The first time I ever went into a record shop and actually bought a record was in 1974. I was nine years old at the time and managed to persuade my mum to give me some money to buy a copy of ‘Teenage Rampage’ by The Sweet. I’d seen them on Top of the Pops and fell for their brash, rowdy rock’n’pop sound. Yeah, maybe it wasn’t Bowie or Roxy Music, but for a nine-year old it was a pretty good choice. A few years later, alongside the likes of TRex, Sparks and Alice Cooper, The Sweet served as a gateway into the sounds of Punk Rock. For me, it made perfect sense. All the adults seemed to hate it, but to me it was energy, attitude and fun. What more could a kid ever want?
Unfortunately, despite covers of their songs by new bands like The Damned (with Lemmy), The Rezillos and Cockney Rejects, The Sweet were never given the credit they deserved and despite having one last big international hit in 1978 with ‘Love is Like Oxygen’, the band faded from the Charts. Singer Brian Connolly left the band to go solo, but was hampered by ill-health and alcohol problems. The rest of the band continued as a trio for several years before disbanding. In 1984, Connolly formed a new version of Sweet (aka New Sweet) without any of the other former members and started touring to diminishing returns. After a short hiatus, guitarist Andy Scott and drummer Mick Tucker continued to play together as Sweet (Mick was forced to retire in 1991 due to ill health) whilst bass player Steve Priest relocated to Los Angeles where, in 2008, he also formed his own version of the band. Sadly, Brian Connolly died in 1997, followed by Mick Tucker in 2002 and Steve Priest in 2020. Although their careers had not continued with the success they enjoyed during the Seventies, they remain a band whose remarkable series of hit singles is going to be remembered for a very long time.
Fortunately for us, guitarist Andy Scott is still alive and very-much kicking, and has continued to play and record with his own version of Sweet from 1985 through to now. Still enthusiastic and full of energy, the band even managed to release a new album earlier this year despite the obvious restrictions placed on them by the lockdowns. Wryly entitled ‘Isolation Boulevard’ (in reference to both their classic 1974 album ‘Desolation Boulevard’ and the pandemic) the album re-worked a selection of older songs in a style more representative of the bands’ current sound. It was greeted with very positive reviews and coverage. Unfortunately, their 2020 UK tour was unable to go ahead, but the dates were rescheduled and they will be back on the road shortly (check details at the end of this interview.) I recommend that you do your best to see them.
Unfortunately, despite covers of their songs by new bands like The Damned (with Lemmy), The Rezillos and Cockney Rejects, The Sweet were never given the credit they deserved and despite having one last big international hit in 1978 with ‘Love is Like Oxygen’, the band faded from the Charts. Singer Brian Connolly left the band to go solo, but was hampered by ill-health and alcohol problems. The rest of the band continued as a trio for several years before disbanding. In 1984, Connolly formed a new version of Sweet (aka New Sweet) without any of the other former members and started touring to diminishing returns. After a short hiatus, guitarist Andy Scott and drummer Mick Tucker continued to play together as Sweet (Mick was forced to retire in 1991 due to ill health) whilst bass player Steve Priest relocated to Los Angeles where, in 2008, he also formed his own version of the band. Sadly, Brian Connolly died in 1997, followed by Mick Tucker in 2002 and Steve Priest in 2020. Although their careers had not continued with the success they enjoyed during the Seventies, they remain a band whose remarkable series of hit singles is going to be remembered for a very long time.
Fortunately for us, guitarist Andy Scott is still alive and very-much kicking, and has continued to play and record with his own version of Sweet from 1985 through to now. Still enthusiastic and full of energy, the band even managed to release a new album earlier this year despite the obvious restrictions placed on them by the lockdowns. Wryly entitled ‘Isolation Boulevard’ (in reference to both their classic 1974 album ‘Desolation Boulevard’ and the pandemic) the album re-worked a selection of older songs in a style more representative of the bands’ current sound. It was greeted with very positive reviews and coverage. Unfortunately, their 2020 UK tour was unable to go ahead, but the dates were rescheduled and they will be back on the road shortly (check details at the end of this interview.) I recommend that you do your best to see them.
I was more than chuffed to get a chance to talk to Andy Scott and it was a real pleasure chatting with him. I started by asking about how the recent lockdowns have affected his and the bands’ plans over the past two years?
‘We were lucky enough to complete our last tour in 2019 before all of this happened, but obviously we couldn’t play the dates that were scheduled in 2020. There was some attempt to see if we could do the dates in March and April this year but that didn’t work out either, so it was pushed all the way forward to November and December again. So unless something else occurs, it now looks as if it’s going to happen. The only problem is that, especially after the tour in 2019 which was a virtual sell-out, the figures for ticket-sales this time aren’t so good. It seems to be down to people thinking, do I really want to be in the middle of a big crowd just yet? And I can totally understand that, because you just don’t know if everyone in the audience is going to be vaccinated or whatever. I can’t understand why people won’t get vaccinated as it just seems like the obvious thing to do, but there’s all these people marching and protesting because they don’t want to get jabbed… They say it could split society, but to me, that’s already happened because there’s a lot of people who just don’t want to be somewhere next to someone who hasn’t had any kind of protection and could be spreading the virus. It also seems that it’s those minorities who get lots of column-inches in the newspapers and seem to be demanding things that are totally out of proportion to the actual amount of people they think they represent. I really don’t recognise the world anymore, sometimes. There’s a Beach Boys’ song called ‘I Wasn’t Made for These Times’ and it rings more and more true every time I hear it! But, we’re still going to go out and do the tour, regardless of the numbers, because it won’t make any difference for us whether there’s 50 or 500 or 5000 people… we’re still going to play the same. If there are smaller audiences it isn’t ideal, but we all agreed that we wanted to get out and start doing things again, so we’ll just have to tighten our belts, bite the bullet and get on with it. Perhaps it’ll be like stepping back a few years, when we all used to get in a van in London, drive to Glasgow, play a gig and then drive home afterwards! I understand why people are still wary about going out to gigs but I think we’ve got to get past this and try to get back to some sort of normality. I’ve always thought that live music, more so than going to a nightclub or whatever, can really fire the soul. When you go to see a band, their songs can trigger emotions and memories, which is something that’s been missing in people’s lives over the past 18 months.’
