Susan Kay Quatro is an American-British singer, bass guitarist, songwriter, and actress. 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 number one in several countries.
Quatro released her self-titled debut album in 1973. Since then, she has released 15 studio albums, 10 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 number four 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.
Early life
Quatro was born and raised in Detroit. Her father, Art, was a semiprofessional musician and worked at General Motors. Her paternal grandfather was an Italian immigrant to the U.S. and her mother, Helen, was Hungarian and she died in 1992. 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 (Michael Quatro), 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 US for Britain. 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. after her sister asked her to learn it for her first band, the Pleasure Seekers.
Career
Early career and the Art Quatro Trio
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).
The Pleasure Seekers recorded three singles and released two: "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. This was a solo effort, although aided by people such as Duncan Browne, Peter Frampton and Alan White. Subsequently, with the approval of Most, she auditioned for a band to accompany her. It was also after this record that Most introduced her to the songwriting and production team of Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, who wrote songs specifically to accord with her image. She agreed with Most's assessment of her image, saying that his influence, at which some of his artists such as Jeff Beck and Rod Stewart balked, did not extend to manufacture and that "If he tried to build me into a Lulu, I wouldn't have it. I'd say 'go to hell' and walk out." This was the height of the glam rock period of the 1970s and Quatro, who wore leather clothes, portrayed a wild image while playing music that "hinged mostly on a hard rock chug beneath lyrics in which scansion overruled meaning." In May 1973, her second single "Can the Can" (1973) which Philip Auslander describes as having "seemingly nonsensical and virtually unintelligible lyrics" although they met with little success in her native United States, where she had toured as a support act for Alice Cooper. Rak Records' artists had generally not succeeded in the US and her first album, Suzi Quatro, was criticized by Alan Betrock for its lack of variety, for its Quatro-written "second-rate fillers" and for her voice, described as "often too high and shrill, lacking punch or distinctive phrasing."
In 1973, Quatro played on the Cozy Powell hit "Dance With the Devil", a track written by Mickie Most while Cozy Powell was part of the Rak Records roster.
thumb|left|Quatro on the [[TopPop television program, 1973]]
Musicians who acted as her backing band around this period included Alastair McKenzie, Dave Neal, and Len Tuckey, Tuckey's brother, Bill, acted as tour manager.
Mike Chapman and Dreamland Records
In 1980, after Quatro's contract with Mickie Most had expired, she signed with Chapman's Dreamland Records.
In the same year, she released the album Rock Hard; both the album and title single went platinum in Australia. Rock Hard was also used in the cult film Times Square and was included on the soundtrack album. The single reached number 11 in Australia, but only 68 in the UK due to distribution problems. At this point her hit single career clearly was beginning to wane. A second single from the Rock Hard album, titled "Lipstick", was released in February 1981, but radio refused to play it, as they claimed it sounded too much like "Gloria" by Them. Suzi Quatro's Greatest Hits, which was released in 1980, peaked at number four in the UK chart, becoming her highest-charting album there.
Her last UK hit for some time was "Heart of Stone" in late 1982. In 1983, another single "Main Attraction" was released. It failed to chart, but did become a moderate airplay hit. Quatro also collaborated with Bronski Beat and members of the Kinks, Eddie and the Hot Rods, and Dr. Feelgood on the Mark Cunningham-produced cover version of David Bowie's "Heroes", released the following year as the 1986 BBC Children in Need single. Quatro also released a cover version of "Wild Thing" in November 1986, as a duet with The Troggs singer Reg Presley. "Can the Can"/"Devil Gate Drive" were re-released in 1987 as a single and reached number 87 in the UK charts.
Around 2005, a documentary chronicling Quatro's life, Naked Under Leather, named after a 1975 bootleg album recorded in Japan, directed by a former member of the Runaways, Victory Tischler-Blue, was made, but this has never been released. In February 2006, Quatro released Back to the Drive, produced by Sweet guitarist Andy Scott. The album's title track was written by her former collaborator, Chapman. In March 2007, Quatro released a cover version of the Eagles song "Desperado", followed by the publication of her autobiography, Unzipped. By this time, Quatro had sold 50 million records. Quatro was also inducted into the Michigan Rock and Roll Legends online Hall of Fame in 2010, following an on-line vote.
In August 2011, Quatro released her 15th studio album, In the Spotlight (and its single, "Spotlight"). This album is a mixture of new songs written by Mike Chapman and by herself, along with some cover versions. A second single from the album, "Whatever Love Is", was subsequently released. On November 16, 2011, a music video (by Tischler-Blue) for the track "Strict Machine" was released onto the Suzi Quatro Official YouTube channel. The track is a cover of Goldfrapp's "Strict Machine", but Quatro's version contains two lines from "Can the Can", referencing the similarity of the tunes for the two songs.
In April 2013, she performed in America for the first time in over 30 years, at the Detroit Music Awards, where she received the Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award, presented to her by her sister, Patti.
In 2017, Quatro released her 16th studio album backed by Andy Scott from Sweet on guitar and Don Powell from Slade on drums.
Acting and radio hosting
Quatro is possibly best known in the United States for her role as the bass player Leather Tuscadero on the television show Happy Days in 1977. The show's producer, Garry Marshall, had offered her the role without having an audition after seeing a photograph of her on his daughter's bedroom wall. Toby Mamis, who was acting as her US representative at that time, helped broker the deal and generate enormous media attention to it, elevating Quatro's profile in her home country. Leather was the younger sister of Fonzie's former girlfriend, motorcycle trick rider Pinky Tuscadero. Leather fronted a rock band joined by principal characters Richie Cunningham, Potsie Weber, Ralph Malph, Chachi Arcola, and even Joanie Cunningham once. The character returned in other guest roles, including once for a date to a fraternity formal with Ralph Malph. Marshall offered Quatro a Leather Tuscadero spin-off, but she declined the offer, saying she did not want to be typecast.
Her other acting roles include a 1982 episode of the British comedy-drama series Minder (called "Dead Men Do Tell Tales") as Nancy, the singer girlfriend of Terry (Dennis Waterman). In 1985, she starred as a mentally disturbed ex-MI5 operative in Dempsey and Makepeace – "Love you to Death". In February 2022 Quatro gave an exclusive interview to Paul Stenning regarding her appearance in both shows.
In 1994, she made a cameo appearance as a nurse in the "Hospital" episode of the comedy Absolutely Fabulous. She also was filmed in the 1990 Clive Barker horror film Nightbreed, but the studio cut out her character. In 2006, Quatro performed the voice of Rio in the Bob the Builder film Built to Be Wild, and appeared in an episode of the second season of Rock School, in Lowestoft. She also appeared in the episode "The Axeman Cometh" of Midsomer murders in the role of Mimi Clifton.
Quatro has also performed in theater. In 1986, she appeared as Annie Oakley in a London production of Annie Get Your Gun
In more recent times, Quatro has hosted weekly rock and roll programs on BBC Radio 2. The first one was titled Rockin' with Suzi Q, while her second was given the title Wake Up Little Suzi.
Songwriting
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, "... [the] album tracks are a very different story from [the] singles. The two-minute low-and-behold commercial single will not come out of my brain, but ain't I gonna worry about it."
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."
Personal life
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, Essex, England, that she and Tuckey bought in 1980.
She married German concert promoter Rainer Haas in 1993. In 2006, her daughter and grandchild moved back into the Essex manor house. 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.
Since 2011, she has published music videos on YouTube. 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.
Quatro has lived in England since 1971. She became a British citizen in early 2026.
Public image
In a 2012 interview, Quatro was asked what she thought she had achieved for female rockers in general. She replied: