Suzi Quatro reflects on touring ahead of 2025 Cairns show

A decade on from her “farewell” tour of Australia, rock ‘n’ roll icon Suzi Quatro will return to Cairns early next year

International rock 'n' roll sensation Suzi Quatro will hit the stage at the Cairns Convention Centre on February 2 as part of her latest tour 'Rockin' On'. Photo: Supplied.

A decade on from her “farewell” tour of Australia, rock ‘n’ roll icon Suzi Quatro will take the stage at the Cairns Convention Centre for her new Rockin’ On tour on February 2, 2025.

Ahead of her 2015 Cairns concert, the Can the Can singer declared it would be her last leg of shows Down Under, before returning in 2017 for Suzi Quatro’s Leather Forever Encore Tour.

Now, she laughs whenever she hears someone bring up her “final” tours.

“It’s so funny whenever I hear that,” she said.
“I just laugh because at that time, I thought, OK, this is my 50th anniversary year and I thought maybe I’ll slow down a little, but no.”
Following her “swan song” tour of Australia, Quatro realised she wasn’t quite finished.

“Then I got home and after about two months, I went, what did I do? Why did I do that?” she said.

“So next time I said to my audience on my encore tour after that, you will never hear me say the ‘F word’ again and they gasped, and I went, final.”

She said working with her son Richard had given her a new lease on life and work.

“He turned me back onto myself because that’s what he saw, his mum Susan Quatro, so we started working together, writing together so now he’s producing, playing – he’s pretty talented – and gave me this new lease on life,” she said.

“I’m 74 now, getting the best reviews of my entire career, it’s amazing.

“I am the rock and roll entertainer I always wanted to be.”

The ‘Rockin’ On’ tour will follow Quatro on a musical journey through her life and include an eight-minute bass guitar solo.

“I do my famous eight-minute bass solo which I love doing because I love looking out at the audience and I start, and all of a sudden they go (imitates a jaw drop), and I watch it. I start and they go, what is she doing?” she said.

Quatro, a trailblazer for women in rock, said people didn’t believe she played the bass on stage when she first started out.

“When I first started off, often they thought I had a bass player playing behind the curtain, I mean how dumb can you be? You can see that I’m playing my bass,” she said.
“But that’s ‘cause it was so unusual, which I didn’t know at the time.

“I’m a self-confessed naive girl – I had no idea what I was doing was unusual, I was just doing what I do. I didn’t care.”

Tickets for her Cairns performance are available via Ticketek.

Originally published as Suzi Quatro reflects on touring ahead of 2025 Cairns show