Suzi Quatro

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob West Podcast. My
guest today is the one and only Susie Quatro. Susie,
glad to have you on the podcast. It's a it's
a pleasure to be on you. What the last name?
You know, what nationality is that name? You know how
it is? The ancestors came from the old country, They
hit Allis Island whatever it was, turned into something else,

(00:30):
and it's a Jewish name, but the derivation even I'm
not even sure. My grandpa came over as Rocky and
he emigrated at Ellis Island and they took one look
at his name and they said he was a little boy.
They said, Michael Quatro done okay, once again, pronounced the
name as it was before it was shortened Quatro quatroky, Yeah,

(00:55):
and they just for four eyes and they just shortened it.
So he entered America as my Quatroll. And that's the
family name. And my dad told me a million times
that anybody with the name Quatroll has got to be
related to us. Are there a lot of Quatrolls? No,
well there isn't. My family. Millions in my family, but yeah,
there there's no there's not that many, and there's no

(01:17):
real Susie qus But me, well, what about the song?
I said, there's no real Susie. Cuse okay, okay, okay,
how did you decide on the spelling, because there's different
ways to spell Susie. Oh God, I had a T
shirt made up recently and I'm going to sell him
on my merch side. I hadn't made up from my crew,
and it says six different names of Susie spelled wrong,

(01:40):
all crossed out and then at the bottom and has
it correct. I've been spelling. My name has been spelled
every which I get s u s I E s
u z y s u z i e as and
and then I get quatrill quadrille. I just decided in
the Pleasure Seekers, when we were all taking stage names,
that I would be Susie A s u z I,

(02:03):
soul a s o U. Well, because I did a
lot of otis writing and stuff like that way back
when I was fourteen. I don't know how that spelling
came out, but it just looked right. And everybody has
asked me, everybody, including Mickey most, what's your real name?
Because it looks and sounds like a stage name, doesn't it? Yeah, Well,

(02:24):
the question becomes many people changed their last name when
they have an ethnic or hard to pronounce uh last name. So,
but when it was the Pleasure Seekers, you were Susie Q,
but it was still Quadr. Do you ever think you're
gonna be like Susie Smith or something else? No? No,
And in fact that was funny because when I got

(02:45):
to England after I was discovered and put solo by
Mickey most Um, we were sitting in his office when
I first arrived. And because I have been calling myself
Susie Soul always, I'm born Susan K Quadro, always Susie.
And I said to me, a key, so I'm gonna
have to think of I don't want to be Susie,
so I have to think of a good stage name.
What should be? And he said, are you kidding me?

(03:08):
I went, what he said, sissit Quatro was about the
best name I've ever heard, And I went, oh, so
just be me. He said, yeah, just be you. That's good. Okay,
you are sitting a room with umpteen gold records and
platinum records. Where exactly are you right now? I am
in the dining Actually, I call it the bragging room. Um,

(03:30):
it's the dining room of my fifteen century. It is
beat in a manor house, nine bedrooms, three and a
half acres um. I've been here since nineteen eighty. I'm
actually gonna be buried out there. I'm gonna be cremated
and are good at my ashes? Put around a four

(03:50):
bass guitar carved out of an old tree that died.
Have you seen wood carvers how they do that? So
four bass guitars coming out of the ground that I said,
that's where I want my ashes with a planque. And
I've been here for a long time. It's the longest
I've ever lived anywhere. I love this house, absolutely love it.
If I'm gonna be locked down, this is where I

(04:11):
want to be. Okay, because even though you're American, most
Americans really don't have a comprehension. So let's try to
locate it. How far from London is your house? Uh? Sixty? Okay?
And where it is is that like rural? Is there
a town? What's there? Like? There is a town? I

(04:34):
live in between two towns. I live fifteen minutes from
a very good airport, which standstead. I live fifteen minutes
there there you go fifteen minutes to around the county
town of Essex. So I'm fifteen minutes away from Chelmsford
and fifteen minutes away from Braintree. That way, Um, there's
a great train service into London. But I'm secluded. This

(04:55):
is what I like. I can be somewhere if I
want to secluded. How much property do you have? Three
and a half acres? And do you own the house outright?
I bought it out right? Wow? And I bought my
first house out right when I was twenty And where
was that house? That was about twenty minutes from here?

(05:17):
Because when I married my guitar player, my ex um,
when we we wanted to move somewhere near one set
of parents. My parents are in Detroit, so we moved
more near his parents. That leaves near family, you know.
And then but then we came out here. I found
this house on the cover cover a big house magazine
and pulled about the front there and this, you know

(05:39):
how you get a feeling this is my house? And
is there a wall a gate? There is two big
brick pillars. There's a walled garden here with flowers. There's
an orchard back there just beautiful with food trees and everything. Um.
There's a brick pillars there too. There's three floors, nine bedrooms.

(06:03):
On the third floor, I have my ego room. Okay, okay,
you have I love it. Um. You have to go
up two flights of stairs. The second flight is very precarious.
You can bang your head on the ceiling. You know,
it's crooked and everything. It's it's it sounds like an analogy,

(06:24):
but it's the extra truth. And you finally get to
this big, heavy wooden door at the end of the
at the end of the house, and it says on
the door, I had a sign made and it says
Ego room. Mind your head, and you go in and
this is your life book. Um. Pictures everywhere, posters, jumpsuits

(06:48):
over here, bass guitars, seeds, videos. I mean absolutely every
inch is covered with me, everything I've done from the
beginning of my career up to the present day. And
you kind of go in if you want to, and
you enjoy and you come out and then you shut
the door. And this is how I survive in this business.

(07:11):
You shut the door. I leave my ego up on
the third floor. How often do you go up there?
At least twenty five times at night door. And I
don't know that was a good question. I don't go
up there much at all, actually not at all. Lots
of times I go up to do a job if
i'm writing something, because I'm on my sixth book now,
and sometimes I need information, And certainly when I wrote

(07:34):
my autobiography, if you had a black spot, you know,
a memory block, you can go up there. You'd find
the year on a tour book or a scrap book
or something, and you could. And I really spent the
light a lot of time up there then. But sometimes
every now and again, you just go up and you
pull out the old tapes. And when I when I
let people go up there, I don't see them for

(07:55):
two days. Okay. Now. Bill Wyman, famously of the Stones,
famously collected everything. How much of your stuff do you have? Everything? Um?
Oh my god. I made it a point of getting
every article about me, And at first I used to

(08:18):
put him in square books and all that. I don't
do that so much anymore. But I have just about
every article has ever been written on me. So many videotapes,
so many videos of every show I've ever done, all
the CDs, all the records, um let me see. Pictures
are just awards, stage passes. Everything I used to collect

(08:40):
when I was like fourteen, fifteen, sixteen seventeen, all the
hotel room keys, and I kept him in a big
hues tin waste paper basket. And then I got bored
of that, so I went down to the local mailbox
and poured them all in. That was bad at me.
I can imagine that that that mail man when he

(09:00):
came to get because it says it says, you know,
mailer back to this address. I put them all in.
I got bored with that. But I've got everything, just
about everything. Okay, no one lives forever when you do
move on? What's going to happen to all the stuff
in the ego room? I am hoping. I've tried to
set it up so it is this way that my

(09:21):
um my son will take over the house and this
house will be my legacy. This is what I want
to happen. I kind of want my this is my graceland.
How else can I say? You know, I mean maybe
even someday people would like to come and see it.
Who knows. I wanted to continue. I don't want this house,
so I've put that in my will. Okay, now, many

(09:45):
people have a family, the kids move out and they
wanted downsize. Growing up, always wanted a big house, I
could have one room for everything. Never quite hit that.
But what's it like living with so few p ballue
in such a big house. Well, it was full at
one point, for it started off with just me and

(10:06):
my ex, and then we had two kids, and plus
we didn't live in nanny, so the house was full
and that kind of stayed even after after we divorced,
got married a year later to somebody else. Um, I
always needed a nanny here because I work, and you know,
my kids were little, and then we had two people
staying here and living here. One was a gardener and

(10:28):
moment was the nanny. And then finally they were old
enough that I could get rid of the nanny's and
my daughter moved out first. Then my son moved out,
and that was not nice at first. Of course, I
was rambling around this house and I oh my I
hated it. Didn't even want to go to the third floors.

(10:50):
But he used to live, my son. So what I've
done now is I've made every rear dream, every single
room in this house has a of Chris every single moment.
Even on the third floor. I've made two of the
rooms into two extra bedrooms in case I have guests over.
One of them became my mother's room. She's been gone

(11:12):
a long time, but I I ended up by accident
putting a cover. She got me, putting a pillow, she
got me putting pictures of her, putting a big portrait
of my mom and dad, and everybody calls that. The
kids call that grandma's room, so it became her room.
You know. I don't know how that happened. But my
son uses one room for his guitar repair room. Uh.

(11:34):
There's another bedroom on the third floor that my granddaughter
has claimed as hers. There's my ego room. The next
floor there's one, two, three, four more bedrooms. Only one
of them is used now, but I do have people
stay over if I have guests, you know. And then
down here, I've got the TV room, the laundry room,

(11:54):
I got a patio out there, got a studio in
the back, which is fantastic on the grounds. I got
my dining room here and in there. In there is
mys the oldest part of the house, and that's where
I write and I can't write anywhere else, and I've
tried it everywhere. That's my writing room. I got my guitar,
even though it's my main lounge and it should be

(12:15):
everything perfect. I've got all my guitars in there, you know.
I got my pen and my paper, my sheet music,
and my my white piano that's never moved since I
moved in. Um, that's the creative room. That room in there. Okay,
there's a lot of questions here. One do you are
you the type person who's a homebody or if you

(12:37):
go into town everybody knows you. You say, Hi, what's
your forgetting COVID? For a minute before that, what's your lifestyle?
Sort of like, UM, I made a choice in nineteen
seventy three, and it was after the first time I
was on television with my first number one can the

(12:58):
Can and uh. We watched it, my me and my ex,
and then we went out to the local public we
always go for a drink, and we walked in and
the place erupted. It's her, it's her, it's her, it's
I went what what we had to leave? The pub
never happened to me before, so I kind of thought

(13:21):
about it started to happen and happen, it happen, and
then I thought, okay, I can baseball cap ponytail, dark
glasses and hide, or I can just say hi. And
I chose hi. It must have happened eight times yesterday
in town, five times today. And it's it's so funny
because it happens the same way. Every time you're walking

(13:43):
by and sew you, somebody will go and I'll just
go yes, and they just because you know what they're
gonna say, um so I say hello. Yes. Sure that
They added a little, but it got a little bit crazy.
I was in the post office. This has never happened before,
and of course you started talking and then everybody sees you,
and everybody's looking and better. It happens all that, especially

