Suzi Quatro

If Suzi Quatro hadn’t existed we’d be inhabiting a very different musical landscape. Until the diminutive leatherclad Detroit fireball emerged out of the exclusively male preserve of the 70s glam scene, the role of female rock and pop performers was largely limited to simpering subserviently in unattractive pinafore dresses. Suzi Quatro changed all that. With an undeniable charisma, a refusal to accept recognised boundaries and a positively feral approach to the delivery of visceral rock’n’roll, Suzi Q inspired (both directly and indirectly) generations of aspiring female artists.

She ascended rapidly to householdname status following her debut performance with in the summer of ’73. Grappling with a bass of almost equal height and fronting a band of surly brawlers, she was a fiery, fashionably androgynous apparition. An untamed, hard-rocking tomboy, apparently oblivious to a sexual magnetism thataverse fathers and a not inconsiderable number of their sisters). But behind her raw enthusiasm and flaming youth, Quatro was no neophyte.