‘We were lucky enough to complete our last tour in 2019 before all of this happened, but obviously we couldn’t play the dates that were scheduled in 2020. There was some attempt to see if we could do the dates in March and April this year but that didn’t work out either, so it was pushed all the way forward to November and December again. So unless something else occurs, it now looks as if it’s going to happen. The only problem is that, especially after the tour in 2019 which was a virtual sell-out, the figures for ticket-sales this time aren’t so good. It seems to be down to people thinking, do I really want to be in the middle of a big crowd just yet? And I can totally understand that, because you just don’t know if everyone in the audience is going to be vaccinated or whatever. I can’t understand why people won’t get vaccinated as it just seems like the obvious thing to do, but there’s all these people marching and protesting because they don’t want to get jabbed… They say it could split society, but to me, that’s already happened because there’s a lot of people who just don’t want to be somewhere next to someone who hasn’t had any kind of protection and could be spreading the virus. It also seems that it’s those minorities who get lots of column-inches in the newspapers and seem to be demanding things that are totally out of proportion to the actual amount of people they think they represent. I really don’t recognise the world anymore, sometimes. There’s a Beach Boys’ song called ‘I Wasn’t Made for These Times’ and it rings more and more true every time I hear it! But, we’re still going to go out and do the tour, regardless of the numbers, because it won’t make any difference for us whether there’s 50 or 500 or 5000 people… we’re still going to play the same. If there are smaller audiences it isn’t ideal, but we all agreed that we wanted to get out and start doing things again, so we’ll just have to tighten our belts, bite the bullet and get on with it. Perhaps it’ll be like stepping back a few years, when we all used to get in a van in London, drive to Glasgow, play a gig and then drive home afterwards! I understand why people are still wary about going out to gigs but I think we’ve got to get past this and try to get back to some sort of normality. I’ve always thought that live music, more so than going to a nightclub or whatever, can really fire the soul. When you go to see a band, their songs can trigger emotions and memories, which is something that’s been missing in people’s lives over the past 18 months.’
Ever since the Seventies, there have been several myths about Sweet that are often repeated by the detractors, despite the fact that there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary. The first was that the band had been manufactured by songwriters Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman. In reality, the band had been together since early-1968 (initially as The Sweetshop) and had released several singles before meeting Chinn & Chapman in late 1970…
‘Yeah, exactly! It was 1968 when Brian Connolly and Mick Tucker left the band they had been-in, called Wainwrights Gentlemen, because they wanted to form their own band. They already had their eyes on a bass player called Steve Priest and I believe it was an old school-friend of Micks’ that became their first guitar player. They even released a record, although there weren’t many made and it didn’t sell very well… it’s worth a bloody fortune now! The following year, they got a different guitar player and also a deal with EMI Parlophone and released a couple more singles, but it wasn’t until 1970 that they met Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman. Mike and Nicky were songwriters and they had some demos of their songs that had been recorded by session musicians, but they were looking for someone to complete the vocals. They asked Brian, Steve and Mick to record the vocals for them. I think Brian did the vocals for three of their songs and everyone seemed to like one of them in particular, ‘Funny Funny’, which would become their next single. Around the same time, their latest guitar player had left the band, so that was also when I became involved with them. I’d already met them when I’d been playing in a group called The Elastic Band, but I’d just left them and moved to London, so I was in the right place at the right time. I was looking to join a band that were already working, so when Brian asked me if I’d be interested, I asked him if they had any gigs lined-up? He lied to me and said they did so I decided to join, but as it worked-out we signed to two different booking agents soon after that and suddenly we were inundated with gig-offers. It was just £30-a-gig work, where we’d be playing in anything from a pub to a hotel, or supporting somebody who had already had some hits, probably at one of the bigger ballrooms. But as soon as we started playing regularly, it all came together. We were sounding great and going down fantastically and it was at that point that we got signed… Initially, we were going to be signed by Fontana, but it was their managing director. I think, who wanted to sign-us and he was about to move over to RCA. So he told Nicky Chinn, who was looking after the band at the time, not to sign anything until he moved over to RCA because he wanted to take us with him. It turned out to be our best move ever, because within months we were appearing on Top of the Pops and our career was really on its’ way. So you can see, the band wasn’t manufactured by somebody else, and in fact, without Sweet, Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman wouldn’t have had a starting point either. We were all important and prevalent at that starting point.’
‘Yeah, exactly! It was 1968 when Brian Connolly and Mick Tucker left the band they had been-in, called Wainwrights Gentlemen, because they wanted to form their own band. They already had their eyes on a bass player called Steve Priest and I believe it was an old school-friend of Micks’ that became their first guitar player. They even released a record, although there weren’t many made and it didn’t sell very well… it’s worth a bloody fortune now! The following year, they got a different guitar player and also a deal with EMI Parlophone and released a couple more singles, but it wasn’t until 1970 that they met Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman. Mike and Nicky were songwriters and they had some demos of their songs that had been recorded by session musicians, but they were looking for someone to complete the vocals. They asked Brian, Steve and Mick to record the vocals for them. I think Brian did the vocals for three of their songs and everyone seemed to like one of them in particular, ‘Funny Funny’, which would become their next single. Around the same time, their latest guitar player had left the band, so that was also when I became involved with them. I’d already met them when I’d been playing in a group called The Elastic Band, but I’d just left them and moved to London, so I was in the right place at the right time. I was looking to join a band that were already working, so when Brian asked me if I’d be interested, I asked him if they had any gigs lined-up? He lied to me and said they did so I decided to join, but as it worked-out we signed to two different booking agents soon after that and suddenly we were inundated with gig-offers. It was just £30-a-gig work, where we’d be playing in anything from a pub to a hotel, or supporting somebody who had already had some hits, probably at one of the bigger ballrooms. But as soon as we started playing regularly, it all came together. We were sounding great and going down fantastically and it was at that point that we got signed… Initially, we were going to be signed by Fontana, but it was their managing director. I think, who wanted to sign-us and he was about to move over to RCA. So he told Nicky Chinn, who was looking after the band at the time, not to sign anything until he moved over to RCA because he wanted to take us with him. It turned out to be our best move ever, because within months we were appearing on Top of the Pops and our career was really on its’ way. So you can see, the band wasn’t manufactured by somebody else, and in fact, without Sweet, Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman wouldn’t have had a starting point either. We were all important and prevalent at that starting point.’
