Suzi Quatro

Susan Kay Quatro (born June 3, 1950) is an American singer, bass guitarist, songwriter and actor.

Her father gave her a 1957 Fender Precision bass guitar in 1964, which she still uses in the studio.

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).

Subsequently, she appeared on local television as a go-go dancer in a pop music series.

In 1964, after seeing a television performance by the Beatles, Quatro's older sister, Patti, had formed an all-female garage rock band called the Pleasure Seekers with two friends.

Quatro joined too and assumed the stage name of Suzi Soul; Patti Quatro was known as Patti Pleasure.

Suzi would sing and play bass in the band.

The band also later featured another sister, Arlene.

Many of their performances were in cabaret, where attention was (initially) focused more on their physical looks than their actual music.

They sometimes had to wear miniskirts and wigs, which Quatro later considered to be necessary evils in the pursuit of success.

However, they would become well-known fixtures in the burgeoning Detroit music community.

The Pleasure Seekers recorded three singles and released two of these: "Never Thought You'd Leave Me" / "What a Way to Die" (1966) and "Light of Love" / "Good Kind of Hurt" (1968).

The second of these was released by Mercury Records, with whom they briefly had a contract before breaking away due to differences of opinion regarding their future direction.

They changed their name to Cradle in late 1969, not long after another Quatro sister, Nancy, had joined the band and Arlene had left following the birth of her child.

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.

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, 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.

Quatro also remains active in radio broadcasting.

Quatro was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, United States.

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.

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.

Her sister Arlene is the mother of actress Sherilyn Fenn.

Her sister Patti joined Fanny, one of the earliest all-female rock bands to gain national attention.

Her brother, Michael Quatro, is also a musician.

She was influenced at the age of six by seeing Elvis Presley perform on television.

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".

Quatro received formal training in playing classical piano and percussion—her first instrument was bongos.

She taught herself how to play the bass, after her sister asked her to learn it for her first band, the Pleasure Seekers.