Often hailed as the Queen of Rock, Suzi Quatro is known for her powerful voice, dynamic stage presence and trailblazing role as a female rocker in a male dominated industry. Her hits like Can The Can and 48 Crash have left a lasting impact on the world of rock. However, now in her 62nd year in the business, what people may not be aware of is the fact that Suzi is also an extremely gifted writer and someone who has an extraordinary knowledge of psychology. She has brought these together to create her latest novel Grave Undertakings, a story about a university professor and his 6 psychology students who were all on a journey of self discovery. The book also brings together Suzi‘s love of collecting tombstone inscriptions, something she has done for more than 35 years. The book includes many examples collected from famous friends, some of whom are no longer with us. This is an absolutely incredible book that despite what may appear as complex subject matter is presented in a wonderfully palatable and immersive way that leaves the reader yearning to learn more. We catch up with Suzi in Hamburg the day after her 75th birthday to dig deep into the story. As ever, we receive the warmest of welcomes, Suzi deservedly brimming with pride over this latest work of art. We make ourselves comfortable and our conversation begins…

Well, can I start by saying how much I absolutely loved reading this book! It’s a story about six psychology students and an Austrian professor who are all on a voyage of self discovery and understanding, but this book is so much more than I could ever have expected. The characters you have created are diverse and captivating, and I loved getting to know them more and more as I read the book, through the 20 classes the pupils attended and the relationships they formed. One thing that struck me is that I didn’t need to have any knowledge of psychology to enjoy and become wonderfully immersed in this novel. However, to be able to write this book you have to have a comprehensive knowledge and understanding of psychology. Only someone truly skilled in this area would be able to write in depth from the position of 7 different characters across so many classes and situations. Tell me about where your love of psychology came from and about your learning of the subject.

It’s a very, very good question! I actually could’ve really gone into that field if I’d wanted to. I’ve always had a love of how the mind works, or sometimes how it doesn’t work! (Laughs!) I have always been one of those curious children who wants answers. I’ll put it this way, if you and I have an argument I want to know why we had the argument. I want to know what triggered you and I want to know ‘what triggered me from what triggered you’. But to answer your question, I had to be a student myself. I knew what I wanted to do with the story, I knew where I wanted it to and I really wanted to explore through the 6 students and the professor this diverse thing we called love. You know, the ups, the downs and everything we go through in our lives. Sometimes, if I wanted to cover a certain area in one of the classes and I really wanted to do it properly, I would be one of the students. I would Google it, read about it, understand it and I learned, and I put it in to the characters. So I kind of went back to school myself, but saying that, I had a good head start because I am psychologically minded. Naturally I am. If you’re having a conversation with me, we will go the distance and argue the toss. I had to have the names of the students – that’s always the first thing. Even when I’m writing a song, I usually like to get the title first. Give the person a name and all of a sudden you see the person. It kind of paints a picture of them, and I wanted them all to be diverse, so I’m glad you got that. Of course, you use bits of things that you’ve been through or maybe people you know who have been through certain things, but I wanted to go the distance. I had to be really careful with the professor – I wasn’t quite sure how to end him and then I came up with something which I think was exactly correct. It could’ve got one of two ways. Did you have a favourite character?

Absolutely! Throughout reading a novel I wondered who I perhaps identified with most, or even if I was in this group of people who I might gravitate towards, and for me it was Penelope Perfect. I just thought she was the sweetest person and an absolute ray of sunshine. She was so wonderfully understanding of people and very naturally so. I loved her relationship with Max Morose and how that developed. It didn’t come straight away, she gave him space and that was just wonderful to see!

I like that you just said that! She saw what was going on without giving everything away. She saw what was going on and she gave him space. So that is a clever girl! And that’s somebody who believes in her own appeal enough to know that it will come around again.