The first few singles released by RCA were more like bubblegum-pop songs, and I think it’s fair to say that the bands’ classic sound, with louder guitars and drums, didn’t really appear until the ‘Wig Wam Bam’ single in 1972…
‘Funnily enough, there is a different version of ‘Little Willy’ which we recorded for Top of the Pops… the Musicians’ Union and the TV company were at loggerheads at the time because bands would go on TV and just mime to their records… The Musicians Union didn’t like that set-up, so insisted that bands had to record a new version of their song specifically for the show. In our case, ‘Little Willy’ had been the first single where we had actually played everything, as opposed to the previous singles where we’d only done the vocals for those Chinn and Chapman recordings. So we were asked to record a live version in the studio and then perform to that. As a result, that version is much heavier than the actual single and more like how we were as a live band. Unfortunately, I don’t think that clip still remains… we’ve tried to track it down, because I’ve always told people that I think that version was so much better than the record. But, yeah, that was when we first started to record everything ourselves and we really hit our stride after ‘Wig Wam Bam’ with ‘Blockbuster’, ‘Hellraiser’ and ‘Ballroom Blitz’. We were more involved with the arrangements and the guitar and drum sounds. I mean, if you listen to the earlier singles, for example, there’s hardly a drum-break on any of them, even though Mick Tucker was a very accomplished drummer and was able to play some really complicated drum-breaks to fill the gaps. Also, I think our producer, Phil Wainman, realised that there was a change starting to happen in the music business, with bands like David Bowie and the Spiders and Slade coming through. With bands like them becoming popular, he could see that those kind of cheesy pop singles that we’d released during 1971 were not going to stand the test of time, ultimately.’
Looking back at the string of big hits that you had from 1972 onwards, it must have been a very hectic time for the band. Do you think you got a chance to enjoy your success at the time?
‘Well, I’m currently working on a kind-of ten-year diary of Sweet, based on my diaries and Mick Tuckers’ diaries from that time… The guy who’s helping to put it all together recently told me that in 1973, I was away from home playing live or doing something else with the band for 229 days! All I can say is, no wonder that my marriage didn’t last!’
The second big myth about Sweet is that you couldn’t play your instruments… However, it soon becomes obvious that if you were that busy on tour and in the studio, you clearly had the necessary talent! And there are plenty of live recordings from the era that show just what a powerful band you were…
‘Exactly… and here we are now, a band that supposedly can’t play but are still on the road almost 54 years later!’
‘Funnily enough, there is a different version of ‘Little Willy’ which we recorded for Top of the Pops… the Musicians’ Union and the TV company were at loggerheads at the time because bands would go on TV and just mime to their records… The Musicians Union didn’t like that set-up, so insisted that bands had to record a new version of their song specifically for the show. In our case, ‘Little Willy’ had been the first single where we had actually played everything, as opposed to the previous singles where we’d only done the vocals for those Chinn and Chapman recordings. So we were asked to record a live version in the studio and then perform to that. As a result, that version is much heavier than the actual single and more like how we were as a live band. Unfortunately, I don’t think that clip still remains… we’ve tried to track it down, because I’ve always told people that I think that version was so much better than the record. But, yeah, that was when we first started to record everything ourselves and we really hit our stride after ‘Wig Wam Bam’ with ‘Blockbuster’, ‘Hellraiser’ and ‘Ballroom Blitz’. We were more involved with the arrangements and the guitar and drum sounds. I mean, if you listen to the earlier singles, for example, there’s hardly a drum-break on any of them, even though Mick Tucker was a very accomplished drummer and was able to play some really complicated drum-breaks to fill the gaps. Also, I think our producer, Phil Wainman, realised that there was a change starting to happen in the music business, with bands like David Bowie and the Spiders and Slade coming through. With bands like them becoming popular, he could see that those kind of cheesy pop singles that we’d released during 1971 were not going to stand the test of time, ultimately.’
Looking back at the string of big hits that you had from 1972 onwards, it must have been a very hectic time for the band. Do you think you got a chance to enjoy your success at the time?
‘Well, I’m currently working on a kind-of ten-year diary of Sweet, based on my diaries and Mick Tuckers’ diaries from that time… The guy who’s helping to put it all together recently told me that in 1973, I was away from home playing live or doing something else with the band for 229 days! All I can say is, no wonder that my marriage didn’t last!’
The second big myth about Sweet is that you couldn’t play your instruments… However, it soon becomes obvious that if you were that busy on tour and in the studio, you clearly had the necessary talent! And there are plenty of live recordings from the era that show just what a powerful band you were…
‘Exactly… and here we are now, a band that supposedly can’t play but are still on the road almost 54 years later!’
I read a story that ‘Ballroom Blitz’ was inspired by an actual gig you played, which had ended-up in a near-riot…
‘Yeah… we had dragged Mike Chapman along to a couple of gigs we were playing because he hadn’t seen us play for a while. I think we were playing at the Hammersmith Palais which was the kind of venue where pop bands would play, rather than rock bands… By then, we thought we should probably have been playing across the street at the Hammersmith Odeon and after that gig, I think he got our point. Anyway, our next gig was up in Glasgow and we knew the audiences up there always went nuts when we played. On this occasion, both Brian and I were actually dragged into the audience during the gig and I remember being pulled offstage and feeling scissors cutting my hair for souvenirs! Somehow, we got out of there alive but we had to jump into the limousine as soon as we came offstage to make sure that we got back to the hotel safely. Mike was with us again, and he said that he’d never seen anything like it… This was just after ‘Blockbuster’ had been released and we’d already recorded ‘Hellraiser’ for the next single, but a few days later Mike called us and said, I’ve got the next song ready, it’s called ‘Ballroom Blitz’. Even before I heard it, I knew it was going to be great because the title said it all. He explained that he tended to write songs from his own experiences and all he had done this time was to embellish what he had seen at that gig in Glasgow.’
As the band continued, you were writing more of your own material which tended to appear on b-sides, while Chinn & Chapman continued to write the a-sides. Did it become frustrating that you weren’t able to develop your own songwriting any further?
‘I think Nicky Chinn would have liked us to stay more under control, you know? He and Mike would continue to write the songs and we’d just get up to do what we had to do with them. But I think Mike realised that we were just as capable of putting some chords, melodies and lyrics together for ourselves. When we recorded the ‘Desolation Boulevard’ album in 1974, we included the first version of ‘Fox on the Run’. Mike was producing the album and I could see that he thought the song was good, but I don’t think the arrangement we had was quite on the money. But the record company also liked it, so when it was time to release a new single, they suggested that we go back in the studio and rework it for the next release. The first version was five minutes long on the album, so they really wanted us to get it down to three and a half minutes for the single, which we achieved in the end. Nicky and Mike were away in America at the time, so we ended-up producing the new version ourselves and the best thing about it, for us, is that it became our biggest hit to date.’
