Carly Simon, Linda Ronstadt, Suzi Quatro, Janis Ian, and Joni Mitchell. The superstars of today's pop music world. They have two things in common: They've all made more than a million dollars - and they've all struggled to overcome the heartbreak of rejection.

Behind the facade that is so essential to today's female rock stars is the wound of yesterday - the affliction that still torments their hearts.

In Detroit, Arthur Quatro told me that he is very proud of this children - except one. Mr Quatro thinks that his little girl, Patti, who's the lead guitarist in "Fanny" is fabulous, that his daughters Arlene, who leads a Detroit rock combo, and Nancy whom he describes as "my baby," are both wonderful. As far as his son, Michael, is concerned, Mr. Quatro points in pride to a recent advertisement in The Rolling Stone promoting his new record LP, "In Collaboration with the Gods."

Mr. Quatro is reluctant to talk about the fifth of his offspring - and, ironically, the only one who is a genuine musical superstar - Suzi Quatro. Suzi was always the rebel in the family - the one who preferred to do things her own way rather than sit still and take advice from anyone. Mr. Quatro had given up his own musical career as an organist in Detroit to join the far more prestigious General Motors as an engineer. He may not have enjoyed the GM job more than his musical efforts, but there was no question that his executive career was from more profitable than his turns at the organ's keyboard had been. Profitable enough, as a matter of fact, to permit him to give piano lessons to all five of his children.

"Suzi was always the rebel," is one of the few things he'll admit about his sultriest daughter. "I just don't like to get into that story," he states.

Ms. Quatro's candor is far more interesting. Speaking of her upper-middle class upbringing in Detroit, Suzi explains: "I hated Grosse Pointe. It was snooty and terrible. I got into trouble right away at home when I dropped out of high school. To make matters worse, I made friends with this great girl from the wrong side of the tracks. We hung around together all the time - in bowling alleys and with all the toughest kids. They really weren't bad. They only tried very hard to seem like they were. Frankly, it took one beer to get them drunk. But, to listen to them, you'd think they were all genuine alcoholics.

"I was still a teen-ager when I started carrying around a switchblade knife. I told myself and everyone else that it was for protection. I'd convinced everyone that I wouldn't hesitate a minute to wipe somebody out if they bothered me. But, to tell you the truth, it was all a game. I couldn't have stabbed anyone with that knife if I'd had to. It was all part of the game I was playing."

"Listen, as soon as I could afford it, I got rid of the knife and hired a bunch of bodyguards to protect me. The reason for that, my friend, is that I'm just scared to death that someone's going to hurt me. It's all a self-protective measure - that's all."

"Listen, back in the beginning I guess I was the classic example of the rich kid who needed a lot of attention and love. I had to do something really unusual to get people to look at me and want to know what I was all about. I used to get high and cruise up and down the main thoroughfare [Woodward Avenue in Detroit], searching for action. I always wanted to be a star - whether that meant in real life or in music didn't really matter. I suppose it all comes down to a search for love."

"I found both love and sex in my music. I actually achieve orgasm during my act. I get into my music so much that I reach climax at least twice during my act when things are really going well. When you can do that, it brings you down for everything else that can happen after the performance. In other words, I'm not nearly so wild after my act as I am during it."

Ironically, Suzi confesses that much of her publicized image is pure fakery. She admits that the stories about her motorcycle-riding adventures were all fabrications. She's never even been on a cycle by herself. The fables about her battles with chains with other motorbike gangs were simply dreamed up by overimaginative press agents. And that legend about her once whipping out her trusty switchblade and carving up another chick who'd rubbed her the wrong way, is pure bunk.

"What actually happened," according to Suzi, "was that I came head to head with a very tough waitress in a place. She told me off and cursed me out - and she scared me nearly to death. All I ever did was get the hell out of the place as fast as I could! But somewhere along the line, somebody dreamed up the version that I wiped her away with my shiv. Can you really imagine that!"

Joni Mitchell has thus far grossed more than $5 million dollars as her share of profits from record albums and concerts. Yet, a deep unhappiness still permeates her life. Back in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, Joni and her mom, Myrtle Anderson, never did see eye-to-eye about Joni's musical interests.

"I was always in trouble," Joni recalls. "I flunked math and was held up to terrible ridicule for the way I danced in bars. The local folks said it was downright wicked. I was always involved in a constant war to liberate myself. I tried art school when I was 19, but I just couldn't make it. I roamed around Toronto, wanting to get into music, but I was too poor to join the musicians' union. What I did was, I wound up marrying a musician. Chuck Mitchell and I were husband and wife for about nine months. That's all it took to end. He was seven years older than me, and I married him about 30 days after I'd met him for the first time."

There is bitterness in Chuck Mitchell's tone as he recalls his bride: "She knew she was beginning to happen," he says, referring to Joni's singing career, "and she immediately wanted out of our marriage."

Joni's ex-husband continues: "Just look at the music she wrote at the time. All her first hits were about people who were frustrated, miserable, and living in a fantasy world - just as she was."

Ms. Mitchell wound up singing in New York's Greenwich Village dives for $15 a night - when she could get the work. She says she had some of her most fascinating experiences with total strangers she used to meet when they shared tables with her in the Automats of New York. "I never even knew their names most of the time," she confesses, but admits, "It was probably better that way."