(14:05):
when you're in a line, you know, and then people
and they start they start to a whisper, look whisier,
gout it out it out. Anyway, the lady next to
me here, she got very friendly. She said, oh my god,
oh my god. Then she was going on and on
on that. She went, can I can I ask your favorite?
And I thought she wanted a selfie? I said sure.
She said, can I just play you some of my
favorite songs from my um on my phone. So I

(14:27):
just sit and listen to her favorite songs on her
phone while the line was getting up to them and
you and you can't be rude. You know you can't
do that. She doesn't mean any harm. But that's the
last thing I wanted to do, is listen to her
favorite song. So that's actually quite funny. Does it ever

(14:47):
get old? And are you ever upset if people don't
recognize you? Um? No. In fact, I made quite a
joke out of it. Sometimes, you know, I'll go into it.
I do it on purpose. I'll go someplace and maybe
I'm ordering something from the guy and he's taking my information.
I went into an art shop just yesterday, brand new

(15:09):
art shop, and I said, how much is that huge?
What I picked out? A million and a half. I said,
Jesus Christ, I got good taste. Anybody. We're talking talking,
and I saw that he didn't know who I was.
So as we're talking, I said, by the way, I said,
I'm very famous, and he went, you are. I said, yes,
I am, So this is what I do. He goes,

(15:31):
what's your name? I said, Susy Quadro, google it. You
googled it. He went, Oh my god, I said, next
time I come in, know who I am. So I
I do do that a lot of times. I'll see youngsters.
I say, you might not know me, but you should
sense of humor at all times. Okay, are you always on?
You're like, you're very on in this moment. Is that

(15:54):
who you just are? Or is it just when you
know the mic is on? No? No, I'm I'm I've
been told. In fact, the phrase used to describe me
by people who know me best as I am exhausting.
But I take that as a compliment. I Um, I'm

(16:18):
a glass softball girl. Um. I love conversation. That's my key.
I love conversation. Uh, nice glass of wine and a conversation.
I'm a happy girl. I love to argue the toss
into the middle of the night. You know so, but
there there there is a quieter shore when nobody's around.

(16:39):
I well, my way of being quiet. If I'm not
watching a movie, which I love movies. I watched movies
all the time. I'm a bit of a movie buff. Um.
I will watch something my way of relaxing. I'll have
agressive ryan, I'll watch who wants to be a millionaire
on TV and at the same time, I'll be doing
online scrabble. Who are you playing with? Who have words

(17:03):
with friends? I mean? Are these always with friends? Who
you play with? Anonymous people? Any anybody? I'll play with anybody.
I just I just like to win. Are you pretty
damn good? Pretty damn good? I'm I'm something like twelve
or thirteen and the big you know, and lots and
lots of people say I'm pretty good. I have I've

(17:25):
learned a lot of the weird words, and you know,
I love word games. Anyway, I'm one of those people.
And I'm waiting for somebody to tell me the scholastic
word for this talent that I have. I'm gonna have
to look it up, maybe google it. You know, when
you have a word wheel and it's got one letter
in the center and then like cut like a pie,

(17:45):
and like eight letters around it, and you have to
make as many words as you can for letters and more, yeah,
and use all the and then it makes one big word.
You look at it and one big word is made
out of that. I can guess it with three or
four seconds, sometimes instantaneously, and I and I know there's
a word for that is it? I can make that.

(18:10):
I can make sense out of the chaos. I can
put the jumbled words together. And I don't know how
I do that or why I do. It's the way
my brain works. It sees the word. Is there a
word for that? Not that I'm aware of. But no,
I'm not as good with words as you are. Let's
go back to a second. You watch movies. You watch

(18:30):
movies essentially every night. Yeah, pretty much, kind of like
a routine. When I'm not on the road, of course
I will watch. I'm a routine girl. Okay, to your
two favorite movies, God, it's so boring Gone with the Wind,
I'm sorry, I just never get tired of it. I
actually know the entire dialogue of that movie, every character.

(18:55):
My husband one time was sitting on the bed and
we were watching it just because we felt like watching it,
and he didn't watch the movie. He looked at me
because I did every bit of dialogue. And I think
my other favorite movie, it's hard to pick two. I'd
say probably all about Eve. Okay. And do you tend
to watch the movies over as obviously as the case
with Gone with the Wind, or are you always interested

(19:17):
in watching something new. Well, I do like to watch
new movies, but I'm afraid I'm a very impatient Gemini,
and it's got to grab me. It's got to grab me.
And you can grab me from the titles alone. But
if I start to watch a movie and they're casting
whoever they've cast in the plot does and pulled me
in the movies off? And yes, I do watch movies

(19:40):
I like again and again and again. I will do that.
I'm quite anal um. I'll read books I like again
and again and again. Right now, idiot that I am.
I asked my husband to send me the complete works
of Friederich Nietzsche. And you want to talk about heavy reading,
Let's go back to the beginning. What inspired you to
want to read that. I have been writing a psychological book,

(20:06):
my sixth novel, my second novel, but my sixth book.
And it's all about people that meet six people that
meet up better psychology class. And I'm getting very much
into the mind. And so many books that I've read
people mentioned this guy as being incredible, and I always wondered,
what's so good about him? And I even said to

(20:27):
my husband, because he's a German philosopher, he said, Oh, Susie,
he's he's hard going and that made me money. He
is hard going boy. You have to really really dive in.
I don't think he was a very happy man. So
what have you learned that he really can talk? He

(20:47):
he I've learned that he's um. He finds a way
of making one sentence jumping about eighteen different areas, and
he finds a descript where even he finds out how
to He has an adjective for an adjective. If you
see what I mean? You know, okay, you but you

(21:08):
have to do is you have to read it very
slowly and take it in and I'm determined. I'm determined
to do it. I've read Warren Peace, you know, so
I'm one of those. Have you read an k No?
I think that's the best book ever written. It depends

(21:30):
on the translation unless knowing you you learned Russians to
read it. But I literally think, you know, there's this
philosophical elements. Some people skip through those. But it's just
amazing how president and how easy it is to read.
But you know you're talking about doing all this reading.
It's well, let me go. Have you talked about psychology?

(21:52):
Have you ever been in therapy. Um, that's one of
the jobs I wanted to do if I hadn't gone
into show business at fourteen. Professionally, UM, I was very
much interested. I'm an art chair of psychologist. I one
time went only one time, and it was after my divorce.
I was with my ex for twenty years. I'm a

(22:13):
Catholic girl. You don't divorce. I had two kids, so
it really I wanted to go. It really messed me up.
There was nobody else I wanted to go. And I
met my future husband and we were newly married, and
I I didn't want to visit. My old problems are
my old failings, my my ex husband's failings on him.

(22:36):
Do you see what I mean? Yeah? I went to
see it a psychiatrist one time and I talked about
this to me to him and I said, um, I
always remember it. I said to him, why didn't he
loved me the way I wanted him to love me?
And he didn't want the divorce. I was the big
love of his life. And he looked at me and

(22:56):
he said, Susie, you went to the butchers for perfume.
He didn't have it on a shelf. Wow. Wow, I
thought that was brilliant, a brilliant way to explain it.
But he loved me, how he could love me. Okay,
did you meet and was it a romance with your

(23:17):
new husband before you got divorced or after you got divorced?
Oh my god, No, I didn't. It wasn't way. I
didn't even know him. Um. I was single for a year,
single for a year. He had booked me, and I
knew who he was, but absolutely nothing. I just just
my husband and I ran out of steam. He we
just ran out of steam. We grew apart. We're good

(23:38):
friends now to this day. But ran out of steam,
not for him, but for me, love him, not in
love anymore. But the new one booked me. You know,
he just booked me. Okay, wait, wait, a couple of questions.
Did your ex husband ever get remarried? No? And I
find that very sad because I would have loved him

(24:02):
to have settled down to somebody else. But in all honesty,
and he said it, you know, he said it to
me before he said it to anybody who listens. I
was a big one and I don't think he wanted
to play the hand again. You know, he's been with
people is that everybody didn't. He didn't stay with anybody.
But you know, it's great. We have a great friendship.
He comes over and sits in the studio while his

(24:24):
son and I record together. Are our son, and he's
he's very very much into the process, loves watching, you know,
loves being part of it. Um. I'm glad that we
could stay close. It's important. Now your present husband is
a German concert promoter. Is that true? Correct? Okay? You
are an American transplanted to the UK. And although we

(24:48):
live more of a global village than we did, then
English people are different than American people. Yes, and then
one step beyond that is German. What's it like being
involved with a German guy? Oh? Well, okay, Germans Germans. Um.
The annoying thing about German people is how correct they are,

(25:11):
and if even if they're gonna fold up a piece
of paper and put it into an envelope, it's done perfectly.
And this can drive you mad. You know, German efficiency,
They really are efficient. I mean I one time was
standing in amber at a light. There was no cars
and I crossed, and the way they looked at me,
I thought I was gonna get shot at Sunrise because

(25:31):
I went against the rules, you know. Um, yes, it's
a it's a it's a strange match in that way
because I'm very Detroit, you know, and he's very German.
But he's been a promoter for many years and worked
with a lot of American acts, a lot of British acts,
so you know bits of it, rub Off. I mean,

(25:54):
it was a big shock when I came here to England.
You know, it's so different to America, but it were
it works somehow. I don't know the language, okay, but
he speaks, you know, many Germans do speak English. He
speaks You're very American, very upfront centered whatever, you know.
The English tend to be more reserved, at least with

(26:16):
their feelings. Okay, what is the general personality Since you're
so closely involved for decades with a German, obviously their
language is different and they're more rigid, as you say,
But are as the forthcoming as Americans? Are they like Americans?
Are they still different? Well? They they do speak their mind,

(26:36):
but they I think just by the nature of the
way the language sounds. It's a guttable language, you know.
I mean when when when when your husband says to
you and that means I love you. I mean, that
doesn't sound nice, doesn't you know what I mean? It
just doesn't work. Um No, they're very straightforward, very straightforward.

(27:01):
They tend to be more harsh with their comments. They
don't pretty things up kind of boom you know at
this my husband does. Anyway, he's got a big mouth.
I got a big mouth too. So I am the
optimists and he's the pessimist, and so we we complete
the picture for each other. Does it bother you that

(27:22):
he's a pessimist. Well, it's actually part of my book
that I'm writing. But that's a fiction book. The fiction
book I created two main characters out of the six
psychology students, and one of them is called Penelope Perfect
and she's she's the optimist. And the other one is

(27:44):
called Max Morose. He's the bits, which I know he's
gonna recognize himself. But tell you, Okay, now you're someone
who's reading Nietzsche, writing books, playing scrabble words with friends,
very into uh words. Yet you dropped out of high school.

