If You Knew Suzi...

Rock star, actress and radio presenter Suzi Quatro has just written her first novel. She talks to Pat Parker about her life, loves and regrets, her home in Essex, and how she keeps her ego in check.

- Pat Parker

SUZI QUATRO sips a coffee as we chat on the patio of her impressive Elizabethan manor house hidden away in the Essex countryside, not far from Chelmsford. She’s wearing no make-up and is dressed in denim shorts and a top, but still looks good for her 67 years. She keeps fit by jogging, gym and yoga, but nothing keeps her fitter than wielding her iconic bass guitar in concert.

‘I’ve never done anything in the gym which gives me the work-out I get on stage,’ she says, her Detroit accent as strong as ever. ‘It’s a heavy instrument to hold up!’

Since Can The Can hit the top of the UK charts in 1973, Suzi has sold more than 55 million records worldwide. After her music career faltered in the late 70s, she moved into acting, appearing in Happy Days as Leather Tuscadero. She’s starred in musicals and now presents a successful Radio 2 show, Quatrophonic.

For the last 20 years or so, her work has become more personal, often reflecting on painful periods of her life, such as the break-up of her marriage to her guitarist, Len Tuckey. Her 2007 autobiography, Unzipped, revealed much of the regret and sense of Catholic guilt which seems to have dogged her life. Last year, she published a deeply personal anthology of poetry, Suzi Quatro: Through My Eyes, which revealed her innermost feelings. And now, she’s written her first novel, The Hurricane, with a protagonist, rock star Alison Heart, who bears more than a passing resemblance to Suzi herself.

Like Suzi, Alison leaves America and her band to seek stardom in England. Like Suzi, she marries her guitarist and the relationship gradually falls apart. She even lives in a moated manor house in Essex! Suzi admits she’s put much of herself into Alison, following the guidance of her friend, the late novelist Jackie Collins.