Suzi Quatro review – at 75, her signature scream is still thrilling

. UK edition

Suzi Quatro standing on stage holding a guitar and singing into a microphone
‘A holler of swallow-the-world desire’ … Suzi Quatro at the Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow. Photograph: Duncan Bryceland/Shutterstock

There is something eternally teenage about the trailblazing rocker, who can still deliver at her glam-era best – but her rambling reminiscences are a bit Alan Partridge

Suzi Quatro has a confession. At 75, age has taken its toll, she tells the Glasgow crowd. She has lost an inch in height and is now 5ft 1in. “But,” she grins, “I can still scream just as loud.” Proof comes during 48 Crash. It is a thrilling noise, the Suzi Q scream, a holler of swallow-the-world desire and a defining sound of the glam era. She has been screaming like that since she was a kid playing dance halls around Detroit. There is something eternally teenage about her, an innocent in black leather, so that even when she covers Neil Young’s Rockin’ in the Free World, towards the end of the first of two sets, she drains the song of anger and floods it with galvanising sincerity.

While the opening hour is entertaining and well paced, the second, longer set is a mess of lesser material, tedious solos and drawn-out introductions of her eight-piece band. Worst is the stretch in which Quatro runs through her career with the aid of pictures: “Fifteen years on BBC Radio 2. I was up for broadcaster of the year at the Sony Radio awards.” Ever wondered what it would be like if Alan Partridge delivered a PowerPoint in the middle of a rock gig? Not great.

Towards the end of the evening she plays Can the Can and Devil Gate Drive back to back; there is no universe in which that is not a pure pop rush. If You Can’t Give Me Love follows, a beautiful country sway. But Quatro does not know when to stop. As she sings Sweet Little Rock & Roller, people are leaving. She goes off herself, and the evening seems over, but then returns, towel round her shoulders, and sits in a chair centre stage. For an awful moment it seems she’s going to tell us more about her life in showbiz. But no. It is the final song: Singing With Angels, a syrupy tribute to Elvis Presley.

This show is screaming out for a few cuts. Maybe not an inch, but at least a quarter hour.

• Suzi Quatro plays Glasshouse, Gateshead, 8 April; then touring UK until 20 April