AS STAR HITS 70 fired up
ROCK legend Suzi Quatro is telling me about the time someone bumped her off.
The second time, that is. Apparently, it had happened once before.
“It was in a Midsomer Murders episode,” she explains, recalling one of her occasional forays into TV drama.
“I played a drugged-out, hippyish singer who got electrocuted.
“It was good. I enjoyed it. But I must admit, it was weird watching myself being carried off.
“I’d also been killed some years before that, in an episode of Dempsey and Makepeace.
“So, I don’t know, maybe trying to tell me something!”
If they are, then Detroit-born Suzi, whose string of early-70s UK hits included Devil Gate Drive, Can The Can and 48 Crash, clearly hasn’t been listening.
Next summer she turns 70, but she’s busier now than in the past four decades. Not playing victims in ITV murder mysteries, but doing the thing she still gets the biggest kick from – performing sweat-drenched two-hour gigs to packed houses the world over.
“I’ve had virtually no days off this year,” she tells me. “I haven’t stopped. I’ve done an arena tour in the UK. I’ve done two tours of Australia. I’ve done Germany, Scandinavia, Canada.
“I’ve been promoting my album, No Control.
“And now there’s the documentary about my life, Suzi Q. That’s gone ballistic.”
Mind you, it’s pretty clear this frantic lifestyle suits her. She adds: “I must admit that on my last free day I didn’t know what to do with myself.”
Suzi has proudly oldgot
athey’re new school approach to her job. “I love entertaining,” she tells me. “I love it with every fibre of my being.
“In an audience of 10,000 people, if there’s one person who’s not smiling, I’ll find them. I have an instinct for it. “My father used to play in bands, and when I was just starting out I remember him saying two particular things to me.
“One of them was: doing is a profession.’
“The other was: ‘Whether there’s 10 people or 10,000 in that audience, every single one of them has taken a dollar out of their pocket and paid to see you. So you’d better deliver.” The Suzi we see on stage, in the trademark leather jumpsuit, wielding “a bass guitar that weighs more than me” isn’t, she insists, just a character she plays. It’s very much her.
“It’s just the public part of me that I show,” she explains.
“I don’t want to carry the ego of my performance into my life.
“It’s always been a big thing for me, keeping my feet on the ground.
“I hope you can tell that just by talking to me.”
She’s right, I can. Which may explain why we end up talking Scrabble. Yep, as in the board game. The off-duty, down-toearth Suzi – the Suzi who will gladly welcome you into her Essex home but insists you remove your shoes to spare her beige carpets – is a huge fan. When she proudly tells me about the time when “I made Equinox – that was huge!” she’s not answering some nerdy question about a concept album but revealing the highestscoring word she’s ever put down.
“It was all seven letters – and on the triple word score! I thought: ‘I’ll never do this again for as long as I live.’” But the day when Suzi Quatro gets to play board games to her heart’s content, hanging up the leather gear and easing herself into retirement, is clearly some way off.
The gigging continues. Likewise, the recording.
She has album with
Tunstall. On great shape.
I know it’s a corny old question to end with, but what the hell is Suzi Quatro’s secret?
“My secret, Mike, is I don’t give a s**t that I’m 69!” she cries. “Just accept it and enjoy it.” ‘What you’re just made a new Scottish singer KT top of which, she’s in
FILM: Damage
BOOK: Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
TV SHOW: Lucy
ACTOR: Daniel Day-Lewis
COMEDIAN: Don Rickles
SPORTSPERSON: Joe Bugner
SPORTS TEAM: Liverpool FC
SPORTING EVENT: FIFA World Cup
SONG: When I Fall In Love
CHRISTMAS SONG: Silent Night
SINGER: Elvis Presley
BAND: The Beatles
FOOD: Italian
COLOURS: Black and blue
I Love
DRINK: Good red wine. Chateau Margaux 1982
CITY: New York
HOLIDAY DESTINATION: Hawaii
BUILDING:
Building
SCHOOL SUBJECT: English Literature
FIGURE FROM HISTORY: Jesus
ANIMAL:
Dog
Empire State