Susan Kay Quatro[1] (born June 3, 1950)[2] is an American 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.

Wikipedia

Quatro was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, United States.[2][7] 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.[8] 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 U.S. for Britain.[9]

Her sister Arlene is the mother of actress Sherilyn Fenn.[10] Her sister Patti joined Fanny, one of the earliest all-female rock bands to gain national attention.[11] Her brother, Michael Quatro, is also a musician.[12]

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 in Essex, England, that Tuckey and she bought in 1980.[57]

She married German concert promoter Rainer Haas in 1993. In 2006, her daughter and grandchild moved back into the Essex manor house.[1] 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.[58]

In a 2012 interview, Quatro was asked what she thought she had achieved for female rockers in general. She replied:

Before I did what I did, we didn't have a place in rock 'n' roll. Not really. You had your Grace Slick and all that, but that's not what I did. I was the first to be taken seriously as a female rock 'n' roll musician and singer. That hadn't been done before. I played the boys at their own game. For everybody that came afterward, it was a little bit easier, which is good. I'm proud of that. If I have a legacy, that's what it is. It's nothing I take lightly. It was gonna happen sooner or later. In 2014, I will have done my job 50 years. It was gonna be done by somebody, and I think it fell to me to do because I don't look at gender. I never have. It doesn't occur to me if a 6-foot-tall guy has pissed me off not to square up to him. That's just the way I am. If I wanted to play a bass solo, it never occurred to me that I couldn't. When I saw Elvis for the first time when I was five, I decided I wanted to be him, and it didn't occur to me that he was a guy. That's why it had to fall to somebody like me.[61][b]

References

1. https://quatrorock.com/quatrorock/bio/the-quatros/suzi/ “She sings like Otis Redding, suffers like James Brown, strums like Jimi Hendrix, howls like Janis Joplin, and toys with the audience, as the wild one of the band. Crouched over her Fender bass, hair hiding her features, eyes shut in intense concentration, she provides the group with a good foundation to build on. And just as she is offstage, Suzi is never caught standing still. The little dynamo is always on the move–forward, backward, right, left, stomping her feet in time to the beat, enjoying every minute of her work.” ~1971 review
2. "DS Exclusive: Curt Weiss on “Stranded In The Jungle,” his wild ode to Jerry Nolan (New York Dolls, The Heartbreakers)" < link >