‘Yeah… we had dragged Mike Chapman along to a couple of gigs we were playing because he hadn’t seen us play for a while. I think we were playing at the Hammersmith Palais which was the kind of venue where pop bands would play, rather than rock bands… By then, we thought we should probably have been playing across the street at the Hammersmith Odeon and after that gig, I think he got our point. Anyway, our next gig was up in Glasgow and we knew the audiences up there always went nuts when we played. On this occasion, both Brian and I were actually dragged into the audience during the gig and I remember being pulled offstage and feeling scissors cutting my hair for souvenirs! Somehow, we got out of there alive but we had to jump into the limousine as soon as we came offstage to make sure that we got back to the hotel safely. Mike was with us again, and he said that he’d never seen anything like it… This was just after ‘Blockbuster’ had been released and we’d already recorded ‘Hellraiser’ for the next single, but a few days later Mike called us and said, I’ve got the next song ready, it’s called ‘Ballroom Blitz’. Even before I heard it, I knew it was going to be great because the title said it all. He explained that he tended to write songs from his own experiences and all he had done this time was to embellish what he had seen at that gig in Glasgow.’
As the band continued, you were writing more of your own material which tended to appear on b-sides, while Chinn & Chapman continued to write the a-sides. Did it become frustrating that you weren’t able to develop your own songwriting any further?
‘I think Nicky Chinn would have liked us to stay more under control, you know? He and Mike would continue to write the songs and we’d just get up to do what we had to do with them. But I think Mike realised that we were just as capable of putting some chords, melodies and lyrics together for ourselves. When we recorded the ‘Desolation Boulevard’ album in 1974, we included the first version of ‘Fox on the Run’. Mike was producing the album and I could see that he thought the song was good, but I don’t think the arrangement we had was quite on the money. But the record company also liked it, so when it was time to release a new single, they suggested that we go back in the studio and rework it for the next release. The first version was five minutes long on the album, so they really wanted us to get it down to three and a half minutes for the single, which we achieved in the end. Nicky and Mike were away in America at the time, so we ended-up producing the new version ourselves and the best thing about it, for us, is that it became our biggest hit to date.’
During this time, Sweet were also having considerable success in Europe and America…
‘Well, Europe was really our main territory. We actually had our first number one hits in Germany, even before the UK, and we had a lot of success in places like Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Austria and Switzerland… But when you’re spending more time in Europe than you’re spending in the UK, it does change your perspective a little bit. It wasn’t until ‘Blockbuster’ went to number one that we started to feel that there was a little bit more respect here, for want of a better analogy. I mean, we were never favourites of the critics or the music press and I suppose that’s where the reputation of us being arrogant sods came from. But I remember that someone wrote a review of ‘Ballroom Blitz’ in one of the papers and all it said was ‘unadulterated rubbish’. But it then went straight-in at number two in the charts and stayed there for six weeks! So I don’t know how I’m even supposed to think about that, because that writer should have, at least, strung more than two words together. But reducing the review down to that just shows that whoever it was, they were against us from the word go. On the other hand, in the rest of Europe we were having a lot of success and even winning awards, so it felt as if we had a different kind of respect in the rest of Europe than we had in our own country.’
During 1974, Pete Townsend invited Sweet to support The Who when they headlined their legendary gig at Charlton Athletic football ground. Obviously, that was a great endorsement of the band, and it also meant that you were going to be playing to a new set of fans. But unfortunately, the opportunity fell through when Brian Connolly was assaulted one night and left with serious throat injuries…
‘Well, Brian really shouldn’t have gone out on his own that night, because there was nothing he could do when he suddenly got set-upon by two idiotic thugs. I don’t even think it was a planned thing, as all he remembered was someone saying, ‘it’s that guy from the Sweet – kick him in the head!’ Now, for me, I just can’t get my head around why someone would want to do something like that. But for the band, it really set us back. It’s probably the main reason why the ‘Desolation Boulevard’ and ‘Sweet Fanny Adams’ LPs both had me and Steve Priest singing lead vocals on some of the tracks. Brian was just not in the shape he needed to be in to record those albums. Plus, as you said, this was right at the time when we were supposed to be playing with The Who at Charlton. It would’ve been our chance to show what we could really do, but as a result of the assault we had to pull out and someone else took our place. I think that was an event that really could’ve changed things for us. I mean, even now, we get invited to play at all the major festivals across Europe, but we never get asked to play the big festivals in the UK. Also, the Charlton thing would’ve been special for us because we were all big fans of The Who and at one point, we even used to play a medley of songs by them in our live set. So to be personally asked by Pete Townsend to play on that bill was incredible. It feels great when your idols and peers do something like that. In fact, quite a lot of musicians were supportive of what we were doing, but that just never filtered down to the music press. Actual musicians tend to know what’s decent and what isn’t in a way that critics don’t… We met loads of people from other bands along the way and we never had a problem with chatting to anybody, while on the other hand I don’t think we ever came across anyone who didn’t want to talk to us because we were in Sweet.’
‘Well, Europe was really our main territory. We actually had our first number one hits in Germany, even before the UK, and we had a lot of success in places like Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Austria and Switzerland… But when you’re spending more time in Europe than you’re spending in the UK, it does change your perspective a little bit. It wasn’t until ‘Blockbuster’ went to number one that we started to feel that there was a little bit more respect here, for want of a better analogy. I mean, we were never favourites of the critics or the music press and I suppose that’s where the reputation of us being arrogant sods came from. But I remember that someone wrote a review of ‘Ballroom Blitz’ in one of the papers and all it said was ‘unadulterated rubbish’. But it then went straight-in at number two in the charts and stayed there for six weeks! So I don’t know how I’m even supposed to think about that, because that writer should have, at least, strung more than two words together. But reducing the review down to that just shows that whoever it was, they were against us from the word go. On the other hand, in the rest of Europe we were having a lot of success and even winning awards, so it felt as if we had a different kind of respect in the rest of Europe than we had in our own country.’
During 1974, Pete Townsend invited Sweet to support The Who when they headlined their legendary gig at Charlton Athletic football ground. Obviously, that was a great endorsement of the band, and it also meant that you were going to be playing to a new set of fans. But unfortunately, the opportunity fell through when Brian Connolly was assaulted one night and left with serious throat injuries…
‘Well, Brian really shouldn’t have gone out on his own that night, because there was nothing he could do when he suddenly got set-upon by two idiotic thugs. I don’t even think it was a planned thing, as all he remembered was someone saying, ‘it’s that guy from the Sweet – kick him in the head!’ Now, for me, I just can’t get my head around why someone would want to do something like that. But for the band, it really set us back. It’s probably the main reason why the ‘Desolation Boulevard’ and ‘Sweet Fanny Adams’ LPs both had me and Steve Priest singing lead vocals on some of the tracks. Brian was just not in the shape he needed to be in to record those albums. Plus, as you said, this was right at the time when we were supposed to be playing with The Who at Charlton. It would’ve been our chance to show what we could really do, but as a result of the assault we had to pull out and someone else took our place. I think that was an event that really could’ve changed things for us. I mean, even now, we get invited to play at all the major festivals across Europe, but we never get asked to play the big festivals in the UK. Also, the Charlton thing would’ve been special for us because we were all big fans of The Who and at one point, we even used to play a medley of songs by them in our live set. So to be personally asked by Pete Townsend to play on that bill was incredible. It feels great when your idols and peers do something like that. In fact, quite a lot of musicians were supportive of what we were doing, but that just never filtered down to the music press. Actual musicians tend to know what’s decent and what isn’t in a way that critics don’t… We met loads of people from other bands along the way and we never had a problem with chatting to anybody, while on the other hand I don’t think we ever came across anyone who didn’t want to talk to us because we were in Sweet.’
