Put some clothes on: Suzi Quatro tells youngsters

Suzi Quatro is no exception to this rule. In 2015 she was out here for her "final" Australian tour. Only now she's back, for her 32nd tour here since she first played the Hordern Pavilion in 1974.

"The reality set in," she says, of the aftermath of her last tour here. "I was buzzing, buzzing, buzzing when I got back. I said, 'Oh my god, I just did a perfect tour.' And then it wore off and then I went, 'What have I done?'

"So you'll never hear the words out of my mouth again. Final is not ever in my vocabulary ever again. I learnt my lesson."

Fittingly, her latest string of dates here is called the Leather Forever Encore Tour, and at age 66, those leather jumpsuits are still synonymous with Quatro. She says looking back now it was a look that was cute – not least because of her 1.57m stature – but not overtly sexual. She says it's not a good time for women in the industry today because a line has been crossed.

"I'm hoping it's going to turn back," she says. "I think women take off too many clothes now. Leave something to the imagination, you know? I mean, I might have had a black leather jumpsuit, but I was covered. And I think that a lot of women in this industry are mistakenly thinking that they're in control of their sexuality but really they're just playing the same game, or they're allowing it to be played on them, thinking they're in control. It's not my way."

She names Mariah Carey as an example of the wrong path.

"There's nothing hardly covering her. It's like Adam and Eve without the fig leaf, you know? How far can you go? And these are all hugely talented people, hugely. Mariah Carey, her voice is to die for, but how many clothes can you take off? Have a look at yourself."

Quatro has never been someone to let her gender define who she is as a performer. She says she saw Elvis Presley on television at home in Detroit when she was six and it was a moment of epiphany. What struck her was "that I was going to be him," she says.

"I didn't even think 'oh you're a guy and I'm a girl', which is how strange I am. So I didn't think 'Can I do that, I'm a girl? I just thought, that's who I am."

Blazing a trail in glam-rock in the 1970s, with hits such as Can the Can, Devil Gate Drive and 48 Crash, she says women wanted to be her because she was a woman "doing exactly what she wanted to do," she says.

"It had nothing to do with gender. I never even thought of that. I wasn't out there showing I can rock like a guy, I was just doing what came naturally to me. But I gave permission to women to be in rock'n'roll roll and I'm really pleased I could do that. I'm very much a me-ist. I do what I feel is right for me, and to hell with the consequences."

Even looking back now, she says she just wasn't aware of the boundaries she was breaking.

"I was simply sticking to me and it spoke to the world. Isn't that great? What a nice legacy to have."

More than 50 years on from her performing debut in a band with her sister called the Pleasure Seekers, she's got a busy year of touring ahead with an arena tour of Britain, plus dates in Japan and the US. Australia, however, remains an "ongoing presence" in her life.

"There's an affinity that we have, a synergy between us," she says. "I like to think it's because I'm a what-you-see-is-what-you-get person and I think Australia is exactly the same. They just always got me. I'm a no-bullshit girl. They just get me, and I get them, and we've grown up together now. There's a real sense of family."

She's also writing a novel and is in talks to make a movie about her life, adapted in part from her 2007 autobiography Unzipped.

But who could possibly step into the leather jumpsuit to play the inimitable Quatro? She's stumped for an answer.

"I don't know. I'm kind of a one-off. My dad used to say, 'You're a one-off, and thank god'," she says, laughing.

The Sydney Morning Herald