Suzi Quatro - still going hell for leather

There aren't many people who were called up and invited over to Graceland by Elvis and even fewer who turned him down.

Suzi Quatro is one such person, and she has been kicking herself ever since.

It was 1974 when she got the call.

Suzi was doing a tour in Memphis and had just returned to the hotel when the phone rang. It was Elvis. He'd heard her sing All Shook Up and thought it was the best version since his own.

"All I could do was breathe," she says. "He must have been totally amazed at my reaction but I just wasn't ready to meet him. I'd only had three hits. I think I said thank you and made some excuse about being busy and he said goodbye." The Seventies rock chick, famous for her leather jumpsuits and hits such as Devil Gate Drive, relays this encounter and more in her new auto-biography Unzipped.

We are due to meet in The Grand in Brighton. Suzi turns up an hour late, apologising profusely for the traffic and assuring me she is normally on time. She is wearing black leather trousers and a frayed denim jacket.

She is tiny, extremely direct and doesn't suffer fools.

Born in Detroit in 1950 to an Italian father and Hungarian mother, Suzi was encouraged to play piano, bass, guitar and percussion from an early age.

At 14, she played bass in all-girl band The Pleasure Seekers with her sister Patti. At 15, the band had a major recording deal but at 21, Suzi was offered a contract to go solo.

"The mood in the house felt like someone had died," she says, in her broad American drawl. "My dad's dream was that all of his girls made it together and I felt very bad. I have carried that with me my whole career but I always felt it was my path to go solo. I had been waiting for that chance and you need to believe in yourself to survive." Suzi left for London just as Glam Rock was kicking off. She got a band together and promptly fell for the guitarist Len Tuckey, who she later married.

Noted for her huge talent and edgy approach, she was soon drawing crowds of thousands. Her first number one record Can The Can sold 2.5 millon copies and the hit single Devil Gate Drive went gold, silver and platinum. With six albums under her belt and 50 million records sold worldwide, one of the first things Suzi wants to make clear is she was never manufactured.

"My love of leather comes from Elvis Presley," she says. "I saw him do the comeback concert and had it in my head I was going to be like Elvis.

I didn't think about it being sexy, I just thought it was sensible and would stay put when I jumped around."

Her black leather jumpsuit, snakeskin boots and silver-chained tiger's claws drove fans wild, inspiring fellow rock'n' roll stars such as Joan Jett.

Apart from the odd rip (repaired on the spot with a roll of gaffer tape), the only major drawback was the heat.

"I lost so much water weight, my ex had to peel it off," she recalls. "It was easy to get on, it was getting it off when you were soaking wet that was really difficult. You can't do it yourself because you'd put your arm out of joint. I could feel myself getting frustrated a couple of times when there was no one around." Suzi has been a fan of Elvis since she saw him on TV when she was five years old and has even written a tribute song for him, due out next year, called Singing With Angels.

"I thought I would have another chance but it wasn't my path to meet him. I believe in destiny and that song is spine-chilling," she says.

Had she taken up the offer to go to Graceland, Suzi says she would have liked nothing more than to have sat in a room with Elvis and sang.

Would she have slept with him? "No, no," she says, horrified. "You don't sleep with heroes. The dream should remain the dream. It wouldn't feel right. I was in love with him as a performer not as a man. I'm not a groupie. It would go against every bone in my body to even consider it. I have my own groupies." Asked if she has ever been tempted to take advantage of one of her own "groupies", Suzi almost balks at the thought. "That's not my style, I'm a good Catholic girl in that way. I'm a one-man dog." That said, she has hung out with a fair number of rockers in her day. including Iggy Pop, Jethro Tull and legendary "shock rocker" Alice Cooper (who she calls Vinnie as his real name is Vincent). They shared plenty of wild times, including one episode when Suzi broke his nose in a dart gun fight. It was during his Welcome To My Nightmare Tour when she was a special guest.

"We were bored so we decided to have a dart gun fight," she explains. "We took the mattresses to use as shields and went out into the hotel hallway armed with rubber-tipped darts and dart guns. Alice has got a rather large nose, I could see it peeking out when he stuck his head out to see where I was and I got him right between the eyes. He went on stage with a big Band Aid on his nose and wore a T-shirt with my name on out of respect,' he said." Apart from the occasional spliff, Suzi has always steered clear of drugs and is critical of the high-profile partying antics of current artists such as Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen.