(28:10):
So do you feel any inadequacy there, something you're covering
up for or that's not a factor whatsoever? Um? Well,
I've always been clever, and I don't mind saying that
I'm a clever girl. Uh, I did leave school early,
and I have a unquenchable thirst for analogy. I always said,

(28:34):
maybe that is because I left early. But you know,
but then again, when I used to be at school
like Kenny Levn TV and all that, and the summer
vacation would start, I would go home and the next
day I would play school. Is that crazy? It is
to me? But keep going, that's not so? But um

(28:58):
saying that, Yeah, I'm very well read. Maybe it's to
make up for the fact that I did in grade
right high school. But I am now Dr Quatroll by
the way, officially, Okay, where'd you get your degree at Cambridge?
Honorary Doctor of Music? Wait? Wait, Cambridge like Oxford and Cambridge.
I got made honorary Doctor of Music at Cambridge October

(29:18):
two thousand sixteen. I am officially Doctor Quatroll. Okay, tell
me the backstory there. Well, they called me up and
they wrote to me and they said, we'd like to
honor you. Would you like to be honored? I said,
are you kidding me? I mean I say it on stage,
I say, I say, I am officially Dr Quatro. You know,
I can't believe it. I was in tears. I was

(29:42):
in cap and gown, you know me. Wow. But that's
as good as it gets, I know. I mean, that's
better than Yale or Harvard, I mean Cambridge Oxford gets.
That's that's the top. You banged the gong, as they say.
I know, Dr Quatro, I can't believe it. Every time
I think about it. I'm allowed to use it in

(30:03):
my passport and I'm Dr Quatro. And when I stood
up to make my speech, my husband was in tears,
and I wanted to hold it all together. You know,
all these academics out there, Jay's McCambridge and at my
speech here. But I pushed it over. That's so much me.
I pushed it over and and I just started to talk.

(30:26):
And the basic gist of what I said was we all,
we all have a job in life, and every one
of us, and it doesn't matter rich, poor, black, white,
doesn't matter. We all have a job, and that's to
go inside and find that little light and turn it
on and let nobody ever switch it off. And then
I started to cry, Oh dear, what a moment, What

(30:50):
a moment, I'll be forever proud of that, staying with
staying with education. Were you when you were in school
for a long time? Good student, bad student, class clown friends?
What was that like? I was a pretty good student. Um.
I excelled at believe it or not. You have music, English, um,

(31:12):
geography crap um, math crap, science and I didn't care
home economics I failed dreadfully. Um. Can you can you
cook today? I am not known from my cooking I do.
I do my cooking in the bedroom. I used to
always say that. Um. I would say, Oh, my mother

(31:34):
kept for me all of bigfold, all the kids off
five kids, religiously, every report card, every immunization, you know,
and she gave it to us when we left home.
And I was looking at my report cards just the
other day, old ones, seventh eighth grade, and one of
the teachers had written, if Susie could concentrate a little

(31:59):
bit more instead of trying to be popular, she would
do very well. Well guess what. Guess what made me
famous trying to be popular? Yes, exactly, So she got
it wrong. Okay, you know you're talking about technical stuff.
Before we began. Dudge says, you're pretty up on technical
and say no, no, no, and you're giving examples. So

(32:21):
how good are you with technical stuff? You ran that,
no problem. Well, you gotta remember my generation was not
a computer generation, so I had when I finally started
to learn it, I had to learn as you need
to learn kind of thing. I'm not too bad now,
you know. I can do certain things, but I get
things wrong. I mean I went into the studio the

(32:44):
other day when my son was recording with two other
guys in there, and I said, Richard, we need to
work on that one song. Did you get the stem cells?
And he just went and the best one, the best
one to see. I've told everybody this because it's amazing
that fifty eight years in the business that I could
do this. I was sitting in the and it's not

(33:06):
technical thing, it's it's something else, sitting in there with
my guitar, and I had this tuner right, and I
wasn't sure how to use it because I've never used
it before because I've had hits. So people tuned for me.
So anyway, I put this tuner on the tuning peg.

(33:29):
It's called the tuning peg tuner. That's what we've named it. Now.
It's a headstock tuner. But I didn't know this, so
I couldn't figure out how you made it work. So
I figured it would pick up the vibrations from each string.
Because I put it, don't even go there. I put
it on the tuning peg, and I'm and I've got
it on that and I'm following it around as I'm

(33:50):
tuning it to see how it's and my son came
in and he went, Mom, he screamed to me, and
I went, what I knew I was doing something wrong?
He said, what do you do? I start up tuning
a Mom, it's a headstock tuner. Where do you think
you put it? I said? Oh? And you wouldn't believe
that somebody could do something so stupid. Do you normally

(34:14):
have common sense and these are just outliers or you're
not known for your common sense. I can be both.
I'm extremely quick with it. I'm very clever, and I
can do really dumb things too. I'm just like that.
And it's only because in my brain I thought I

(34:35):
can figure this out. No, I couldn't. It made logical
sense to me, Oh don't. It's so embarrassing. How could
I do that? It's a head stock tuner, but we
all call it now a tuning peg tuner. It's changed names. Okay,
let's go back to Detroit. So there are five kids
in the family. Not everybody is completely familiar with your history.

(34:57):
So where are you in the hierarchy? I I am
the fourth out of five, my eldest sister Artie, then
my brother Mickey, than Patty, than me, and then Nancy.
Then how many years between everybody? Oh? God, let me think.
My dad always called it his two wave of kids.
So are Lean and Mickey I think are two years apart,

(35:17):
and then there was like five or six years and
then Patty, me and Nancy. So you have the two,
and I think there was a couple of miscarriages in
there and stuff because my mom was always pregnant. I
think she had nine pregnancies and five kids. So yeah,
there's there those two and then the US three. And
those two were off married and the kids and everything.
And it was my elder sister, Patty and I that

(35:38):
started the band. Okay, you call him Mickey. For those
of us who don't know him, we call him Mike.
So was he Mickey or Michael? What's the story? We
always called him Mickey? But as I think, he always
went professionally as Michael Quadrille or Mike Quadrille, but us kids,
we always called him Mickey. I never called him Michael never. Okay,

(35:59):
So just to be clear, how old were those kids?
The oldest two kids relatives to the next three kids. But, um,
let me see Arleen. Okay, Arlein, now is hang? I
gotta see, I'm dumb at Matt's seventy one. She's gonna
be eighty this year, so she's nine years older. Mickey
is seventy eight, Patty is I'm seventy one, Patty is

(36:24):
seventy four, and then Nancy is sixty nine. So the
three of us are worked together in those two Leans
nine years old and Mickey seven years older, and then
there was five years between Patty, me and Nancy. Okay,
you know, I grew up in a family with only
three kids. I'm the boy in between two girls, and
traditionally there's a middle child syndrome. Every child has a

(36:47):
different you know, psychology. So were you kind of lost
in the shuffle or did you get a lot of
attention where were you in the family. Um, I wrote
a lot of songs based on this. I talked about
a quite openly. I was UM, the square peg in
the round hole. Always. That's how I saw myself. I
mean a lot of its perception, you know, but that's

(37:09):
how I perceived it. I didn't fit anywhere my whole life.
I didn't fit anywhere. I didn't know where I fit
in the family. I didn't know where I fit in
the world. I didn't know where I fit um until
I but on stage that first time. That that's catting
it short, but that's the truth. Fourteen did our first gig.
I remember getting up there with my basse and I
went in my head, I went, I'm home. Then I fit.

(37:32):
What happens when you don't fit anywhere? And when you
you're one of the crowd with five kids, you're one
of the crowd. You know, It's just how it is.
And Right says I was the Cinderella syndrome, that I
was the dark purse. Nobody better. I'm not so sure
if he's got that right, but maybe he does. But
I know that the whole time I was growing up,

(37:55):
I was searching from my voice for what was like
the speech I made, for what my thing was. And
I noticed quite young, like maybe eight seven or eight
when we started to do family shows. We always did
family shows. My dad was a musician, and we would
sing and play and you know all that kind of stuff.

(38:15):
And I noticed very young that whenever I did my
little bit, whatever it might be, the room stopped and
watched me. And I remember going into my brain, I'm
good at this. I'm good at entertaining a crowd. I
knew it from very young. So I think that's how
my life developed after that. I could tell a joe,

(38:37):
I could do a sketch, I could act a scene.
I could play bongles, I could play piano, I could
I could reside a poem. So whatever I was doing,
it would hold hold the people. And that's kind of
like why I guess I did what I did. Okay,
so you're good on stage, needless to say, you can't
be on stage. No one can be on stage more

(38:58):
than like two hours. And I so if this late
date as your go older, what's it like being lost stage? Um?
Do you mean right now? Well? I mean in your
life and your interior life. Okay, yeah, yeah, Um, well
I mean I I give everything on stage. That's my
that's my love. I love entertaining UM, I'll never get

(39:22):
tired of It's still every gig, it's the same. Just
before I go out, I think, oh God, I hope
they liked me. That's always that same attitude when I'm
not on stage. I'm not on stage. That's the performing
part of my life. You know, I don't have to
be okay. But as I say, if let's assume I

(39:42):
dropped by and I said, Hey, we're gonna go hang
at people's houses and it's gonna be like fifteen people,
there is that something like you're gonna say, WHOA, this
isn't gonna work for me, and say, oh, I want
to go. I'll talk to everybody, which which where do
you feel? Internally? Um, I'm more comfortable one to one.

(40:04):
And I've been told by a lot of different people
through the years that if they're having a dinner party
that they know that they can sit me anywhere and
I will start a conversation with who I'm with. I'm
not so comfortable walking into parties of people. I don't
know why. I feel a little bit shy. Believe it
or not, Yeah, I have. My mom always told me

(40:26):
that I was a very shy little girl. There you go,
so I guess it's my alter ego, but it is.
But I am. I am the kind too. It depends
dinner parties. I'm great at you know, when you can
sit and talk, you have your one to once. You know,
I don't have to take the stage and be Susie
Quatroll when I'm out with a bunch of people. I
don't like doing that. In fact, I've been to a

(40:47):
couple of parties where they said sing and I've said, no,
you and if I did me, didn't you me? That
annoys me. You know that they expect you to sing
for your supper. If I hones sing, I will. You know,
I don't need to be asked. I'll say hey, and
I'll do what I want to do. But don't don't
expect me to do that otherwise, you know, I'm I'm

(41:08):
like a monkey, like a performing monkey, and that's not
who I am. Have a real thing about going out
with people, like after a show, for dinner somewhere, if
there's friends and stuff, because it's just you have to
perform because he's still being Susie Quatra. So I do
separate the two. That's why I have the ego room.
And if you read my autobiography, um unzipped. It's written

(41:31):
in two people, Little Susie from Detroit and Susie Quatro,
and all the way through the book, both people have
their say and it's important. Okay. A lot of rock
stars do it for acceptance. A lot of performers do

(41:53):
it for acceptance, looking for the love that they didn't get,
maybe from their parents, or the accepted they didn't get one.
Was that an issue too? How are you internally? Are
you still looking for that acceptance? Are you comfortable in
your own skin? I'm comfortable in my skin, but I

(42:14):
think that that that there is a a need in me.
It's in my heart and soul. There's a need in
me to go out there and do my show. I
love doing it, you know, and I many times I'm
up there and I'm being very honest with you. Um,
I'll be up there doing a show and I'll think,
I'll think to myself, and you're paying me for this.