One of my favourite recordings of The Sweet is the ‘Live at the Rainbow 1973’ album… To begin with, it clearly shows just how powerful you were as a live band, but it’s also great to hear all of the improvisations in the songs. It really sounds as if you were having a lot of fun…
‘That was just how it was… I think a lot of bands get to the point where, rightly or wrongly, you just want to make a statement and you come up with these ideas. Then, all of a sudden, you see the audience singing along with it and you realise that you’ve hit a seam and they like it. Mick and I used to love things like Frank Zappa and the original version of Dr Hook, who were a lot more eccentric than what they became later on. They could play brilliantly but at the same time keep it a little bit tongue in cheek. I remember seeing Frank Zappa on his ‘Titties and Beer’ tour and it was absolutely fantastic! It was completely out there and he didn’t care what he sang or what he said… Not that we were trying to copy that, but we were trying to put our own stamp on some of our songs and forge our own way. When we went over to America, I don’t think they knew what to make of us, because we were having hit records over there but when they came to see us live, it was a lot harder and more in-your-face than our image was giving-off.’
Of all the albums you released, it seems that ‘Desolation Boulevard’ is the one that really stands out, and it’s reputation has steadily grown over the years…
‘Yeah, I think so too. Especially the American version, which had the new version of ‘Fox on the Run’ on it, as well as ‘Ballroom Blitz’… It’s funny when you look back and realise that the two albums we released in 1974, ‘Sweet Fanny Adams’ and ‘Desolation Boulevard’, they hardly had any hit singles on them. They were stand-alone albums in their own right… The only track on either of the albums that had already been a hit was ‘The Sixteens’. So it was quite a brave thing to do when we were primarily known as a singles band.’
‘Desolation Boulevard’ also included your version of ‘The Man with the Golden Arm’, which was a rather unexpected choice and a pretty ambitious thing to attempt…
‘I think we all wanted to get our moment in the spotlight and Mick had been thinking about how he could highlight his drumming. He’d already talked to me and Steve about the main theme from the Frank Sinatra film, ‘The Man with the Golden Arm’. It had been done years before, on a six-string bass, by Jet Harris. But we wanted to do it more like a rock-band, in the same sort of way that Dave Edmunds had played ‘Sabre Dance’... and it was also a way for Mick to get his moment on the album. It was quite long, six minutes or so, but it includes this great drum solo where he battles with himself… when we played it live, he’d have a screen above him so that he could play a bit, then the screen would have him playing the next bit and it would go back and forth like that. It was quite a phenomenal thing to watch!’
‘That was just how it was… I think a lot of bands get to the point where, rightly or wrongly, you just want to make a statement and you come up with these ideas. Then, all of a sudden, you see the audience singing along with it and you realise that you’ve hit a seam and they like it. Mick and I used to love things like Frank Zappa and the original version of Dr Hook, who were a lot more eccentric than what they became later on. They could play brilliantly but at the same time keep it a little bit tongue in cheek. I remember seeing Frank Zappa on his ‘Titties and Beer’ tour and it was absolutely fantastic! It was completely out there and he didn’t care what he sang or what he said… Not that we were trying to copy that, but we were trying to put our own stamp on some of our songs and forge our own way. When we went over to America, I don’t think they knew what to make of us, because we were having hit records over there but when they came to see us live, it was a lot harder and more in-your-face than our image was giving-off.’
Of all the albums you released, it seems that ‘Desolation Boulevard’ is the one that really stands out, and it’s reputation has steadily grown over the years…
‘Yeah, I think so too. Especially the American version, which had the new version of ‘Fox on the Run’ on it, as well as ‘Ballroom Blitz’… It’s funny when you look back and realise that the two albums we released in 1974, ‘Sweet Fanny Adams’ and ‘Desolation Boulevard’, they hardly had any hit singles on them. They were stand-alone albums in their own right… The only track on either of the albums that had already been a hit was ‘The Sixteens’. So it was quite a brave thing to do when we were primarily known as a singles band.’
‘Desolation Boulevard’ also included your version of ‘The Man with the Golden Arm’, which was a rather unexpected choice and a pretty ambitious thing to attempt…
‘I think we all wanted to get our moment in the spotlight and Mick had been thinking about how he could highlight his drumming. He’d already talked to me and Steve about the main theme from the Frank Sinatra film, ‘The Man with the Golden Arm’. It had been done years before, on a six-string bass, by Jet Harris. But we wanted to do it more like a rock-band, in the same sort of way that Dave Edmunds had played ‘Sabre Dance’... and it was also a way for Mick to get his moment on the album. It was quite long, six minutes or so, but it includes this great drum solo where he battles with himself… when we played it live, he’d have a screen above him so that he could play a bit, then the screen would have him playing the next bit and it would go back and forth like that. It was quite a phenomenal thing to watch!’
During the late Seventies, the Punk Rock movement emerged in London and it did seem that Sweet were one of the bands that a lot of the new musicians admired, even though again, the music press didn’t give the credit you were due. What did you think of the new bands that were appearing at that time?
‘By the late Seventies, I’d moved back to London and was actually living on the St Johns Wood side of Primrose Hill, so I would often wander across to Camden and hang out at Dingwalls and places like that. And I didn’t know what these new bands like the Pistols and the others that were coming through actually thought about us, but I found that when I did meet some of these guys, I was accepted! I mean, I’d heard about some older musicians who were literally gobbed-on by some of the punks, but it seemed that most of them just wanted to talk to me, so that was fine! It was another interesting period and I ended up producing a few bands, although that didn’t really go anywhere for me. There was one band called ‘Sussex’ and another band from Scotland called ‘Sneaky Pete’… not really full-on Punk, but sort of leaning that way. But I do know that several of the early punk bands recorded versions of our songs, which was great. I don’t know if it was so much our style that influenced them, but perhaps it was more the energy that we had. I think that’s the right word – energy! I remember having a discussion with somebody who was saying, well, these new bands are no good, they’re all out of tune. But I remember seeing the New York Dolls when they came over and, to me, it was like seeing the Rolling Stones at the very beginning. They weren’t nice and tidy and it wasn’t slick, but my God, did they have so much energy and a real strut to the way they performed.’