As she searched for love in New York - and tried to forget the love she had in Detroit - Joni scored time and again with hit discs that dealt with the need of one human for another. Her wealth began to increase, and she found a new roommate, John Guerin - whom she confesses is very jealous about "my old boyfriends."

Joni also admits that she doesn't wear success well. "Frankly," she swears, "it makes me nervous. I guess I'm just not used to it yet."

Ms. Mitchell's idea of the best female songstress around today is steaming Linda Ronstadt - perhaps the most nervous superstar in all of show business.

"There are only two times when I'm completely terrified," Linda confides - "when I'm on a date, or in front of an audience. Otherwise, I can sit home alone and feel quite comfortable."

"I may be just a totally unhappy person forever. I'm very dissatisfied with everything in my life. I'm also hard to please and terribly restless. I have a desperate desire to have a real home and roots and, so far in my life, I've only had the barest glimpse of that. All the things I do in my life I do for about six months, and then - that's that. It's all over. I just don't know what's wrong with me. People intimidate me like mad. I'm so awfully withdrawn that people think I'm ruse. That's not true. I'm really just scared to death."

"I suppose love is really the answer. I must feel loved or else I go to pieces. I've always needed love. When I was in junior high school I went crazy - boy crazy - looking for love. I worked every day to be like Brigitte Bardot. By the time I got to high school, I was dating 'older men.' I left town with one when I was barely 18."

"That didn't work out - and neither has anything else for me, love-wise. When the night's over, I'm always alone. There's nobody there to kiss me. Do you know what it's like to be on tour and get into a hotel elevator all by yourself - without anyone to hold on to, without anyone to kiss? The holiday I dread most is Valentine's Day, because no matter what my concert takes or my record sales are, there's no one there to talk to or caress on February 14th - so what difference does it all make anyway?

I've read a lot about people who don't have anyone to love. Lots of them commit suicide. Otherwise, they get into one of two things - religion or drugs. I can't handle religion, and I know that there's no way out if you even once get into drugs. So - !" Linda didn't even want to talk about it anymore.

Janis Ian is currently riding the crest of musical fame, thanks to her top hit disc "At Seventeen." having suffered the humiliation of failure some years ago after selling more than a million albums of "Society's Child" when she was barely 15, Janis, at the age of 24, has become a star all over again.

Ian's tale is particularly sad because all of her money was set aside by the courts, as she was a minor. Set aside, but never invested - and taxes were never paid to the IRS on the huge amount of money she'd accumulated during that period. As a result, by the time she was old enough to first begin collection on her money, the trust had become pledged to her creditors. It wound up mostly with the Internal Revenue Service because of an oversight in her financial arrangements. For Janis, it was time to start all over again - from rock bottom.

"When I was 16, I was a superstar overnight and that only led to heartbreak. First of all, I started going out with guys - the youngest of whom was about 25. Then I ran into problems with musicians. They didn't want to play for me because they assumed I was a wise-guy kid. I thought I was so heavy at that time. I was part of a whole generation that grew up seriously thinking that it was really going to change the world. Today, I'm just happy that I survived."

"Today, I'd rather be into writing songs like 'At Seventeen' than anything else. Frankly, you can only say 'Ban the Bomb' so many ways so many times. I have already done that. I always figured I was a lucky kid, thanks to my parents and my musical education. If it hadn't been for all that, do you know what I'd be today? I'd be a burned-out, snotty 24-year-old creep."

"I've had my tragic love affairs. At least one guy walked out on me and left me in soap opera city for a long while - but I'm on my way to real happiness. You'll see!"

The greatest of all the female music superstars, is, of course, Carly Simon, the one singing idol who's admittedly "happily married" to another singing giant, James Taylor.

Ms. Simon is also the only one of the singing sisters who already had more than a million dollars before she ever uttered her first vocal. Carly is the heiress to the Simon & Schuster book publishing empire and her family's assets are estimated to exceed $18 million.

Yet, she chose to break free from that more-than-comfortable family fortune to field for herself in the rough-and-tumble world of pop music.

"I suppose it was a need for love," she explains. She also explains that her recent image change, from sophisticated woman to sexy girl, was caused by the birth of her infant daughter, Sarah, now a year and a half old.

"After Sarah was born, and after the whole maternal feeling that I had about my body from breast-feeding her was over, I felt that I'd really been essential to her life. That's about as heavy as a woman can ever feel. When that was over and my body started to get back to its former shape, there was a renewal of lust within me. I got really turned on by it all - especially my body."

"Listen, I don't feel that attracting people sexually is anything wrong or anything I should feel guilty about. When I stop doing that, I guess I'll become a cook somewhere. In the meantime, I'm not erotic. And I don't even think of myself as a sexual person. Sensuous, maybe - but sexual, no! When I first started in the business they treated me like I was a piece of meat. Guys always kept telling me that if I wanted to bed with them they'd get me a record contract. Wow!"

"You get exposed to that sort of hardcore come-on enough, and, believe me, you'll search for love, too. Real love is what I'm talking about. If you don't have it at all, you can go completely off your rocker."