"I was brought up to believe music was a profession and I treated it as such. That doesn't mean being out of your brain 24 hours a day. I am able to leave Suzi Quatro on stage, walk off and be normal. A lot of youngsters today could take a page out of my book," she says.

Another thing that sticks in Suzi's craw is female pop stars who strut on stage brandishing a guitar. One culprit is Madonna at this summer's Live Earth gig. "She has a certain thing that she does and no one does it quite like her and she looks great but don't pick up the guitar and mime. You're putting what I've done 20 years back for Christ's sake. Don't mime. She doesn't need to, she's a very talented lady.

A one-off."

I am just about to ask my next question when Suzi suddenly interrupts, pokes me in the knee and says: "I get the feeling you don't like me."

Temporarily lost for words, I ask how on earth she has come to that conclusion.

"I don't know," she says, slowly. "Am I right or wrong? I am very instinctive." I had assumed we were getting on fine until this moment but having put Alice Cooper's nose in plaster she is obviously someone not to be messed with.

"No, that's not true at all," I say, unconvincingly.

"No? OK. Good," she says, suspiciously.

Desperate not to end up with a fractured nose, I quickly decide honesty is the best tactic and confess that while I'm familiar with her music and career to date, I haven't actually read her book from cover to cover.

"Ahhh!," she says, knowingly. "This is what I'm picking up. I am picking up a negative vibe." I don't have any negative vibes, I protest.

"No, no, I want to say it because this is important. I am not wrong. I'm really instinctive and I am picking up defensive vibes. OK, I take back that previous statement. It doesn't matter that you haven't read the book." (I have read the juicy bits, but this is no time for debate). "If you'd said that at the beginning I would have been a lot more gentle with you. Good." She sits back and turning to The Argus photographer, adds: "Now don't you start any sh** because you're next!" For someone who's been "rockin' " for 42 years, it has to be said, Suzi is in fantastic shape.

While she's not against Botox in theory, she insists she's never had anything done and keeps fit by jogging or doing yoga. "I actually don't give a sh** about my age and never have," she says. "I am what I am. I'm 57. I'm not perfect but that's fine." "Stage work keeps me fit," she observes. "That bass is heavy and the suit is hot. Look at these bones, have you ever seen bones like these?" She shakes off her denim jacket and starts flexing her arm muscles to the delight of our photographer, who says Suzi got him through his teenage years.

"Look at those," she says, still flexing. "Look at these bones, have you ever seen these? Those bones are from the bass. Look at my arms. This is embarrassing for such a little woman." I nod wide-eyed and ask how long she intends to keep up wearing the leathers. "As long as they look good, I won't look like a caricature of myself," she says, adamantly.

Suzi's tactic for surviving life is to "walk right into the fire and feel the pain" an approach she has had to adopt at low points in her life. She writes at length in her book about the heartbreak of her separation from her husband Len and the pain of losing her mum and his mother just after divorce proceedings had begun.

"If I have to sit in my room and cry for six days that's what I do," she says. "Then I go out the other side and I keep on walking. That's my way of surviving in life, by facing it. Too many people run away." In the late-Seventies, Suzi grabbed the headlines once again with a role alongside Henry Winkler, the Fonz, in American TV show Happy Days.

By 1985, however, she had become disenchanted with everything except her kids (Richard, 22 and Laura, 24).

Feeling trapped in her image, she took the lead in the West End musical Annie Get Your Gun and popped up in all sorts of TV programmes from Minder to the Russell Harty Show.

She was even killed off in Midsomer Murders, playing a rock star who was electrocuted by her mic in the midst of a comeback gig.

In 1993, Suzi married German record producer Rainer Haas and now divides her time between Germany and their home in Essex. With a forthcoming tour of Australia, regular slot on Radio 2 and the current album Back To The Drive now out, she is feeling positive about the future.

"My dad quit music at 89 so maybe that's an indication," she says.

Will she keep going until she's 90?

She grins. "I don't know. Fifty-seven is not old not when you look at some of the other rockers around."

Unzipped by Suzi Quatro, published by Hodder & Stoughton, priced £18.99.

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