Tough-talking, leather-wearing American Suzi Quatro stormed the British charts with Can the Can.

Twenty-five years on, can she still rock? You bet she can-can.

What's more, she's still talking tough and she's still wrapped in leather.

"I didn't knock down the industry's door - I kicked it in," she recalls of those days in the Seventies when it fell to her to prove that women could rock with the best of 'em.

"I had to do it, really - I had no choice. It was such a male-dominated industry. You really felt that you were up against it because of men's attitudes. But what I found was that once you started to take yourself seriously, others did, too. It was the only way you could stop yourself being messed around.

"One thing I made sure of was that I could play my instrument. I'm a damn good bass player and nobody has ever turned around and said, 'You play OK for a girl'.

"It was great fun doing Top of the Pops and all the gigs. My main memories were that I never seemed to stop working. A bit like now, really."

She enjoyed a five-year run of chart success with the songwriting partnership of Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, including another number one with Devil Gate Drive in 1974.

"Suzi Quatro really is a character - a bit like some of the stage roles I've played," she says. "But my on-stage character has been a big part of my life and she has developed all the time."

Currently, Suzi is presenting her own radio show, Rockin' With Suzi Q on Radio Two, and has embarked on a three-month tour of the UK, Australia and Germany. It reaches West Yorkshire on April 25.

Home is a 16th century manor house in Essex, once the residence of Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, where she lives with her second husband Rainer Haas and two children, Laura, 16, and Richard, 14, from her first marriage.

Surprisingly, at 48, she doesn't look very different to the familiar figure of the 1970s. She even has the same feather hair cut. But if she hasn't altered, she's in no doubt that the music industry has changed around her.

"The business has changed a great deal since I was number one. A lot of today's acts don't go into it for the same reasons as we did.

"We really wanted to play rock 'n' roll. We would be on stage playing five sets a night with 15-minute breaks - you really learn your craft that way."

Born Susan Kay Quatriocchio, in Detroit, Michigan, she was the second youngest of five children. She began singing at 14 and seven years later she came to Britain.

Entrepreneur Mickie Most spotted her in a band called Cradle and thought she had star potential. She married her guitarist, Len Tuckey, in 1976 but they divorced in March 1993.

After a whirlwind romance she married German pop concert promoter Rainer Haas. She actually proposed to him.

On the music front, once the chart hits dried up she turned her talents elsewhere, performing in stage musicals such as Annie Get Your Gun. She has carried on making records and touring ever since, and her daughter Laura may yet follow in her footsteps.

"I would love Laura to go into the music business. She has a really brilliant voice. It's more like a Whitney Houston type voice, a real voice. She has already appeared on stage but I don't want to push her into anything really - it's her decision."

Although she has a heavy work schedule, Suzi makes sure she sees her family as often as she can, even when she's on tour.

"When I go off on tour, Laura and Richard come to stay with me at the weekends wherever I happen to be and Rainer flies in from Germany to be with us - although he's pretty busy with his concert promotion over there."

She is also involved in self-development. Last year she helped organise the 22nd International Festival of Mind, Body and Spirit in London.

"I work with my partner, Shirley Roden. It's about getting inside yourself and finding a special spark, which is something a lot of people spend all their lifetime covering up.

"We have a fear of being exposed; that if we actually open up we will be hurt or laughed at or judged not to be good enough."

Although this work takes up an increasing amount of her time, she doubts if she'll ever say thank you for the music and hang up her over-sized bass for good.

"I can't really see a day when I'll give up playing rock 'n' roll," she says. "Look at Chuck Berry - he's 72 and he's still going strong.

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