Brian Connolly left Sweet in 1979 to try and start a solo career, while you, Steve and Mick decided to continue as a trio. Did that go well for you or did you find that it completely changed the dynamics of the band?
‘Yeah, we became ‘Three-piece Sweet’, as Mick used to call it… Well, personally I would have preferred it if we had found a replacement and carried on with a new front-man. Funnily enough, I got to know Ronnie James Dio quite well around that time, as we played some dates with Rainbow over in America. He used to hang out with us in our dressing room because he was really unhappy with Rainbow at the time… Well, when Brian left us, I remember thinking, Ronnie would be ideal for the new material we were writing. So we spoke on the phone and I told the other guys about it, but Steve said that, because of Brians’ problems over the past few years, we’d already been covering for him and we shouldn’t get another front-man in because it would only add another dynamic that we might not even need at that point. I think Mick would have been happy to work with Ronnie, but it really needed all three of us to agree on it because if one person disagrees then there’s always going to be a negative in there. You know, it’s like the one black-ball in the bag when a golf-club vote on a new member… If there’s one black ball, then it doesn’t happen. So we carried-on as we were and I have to say that, musically, the three of us, with our live keyboard player Gary Moberley, were really superb. It really came together musically and it was taking us into a different area. A few years earlier, Mike Chapman had said that he could see we were taking this new route with the band, but he didn’t think that Brian would be going with us… he could see that, ultimately, Brian was not going to be able to move forward with the rest of us, and he was right. At the time, I didn’t agree with what he said and thought he was trying to split us up, because it sounded as if he was saying that the three of us could move on and do the hard rock thing, while Brian could stay behind and continue to record the more poppy things. Looking at that now, that might have been better for Brian in the long run… The thing was, by then, we’d be going to America and we’d either be travelling or just sitting on our arses a lot. What are you going to do if you’ve got weeks of that ahead of you? Well, in Brians’ case, he’d have a drink and I can see that this was the start of all his problems. At least for the rest of us, the musicians, we’d have to go to music shops to take care of things as we went along… as well as swooning over all the early-Sixties Stratocasters that they seemed to have over there!’
‘By the late Seventies, I’d moved back to London and was actually living on the St Johns Wood side of Primrose Hill, so I would often wander across to Camden and hang out at Dingwalls and places like that. And I didn’t know what these new bands like the Pistols and the others that were coming through actually thought about us, but I found that when I did meet some of these guys, I was accepted! I mean, I’d heard about some older musicians who were literally gobbed-on by some of the punks, but it seemed that most of them just wanted to talk to me, so that was fine! It was another interesting period and I ended up producing a few bands, although that didn’t really go anywhere for me. There was one band called ‘Sussex’ and another band from Scotland called ‘Sneaky Pete’… not really full-on Punk, but sort of leaning that way. But I do know that several of the early punk bands recorded versions of our songs, which was great. I don’t know if it was so much our style that influenced them, but perhaps it was more the energy that we had. I think that’s the right word – energy! I remember having a discussion with somebody who was saying, well, these new bands are no good, they’re all out of tune. But I remember seeing the New York Dolls when they came over and, to me, it was like seeing the Rolling Stones at the very beginning. They weren’t nice and tidy and it wasn’t slick, but my God, did they have so much energy and a real strut to the way they performed.’
Brian Connolly left Sweet in 1979 to try and start a solo career, while you, Steve and Mick decided to continue as a trio. Did that go well for you or did you find that it completely changed the dynamics of the band?
‘Yeah, we became ‘Three-piece Sweet’, as Mick used to call it… Well, personally I would have preferred it if we had found a replacement and carried on with a new front-man. Funnily enough, I got to know Ronnie James Dio quite well around that time, as we played some dates with Rainbow over in America. He used to hang out with us in our dressing room because he was really unhappy with Rainbow at the time… Well, when Brian left us, I remember thinking, Ronnie would be ideal for the new material we were writing. So we spoke on the phone and I told the other guys about it, but Steve said that, because of Brians’ problems over the past few years, we’d already been covering for him and we shouldn’t get another front-man in because it would only add another dynamic that we might not even need at that point. I think Mick would have been happy to work with Ronnie, but it really needed all three of us to agree on it because if one person disagrees then there’s always going to be a negative in there. You know, it’s like the one black-ball in the bag when a golf-club vote on a new member… If there’s one black ball, then it doesn’t happen. So we carried-on as we were and I have to say that, musically, the three of us, with our live keyboard player Gary Moberley, were really superb. It really came together musically and it was taking us into a different area. A few years earlier, Mike Chapman had said that he could see we were taking this new route with the band, but he didn’t think that Brian would be going with us… he could see that, ultimately, Brian was not going to be able to move forward with the rest of us, and he was right. At the time, I didn’t agree with what he said and thought he was trying to split us up, because it sounded as if he was saying that the three of us could move on and do the hard rock thing, while Brian could stay behind and continue to record the more poppy things. Looking at that now, that might have been better for Brian in the long run… The thing was, by then, we’d be going to America and we’d either be travelling or just sitting on our arses a lot. What are you going to do if you’ve got weeks of that ahead of you? Well, in Brians’ case, he’d have a drink and I can see that this was the start of all his problems. At least for the rest of us, the musicians, we’d have to go to music shops to take care of things as we went along… as well as swooning over all the early-Sixties Stratocasters that they seemed to have over there!’