(42:35):
I love entertaining. I love seeing people come in maybe
you know Saturday night crowd like that, you know, and
then the swinging from the rafts. I love it. I
love what I do. I love having a good conversation
with somebody. But I won't do small talk, so be warned.
I don't I do not do small talk. If we're

(42:57):
going to converse, we're both gonna remember it. And that's
how I treat my life. Okay, you said you're very
much as Detroit girl to find that. Uh, there's an edge,
There's an energy, there's an acceptance of all the different
things that Detroit has to offer. There's an electric there's

(43:19):
a danger element in Detroit. I think just about and
I've had this talk with many other Detroit musicians. Um,
there's something in the air there. And and if you
look at a lot of the people, a lot of
the musicians to come out of Detroit, you'll you will
see a similarity. You got me, Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop,

(43:40):
MC five, Bob Seeger, eminem Kid Rock, White Stripes, God
am I forgetting any bocaby, a million people, um, Ted
Nugent Uh. And then you got all your motown but
all the ones I just said, there's there's something that
fits there. You know, it's an edge. Okay. You know,

(44:03):
as I say, this is an audio podcast, but we're
looking each other via zoom in order to facilitate conversation
and as you move your hands, I notice you do
not wear a wedding ring. Do you never wear a
wedding ring? What's that about? Um? I got into the
habit of not wearing rings at about the age of
fourteen when I had on a cheap ring and I

(44:26):
was slapping my bass and it broke off and went
into my finger. So, because I played bass, I very
often don't wear rings at all. If I go off
for dinner, I might put it on, but it don't
wear a wedding ring. Now, I don't need to. I've
never felt the need to wear one. Now I feel
the similar. Had a similar experience. I went to a
dude ranch with my parents and we got a ring
made out of like a horseshoe nail. And of course

(44:49):
when you're a little kid, you're growing and I had
such a hard time getting it off. Never wore rings
after that. Yeah, it's scar does want anything like that? Yeah? So,
I mean it actually went because it was a cheap one,
it actually it into my finger. I thought, I don't
need this. So I can never wear any jewelry when
I play, And so I guess maybe it's only when
I'm going out for dinner or something, and I have
a lot of nice jewelry. I'll put my jewelry on,

(45:10):
you know. But now I've never been a wedding leen wearer. Now, okay,
So you say you grew up your father was a musician,
you're playing. To what degree did you take lessons on
any instrument? Um? I started on bongo drums at the
age of seven, begged my dad to get me a pair.
I wanted to be a hippie and a coffee house,

(45:32):
smoking cigarettes, playing bongos and reading my poetry. Okay, Um
so I used to go with my dad at the
age of seven, round eight when I started to get
quite good, and let me sit in front of the trio.
Then I took classical piano for eight years at least.
Then yeah, oh yeah, I read. I read and write
and play classical piano, and I also took percussion. I

(45:55):
was in the school orchestra, first chair in the percussion section.
Uh so I'm trained in piano and percussion, and then
at fourteen self taught on base. Okay. So, for many
peep Benny Boomers, the line of demarcations the Beatles by
the same token. There was a lot of popular music,

(46:16):
as you mentioned Motown, etcetera happening in Detroit. What do
you mean what turned on your lights? Obviously you came
from musical family, but what were the records for the
type of music that all of a sudden you said, Man,
I just got to go in this direction. Yeah, I
got some pivotal moments that are very important. Um, five

(46:39):
and a half, I was watching the Ed Sullivan Show
with the family, like we all did, eight o'clock at night.
Everything stopped Sunday at Sullivan and um, you know, he
always would bring on something for the youngsters at the
end of the show. And this particular night, Elvis came
on and he was doing Don't Be Cruel. And my

(47:00):
eldest sister by nine years, she was survited age. She
was screaming, and I remember, like it was yesterday. I
looked at her and I thought, cent, what's the matter
with you? I was only a little girl. And then
I looked back at the TV and I went into
the screen. I went into it and lightbulb moment. I'm
gonna do that. Don't ask me why, but it happened

(47:26):
that age. Wow, And he stayed with me my whole life.
It's it's a it's a whole of this whole other interview.
There's like nine elvous epiphanies that you can't write. And
then at fourteen, we were watching at Sullivan again and
the Beatles came on, and as soon as they were finished,
we called our two two friends, sisters and another girl.

(47:48):
Everybody's on the phone and we were all oh eyeing
over the Beatles, and Patty said, my older sister, she said, hey,
why don't we have an all girl band? And everybody
said yeah, great, great, great, great great. Everybody chose an
instrument real quick. I want rhythm, I want drums, I
want piano, I want lead, and I wait hello, and
Patty said to me, you'll play bass, okay? And I

(48:13):
did you know? I find base unfathomable, especially forget to
stand up base, but just in a regular guitar base.
A lot of legendary basses play without frets. Uh, how
do you learn him? How do you do it? What
without fritz? No? Just base in general? Oh god, I

(48:34):
didn't even think about it. Um. When I was little,
I used to put a broomstick and put rubber bands
like that, and betime I was doing this. Um, My
dad gave me precision to start with. That's like the

(48:55):
Rolls Royce of bass guitars. Um. I didn't know that
there were smaller bass guitarist. All I knew was this
is what he gave me to learn, so I learned it.
I didn't know it was a big bass, but I
sort of felt real comfortable with it right away because
don't forget, I'm a percussionist and a pianist, and they're
both percussion. Pianos is classed as a percussive instrument, so

(49:18):
that's where my brain is anyway. Um, And because I
learned the bass and became lead singer together, it wasn't
difficult because I was playing a singing so everything off.
I learned this and I learned it just fit fitted
together like a jigsaw puzzle, and bass became my favorite
stage instrument. Oh right away. I fell in love with

(49:40):
it very much suited me. Okay, so it's February, the
Beatles are on TV. You get on the phone. What
is the next step with the group. Then we decided
we were gonna have the band. Um, Like I said,
I got my bass from my dad. NaN's parents bought
her a bass drum and a snare drum in one
symbol because they weren't sure if she was serious. Patty

(50:02):
got a cheap guitar, Mary Lew got a cheap guitar.
Diane got a little funky little world sir. And we
started to rehearse, and we talked to my sister, talked
to the owner of the hideout, which was the local
dance all that everybody went in too, to let us
do a gig there in a month's time, a month
a month and we what We only learned three songs

(50:24):
and they were the same three chords, so we played
it safe and yeah, we were up a month later. Wow,
And that was that was a real wake up call
for me, you know, to be up there and I
really what wait wait wait what were the three songs? Oh?
Latin Blu twist and shout and long talk text And

(50:45):
so you get up and you play. What's the reception? Like?
It was fantastic? And did you sing longfall text in
like the record? Yeah? Well I'm alone tall text in,
I ride a bit? Why or is he cons on
texas sound a big don't? But oh yeah, I did
it all. I was the lead singer, I was in front,

(51:07):
the whole front person. I didn of the songs singing.
So after that great debut, what happened with the act?
We then started to play colleges teen dances. Um, the
drummer went off to college. We went off to ann
Arbor every weekend to play the Friday T G I
F parties and all that. UM. Then one person dropped out.

(51:33):
Then another person dropped out in my elder sister Arlene,
who was married to three kids. She joined the band
and her first husband out of seven I love saying
that he started to manage the band, so he left
his job and he had to support three kids on

(51:54):
what we earned. So we worked and we started to
become a show band, UM with costumes, playing all the clubs,
you know, doing five sets a night. That was pretty normal,
forty five on, fifteen off. And we worked all the time.
We worked more than the guys did. And we went
into club land, you know, we were a show banding

(52:15):
club land. That's where I learned my craft. How much
money were you making? Well, I remember being seventeen eighteen
and earning a thousand dollars a week, which was pretty
good back then. Oh yeah, yeah yeah, I mean he,
like I said, he had to earn a living. You know.
So he got us good money and we were an

(52:35):
all go a band, so we were different, we were
unique and it was easy to book us and we
went coast to coast NonStop. I was on the road
from fourteen until last year because of the pandemic. Okay,
so how did you decide to drop out of high school?
I was in New York. We were playing Trudi Heller's

(52:56):
in Greenwich Village, fantastic and see end of the summer,
it was time for me to go back and finish
my school. And I was sitting on the bed in
my hotel and little tiny single bed. I called home
collect of course, and uh, I remember because my dad
got on the phone and my mother got on the

(53:17):
extension and I said, Dad, I think I found what
I want to do for the rest of my life
and I don't want to come back and finished school.
And there was a real silence, and then he said,
is there anything I can say to change your mind?

(53:37):
And I said nope, And he quietly put the phone down.
He cut me off, but he didn't do it mad.
He just went click. And how clever, How clever because
I had made this statement and he didn't yell at me.
It's almost like click, you better think about that. And

(53:59):
I did. I said, on to bed for about maybe
twenty minutes or so, and I'm out. I'm out of here.
Never regretted it, not for a second. Okay, so this
is in the heyday of beans. People have no idea
what it was like. There was no internet. Everybody picked
up an instrument after the Beatles, there were bands battle
of the Beans everywhere. So now you're a professional, what

(54:23):
is your life and career look like? And are your
dreams bigger than being in a show band playing clubs? Um?
I loved the Pleasure Seekers. It was a fun band,
and I was learning all the time. I was enjoying
the You know, my god, how I learned how to
use my throat without losing your five shows a night. Um.

