(Credits: Far Out / Stefan Brending)
Tue 17 March 2026 23:00, UK
The great thing about musical legends is that they often don’t see themselves that way – Suzi Quatro, for instance, might be aware of her cultural impact and status, but her pride usually comes with a healthy dose of humble gratitude, too.
That said, as one of the first female bassists to shatter the glass ceiling, Quatro knows full well that rising to the top comes with a hefty amount of challenges and setbacks, because after all, one of the most startling facts about Quatro’s journey was the intense sexism she faced along the way, not just the media discourse, but with the physical experiences she endured on her path to becoming a major name in her own right.
One of which was how chaotic and destructive her early audiences were, many of whom were so attuned to animalistic and misogynistic spaces that seeing someone like Quatro on stage felt like a direct insult to their communities. Quatro has discussed this many times, specifically the moments when she’d leave the stage infuriated and covered in spit, but this doesn’t remove from how absurd it still seems, or how much these experiences stemmed from something she never really thought about herself to begin with.
After all, growing up, Quatro’s idols were mainly male musicians, not because she preferred them, but because she simply didn’t think about it, or about her place among them, for that matter. She didn’t go looking for female influences because she didn’t think it was an issue that she wasn’t a man, and she didn’t care that that boundary even existed anyway.
She also barely considered the fact that she would find it more difficult to gain respect in the same spaces as many of her male peers. For instance, Quatro’s love for Elvis Presley is no secret, and she even poked fun at that fact herself following the release of her EP Uncovered when she explained that she avoided Presley covers because “everybody knows I’m an Elvis freak”.
But beyond his impact on her music and stage presence, Presley also inspired that familiar sense of boundary-shattering defiance that Quatro became known for, a trait that went hand-in-hand with her devil-may-care image, which at one point was inextricably linked to her iconic leather jumpsuit.
Quatro had first become endared to Presley when she watched his performance on The Ed Sullivan Show. She didn’t think about her own path all that deeply at that point or “the fact that I was a girl”; she just remembers thinking, “I’m gonna do that.” Then, at around 18, when she’d already been on the road for a number of years, she came across Presley’s 1968 Comeback Special.
Clad head-to-toe in leather, Presley inspired countless others to venture out and buy their very own leather jackets, including Quatro, who set off on a clear path to her very own version of that getup in 1973, when the leather jumpsuit emerged during the explosion of her career-defining hit, ‘Can the Can’.
Quatro later recalled to Tidal that she managed to somehow speak to Presley on the phone around a year later, who praised her version of ‘All Shook Up’ and invited her to Graceland. However, Quatro turned the invitation down, citing the fact that she needed more time to prepare to meet one of her heroes. She never met him, but she doesn’t live to regret it, likely since he already lives on as a deeply ingrained aspect of her own artistry.