This isn’t just a book that represents a wonderful story, it had such a powerful and profound effect on me personally because it made me reevaluate how I live my life and invited me to think about myself from a psychological perspective. In Class 1 the pupils explore whether they are optimists or pessimists, and it was wonderful to read them dissecting themselves. In life, I feel there is enormous pressure for people to be expected to be optimists rather than perhaps the more negatively perceived pessimist, but I think one of the things this book has taught me is that there is no right or wrong answer and it’s okay to be both. Would you agree, and also would consider yourself to be an optimist or pessimist?

I would agree with that! I am definitely an optimist. That’s just the way I’m made. I’ve always have been and I’m married to a pessimist, which is perfect. But it’s funny that you say what you said because I was at my dinner party last night and I was talking to a fellow Gemini, and he said “I read your book, Suzi and I’m not going to be either. I’m leaving my options open. I’m not a pessimist and I’m not an optimist” and I said “That’s called sidestepping!” (Laughs!) What are you?

Well, in the main I think I’ve acted as an optimist, because in family situations I’ve always wanted to be the person who has been upbeat with the message ‘everything is going to be okay’, but I do find myself balancing things with elements of pessimism because sometimes I’m not convinced of things. Even though people may tell me things are alright I tend to question them by saying ‘Really!? You really think that’s going to happen?!’. I think I’m just trying to encourage people to speak the truth rather than something they think I want to hear.

You gave it away when you started what you just said. You said, I have acted like an optimist. That’s the message. You see, this is how my mind works, I immediately picked up on that, and if you were in my class I would’ve said “Wait a minute, you said acted!” There is a middle ground, always, and I always say that you can have perception – perception is important – but there really is one truth of what actually happened. Your perception is something different. The truth is that you can’t change the truth of what happened. Like I say in my book, you can’t control your emotions – that’s why they’re called emotions – but you can control your reaction to your emotions. I started to write this book because I used to love graveyards. I still love graveyards, and I find them fascinating. I look at the graves and the falling over ones and the big overdone ones and the neglected ones, and my brain goes crazy, and I started collecting tombstone inscriptions, which I did for 35 years. A lot of famous people and lot of surprising things that they wanted on their tombstones. You go, ‘Wow!’. So then when I went to put these tombstones into a book, it was at that point that I went, ‘Wait a minute, this is a novel. I have to write a novel. I have to have a reason why all these tombstones are at the end of the book’. So I created this book around it and it gave me a canvas on which to paint my lifelong love of psychology. And then the payoff - because really, after we live this life that we live, all of us, at the end you’re 6 foot under with a few words on a gravestone. And doesn’t that just bring it all home?

It really does, and I’d like to pick up on some more of this in a moment, but before we do, I’d like to go to Class 5 where the pupils share their thoughts on the question ‘what is love?’. I was really captivated with how the pupils presented so many different interpretations, and every single one with food for thought. What made you make this a focus of the book? Was this you as a person essentially debating with yourself and trying to make sense of it? Does that make sense?

It does make sense. Obviously, when you write a book like this you put a lot of yourself into it – you have to! I got lost in the characters so a lot of my own self would come out. Love has always, never ceased to fascinate me. What is it? Why is it? How is it? There’s so many facets of it. And really, what is falling in love? Do you actually fall? It’s so many questions, so I had these wonderful 6 students and I wanted to give them all a different take from their own experience of what love is. And we all have a different take on it! I don’t know what mine would be. I think my mind is very close to Penelope’s. Max I thought was interesting. He had a good one. But they all had good ones. They were all in their own kind of way damaged, but you don’t come through this life without getting some damage in the love area. It happens.

Another focus of the book is how we face our demons and conquer them, and that made for very emotive reading when the pupils shared some deeply personal and often heartbreaking events in their lives, but also the positivity of how they overcame them, for some it would be throughout the psychology course they had enrolled on. Again, it’s interesting that you would choose to cover this subject in the book. I actually found a lot of strength when reading this because I saw people emerging from difficult situations and it made me wonder, to what extent are you hoping that the reader will be able to feel a sense of empowerment from reading this book?

