my favourite city in Australia. I’m not just saying that, I love all of Australia, but Melbourne has a vibe,” she tells me intently, visibly trying hard to pinpoint what makes the city special.
“Melbourne is different, I can’t even explain. I love Sydney, but now it’s just like any big city. I love Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, but Melbourne… If I had to live in Australia, I’d live there.”
As prolific as Suzi is, she has only recently started to comprehend the sheer profoundness of her career. It was only when she watched the premiere of the Australian-made documentary about her life, Suzi Q, that it started to hit her.
“All through the documentary, there were Debbie Harry, Chrissie Hynde, Joan Jett, KT Tunstall and others – and they all said, if you paraphrase, they all basically say the same thing. They said that they wouldn’t have done what they did had I not done it first.
“And at 69, that’s how old I was when that film came out, it was the first time I realised. I was standing there watching, and I started to cry, because it actually dawned on me. Now I get it.
“Sooner or later, a girl would have made it doing rock and roll. But it had to be somebody like me, who was naive enough to not know what they were doing. And that’s why it worked, and that’s why I’m still here now.
“I remember calling Cherie Currie, who was the original lead singer of The Runaways. I called her the day after that documentary premiere. I said, ‘Cherie, I just realised. By me doing what I did, I gave women all over the world permission to be different’.
“There was a long silence, and then she went, ‘and you just got it?’,” Suzi says, laughing at herself and shaking her head.
I ask her about the best advice she has ever received and she immediately knows the answer. It was from her father and she was 18 years old.
“He said: I will give you two pieces of advice. He said first of all, this is your job. This is your profession. Then he said: second, if there’s 10 people or 10,000 in the audience, they’ve all put their hand in their pocket and taken money out and paid to see you, and you owe them,” she says.
Every time Suzi performs, she believes she must prove to the audience why they paid to see her. Perhaps it is this humility that has kept her rocking at such a supersonic level for so long.
She jokes it’s “ridiculous” she’s preparing for her 40th Australian tour, but it’s evident she’s immensely proud. She’s also not slowing down.
Her first number one hit, Can The Can, was released in 1973 and in 2024, she played the main stage of the biggest outdoor festival in Europe to a crowd of 85,000 people.
“I didn’t get in this for five minutes, I got in it for a lifetime,” she says.
“I take it seriously. I don’t think I’ve ever coasted a show in my life. I give 300 per cent when I go out there – and in fact, if I ever do coast a show, it’s time to stop, that’s how I feel about it.
“Australia and me? We just love each other, it’s been this ongoing affair, and we should never get married. I’ll keep coming as long as you will have me. It’s my second home.”
Suzi Quatro will perform at the Palais Theatre on January 26, 2025. Tickets are on sale now.
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