Hell for leather

FIVE-year-old Susie's eyes are locked onto the television set in their Detroit home, watching a Sunday night favourite across America, The Ed Sullivan Show. Elvis is about to make an appearance. Pandemonium breaks out on screen as The King struts on stage and breaks into Don't Be Cruel.

Her sister Arlene starts screaming. The moment is forever burned onto the psyche of the wide-eyed Susie, who recalls it today as clearly as if it happened yesterday. "I was mesmerised, and when Elvis went 'mmmmm' I felt my first sexual thrill - although I didn't know what it was at the time," she says. "Then my dad came in and said it was disgusting and switched it off. In that moment, Suzi Quatro was born."

Fifty-two years later, rocker Suzi Quatro is sitting in the bar of the Malmaison hotel on Newcastle's Quayside, sipping diet coke and dressed in one of her trademark leather jackets and jeans. It was Elvis, it turns out, who also influenced her look, following his 1968 Comeback Special.

"Not only did I decide I was going to be Elvis, but I was also going to wear leather," she says, and she has stayed true to her word ever since. "I've got various jumpsuits, lots of different jackets, I even have a leather bikini."

Born one of five children, Suzi grew up in a Catholic, musical family in Detroit. By 14, she was in a girl band, The Pleasure Seekers, formed by sister Patti, and the band went on to secure a recording contract. Suzi, who played bass, loved it - writing songs, touring and performing. She longed to make it her career, and when the band split she got the chance after meeting Mickie Most, one of the most successful independent producers of the Sixties. The downside, was that he would only sign Suzi as a solo artist, causing deep-rooted feelings of guilt which would stay with her for years, and of which she writes candidly in her new autobiography, Unzipped.

"When my dad said to me 'your sisters aren't going to make it without you', it took me years to even enjoy my success," she says frankly.

"We were a very tight family. We were very loving and there was a lot of show business fun...but I was the kind of kid who felt alone. I don't know why but I did. Was it because I didn't get enough attention or was it because I needed too much? I tend to think it's a little bit of both. I've always been thin skinned and very sensitive."

Suzi arrived in London in 1971, desperate to make her new life work. But it took two years to get her band together - through which she met her first husband, Len - and establish herself before the single Can the Can gave her the big break she craved. It made number one and the record went on to sell 2.5 million copies.

In her skin-tight black leather jumpsuit and snakeskin knee-high boots, Suzi paved the way for female rockers worldwide. The follow-up single to Can the Can, Devil Gate Drive, collected gold, silver and platinum discs and won awards across Europe. Suzi went on to work with music legends from Jethro Tull to Alice Cooper. But while she may have been at the wild parties of the Sixties and Seventies, she found drugs were not to her liking and couldn't handle the booze.

"I actually remember the Sixties, which is pretty unique," she says, bursting into a gravelly laugh.

But while she rocked, some of her sweeter-imaged counterparts mistook her leather-trousered dynamism for lesbianism. Lyndsey De Paul is famously quoted as calling her a dyke - which sparked a furious response from Suzi. The pair, however, are now friends.

"She told me that she'd been misquoted and that she actually said I was a little butch and I totally believe her," she says, although adds that she'd prefer to think of herself as both 'tomboyish' and feminine.

And there has always been two distinct sides to Suzi - the shy but talkative child, always anxious to please, and the adult who had the single-mindedness to carve out a successful music career. She keeps these sides separate and, rather disconcertingly at times, refers to herself as two people - Little Susie from Detroit and 'Suzie Q' the performer.

It is illustrated throughout her book, such as when she writes of the whirlwind love affair, aged 18, with a married record company scout, and her subsequent abortion.

She writes as Little Susie: "When I get to those golden gates (hopefully) this is the sin I will pay for. Not a day goes by that I don't think about who that baby would be now."

In the following paragraph, Suzi Q interjects: "You shouldn't be so hard on yourself, Susie. This is not an unusual tale - it happened to lots of young girls."

Asked why she felt the need to create two personas (apparently it is Little Susie who is being interviewed because we're talking about Suzi Q) she says: "I had to separate them. It was necessary to stay sane and normal because you can get caught up in your own hype and disappear up your own backside. That was something I didn't want to do. Having said that, I do have my diva moments."

She says husband Len fell in love with Suzi Q because that's who she was at the time, focused on touring the world, bringing out hit albums. It was only when she wanted more - her acting roles in the hit American sitcom Happy Days, starring as the lead in the musical Annie Get Your Gun - that the pair began to drift apart.

"The hardest decision of my life was to actually leave him after 20 years because it went against everything I'd always believed," she says. "I really gave it every opportunity to right itself. Then there were the children (Laura and Richard). I still feel bad that I took their daddy away, but it got to the point where either the marriage died, or I died."

Several times she returned to Detroit in an effort to conquer her childhood demons, but she was always disappointed, like the time she overheard her father say she had only found success because she'd got lucky.

"That was hurtful," she says. "But there was always going to be envy there. Maybe I was looking for their applause, but I was never going to get that."

Ironically, she found the praise she yearned for not as a rock star but as a musical actress in the lead role of Annie Get Your Gun. "My father said 'I'm really proud of you' and my mouth must have dropped open. When you're waiting for something you never get it, and he said it when I least expected it - when I actually didn't need it anymore."

Meeting her second husband, Rainer, to whom she has been married for 13 years, has also helped.

"Rainer always said many times that he fell in love with Little Susie," she says. "He doesn't need me and I've always had guys who've needed me. He made it possible for Little Susie to accept herself. He made me feel safe."

Her eyes light up when she speaks of him and when her mobile rings she disappears off to the bar, returning a few moments later to say her husband has arrived. "You should meet him," she enthuses. "He's very handsome."

Now 57, she has lived in Britain almost 40 years and she's as busy as ever, touring Prague, Sweden and Denmark this summer with her latest album, Back to the Drive.

"The gigs are the air that I breathe," she says. "I get up there and there's a smile plastered on my face. It's everything I want it to be and everything I am."

She also presents Rockin' with Suzi Q on Radio 2 and a new series, Suzi Quatro's Heroes of Rock 'n' Roll, will begin on Radio 2 on October 3.

But there are quiet times too, with Rainer and playing with her adored granddaughter, Amy, six. She has also found writing the book a cathartic experience.

"My life really made sense to me afterwards," she says. "It crystallised everything for me. I don't feel anger, I don't feel anything. I'm really at peace now."

With that, she switches into Suzi Q mode as she poses for our photographer. "Where d'ya want me?" she drawls, the consummate professional, leather jacket pulled up around her.

It has been a pleasure meeting both Suzis.

Unzipped by Suzi Quatro (Hodder, £18.99)