In the 1970s, she scored a string of singles that found success in Europe and Australia, with both "Can the Can" (1973) and "Devil Gate Drive" (1974) reaching number one in several countries.

Following a recurring role as bass player Leather Tuscadero on the popular American sitcom Happy Days, her duet "Stumblin' In" with Smokie's lead singer Chris Norman reached number four in the US, her only song to chart in the top 40 in her homeland.

[1]: 26  She has said that she had no direct female role models in music, but was inspired by Billie Holiday and liked the dress sense of Mary Weiss of the Shangri-Las "because she wore tight trousers and a waistcoat on top – she looked hot".

[16] In 1964, after seeing a television performance by the Beatles, Quatro's older sister, Patti, had formed an all-female garage rock band called the Pleasure Seekers with two friends.

[18] The Pleasure Seekers recorded three singles and released two: "Never Thought You'd Leave Me" / "What a Way to Die" (1966) and "Light of Love" / "Good Kind of Hurt" (1968).

They changed their name to Cradle in late 1969, not long after another Quatro sister, Nancy, had joined the band and Arlene had left following the birth of her child.

[9] According to the Encyclopedia of Popular Music, his attention to Quatro was drawn by "her comeliness and skills as bass guitarist, singer, and chief show-off in Cradle.

[9][20] It was also after this record[21] that Most introduced her to the songwriting and production team of Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, who wrote songs specifically to accord with her image.

She agreed with Most's assessment of her image, saying that his influence, at which some of his artists – such as Jeff Beck and Rod Stewart – balked, did not extend to manufacture and that "If he tried to build me into a Lulu, I wouldn't have it.

Rak Records arranged for her to use Thin Lizzy's newly acquired PA system during this, incurring a charge of £300 per week that enabled the Irish band to effectively purchase it at no cost to themselves.

[23] In May 1973, her second single "Can the Can" (1973) – which Philip Auslander describes as having "seemingly nonsensical and virtually unintelligible lyrics"[24]: 1  – was a number-one hit in parts of Europe and in Australia.

[25] "Can the Can" was followed by three further hits: "48 Crash" (1973), "Daytona Demon" (1973), and "Devil Gate Drive" (1974), each of which sold over one million copies and were awarded gold discs,[25] although they met with little success in her native United States, where she had toured as a support act for Alice Cooper.

Musicians who acted as her backing band around this period included Alastair McKenzie, Dave Neal, and Len Tuckey,[9] with Robbie Blunt also being listed by some sources.

Quatro recorded the album Aggro-Phobia in 1976 and released a new single in 1977 called "Tear Me Apart", which reached the UK top 30, her first hit to have done so in three years.

A second single from the Rock Hard album, titled "Lipstick", was released in February 1981, but radio refused to play it, as they claimed it sounded too much like Gloria by Them.

in 1983, after playing a successful show at Reading Festival on August 27, that she did not care about being in the charts, but was more interested in releasing what she wanted to, commenting that she started in 1964, and did not become famous for nine years.

[32] Quatro also collaborated with Bronski Beat and members of the Kinks, Eddie and the Hot Rods, and Dr. Feelgood on the Mark Cunningham-produced cover version of David Bowie's "Heroes", released the following year as the 1986 BBC Children in Need single.

[33][34] Around 2005, a documentary chronicling Quatro's life, Naked Under Leather, named after a 1975 bootleg album recorded in Japan, directed by a former member of the Runaways, Victory Tischler-Blue, was made, but this has never been released.

Toby Mamis, who was acting as her U.S. representative at that time, helped broker the deal and generate enormous media attention to it, elevating Quatro's profile in her home country.

[45] Her other acting roles include a 1982 episode of the British comedy-drama series Minder (called "Dead Men Do Tell Tales") as Nancy, the singer girlfriend of Terry (Dennis Waterman).

[50] In 2006, Quatro performed the voice of Rio in the Bob the Builder film Built to Be Wild,[51] and appeared in an episode of the second season of Rock School, in Lowestoft.

In a 1973 interview, Quatro sympathized with many of the opinions voiced by the women's liberation movement, while distancing herself from it because she considered that the participants were ... completely hypocritical.

[55] The interviewer, Charles Shaar Murray, considered her viewpoint to be "... somewhat anomalous, because unless the woman in question happens to be well known, she has no way of letting people hear her unless she unites with other women and then elects a spokesman."

In 1974, Philip Norman said that Of all female rock singers, she appears the most emancipated: A small girl leading an all-man group in which she herself plays bass guitar.

The image is of a tomboy, lank-haired, tight-bottomed and (twice) tattooed; a rocker, a brooder, a loner, a knife-carrier; a hell-cat, a wild cat, a storm child, refugee from the frightened city of Detroit.

[64] In October 2016, Quatro received an honorary doctorate in music from Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK, along with Dr. Feelgood's Wilko Johnson.

In August 1974, Simon Frith spotted a problem with the formula that was working outside the US, saying that Suzi's facing a bit of a [commercial] crisis: Chinn and Chapman, having proved their point, are losing interest in her.

But Suzi Quatro, with her tomboy sneers, her bass guitar and her stompingly persuasive teen-tunes, had at least laid down a challenge to the male-dominated rock orthodoxy.

[24]: 2  Auslander adds that in 2000 Quatro saw herself as "kicking down the male door in rock and roll and proving that a female musician ... and this is a point I am extremely concerned about ... could play as well if not better than the boys".

[72] Musician Kathy Valentine, best known for her work as bass player for The Go-Go's, cited Quatro as a major influence in her 2020 autobiography All I Ever Wanted.