In 1982, rock star Suzi Quatro took pity on a 14-year-old fan in Australia. He had bought tickets to her show not realising it was an 18-and-over event, and so with the sort of pluck only a teenager can muster, he found out where she was staying, turned up and begged for entry. Never one to follow rules, Quatro said OK. He spent the night watching his mulleted, leather-clad idol perform from backstage in a cardboard box to evade roaming security. Four decades on, that boy, now in his fifties, greets me at the gates of Quatro’s Elizabethan manor house in Essex. Quatro and Pat remain very, very good friends.
The house, where Quatro has lived since 1980, was something of an impulse buy. The singer-songwriter and bassist saw the property on the cover of Country Life magazine and knew she had to have it. It’s a very Suzi Quatro quality, that heady mix of intuition and determination. The home itself is very Essex, very old: a listed, timber-framed property at the end of a long tree-lined driveway. Also, there is a moat. Inside are big sash windows and pristine beige carpet. “Shoes off or f*** off!” she wrote on a sign pinned to her front door during a Christmas party last year.
Beige carpets don’t much scream rock ‘n’ roll, but Quatro leaves her mark in other ways. Cushions are decorated with the Star-Spangled Banner and in the living room, a ginormous, silver apple takes pride of place in an ode to New York City. But the biggest sign you are in the home of hard-rocking Suzi Q are the guitars everywhere you look. Out of the corner of my eye, I think I recognise one pearly white bass from her first Top of the Pops appearance during which she played her UK No 1 glam rock stomper “Can the Can”, which preceded more smash hits like “48 Crash”, “Devil Gate Drive” and “Stumblin In”.