(54:44):
But I didn't care about it being all girls. But
I don't do gender. Actually I never have. I've never
I've never thought of myself as a female musician. That's
why when I looked at Elvis, I said, I'm gonna
do that. Never thought about it being a guy. I
just don't do gender. Um. I was a tomboy when
I was growing up. But I remember a pivot another

(55:07):
pivotal moment. We were setting up the equipment because because
sorry about that, setting up the equipment because some we
didn't have a ROADI couldn't afford one. And the lights
were growing up and all that, and we were carrying
in all of us, the Hammond Oregon, the Hammond organ
and my our manager, my sister's husband. He said, now

(55:28):
you girls, you girls do realize that all the lights
have to go on, Susie, I didn't say that. He
said that. I remember being quite uncomfortable with that. Actually,
you know, that didn't come from my mouth. I was like,
what do you say? But I always kind of knew that,
Um not kind of. I knew that somebody one day

(55:52):
was gonna tap me on the shoulder and sec I
just knew. I knew it. I had a feeling. So
I was learning and enjoy being with everybody, and then
and then the call came. I had dreams of every
I guess dreams of I don't like the words startom.
I think it has negative connotations. I wanted to be

(56:14):
well known. I wanted everybody to endure my music. I
wanted to be able to reach a lot of people.
Um yeah, I wanted to be somebody. Okay, what were
you doing with all the money? Oh that I was
baking back then? Uh, buying clothes, got some guitars. God it.

(56:39):
It didn't last that long. That big money didn't last
that long because Leonder ain't got divorced. So when he
stopped managing us, we didn't. We didn't end up doing
quite as well. He was a good manager. I have
to say he did well. Um, and we still lived
at home. You know, I can't say I got reaching
either of those fans pleasure seekers or cread or not really. Okay,

(57:00):
we live in the me too era. You're a teenage
girl working in nightclubs across America? What is that like?
I'm sure you had some experiences were not that comfortable
many times. Um. I luckily what I lack in stature

(57:22):
I make up for in mouth. So I learned very
young to put somebody verbally in their place, and I
could do it very easy. Believe me, you don't recover. Um. Sure,
there's been a few incidents, is yeah. One time. I
remember one time when guy was at the front of

(57:42):
the stage watching the band, and he made this rude
tongue gesture you know what I mean, And I took
my base as it was part of the show, and
I whacked him over the head with it, and then
I just had that little innocent look that I'm so

(58:03):
great at, you know. Oh sorry, Okay, you paint a
picture of a rambunctious, spinning top tom boy. Needless to say,
the young men go on the road frequently with the
intention of having sex. Were you sexually experienced? Was this

(58:24):
something that was off the table? How did this fit
in because on some level you were selling sex to
boot Yeah? Yeah, sure. I had a boyfriend of fourteen.
We're still in contact now, really good boyfriend. Uh. Then
I wasn't very experienced at all. No, quite green. Actually
I talked to a good game, you know. I then

(58:45):
fell in love with a married man like you do.
You know he broke my heart. Yeah I didn't. I
didn't have that many boyfriends. I didn't. No, we were
all quite square that way. My mom and there were Catholic.
My mother was very strict, and that actually gave me
real good tracks to run down. I wasn't one of

(59:08):
these sex drugs in rock and roll grow like it
was just for the stage, but offstage, quite quite square.
My chapman or he says that that I'm doing quite
square of stage. And I believe in if you're in
a relationship, you're in a relationship. I believe in monogony.
I believe in being. If you're with one person, be
with one person. Otherwise, don't be with one person, you know.
But I had fun, I had enough fun. But I

(59:29):
certainly wasn't promiscuous by any stretch of the imagination. That
just wasn't me. In fact, the joke amongst all the
male musicians in Detroit was that you couldn't get near
the quadrulls. That it was quite funny. Uh no, not
not permissing. I'm quite square to the question of drugs
and alcohol. No, In fact, I didn't even get drunk

(59:53):
until I was twenty two when I met my ex
husband and he said me, you've never been drunk. Maybe
I had some beers back in the teenagers, but it
wasn't wasn't a drinker. Um. And I had my first
drunk with my ex houseman and he took me out
to her the Greek restaurant. We had wine and I
was dancing on the tables. That's funny. And what about drugs,

(01:00:20):
the normal pop stuff that you do in the in
the I was the sixties teenagers, so the drinking parties
were in fact pop parties, you know. But unfortunately, unfortunately,
I'm one of those people that when I smoke dope
it makes me speedy, and I'm speedy anyway. And everybody's

(01:00:43):
I remember going to I never forget at a pivotal
moment in my life again, big pot party where at
everybody's smoking. Everybody's like like this, you know, laying around
like you do, nobody talking, and I'm going person to person. Yeah,
And I heard somebody say to somebody else, next time
you come, don't bring her oh wounded. And as the

(01:01:08):
late seventies hit in in the eighties, come on, it's
a big cocaine scene. Were you ever doing coke or
were you just a marijuana girl? I didn't even hardy
do dope once I saw what it did to me.
UM never never not interested. UM. I'm not one of
these people that would ever take a drink, even to

(01:01:30):
this day. Although I like a glass of wine, glass
of champagne absolutely, um, and I have a good collection
and I'm a snub with wines in champagne like good stuff. UM.
Never have needed anything to go on to a stage,
and in fact, I don't like it when people do
need something. Cocaine just didn't interest to me whatsoever. I've
seen a lot of people waste a lot of money

(01:01:51):
up there nose. You know, no, thank you, not for me. Okay,
So you're in the Pleasure Seekers, you ultimately make records.
Then the band morshed into cradle. You know, that was
a time where there was a clear line between It's
not like today where anybody can make a record. There
was a clear line between the people who were happening

(01:02:11):
on the radio had deals and the bands were playing
in clubs. What were your thoughts into what degree were
you're optimistic? Into what degree were you frustrated? Um? Yeah,
we got signed by Mercury. We made a few sides,
but that didn't work out. Because this is the Pleasure Seekers.
They didn't want us to actually play our instruments on

(01:02:32):
the record, and we all didn't like that at all,
so we left the company. Um. Then there was an
incident where my brother booked us on his one of
his festivals that he started to do, and uh, we
we're a custom wearing show band, and we went onto
this hippie festival and we died. We died with our stage.

(01:03:01):
We were a show band and it was a bit
of a shock because we always did great at clubs.
You know, everybody loved us. So we had a big
discussion after that, and it was a case of changing
the band around, getting heavy, writing our own material. I
would take a step back and mainly just play bass.
A little sister would come in and start singing, and
it became a serious jamming band, long hair and ty

(01:03:24):
dyed T shirts and one of those. And I didn't
like that at all. We couldn't get signed, and we
didn't really have record success in either band, not really
um and it was the cradle the band, the second
wave of the pleasure Seekers, where the two record companies
came and saw us both in one week of each other.
Electorate Records came to Detroit, saw the band, didn't like

(01:03:46):
the band whatsoever, offered me a solo contract, and that
very same week, Mickey Most came to Detroit, saw the
band didn't like the band whatsoever, and offered me a
solo contract. So yeah, there was definitely a line between
we're king unit and recording. Yeah, it was srd to
get signed back then, but like I said, I witness

(01:04:06):
a solo with Mickey Most and the rest is history.
You know, Okay, how depressed were you when the band
more than the Cradle and you're no longer the lead singer.
I took it with a little bit of philosophical attitude.
I thought, Okay, I could see the reasons she's more
in tune with that sort of happening things. She's that age,

(01:04:26):
and she video is a little bit heavier and blah
blah blah um. And then I thought that it would
be a great opportunity to learn my base really well.
So I became really proficient on my bass guitar. But
the joy went out for me. I have to say,
I'm better as I'm a fun person by nature. So
I didn't really enjoy my time in that band at all.
And I didn't like the root it took musically how

(01:04:50):
much heavier and we have to say something politically and
blah blah, No, no, I don't want to do that,
you know. So um, Like I said, when the two
offers came with an week, it was to me a
no brainer that it was my time to move on.
In that interroom. Before you got those two offers, do
you ever think of giving up. No, I'm gonna make

(01:05:12):
it no matter what, no matter what. Never for an instant,
even in London, living in a room that was about
as big as this chair, with nobody, you know, just
my contract, and going to the studio every day with
my less Paul recording basement way more than I did,
crying myself to sleep every night, very lonely. Never did

(01:05:36):
I consider giving up. I was always going where I
was going. In fact, I've still got that exact same
fire in my belly that I had then. It hasn't
hasn't dissipated, even even with all the success, It's still
not going. So I guess that's just my nature. Okay,
when you're there and your brother Mike brings Mickey mo

(01:06:00):
most to you, what goes through your brain? Um? After
after Okay, I just knew it. Mickey was watching and
Nancy was singing, and I walked up and I did
two songs. And I remember it because I knew he

(01:06:21):
was there, and I was a big as a big
fan of his production. I was a huge Donovan fan,
so I loved Mickey's productions, loved him. Um and I remember,
I said, I remember doing it. I went here's what
I wrote. It's called brain confusion. And then after that
I went going to a party at the County and
I knew exactly and after the show, he just went

(01:06:42):
like this to me. I just had the feeling, you know,
And he said to me, how would you like to
come to You gonna make a record? But I thought
he meant the band. He didn't mean the band, and
and that's a It's in my documentary. It's a well
documented story. Um. He flew Mickey to New York to
talk to him, and Mickey came back with the news.

(01:07:05):
But nobody told me that he didn't want the band.
He only wanted me, And nobody told me that news.
So I could have missed my shot. But about three
or four months later, the band started to disintegrate, and
I rode my bike to my eldest sister at Need's house,
who wasn't in the band anymore for quite a while.
She was on husband number two then, and I was

(01:07:26):
really upset. I said, what am I gonna do? This band?
The band is my whole life. Music is what am
I gonna do? She said? Called Mickey, I said, why
why I've been sending him stuff with the band and
you know, and she said he likes you. I said, well,
what do he means? She said, he just only wanted you, Susie.
And I went what I had, no idea, no idea.

(01:07:50):
I could have missed my shot. That's not right. They
should have told me, um. I mean, I know why
they didn't. Obviously they will hope me. He's going to
take the whole band, of course. But I called him
did that that day and he said, I understand because
they didn't want to break up the family band. You
say he wanted it. He thought it was out his
last legs anyway, and he said to me, uh oh,
so the band is going to be split and I

(01:08:11):
said yeah. I said good, you're ready to come over.
I said, yep, done, okay slowly you're in Detroit. You
literally called Mickey most in England. Yeah, okay. That was
when the transatlantic phone call was a really big deal. Second,
I know, and he took the call right away. I
just said, Sissor Quadro called Mickey out, Hello, Susie Quadri.

(01:08:33):
He always called me Susie Quadra. Okay, how long thereafter
do you end up in London? And where there's any
anxiety about going to London, what your parents and peers
have to say. Well, I had the two offers on
the table. Electric Records wanted to take me to New

(01:08:55):
York and put a mail band around me and turned
me into the next Janis Chapham, which I didn't like
it at all, And Mickey Mo said, come to London,
we'll record an album who used the best musicians, and
I'll make you the first Susie Quadrum. So he saw me,
but I went to I had to think about it,
and I went to my parents bedroom and my mom

(01:09:18):
was sitting on a chair and my dad was sitting
on the bed and we were talking, and I said,
I've had the two offers. Uh, I'm going to take
the English offer. And then my mom started to cry
because it was going to be so far away. And
my dad said something to me that forever pushed me.

