Years before Heart and the Runaways, Suzi Quatro was leading the charge for women in rock. After performing with her sisters in the mid-’60s group the Pleasure Seekers, the Detroit-born bass guitarist relocated to England, where she came under the management of Mickie Most.
With the release of her self-titled 1973 debut — and its standalone hit, “Can the Can” — Quatro built a formidable following across Europe and Australia.
Although she had yet to break through in the U.S. by the time of her third album, 1975’s Your Mamma Won’t Like Me, Alice Cooper tapped Quatro as the opening act for his horror-themed Welcome to My Nightmare tour.
The connection was rooted in shared history. Like Quatro, Cooper hailed from Detroit, and his touring entourage included several musicians tied to the Motor City scene, many of whom were longtime acquaintances of Quatro.
“I was friends with so many acts from Michigan,” she tells Classic Rock. “MC5, the Amboy Dukes, Grand Funk Railroad. And I’ve known Alice for years, and we always had a connection.”
Quatro and her band even had a nickname for him on the tour: Vinnie the Boss, a nod to his birth name, Vincent Furnier.
Still, the relentless schedule made for a grueling run.
“We were on a turboprop and making at least one flight a day, if not two,” she recalls. “Back then, I was a terrible flyer, so it was white-knuckle time. But it was wonderful because there were a lot of Detroit people around — musicians I’d known forever.”
On the rare occasions when the touring parties could unwind, they made the most of it. One night, the fun and games went too far.
Then I saw his rather large nose poking out from behind a television set, and I went ‘boink!’”
— Suzy Quatro
“On a big tour like this, you get a little crazy,” Quatro says. “In one hotel, we decided to have a rubber dart-gun fight before a show. We hid behind mattresses in the hallway, and it got serious — dark. Who was going to win?
“Alice hid in a room,” she adds. “Then I saw his rather large nose poking out from behind a television set, and I went ‘boink!’”
The dart struck him squarely on the nose.
“I didn’t break it, but it was pretty close. His first words were: ‘Ouch!’ and then ‘Good shot!’ That night, onstage, he wore my tour T-shirt out of respect.”
As a breakthrough figure for women in rock, Quatro was unapologetically self-defined.
“[I created the rock chick] because there wasn’t anybody for me to model myself after,” she tells Guitar Player. “I was aware I wasn’t succumbing to being like other girls, and I was nervous about that, but I had to stick to what I was.
“It was hard all through my life. I never knew where I belonged until I got on stage. I shocked a lot of people. I was playing with a band of guys, and I was in charge.”
That commanding presence resonated with Cooper, who had earlier shared Detroit stages with the Pleasure Seekers. He witnessed firsthand how she carved out a template that future generations of female rockers would draw from.
“A lot of girls have tried to be Suzi Quatro,” he says in the documentary Suzi Q. “But when it’s in the DNA, you can’t fake that.”
Cooper has since reflected on earning Bob Dylan’s approval for one of his songs, and on transforming a ’60s ballad into a glam-rock anthem.
