Perhaps for Bowie it was the excuse he needed to wear make-up in public, but for Sweet it was all a piss-take. We all thought, ‘What a strange young man, taking it so seriously’. “We were at Top Of The Pops for Little Willy and Bowie kept telling our make-up girls, ‘No, no, no, their eyes aren’t right’. Top Of The Pops sometimes seemed a bit like a pantomime, and The Sweet were definitely the ugly sisters!” “Īt the start, we just used make-up as a giggle,” recalled Mick Tucker years later. There was definitely a sense of competition with Dave Hill of Slade and – dare we mention his name – Gary Glitter, who used to come up with daring outfits. I guess that Wigwam Bam is the one that people tend to remember, with the miniskirts and headdresses. In places like Sweden there would be bunches of geezers hanging around outside the hotel. “They already thought we were poofs, so we may as well elaborate. “Steve Priest very aptly summed it up,” winces the guitarist. According to Scott, upon seeing Marc Bolan in all his glam glory they realised they simply had to compete. Nobody who experienced it on the small screen will ever forget Priest batting his eyelids and mockstuttering “W-w-w-w… we just haven’t got a c… oh!” during Blockbuster or Connolly prefacing Ballroom Blitz with the legendary questions, “Are you ready, Steve… … Andy?… … Mick?… … well, alright, fellas, let’s go-o-o-o-o-o.”īut as Sweet later discovered, the dressing up and cosmetics would haunt them when they decided to get serious. Between them, they purchased vast quantities of our new release and dumped them in the Thames.” Nevertheless, the group’s bubblegum anthems and über-camp delivery established them as mainstays on Top Of The Pops (“We got to know the guy who let us into the bar very well,” winks Scott). Indeed, at least one of Sweet’s early 45s may still be ‘bubbling under’, in a manner of speaking: “Nicky sent Phil and Mike around the country to the stores whose sales were used to compile the Top 30. Steve Priest admits that certain underhand tactics were used to massage their sales. As a small child I recall sobbing in the kitchen when the single began to plummet down the charts, but as Scott rightly points out: “Sales-wise, what would have been a Number Two in those days would now top the charts for months on end.” Sweet would go on to stall at Number Two on no less than five occasions, most annoyingly in September ’73 when the Simon Park Orchestra’s Eye Level repeatedly held off Ballroom Blitz for weeks at a time. “I swear I’d never heard Bowie’s song before ours was released… I was onto Nicky Chinn as soon as I heard it on the radio,” says Scott now, adding gleefully: “We felt a bit shabby about Blockbuster coming out a week later – but ours went to Number One.” It beat off stiff competition from David Bowie’s Jean Genie, which featured an almost identical guitar riff and was released via the same label just a week apart. Even though it went to Number One, it was still an awful song.”įor the first and last time, The Sweet topped the charts with Blockbuster in early 1973. One of these was Mud’s Tiger Feet, a fact confirmed years later by Mick Tucker when he bitched: “Any group who’d recorded that would have got a hit. So other bands ended up using our rejects, though I won’t name any names.” “We wanted to start having some of our own material used, so the arrangement was never going to last forever. “Chinn and Chapman’s songs were banal and simple, but they offered endless possibilities,” admits Andy Scott now. Whatever anyone’s reservations, the pair’s formula proved immensely successful, and they soon began using it on such other acts as Mud, Suzi Quatro and Arrows. Consisting of the contents of a Benedryl inhaler and Coca Cola in a glass, it helped The Sweet (as they later abbreviated themselves) to numb the pain of seeing their first four singles all flop dismally. Various small-time gigs were performed, some fuelled by a unique concoction they nicknamed The Benny Buzz. Vocalist Brian Connolly and drummer Mick Tucker formed a band called Sweetshop with bassist Steve Priest and guitarist Frank Torpey. But by Christ, did Sweet have fun while it lasted… This, then, is a tale of glorious underachievers. To make matters worse, wrapped up in their own vanity and self-importance, they often behaved like complete and utter fools. Though unmissable, their exploits on Top Of The Pops branded them damaged, novelty goods. That’s because Sweet were never anywhere near as cool as the icons whose respect they craved. Sadly, you probably never heard any of them. At their prime, circa the Sweet Fanny Adams and Desolation Boulevard albums, they were making records good enough to have matched any of the true giants of the 1970s, including infinitely more credible names like Bowie, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. Yes, Sweet were rockers… albeit frustrated ones.
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