(01:09:38):
He said, you do realize, of course, that your sisters
won't make it without you. Wow. Talk about a heavy
burden to carry, you know, I don't even I think
it must have taken me maybe ten years to even
join my Hit Records. I always felt bad, so he

(01:09:58):
shouldn't have put that mean, but he did. But at
the same time. He was giving me quite a compliment,
but it really was a heavy load that I carried,
that really heavy. Okay, so what exact year he moved
to England. I arrived October thirty one nine. Okay, so

(01:10:19):
you're twenty one years old. Did they have an apartment
for you? What is your life look like now you're
in England? They put me in like a little hotel
um with a small room, a tiny bed, no bathroom,
a mirror with a cracked a sink with a cracked mirror,

(01:10:39):
and a dirty window. Not a nice room. Not a
nice room. And I had come from a beautiful home
and gross Point Whids, you know, cross Point Farms actually
at that point. Um wow, I spent so much a
long time there then, Like I said, I used to
cry myself to sleep every night, but I kept thinking
to myself, this is my pay, my due is part

(01:11:00):
of my life and I will make it. And I
promised myself I would not go back to Detroit without
hate records. Okay, you talk about low moments during that year.
Generally speaking, now you've got a lot of the whole
life look back upon. Do you have low moments? Do
you get depressed or those times that never really happened

(01:11:22):
to Susie Quadro Oh gosh. I get those all the time.
But as an artist, they're my favorite moments because I create.
You know, I've got a poetry book. I've got a
lyric book. I've just got an Instagram book. A year
on lockdown, I'm writing songs all the time. Whenever anything
happens to me, I let it. I'm the kind of

(01:11:44):
girl that walks through the fire I do. I let
it burn, and I come out of the other side,
and then I will either put it in a poem
or a song. I get lots of low moments, but
luckily I'm I'm basically a glass offtball person. Basically I
am so the low more and they don't stay long.
I get them out. You have to get them out.

(01:12:06):
At one time, I was not you know this book.
I just put up called them through my Thoughts Coffee
table my third in my series of coffee table books,
and it was on a year long of lockdown, so
it was like a year in lockdown. I did Instagram
and I made it into a book with some narrative,
just put it out and one one one that I
wrote which every morning I wake up, lockdown, can't see

(01:12:29):
my husband, he's in Germany, so really alone, couldn't see
my kids alone. And I would wake up every morning
religioucy from March to March to one figure out what
my day is like, find the right picture and the
right uplifting message or maybe not uplifting, however, I was
feeling with short message. One message, I wrote, oh, you know, hello,

(01:12:50):
good morning, and this and them about it up um
and depression. Don't come knock on itt my door. You're
not getting in. That was in the more. At midnight,
I hit the wall, and I mean I hit the wall.
I couldn't stop crying. I couldn't stop crying. So my
next Instagram the next day was smartass shut up you

(01:13:15):
know really, I said, uh, I'm sharing this with everybody
because obviously the depression was skirting around the edges of
my mind and I was I was be at all
ha ha. I said, it didn't even knock on the door.
It just came in, you know. And it's okay to cry,
It's okay to hit that wall, which we all have
to do. You shouldn't stop it. I felt better after crying,

(01:13:38):
you know, but yeah, I've hit the wall a lot
of times during this, but I bounced back. I just
you say your husband was in Germany. Was that just
during lockdown or do you spend a lot of time
a part normally. Well, he lives in Germany and I
live in England. And for the past twenty seven years

(01:13:58):
that's worked beautifully because here's ten minutes from the airport
in Hamburg, and I have ten minutes from the airport
here fifteen minutes and we just and we were and
he goes on the road with me, he has done
since he retired from his promoting. He just looks after me.
So we go on the road. Um, you're coming here?
Am I coming there? That's the life we've had. Were
either going somewhere together or he's coming here and I'm

(01:14:19):
going there. And then all of a sudden, lockdown and
that was over. So all of a sudden, I am
alone and so we see and we had only skype,
only skype. So every morning tears, you know, tears. It's
been really hard. And I can't go over there with
him full time, and he can't be here full time
because this is my house and that's his. So everything

(01:14:41):
is the way we like it, you know, So we've
we've managed to make it through. It's easing up a
bit now. Five months apart last year all together, and
three months so far this year. He's coming over on
Sunday pre COVID. If there are three hundred and sixty

(01:15:03):
five nights in a year, how many are you together? Um?
We usually are a part for maybe together two and
a half weeks apart for two and a half to
two weeks. Two weeks and two weeks. It probably averages
out like that. And has it been that from day
one in the relationship yet? I didn't think I would

(01:15:24):
like that, you know. And he was the one. He
kept saying, oh, a lot of a lot of professional
couples lived this way, blah blah blah. And now you know,
it's just like when I said, depression, you're not coming
in ha ha. He hates it, and I'm fine, and
I'm fine. I'm actually fine with it. So he's the
one hating it now and I'm the one that's saying

(01:15:45):
it's fine. Okay, So you're in this little hotel room.
What are you literally doing professionally? For that next year?
We are recording Mickey signed me as a singer song.
We're writing a musician. Um, so I'm writing all the time.
He got me a little studio to work in with
the piano and an amp and a bass, and I'm writing,

(01:16:07):
and we're in the studio with some big people, Um,
Peter Frampton playing on some of my stuff, Big Jim
Sullivan on guitar, Alan White on the drums. From Yes.
I mean, we had serious people me on the base
so making stuff. Um, but it was a very Mickey
would be the first rest in peace. Mickey. He would

(01:16:29):
be the first to say he never was quite sure
how to get me on record. He knew what he
knew what I was, and he didn't know what I was.
He was always searching, and you know, so we weren't
making the right kind of records. And finally, after about
oh a year, mab a year and a half, I said,
I've been advanced since I've been fourteen, Mickey, you know

(01:16:52):
that's what I do. I said, I need to get
a band here and start working because I'm going crazy,
you know. He said, okay, So I auditioned and I
got a band. That was the turning point for me. Um.
He put us on the circuit, on the college circuit,
doing all my own materials. So really, now I'm developing.
I got my band, you know, now everything's making sense.

(01:17:13):
And uh. Then we went on the first ever national
Slade tour and they were having hits before I had mine.
Mickey called his friend Chase Chandler, who used to be
bass player for The Animals, and he said, I got
this girl. She's gonna be huge. Can you put her
on opening the show? He said sure, So I had

(01:17:34):
twenty minutes at the beginning of every show, then then
Lizzie and then Slade and all my own stuff. And
by the time that tour was over, I was in
love with my guitar player. We wanted to get married,
and the band had a sound, had a sound we
had developed. Obviously, you're playing every night, you're gonna find
your sound. And Mickey then had just signed Chinn and

(01:17:57):
Chapman songwriters, and he said to me, do your mind,
because I'm the songwriter. He said, do your mind if
they come along and see a show and try to
craft a hit single out of your sound. And I said,
I don't mind whatsoever. The good writers, you know, So
they came and heard and if you hear the first album,
you'll hear all my stuff is to do is very boogish,

(01:18:20):
you know. So they heard what we did, they heard
the set, and they went away WI can the Camp
And that was my first number one. A little bit
slower he gets them, they see you live. Tell us
about the creation of can the Camp. Uh, Mike came
in with this. If you want, don't ever give Mike

(01:18:43):
a guitar because he's on eleven all the time and
he likes screeching, you know. But anyway, he heard the sound,
he came. But he came up with this demo of
just lots and lots of noise and guitarist and him singing,
and he played it for us and we liked it,
and we down into the rehearsal room at the record company,
all of the all of us musicians, and we worked

(01:19:05):
on the arrangement of this song. So the drummer came
up with to do. He came up with that excellent um.
Lenny came up with his little choppy way of playing it,
and I came up with the nice boogie base line.
And we had a great great keyboard player, Alistair. Oh.
He was so good. He's he's called so many of

(01:19:25):
them are dead. Anyway, he came up with that, and
it all took shape very quickly. The band, everybody put
their stamp on it with their instrument, and then Mike
said to me, sing it here, and I sang it,
and he went sing it here. By saying it, sing
it here, I said, Mike, that's the top of my range.
He said, that's where it's gonna be. So he took
me right up. He said, something happens to your voice

(01:19:46):
up in that register. Took me right up there. And
when we were making it in the studio, I put
the doom do, which really became a real key factor.
That was Lenny's idea to doom with do do do
a medal base rift there. And then when we were done,
I've done the vocal and everything, and Mike said I
need something just here, and I went right and I

(01:20:07):
went out. I did my famous I've been doing it
since I've been fourteen, my famous scream. And it's a
good one. It really is. Makes the hairs on the
back of here that going. Max said, that's the magic.
So how long did it take to cut the record?
And how long after that was it released to the marketplace?
And let me see, now we cut it must have

(01:20:31):
been just after the Slave, so it would have been
around January, February, March about March, and then, um, that
was all put together. I was number one in May,
so we we just cut that one side first and
then I hit number one in May. I was twenty three,
had my first number one nearly three, and then Mickey said,

(01:20:55):
we need to make the next single right away and
the album. So then we went and started to record
the album. So they came out after the second hit single,
after forty eight crash. That was great, That was great.
A couple of things. Mike will say that he wrote
the songs and Nikki was just a business guy. You
align with that, or you see Nikki having an influence

(01:21:18):
on the material. Um, I mean, Mike's a very good
friend of mine. You know, we're still very close. And
he would say him he said many for many years.
At the beginning, probably says for the first four or
five years that Nikki Chin was very important. And because
he used to edit, he'd say what you got, Mike

(01:21:39):
would play it, and he might change a word here
and there. He was maybe good at hearing a certain
word or whatever. But but in reality, Mike was more
the writer Nikki did what he did whatever he did
in private, and Nikki was very good at business. And
when I did my big documentary, when I was doing
my radio shows, I did fifteen years on BBC Radio two. Um,

(01:22:02):
everybody that they talked to that got included in the
interviews when the documentary came out, they all said the
same thing. So Nikki would tell it different, but that's
how Mike tells it. Okay, So you hear the version
finished version of Can That Cant Do you immediately say,
holy sh it, this is hit record. He say, well,

(01:22:22):
we made it. We'll see what happens. No, you could
hear it. Um, you got goose bumps. So I had
no doubt that was gonna Mickey heard it. He said,
this is number one. It's the number one. Um. You
know when you hear a song like that, that's gonna
be here, you know it. You know it. It had
something had an excitement about it. Um. He called me

(01:22:46):
into his office and it was about a month before
the record was due to come out, and he said,
we have to talk about image now. He said, you're
gonna have a number one with this. We need your image.
What do you want to wear? Great story of this.
I said leather, of course, Elvis and he said no, no, no,

(01:23:07):
no no. And I said, Mickey, I want to wear leather.
Said no, it's it's old hat. It's been done, and
I said not by me. And he went and he
looked at me and he said, how about a jumpsuit?
And I said, yeah, this is when I can be naive.