Oh my God, yes, I wanted to touch people! I wanted to make people question and I wanted to touch people. I have a big thing about what we carry from our childhood and this comes out in my novel. Every demon you have is cemented from when you’re a kid and a lot of the bad stuff you shelve it and then it comes out much later and becomes like poison. You should never shelve it. One story that I didn’t put in the book is my story. My backstory made me become who I am. I was 10 years old and my parents discussing my eldest sister’s upcoming wedding. I was one of 5 kids so that’s a lot of kids and you’ve got to try and find your voice. So I’m listening and I heard my dad talking and he said “Mickey (my older brother) is going to be the usher, Patty, (my older sister) she’s going to be the bridesmaid and little Nancy is going to be the flower girl. What are we going to do about Suzi?”. Then I heard my mother say “Well, at least we better buy her a new dress”. Now, I carried this with me for a lifetime, and when my parents were leaving Detroit, when I was visiting, my dad said “Go downstairs and go through all the photographs to see if there’s any you want to take back to England with you”. This is something that the universe threw at me: I found an 8 x 10 photo of me and my sister’s wedding holding up her train going (shows mildly defiant expression). So in other words I felt like I was in the way and that they didn’t need me, and that left its mark. I just felt ‘Okay, you don’t want me to be in the wedding, I’m going to hold the train up!’. So all the psychological stuff has always been a big thing with me, and that shows you how I coped with it, and I’m honest when I say that this one incident propelled me to be somebody.

That’s so profound because in that situation you have your mum and dad having a conversation - and it was one of the many, many important conversations - but as such a young child you happen to hear it, and I can absolutely see how that instilled some strength and determination.

But it’s a valuable chapter and I’m glad you brought that up, and that’s why I gave each character a real set of things to overcome and ‘overcome they must’. The message of that is you can’t change what happened, you can’t change your perception of it, you can’t change the pain - but you can change your reaction to it. Any troubles, you put them on the table and look at them. They are there. It becomes an object. Look at it. Does it scare you? Does it scare me? Now you see how my mind works. This is how I could write the book! (Laughs!)

I mentioned earlier about this book having a profound effect on me and I want to give another example of how this happened right from the very outset of the book, where you mention remembering seeing a sign at a gas station whilst on tour in America that read ‘Please, don’t let me get to the end of my life and find out I haven’t lived!’. And it just made me think about some of the things I still want to do in life and how they will only happen if I make actual plans to do so! To what extent would you agree that this is one of the key messages within the story?

It is one of the key messages in the story because it affected me profoundly. And I think if you ask me what I would like people to get out of this book, my whole reason for writing it is that we go through life, to cope we put on layer after layer. It’s not necessarily phoney, it’s protection layer after layer after layer. The whole journey which brings us to the end of the book again is getting back to you. This little special spark, that’s you. This person right here. Shaking hands with yourself. And then when your time comes, you can indeed rest in peace. That’s my message. You’ve got to get back to total honesty, as all the lessons did, examining your triggers and looking at your bad parts. My favourite chapter is when they had to come up with something that really changed their life. Some of them had some really embarrassing things that they had been through.

Oh absolutely! But the amazing thing is how open all the characters were, how are they embraced the opportunity of their environment and they didn’t shy away from it.

I think they were meant to come together. When you’re creating you’re not so much involved in what’s going on down on the page. You’re so into it that it flies away with you. I think they were all meant to come together, they had a reason to come together and the professor definitely discovered himself. He didn’t even know that he had a ‘self’ to discover. So it’s an interesting collection of people and I think I pretty much represent all the different types of people. I think it pretty much covers the spectrum.

You mentioned earlier your love of tombstone inscriptions. When talking about some of the strong messages, one thing that you do say is that you have to live life for all it’s worth. We must embrace, dance, scream, cry, dream, laugh, struggle, hurt and loved every single minute of every single day. And, as you have suggested, it’s that a question of how we all want to be remembered, and I think it’s wonderful that for 35 years you have been collecting tombstone inscriptions from famous people, some of whom are no longer with us. It was an absolute joy reading these, and I think my favourite is the one from your dad, Arthur Quatro, where he said “Why should I go to heaven? I won’t know anybody!”. It’s hilarious and it’s genius! Surely this is a very special one for you and one which must always bring a smile?