Since the mid-Eighties, there have actually been three different versions of Sweet operating at different times… your version with Mick Tucker, Brians’ version and eventually Steve Priests’ version of the band in America…
‘Well, at least they weren’t all playing at the same time, although there were two versions playing at the same time during the Eighties… Basically, between 1981-84 when me and Mick weren’t active, Brian was going out to Germany to play these shows where they were just booking the lead singers of bands from the Sixties and Seventies and then having them play with a backing band over there. They’d have maybe five or six singers from different bands and they’d all go up and sing three or four of their hits and the whole thing would travel from town-to-town… Brian was becoming a part of all that, even though he wasn’t able to sing in the same way anymore. But because it was Brian Connolly and because we’d been so big in Germany, it was really starting to happen for him. But the problem came when he decided to form his own band and call it ‘New Sweet’. By then, Mick and I were already planning to reform The Sweet, so we had to get in touch with him and say, you can’t really call it that. As a compromise, he ended-up calling it ‘Brian Connolly’s Sweet’, although even that was technically not right as he had left the band in 1979. Anyway, me and Mick reformed the band and initially thought that Steve would join us, but he then opted out at the last moment. But it’s that version, which came from the reformation in 1984-85, that’s still on the road today, although sadly I’m now the only original member still playing… Mick fell ill in the early Nineties and that was when I had to make the decision as to whether I wanted to carry on without him or not. I had conversations with various people who had been through similar situations and eventually I decided, well, what else am I going to do? This is what I do and I’m still doing it now! But it wasn’t until 2009 that Steve decided to come back into the arena with his own version of Sweet, which mostly played just in America. They were only together for the last ten years or so, until he died last year. Although I have recently heard that the guys who were playing with him during that time have since been going out and playing as ‘Sweet’, supposedly as a tribute to Steve... Although to me it just smells of a bunch of musicians who have lost their meal-ticket and haven’t got anything else they can do. It seems as if they just want to have a known-name that they can put on a poster… Of course, it also depends on the fans and whether they’re accepting it, because if they do then it becomes the yardstick by which you start to run things. I read something recently, just after Charlie Watts died, and it was talking about how all of these musicians and performers that our generation loved and respected are now starting to pass away. What are we going to end-up with when there are no original members of bands like the Stones, Led Zeppelin, or even The Sweet… Will there still be bands carrying-on and using the name? I mean, when there are remaining members who have actually played on some of the records but weren’t original members, it’s difficult to know where you should draw the line? As the last surviving member of Sweet, I have to think, what’s going to happen when I’m gone if people still want to see a band playing our music? Of course, by then I’ll have no control over it, but I think it’s a difficult decision for bands to make. I mean, Jagger and Richards have obviously decided to carry on despite losing such an integral original member, whereas Led Zeppelin pretty-much decided that the band died when John Bonham died. I’m sure that, technically, they could have carried-on with another drummer, but perhaps they just didn’t want to do it without him. It would have been like changing one of the Beatles. It’s difficult… this is a conversation that could go on for a long, long time!’
‘Well, at least they weren’t all playing at the same time, although there were two versions playing at the same time during the Eighties… Basically, between 1981-84 when me and Mick weren’t active, Brian was going out to Germany to play these shows where they were just booking the lead singers of bands from the Sixties and Seventies and then having them play with a backing band over there. They’d have maybe five or six singers from different bands and they’d all go up and sing three or four of their hits and the whole thing would travel from town-to-town… Brian was becoming a part of all that, even though he wasn’t able to sing in the same way anymore. But because it was Brian Connolly and because we’d been so big in Germany, it was really starting to happen for him. But the problem came when he decided to form his own band and call it ‘New Sweet’. By then, Mick and I were already planning to reform The Sweet, so we had to get in touch with him and say, you can’t really call it that. As a compromise, he ended-up calling it ‘Brian Connolly’s Sweet’, although even that was technically not right as he had left the band in 1979. Anyway, me and Mick reformed the band and initially thought that Steve would join us, but he then opted out at the last moment. But it’s that version, which came from the reformation in 1984-85, that’s still on the road today, although sadly I’m now the only original member still playing… Mick fell ill in the early Nineties and that was when I had to make the decision as to whether I wanted to carry on without him or not. I had conversations with various people who had been through similar situations and eventually I decided, well, what else am I going to do? This is what I do and I’m still doing it now! But it wasn’t until 2009 that Steve decided to come back into the arena with his own version of Sweet, which mostly played just in America. They were only together for the last ten years or so, until he died last year. Although I have recently heard that the guys who were playing with him during that time have since been going out and playing as ‘Sweet’, supposedly as a tribute to Steve... Although to me it just smells of a bunch of musicians who have lost their meal-ticket and haven’t got anything else they can do. It seems as if they just want to have a known-name that they can put on a poster… Of course, it also depends on the fans and whether they’re accepting it, because if they do then it becomes the yardstick by which you start to run things. I read something recently, just after Charlie Watts died, and it was talking about how all of these musicians and performers that our generation loved and respected are now starting to pass away. What are we going to end-up with when there are no original members of bands like the Stones, Led Zeppelin, or even The Sweet… Will there still be bands carrying-on and using the name? I mean, when there are remaining members who have actually played on some of the records but weren’t original members, it’s difficult to know where you should draw the line? As the last surviving member of Sweet, I have to think, what’s going to happen when I’m gone if people still want to see a band playing our music? Of course, by then I’ll have no control over it, but I think it’s a difficult decision for bands to make. I mean, Jagger and Richards have obviously decided to carry on despite losing such an integral original member, whereas Led Zeppelin pretty-much decided that the band died when John Bonham died. I’m sure that, technically, they could have carried-on with another drummer, but perhaps they just didn’t want to do it without him. It would have been like changing one of the Beatles. It’s difficult… this is a conversation that could go on for a long, long time!’
-up Going back to the Eighties, though, with you and Mick in one band and Brian playing with his version, was there ever any talk about you all coming back together to play again?
‘There were a couple of attempts… the most serious one was in a 1988. Mike Chapman was living in LA at the time and had just set-up a new label, so he got in touch with all of us and suggested that we should reform and be one of the first bands on it. Obviously, this all depended on whether we were all still able to do what we used to do. Mick and I were still playing together, and Steve was living in LA by then, so we arranged to meet-up out there and see how it went. But Brian was not in fantastic shape and when Mike Chapman met him, he was like, ‘oh my God! Why didn’t anybody tell me?’ I had to tell him, well, we didn’t know what to say… But we were all there and decided to give it a go. What we laid-down, musically, was pretty solid but there was just no way that Brian was going to be able to record his vocals the way it needed to be. His voice had just gone to the point where, the younger Brian sounded great but the older Brian was something very different. And I’m not being disrespectful about him because, as a guy, you couldn’t help but love him. But he just wasn’t going to be able to sing in the way that was needed and that pretty much meant the whole reunion couldn’t go ahead. I remember someone over there made a suggestion that, really, all we needed was to have the four of us onstage to carry it off, so why didn’t we get someone else who could do the vocals for Brian from the wings? I think it was when they made that suggestion that I decided I should pack-up and go home. If that was what was going to happen, they could count me out. So, yes, there were a few times that it was suggested that all four of us should get back together again, but sadly it was just never going to happen.’