(01:23:28):
I said, yeah, great, And I'm thinking to myself how
sensible that is, because I'm a real energetic performer and
everything will stay in place. And I had no idea
until I got the pictures back that it was sexy.
And that's why that photograph works, because it doesn't look

(01:23:49):
like I'm trying to be sexy. I didn't know I
was being sexy. But when the pictures came back from
being to choose, I looked at them and I went, oh, oh, dear,
oh dear. If I don't it's very funny. Don't see
you don't see yourself that way, you know. But there
was a pivotal moment again just before we just I
went just watching the time you just before we move on. Um,

(01:24:11):
when I was in the studio, the photographic studio with
a very big photographer, gard make of its. He's done, everybody,
including the Stones, and I was standing there in my
brand new jumpsuit. The boys were sort of lying on
this table around my feet. I was a leader of
the gang and my record was playing in the background,

(01:24:32):
and my first ever proper photo session in my jumpsuit,
and I remember the photographers saying to me, okay, now
give me that Susie Quatro look, and I had one.
The funniest thing is I didn't know I had one.
I'm just gonna grab the box set so I could
show you the look and you'll see what I mean
one second, because I'll never forget this as long as

(01:24:56):
I live, because I you know, you're searching, searching, searching,
and then somebody says something like that to you, and
you you do it, and then everything, all the pieces
of my my performing jigsaw puzzle, my personality, it all
came boom. I remember this picture being taken. I hope

(01:25:17):
believe I'll remember the picture too. See can you see
what I mean? Absolutely, it's a legendary picture. But okay,
you're instantly a sex symbol. What's it like being inside
the jumps dude and everybody looking at you. To me,
it was it was right. It felt good. Um, when

(01:25:41):
you when you don't grow up thinking of yourself as
a good looking, sexy girl, even wearing that and being
looked at is not going to change your inside, you know.
And I always say to my husband that, thank goodness
I didn't grow up that way, because what that did

(01:26:03):
was that give me a very natural balance to being
stared at and being a sex, very natural balance to
it all. Because I don't take it serious, you know.
I mean, they're loving Susie Quadro, and so I do
separate that way. I mean most of the time. And
it happens all the time. The guys will come up
and they go, oh, oh no, I had you on
my wall, your poster, and you know that. I said, yes,

(01:26:26):
I know that, thank you enough information. They want to
share it with you, you know. So I don't take
it serious. I just don't take it serious. That's Susie Quadro.
That's Susie Quatro. Okay, okay, Now, performing leather is not
that easy. It gets hot and sweaty. I mean, what
was I'm like, Well, you know, look at this idiot here,

(01:26:49):
I'm five ft two. I picked the heaviest instrument and
the hottest outfit. So what am I like? I could
have played flute and satin. You know, Um, I just
got used to it. I I when I zipped that up,
I still wear it. I become me, become her, become me.

(01:27:10):
She is me, She's part of me. But it's still
performing side. I love. I love the jumps It's what
a great what a great image. And I could still
do it now at seventy one. I mean, my god,
how lucky am I to have the same image. That's fantastic.
That means it worked because Mickey's idea was a jumpsuit.
Why did you want to be in leather? From Elvis?

(01:27:31):
That's another pivotal moment. I saw him on the Comeback Special.
I was eighteen, and I decided leather was for me,
and I went and bought my first leather jacket. Next
pivotal moment, we're making the first album and we record
I'll Shook Up. Next pivotal moment, I'm touring America with

(01:27:54):
my English band. I've had hits. I'll Shook Up is
in the charts. Um, I me in Memphis and the
phone rings and it's Elvis's people, and all of a
sudden he gets on the phone, I knewly died, and
he said, uh, I've heard your version of All Struck
Up and I think it's the best. It's my own

(01:28:14):
and would you like and would you like to come
to grace Land? And I went, I'm very busy right now,
not because I was scared, because I wasn't ready and
I figured i'd have another chance to meet him and
I didn't. Next pivotal moment, I have to go through
these now that I started. Nineteen seventy seven, I come

(01:28:34):
from Japan to l A. I auditioned for Happy Days.
Um they said okay. I met the director at the funds,
read for the part. They said, go back to your
hotel when we'll give you a call. We have to
discuss you. So I've put on the TV. I'm sitting
next to the phone waiting for them to call. TV

(01:28:54):
is on in the background, and they called and they said,
we don't just want you for the two part episode,
want you for fifteen episodes. I went great, And just
as they were saying that, the TV said, news flash,
the King is dead right. You can't write this stuff simultaneously.
Then two or three months later I'm there to do

(01:29:17):
my first taping of Happy Days and the director comes
over with a little little man and he said, Susie,
I'd like you to meet this guy. His name is
Nudy and he's gonna be doing all your costumes for
the show. That was Elvis's personal Taylor, you cannot write
this kind of stuff. Okay, then it's not coming out

(01:29:39):
to the end of it. Now, I'm doing my tribute
song to Elvis et and google it when we're done,
called Singing with Angels Um. It was done in Nashville
with James Burton on guitar and the Jordanaires. Gordon Stoker
had come out of his hotel bed to sing on
this song. I wrote it about Elvis, so that that

(01:30:00):
is the final, the final one, so I finally beat
used a thing with him, and the compliment that I
shall take to my grave is I was outside with
James Burton, took a little break from recording, and I
gave him my headphones and I was playing him a
few tracks from the album I was recording and he's
listening and he took off. He said, you know, Susy,

(01:30:20):
I gotta tell you something. I said what he said?
You got what over said, and I went even when
I said, now, my heart stops. I said, what what
do you mean? He said, I can only explain it
this way. Whatever you do, it's you. Wow. Wow, Let's

(01:30:42):
go back to can the Can it's number one. It
is very hard to follow up a hit. Was it
all moving so fast you didn't think about it? Or
were you anxious? How am I going to follow this up?
I had no doubt I would follow it up. I
was on a roll. My time had come. I was ready. Okay,

(01:31:04):
Like with everybody, the role eventually comes to an end.
How did you deal with that? How did I just
say say it again? You know, eventually everybody on the
chart their day and somebody else takes the throne emotionally?
How did you deal with it? Deal with that? Um?

(01:31:26):
I never felt like I went anywhere. I've always just
been a working artist. I never went anywhere, So I
I never had that syndrome. Um, what for me? Once
you make it to a certain level and you're out
there and you know you're playing for the crowds, and
you're doing tours and you're all the time working, and

(01:31:46):
whether you're having hits in the charts doesn't really make
any difference because you've made your name, and then you're
a working artist, and you're you're doing the circuit, the
festivals and the private gigs and this and that. So
I've just always rolled along. I've never felt left out
because even in the eighties, I I keept, I kept

(01:32:06):
changing tracks. You know, UM did did the acting, I
did musical. Okay, wait wait, wait, before we get to
the changing, how did you feel being a Detroit girl that,
prior to stumbling in none of these gigantic records in
England crossed over in America. Now, wasn't only you the
other it's very successful acts to talking about Slade, etcetera.

(01:32:30):
But how did you being an American? How did you
feel about? There was something? There was a couple of
year period of a lot of stuff happening everywhere else.
Knew it wasn't happening in America. I used to go
tour there um all the time. We saw quite a
few albums, you know, but the hit records didn't translate.
And every time I went over, I always noticed that
it was Linda von Stadt and the Eagles all over

(01:32:53):
the radio. Um in my documentary has explained very well
by Mike Chapman by Debbie Harry by all these people.
I was a little bit early. You know, they weren't
quite ready for this bass playing leader of a rock
band to to do it. You know that I had
more of a cult status in America, and it wasn't

(01:33:14):
until I did Happy Days. In fact, this is my
own take on it, and they saw this bass playing
girl that all of a sudden it became okay, that's
how I see it happening. So they didn't discover me
as Susan Quasta. They discovered me as Leather Tuscadero being
played by Susan Quadrow in America at that point in time.

(01:33:35):
Happy Days in Laverne and Shirley, which were done by
the same people, were the number one in two shows
they juggled. What's it like being on a number one
television show which has international reach even beyond the records. Yeah, fantastic. Um.
I was very It was a decision I took to

(01:33:55):
to even try out for that part, you know, but
I always I knew I could act, so I wanted
to do it. One of the nicest three three three
years of my life. I've kept good friends with Henry,
good friends with Ron. We email all the time. Um.
In fact, I one time Astron recently we were talking.
I was curious, I said, did I ever feel when

(01:34:19):
I joined the show like I was a brand new
person on the show, a new actress? He said no,
he said, you were just in the show. It was
like you had been there from the beginning. I can't
figure out how that happened. It was a really natural
fit for me, you know, pretty natural. And I love
I love acting. It's my second love if I have one. Okay,

(01:34:41):
do you say, both in words and in the documentary
that you could have continued. Do you regret that you
did not continue being on the show and having your
own spin off? No. I. I spent a lot of
time with Henry, and he was always talking about how

(01:35:05):
he was always going to be the Funds, you know,
and he's a fine actor. And that went into my
little brain a bit. And then I thought, well, I'm
Sushi Quatro everywhere in the world. I now Susi Quatro
playing leather tuscadero. So do I really want to box
myself into being that person for the rest of my life?
And the answer was no, I did not want to.