It’s all my dad! Oh my God. He was such a little scamp in life, a little bit of a rogue musician and a little bit of a naughty boy. Even when we went to the church for my first marriage, I had to go to Catholic church and everybody had to do a confession because that’s required before the church wedding and all that, and my dad went into the confessional and he came at five minutes later and my brother said “He lied!”. So I said to my dad “What did you say? You were so quick in there!”. He said “ Bless me, Father, I’ve done one of everything…” (Laughs!)

Now that is someone who you want to be your best friend! That’s exactly who that is!

It’s a great attitude! (Laughs!)

Thinking about your own tombstone inscription, writers privilege has meant that you have given yourself a double sided one with one side reading ‘NOW I GET IT!’ and the other reading ‘TOO MANY DREAMS, TOO LITTLE TIME’. For someone who appears to have done it all, what dreams do you still have?

I have all the dreams in the world! As an artiste, I don’t want to ever reach a final dream. I want to keep climbing. I want to still have the fire in my belly. I want to have something always a little bit further that’s just out of reach, and that keeps me going. That’s the secret.

And thinking about you as an artiste, what a wonderful news for your fans is that a UK tour has been announced for April next year and you’re going to be playing some gorgeous venues.

I know! 10 great shows and I can’t wait. So everybody has to come to that. It will be my 62nd year in the business! Good God! (Laughs!)

When we spoke last time about your album Face To Face with KT Tunstall and about musically what was next, you said “It’s about being Suzi”. I therefore wanted to ask if we can expect any new music ahead of the tour?

Yes you can. We are just completing the album now. I think I’m going to be doing my vocals in July and then we just gotta mix it and master it. So it’s going to be out and it’s a return to my roots. I’ve got one duet on there with my old buddy Alice cooper and we recorded it in Detroit together face-to-face. My son (Richard Tuckey) is at the helm. He’s writing the songs with me and producing, and it’s so good! I’m excited!

Returning to Grave Undertakings, throughout the novel I found myself reading about so many wonderful things such action versus reaction, Freud’s stages of psychosexual development, DISC (A behavioural style based on four key factors: dominance, influence, steadiness and consciousness), id, ego and superego. These are all presented in an enjoyable and palatable way and what was interesting was that I actually started exploring these in more detail. I wanted to know more. And I went back to the beginning of the book where Professor Handover said “Now class, you are all at the very beginning of this course and there is much to learn and may I add much to unlearn too. Never ever judge a book by its cover, including your own. Psychology is fascinating in every way and eventually, hopefully, you will find yourself addicted to the discovery of how our brains work”. This was of course the professor talking to his pupils, but I wonder if this is actually you inviting the readers to go off on their own discovery of psychology – because I am!

I would love for everybody to get that from this book, and that’s what I’m getting. I’m getting two different things from people who have read it like yourself and they’re saying the same thing but in 2 slightly different ways and they don’t vary. One person, says like you did that ‘this book really touched me and made me think’ and the other person says ‘you’re making me question everything!’ (Laughs!) And you know what? Neither way is correct! The one that’s questioning, good for you! You’re actually admitting that you have some questions. Great! We all have damage, all have baggage, and it’s nice to be able to understand the baggage, isn’t it? It’s nice for it not to be so heavy and for it not to define who you are. Be the best to you you can be. I guess that’s me. That’s me saying what I’m trying to say. I will always go the distance with people. I will always listen, I’m a good person to talk to because I listen and I will try not to be judgemental and I will always try to put my own understanding of what I’ve been through into that situation. And yes I guess I could’ve gone into this as a profession!

As our conversation draws to a close, we reflect on what are wholly immersive and very special novel Grave Undertakings really is. It’s with the highest of recommendations that we invite you to read this wonderful book for yourself. Grave Undertakings is available now at Amazon and other good book stores. https://amzn.eu/d/dqs2Sqy