‘There were a couple of attempts… the most serious one was in a 1988. Mike Chapman was living in LA at the time and had just set-up a new label, so he got in touch with all of us and suggested that we should reform and be one of the first bands on it. Obviously, this all depended on whether we were all still able to do what we used to do. Mick and I were still playing together, and Steve was living in LA by then, so we arranged to meet-up out there and see how it went. But Brian was not in fantastic shape and when Mike Chapman met him, he was like, ‘oh my God! Why didn’t anybody tell me?’ I had to tell him, well, we didn’t know what to say… But we were all there and decided to give it a go. What we laid-down, musically, was pretty solid but there was just no way that Brian was going to be able to record his vocals the way it needed to be. His voice had just gone to the point where, the younger Brian sounded great but the older Brian was something very different. And I’m not being disrespectful about him because, as a guy, you couldn’t help but love him. But he just wasn’t going to be able to sing in the way that was needed and that pretty much meant the whole reunion couldn’t go ahead. I remember someone over there made a suggestion that, really, all we needed was to have the four of us onstage to carry it off, so why didn’t we get someone else who could do the vocals for Brian from the wings? I think it was when they made that suggestion that I decided I should pack-up and go home. If that was what was going to happen, they could count me out. So, yes, there were a few times that it was suggested that all four of us should get back together again, but sadly it was just never going to happen.’
To bring things right up to date, you recorded and released the most recent Sweet album, ‘Isolation Boulevard’, during the lockdowns, revisiting songs from the bands’ past and presenting them in the style played by the band now…
‘Well, we’d been planning to make an album of new material, but then the pandemic hit and made things really difficult. We were all set to go into a studio, but we couldn’t. The main problem was always going to be recording the new drum-tracks because you have to do that in a proper studio, but as it was, I’d been digitising a lot of our old 24 track tapes over the last few years so we just went back and when we found a drum track on an outtake or on a live recording which was really good and solid, we lifted it so we could use it as the basis for something new. Once we had about a dozen tracks to work on, we realised that we had a lot of the songs that had been included on the original American version of ‘Desolation Boulevard’, so when the engineer asked me if I had a working-title for the record, I came up with ‘Isolation Boulevard’ off the top of my head. But the more we thought about it, the more it stuck. It wasn’t that we set-out to record a new version of that album, but as things came together, it became a perfect title and we were able to build the whole thing by recording some things remotely. Lee and Paul were able to record a lot of bits in their own studios, and on those occasions when the lockdowns were eased for a while and we were allowed to have up to six people together, they’d all come down to my studio and that was when we did the majority of the work to put it all together. Once we heard the finished results, I think we all thought that it sounded as good as the original recordings but with a little bit more of the modern production techniques that are available now. When I started to read some of the reviews that we got, and found out that people were starting to play some of these tracks on their radio shows, I realised that we’d managed to do something really good. In fact, I never saw a single bad review of the album, so I was very happy. And now that the lockdowns seem to be over, we’ll be able to start looking towards starting work on an album of new material which we’d intended to start two years ago. We already have a few songs ready to work on and the record company want to use the three singles that we’ve released since 2020, ‘Still Got the Rock’, ‘Set Me Free’ and ‘Everything’. So they’ll form the basis and we’ll just start adding our new tracks to that. We’ve also been thinking about a new version of a single called ‘Defender’, which we released four or five years ago, because the song itself is really good and it did well in Europe, but that’s still something we haven’t really decided on just yet…’
‘Well, we’d been planning to make an album of new material, but then the pandemic hit and made things really difficult. We were all set to go into a studio, but we couldn’t. The main problem was always going to be recording the new drum-tracks because you have to do that in a proper studio, but as it was, I’d been digitising a lot of our old 24 track tapes over the last few years so we just went back and when we found a drum track on an outtake or on a live recording which was really good and solid, we lifted it so we could use it as the basis for something new. Once we had about a dozen tracks to work on, we realised that we had a lot of the songs that had been included on the original American version of ‘Desolation Boulevard’, so when the engineer asked me if I had a working-title for the record, I came up with ‘Isolation Boulevard’ off the top of my head. But the more we thought about it, the more it stuck. It wasn’t that we set-out to record a new version of that album, but as things came together, it became a perfect title and we were able to build the whole thing by recording some things remotely. Lee and Paul were able to record a lot of bits in their own studios, and on those occasions when the lockdowns were eased for a while and we were allowed to have up to six people together, they’d all come down to my studio and that was when we did the majority of the work to put it all together. Once we heard the finished results, I think we all thought that it sounded as good as the original recordings but with a little bit more of the modern production techniques that are available now. When I started to read some of the reviews that we got, and found out that people were starting to play some of these tracks on their radio shows, I realised that we’d managed to do something really good. In fact, I never saw a single bad review of the album, so I was very happy. And now that the lockdowns seem to be over, we’ll be able to start looking towards starting work on an album of new material which we’d intended to start two years ago. We already have a few songs ready to work on and the record company want to use the three singles that we’ve released since 2020, ‘Still Got the Rock’, ‘Set Me Free’ and ‘Everything’. So they’ll form the basis and we’ll just start adding our new tracks to that. We’ve also been thinking about a new version of a single called ‘Defender’, which we released four or five years ago, because the song itself is really good and it did well in Europe, but that’s still something we haven’t really decided on just yet…’
Now that the lockdowns seem to be over, I expect you have a lot of work that you'll be wanting to catch-up on...
‘We had a whole pile of stuff planned over in Germany during the past few months, but when they went through further lockdowns and put another lot of restrictions on venues and everything, all the promoters had to shift the dates back to 2022. So as long as things don’t change again, we have a lot of work coming-up from about March 2022 onwards. There’s going to be a lot of work for us to catch-up with, but we’re ready for it and I’m sure it’ll be good fun… Especially after not being able to play live at all for nearly two years!’
xxx
I doubt if there are many ‘Fear & Loathing’ readers who have never heard Sweet and, if you are one of that minority, you really need to rectify the situation as soon as possible. Their singles from the Seventies still sound just as great as when I first heard them and their albums, although often quite different to their hit singles, include plenty of great moments. Their latest album, ‘Isolation Boulevard’ proves that they still know what they’re doing and continue to deliver the goods. Catch them on their current tour as I’m sure they’ll be a healthy antidote to the gloomy times we’ve had to endure recently!
‘We had a whole pile of stuff planned over in Germany during the past few months, but when they went through further lockdowns and put another lot of restrictions on venues and everything, all the promoters had to shift the dates back to 2022. So as long as things don’t change again, we have a lot of work coming-up from about March 2022 onwards. There’s going to be a lot of work for us to catch-up with, but we’re ready for it and I’m sure it’ll be good fun… Especially after not being able to play live at all for nearly two years!’
xxx
I doubt if there are many ‘Fear & Loathing’ readers who have never heard Sweet and, if you are one of that minority, you really need to rectify the situation as soon as possible. Their singles from the Seventies still sound just as great as when I first heard them and their albums, although often quite different to their hit singles, include plenty of great moments. Their latest album, ‘Isolation Boulevard’ proves that they still know what they’re doing and continue to deliver the goods. Catch them on their current tour as I’m sure they’ll be a healthy antidote to the gloomy times we’ve had to endure recently!
