‘I’m 76 and still shaking my ass’: Suzi Quatro has no plan to slow down

More than six decades after she first picked up a bass guitar, Suzi Quatro is still touring, still writing, still rocking and entirely comfortable with the woman she has become. Ahead of her return to Australia, the rock trailblazer talks to Starts at 60 about ageing, happiness, sensitivity, legacy and why her love affair with Australian audiences has never faded.

Suzi Quatro has a fairly simple philosophy when it comes to ageing.

Don’t care.

At 76, the Detroit-born rock legend has spent more than six decades in show business, sold millions of records, helped redraw the boundaries for women in rock and influenced generations who followed her.

Yet ask her what being 76 actually feels like and there’s no grand reflection on getting older.

“It doesn’t feel any different than it’s felt all these years, and I don’t know why that is,” Quatro tells Starts at 60. “I think somebody put the wrong date on my birth certificate. I’ve really always been the same.”

She doesn’t hide her age, either. Quite the opposite.

“I never go on stage and pretend to be a different age than I am. In fact, one of the first things I say when I do a little talking bit in my two-hour show is my birthday.

“That’s the secret: don’t care. I’m 76, I’m still shaking my ass, I’m still getting the response – what’s the problem?”

And there’s no sign of Quatro easing off. Her 18th studio album, Freedom, was released earlier this year, and another Australian tour awaits in November and December.

Two sides of Suzi

Freedom also finds Quatro doing plenty of thinking about identity and the person behind the performer.

After a lifetime spent being the instantly recognisable Suzi Quatro, who is she when the bass is put away?

“Both sides of me are real. Little Suzi from Detroit and ‘Suzi Quatro’ on stage – they’re both me,” she says.

“The difference is that when you go on stage, you’re putting out your public face. That’s your job: entertaining.”

Quatro says one of her proudest achievements has little to do with sales, awards or packed concert halls.

It’s keeping her feet on the ground.

“I’m a pretty straightforward girl. I’m approachable. I’m very proud of what I do, and I’m proud to say I’m good at what I do and that I’ve had many years of success – but I’m not driven by ego,” Suzi says.

“I don’t think being famous makes me different or better than anybody else. It just means I was successful at my chosen profession. That’s all it means to me.”

The secret behind that energy

The Suzi Quatro stage show still demands serious physical energy, and there’s nothing accidental about her ability to keep delivering it.

Her father was a lifelong musician who instilled a strong work ethic in his daughter: be professional, look after yourself and be ready to give everything when the lights come on.

Quatro says she never embraced the stereotypical “sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll” lifestyle. On tour she gets her sleep, goes to bed early and keeps her days quiet, saving her energy for the show.

Her preparation doesn’t stop when the tour does.

At home, she holds what she calls “living-room sessions”, putting on a live recording and performing the entire show as if an audience were standing in front of her.

“My neighbours think I’m mad,” she laughs.

Recently, while head-banging and tearing around her living room with her bass, she noticed two people outside walking their dog.

“They happened to glance in and saw me – this crazy woman with a bass guitar flying all over her living room. Can you imagine what they must have thought?”

‘Oh… I did that’

For someone credited with smashing a sizeable hole through rock’s gender barriers, Quatro says she didn’t realise at the time that she was doing anything particularly revolutionary.

She had grown up in a musical family. Her father supported her ambitions and gave her a bass guitar. To teenage Suzi, she was simply doing what she was meant to do.

It took until she was 69 for the enormity of her influence to really sink in.

Quatro had slipped quietly into the London premiere of the documentary Suzi Q, standing to the side of the Regent Street Cinema so she could experience the film with an audience before taking part in a Q&A.

On screen appeared women including Debbie Harry, Chrissie Hynde, Cherie Currie, Joan Jett, Lita Ford, Tina Weymouth and Kathy Valentine, talking about the path Quatro had helped create.

The moment floored her.

“At 69, the penny finally dropped. I remember standing there in tears thinking, ‘Oh… I did that.’ I finally realised it.

“So yes, it took me a long time, but now I’ve got it, and I humbly accept it. I just say, ‘Thank you.’ I’ll take that to my grave. I didn’t know I was doing it, but I did it.

“I changed the world for women in rock. That’s quite a nice legacy to leave behind.”

Choosing yourself

One of the most personal songs on Freedom is Choose Yourself, a track that was at one stage going to provide the title for the entire album.

“I’ve always had a sense of my destiny, from a very young girl,” she says.

“‘Choose Yourself’ is a very personal lyric. It’s absolutely about who I am and how I’ve navigated my life.”

Quatro is also a poet and is currently working on her fourth collection.

“My poetry is my confessional,” she says.

“If something truly makes me happy or upsets me deeply, to get rid of it I have to put it on paper – either in a song or in a poem.”

She writes everywhere, including on planes, keeping ideas for lyrics and poetry and sometimes allowing one form to evolve into the other.

“Anything that touches me goes down on that page.”

A love affair with Australia

Later this year, Quatro will once again bring the bass to Australia for headline shows and four Red Hot Summer Tour appearances.

She will perform across New South Wales, Tasmania, Queensland, Victoria, Western Australia and South Australia, including shows at the Sydney Opera House, Melbourne’s Palais Theatre and Fremantle Prison.

Why does Australia keep welcoming her back?

Her answer is immediate.

“Because we’re lovers and we never got married.”

“There’s been a spark between us since day one, and I can’t really explain it. I kind of think it’s because with Australians, what you see is what you get – and with me, what you see is what you get.

“I think I’ve lasted the course so long because I’m real. I’m not manufactured, and I think Australians get that. There’s an honesty both ways.”

Making peace with life

Ask Quatro what she understands about happiness at 76 that she didn’t at 26, and her answer comes back to acceptance.

“You’ve got to make peace with everything in your life,” she says.

“We all make mistakes. None of us are saints.”

Quatro says ageing has taught her to look at those moments honestly, learn from them and then keep moving.

“I’m in a pretty peaceful place. I do a lot of navel contemplation – I’m one of those deep thinkers, that’s just how I’m made.”

She recalls her father once telling her she needed to toughen up after something he’d said hurt her feelings.

Quatro eventually realised she couldn’t – and didn’t want to.

“I do hurt easily. But if I didn’t hurt easily, I wouldn’t be the artist that I am. I’m not going to try to toughen up and become somebody different. If I hurt, I hurt. So what?”

That sensitivity, she believes, is what allows an artist to connect.

“You have to be sensitive. How can you write what you write, or stand on a stage and do what you do, if you’re not?

“I can walk onto a cold stage and I’ve got to feel those people and take them into my heart. You’ve got to be open and vulnerable for that.”

And when the day finally arrives when there is no next Suzi Quatro show?

“I hope they say I gave them happiness. That I gave them an escape from their problems. That I touched them with my music and with my words.

“I’d like them to think well of me. I want to make people happy. I think that’s what I’m all about.”

Quatro is still finding plenty to write about.

“Every morning when I wake up, it’s another day,” she says. “I’m a firm believer that ‘Today is the first day of the rest of your life.’ That’s my motto.”

Suzi Quatro tours Australia in November and December 2026, with headline shows and Red Hot Summer Tour appearances around the country. For tour dates, venues and ticket information, visit Face To Face Touring.