(01:35:27):
And I went on to do a lot of other
different kinds of shows, you know, And I did musicals
and you know, Midsummer Murders and ab Fab and five
or six different series that I did. And I made
the right decision at the right time. I did enough
of Leather Tuscadero. I didn't need to keep doing it. Okay,
not long after that, you have children? Did you always

(01:35:50):
want to have children? And did Why did you decide
to have them at that point and what was the experience? Like,
I always wanted to have kids. I come from big
family myself. That was a no brainer. Who was going
to have kids I wanted for Unfortunately, I'm too small
and I had two cesareans. They were kind of dangerous.
I wasn't allowed to get pregnant again. I wanted to

(01:36:12):
have them before thirty. Then I found that I had
trouble getting pregnant, low fertility, and I had to have
a little bit of help, and I finally got pregnant
at thirty two and thirty four. Always going to have kids,
but I insisted that the kids come on the road
with me. That was one of my things I said

(01:36:32):
to my ex. We argued about it. I said, I
don't have kids and leave them at home. So we
had to live in nanny and we took them on
the road until they got to proper school age. Um, yeah,
kids is great, Kids is great. They they changed your life.
You you you have no idea what love is until

(01:36:53):
you have a child. Wow. Did I just say that
many perfooms. Uh, I have guilt that they did not
spend as much time with their children growing up as
maybe someone with traditional job. Is that enter the picture

(01:37:14):
at all with you? No, it doesn't because I had
arguments about it, and I insisted, and they came on
the road, so I would get my sleep from the
gig before on the road, and then they would come
to spend the afternoon together. You know, I tried to
make up for when I was home, I'm not on
the road. I was boring. I never went anywhere. I

(01:37:39):
stayed here in this house with the kids, so they
were with me on the road, and when we were home,
I was here. My ex used to get quiet, annoyed.
Why don't we ever go? I said, no, I'm here.
So no, I didn't leave them when they went to
school age, and then you couldn't keep taking them out.
Then there was a few tourists maybe where I had
to do a couple of weeks in Australian then they

(01:37:59):
would lie out in their break that that happened sometimes.
But I never deserted my kids. No, I was. I
was a hands on mom and that was not easy
because I was also the bread earner, so I had
to wear eight million different hats. You know, now, a
lot of children of famous people, celebrities, Uh, their childhoods

(01:38:20):
are not easy. They end up drugs, alcohol, bad actors.
How do you work out with your kids? They're they're
pretty normal to um No, they haven't got they haven't
got any problems, any addiction problems. My daughter can drink,
she's half Scottish. Um No, No, they're fine, They're well adjusted.

(01:38:41):
My son has had two successful albums with me. He's
producing people now. He's a fine guitar player. My daughter
has a good job, she's a good singer. She's got
her my granddaughter, and she's got a foster kid. Now
that you know, I made sure that my kids were
as normal as possible. I didn't raise them as show
showbiz breadths at all. Okay. In the documentary, a huge

(01:39:07):
turning point is when you take the gig in any
get your gun, let's kind of separate some of these
things out. Hey, how did you make the decision to
do that gig? And in the documentary that says it
closed a for a huge riff with your first husband.
What was going on all through that? Um? Okay, I

(01:39:29):
had my kids. I was branching out into different bits
and pieces. You know, you can't go on the on
stage when you're pregnant because that's not good for the baby.
So I had two years where I wasn't on the road,
not all the like when I got bigger. When I
got bigger three or four months, I was fine. Um,
I'd wanted to And an offer came up. I was

(01:39:50):
offered the role of Annie and Annie Gets Your Gun
and we had to tour boat in Australia. And I
remember saying to Lenny, this is an offer or we
had we had an offer of a tour. It wasn't booked, obviously,
I said, I will not turn this down. I always
wanted to try my hand at musicals. I love musicals.

(01:40:11):
And Annie Gets your Gun. Wow, what a perfect fit
for me, sharp shooting girl. You know a tom Boy?
What a perfect fit. Um. I slid into it. Again.
It wasn't difficult. Um. I took to it like a
duck to water. Love the songs, love the whole process
of doing a musical, loved the discipline of it. Absolutely

(01:40:33):
loved it. Um yeah wow. But my husband, and you know,
he had to sit around during happy Days. Didn't like that.
And he had to sit around during Annie. He's a
guitar player. So that started to cause a little bit
of a rift. If you had not taken those two
gigs and you'd worked in the band with the marriage,

(01:40:55):
have worked and continued, or was it going to end
in any event? I think it was going to end
in any event because I think I think he kind
of drifted after the kids. I don't I don't even
know if he wanted kids. You know, it was we
were we were growing up heart, you know, And I
love him dearly still I say it to my husband.

(01:41:16):
I'll always love him. Not in love anymore, but always
will love him. Um. We stopped communicating. That's the killer.
So how did you tell him? I wrote a song
called Free the Butterfly, and I brought it down and
played it from beautiful song. You should google it, and

(01:41:40):
I thought he would get it, but he didn't. All
he said afterwards was nice song, sues it's about the
ending of her marriage. Um. Yeah, finally, it took me
six years from from the time I knew that we were,
not that I was falling out of love. It took
me six years to go because I had kids and
I'm a Catholic girl, so he had he had to
really think, get through and make sure one million percent

(01:42:02):
that you were making the right decision. And then finally
I knew. And when I knew, I knew, and I
just said, that's it, that's it. How long was that
after you played him the song? Probably two years? Okay,
So you're working in and get your gun. All of

(01:42:23):
a sudden you start spreading your horizons. You're writing books,
you're acting, you have a radio show. How does that
all come about? And is that fit in with your philosophy?
Is it new? Because is it exciting because it's new?
Where do you say, well, I'm a rock chick, should
I be doing that? What's going on? I don't think
about any of those things. Um, I'm quite comfortable as this,

(01:42:46):
very comfortable. This is who I always will be. The
suit stuff fits, by the way, But I am an artist.
I gotta start five everybody. You're telling me the same
jumpsuits you wore in the seventies. You can no, no, no, no, no,
no, no no, no no no. Okay, for a minute, there
you're no no no, no no no. Of course not,

(01:43:07):
of course not. I would have to be you have
to be a miracle for that. But I do have
older ones, you know, newer ones, and they fit. But
of course they made for me. Now, of course you're
not the same size, Um, not exactly anyway. But I'm
still pretty good. Let's let's put it this way. They
still look good, okay. Um. I'm an artist and I
can't help with be an artist, and I am a

(01:43:28):
communicator and entertainer and a creator, and that's what makes
me tick. So I have to do those things I have.
I love doing radio. It's communicating on the air. I
love writing, it's communicating through my words. I love writing songs.
It's it's all about that for me. I have to create.

(01:43:49):
I I can't exist without creating. Okay. There's a cliche
in the music business. It's not about the money. It's
about the money, okay. So let's go back nicky most
And in that era, traditionally, the acts had to cough

(01:44:09):
up there publishing and they had lousy record deals. What
was your experience in the seventies. It was notorious after
the sixties when record companies were throwing money at everybody.
The seventies thing got very tight. So I had a
normal seventy deal, seventies deal which I be negotiated when
we negotiating came up. Um, I never got cheated by

(01:44:31):
Mackey was very fair with me, ironed, ironed, pretty good.
You know. I bought my first house with cash, so
not bad. But make Mickey put me with a good
accountants and everything, and he was straight with me, and yeah,
I'm fine. I don't have to worry about money. Okay.
Needless to say, the songs that uh uh Mike Chapman wrote,

(01:44:55):
the singles you don't collect on, but all of these
other songs you just get the writer's share in the
rack days or do you have any of the publishing?
Um I was signed with my publishing to Mickey, so yeah,
I get publishing. Sure, I have published cents on the dollar.
The old deal is the publisher owns the publishing and

(01:45:17):
gets and the writer gets. We that we had that,
we had that fifty fifty. But now I've now got
seventy thirty because they do all the administration for me.
I have Butterfly Stroke Rack Publishing, and they do the
administration for and I get it. And who is they?

(01:45:41):
Let's assume you never worked again. You have enough money
to get to the end more than any now in style.
In style, I can drink a nice bottle of champagne
every night of the week. Okay, record royalties which are
different from publishing royalties. A lot of vacts say they
don't get those. I don't people with hit records or

(01:46:02):
not getting any record royalties not now right streaming? Yes,
but are you getting any royalties from the records as
opposed to the songs? It's hard to get. It's it's hard.
That's hard. I get a lot, a lot from the
the publishing and the PRS and all the other thing.
But uh, this is a big, big wrong thing that's happening.

(01:46:24):
And I feel sorry for the young X coming along
right now. Um, the streaming needs to be addressed. It's unfair.
A lot of big acts are coming out and saying
so PRS has just send out things to everybody. We're
addressing this that the artists, you know, nobody's a lot
of people don't buy records anymore, so you're not getting
royalties from there, and streaming doesn't really pay you much.
So this it's not a good business, not route for

(01:46:45):
a lot of artists, and it needs to be addressed
and put right or people will stop making music. Okay,
so you talk about the fact you need to create.
You recently put out a new record. What keeps you
going at this point in time? Creation? God, every time

(01:47:08):
I write a new song, I get excited. Every time
I come up with a great line of the song,
I get excited. I was up in my bedroom the
other night writing poetry from my next poetry book, Flying,
I'm Flying. I love I love creating something I can't
explain to any better than that. And I've always been
the same. I love lyrics, you know, and I've I've

(01:47:30):
still got. Unfortunately or unfortunately, depending on which side of
the fence you're sitting on, I have a lot left
to say. I'm not done. As everybody, as generations change,
the audience gets smaller. Does that bother you that you
might write a book and it might reach fewer people,
or you might play to one quarter of the audience.

(01:47:53):
Used to play. Is that depressing at all? Or still
you're good it hasn't happened. I mean I knew here
as zeeve uh two thousand nineteen, just before the pandemic year,
I played to fourteen thousand people. And here's the funny part.
I'm standing there doing my two hours show with an interval,

(01:48:15):
you know, fantastic, and I'm looking at fourteen th people
and it's the only time I ever thought this, because
when I'm on stage, I'm I'm in the I'm on
the stage, I'm concentrating, you know, I'm there in the moment.
If somebody sneezes, I hear um, you know, I'm I'm there.
And I looked at all those people, and I thought

(01:48:36):
to myself, very fleetingly, you know, if it all stops tomorrow,
I'm gonna go out on a high. And then it stopped.
Oh my god, what did I say that for? Idiot?
Just like when I said, oh, depression, don't come knock
it out my door. I gotta learned to shut my

(01:48:57):
my brain, you know. But yeah, I'm still playing huge.
I'm I had shows in the book last year, all
sold out solo shows with interval, which I love. Two
hours I love it, take you right the way through
everything you know, from bongos to everything. And I had
the same book this year. Of course, a lot of
them are postponed to two thousand twenty two. Um, I'm

(01:49:20):
still pulling in the crowds. So are we gonna have
to scrape you off the stage as you die of
a heart attack at some late age or would you
ever call it a day? I think if I ever
ever find myself going on that stage and putting on
a phony smile. I was stopped. But I do have

(01:49:43):
a famous quote which I'm going to end this interview
with because it's my famous quote. I said it when
I was thirty five years old. Okay, some idiot at
thirty five said to me, what are you going to retire?
And I said, when I go on stage, turn my
BA back on the audience and shake my ass. And
their silence then I stopped. Hasn't happened yet, but a

(01:50:08):
big Susie. You're unbelievable, you know you always do. Until
you actually talk to someone, you don't really know what
they're like. You know, you can tell a story, and
I understand why you're successful. You tell a great story.
Even someone who knew nothing about you would be entertained.
Thanks so much for doing this. Oh well, thank you
and thank you for that compliment. I take that that

(01:50:30):
that see that goes to my heart. Thank you, thank
you very much. Until next time. This is Bob Leftson

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