slade vs the sweet

this thread may be of little interest by the majority of member here, but who knows?

back in the early 70s these were my two favourite bands from the british glam rock scene.
i think the sweet did have a couple of hits in the states? i know slade had one years later with run run away.
i imagine in the states that the sweet are more well known?

slade were my favourite band for a number of years actually. they had two really good writers who had the knack of writing very catchy, anthem like tunes.
also they could turn their hand to many styles. its a shame that most people remember only a brief period of their career which included cum on feel the noize.
slade also had one of the great voices in rock.

the sweet tended to write their b-sides. each single seemed to have a rockier b-side and i like these songs a lot.
the songwriting team of chinn/chapman dealt with most of their a-sides.

do you have a preference out of these two bands?

 

I was a signed-up member of the Slade fan club but I bought singles by both groups. The B-sides of the Sweet singles were always interesting, very different to the A-sides. I bought albums by Slade and didn't but any Sweet albums until later in the 1970s.

 

I already did this as a poll.

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/slade-vs-sweet.187878/

I picked Slade (then & now), but have music by both.

Darryl

 

Hard to pick one. Sweet made some amazing singles, but I found the albums too 'heavy'. I liked the 'Slade In Flame' and 'Old, New Borrowed And Blue' albums, and Slade certainly had their share of stunning singles too. I suppose Slade endured longer. They were still a chart act well into the 80s. But those Sweet singles sure were powerful..

As a kid, coming to music in 1973, these bands were IT in the UK. Add a touch of Wizzard and even Mr Glitter, and you had a cracking singles year.

 

Love them both but The Sweet for me.

 

I think Sweet, Slade and T.Rex were a great combination in the early 70s. It was a bit like the three of them ruling the scene for a while always swapping the No 1 positions. And all three were totally different. They all had great moments on their records - why else do we still talk about them ?
I wouldn't want to miss one of them, I could only rate their live qualities. And then Slade might win, as they were the band, that delivered what their records promised. While the other two had the potential but didn't make much use of it - due to a bigger interest in certain drinks and drugs, all is well documented....

 

I always thought that by the time Slade really hit big, T Rex were beginning to fade. T Rex were massive in 1971/2 but slipped after that. Slade peaked in 1973/4 sort of taking over from them. Again though, T Rex had some incredible singles and a couple of decent albums.

 

i was also in the slade fan club back then too.

 

I think Slade have more songs that I like but "Fox On The Run" tips the scales in favour of The Sweet.

Both bands put out some killer singles.

Chart wise Slade were king - 13 top five singles between '71-'75 including 6 number ones. Also four more top 10 singles (and a bunch of top 20) after '75

The Sweet had 10 top ten singles including 2 number ones.

 

I'll take Sweet. Off The Record is one of my all time favorite albums. Still listen it to it on a regular basis.

 

The string of T.Rex hit singles started spring 1971 with "Hot Love", "Sweet" had their first big hit with "Co Co" in the summer, Slade's golden run began in October 1971 with "Coz I luv you". From then on it was those three dominating the charts with T. Rex running out of steam first in 1973, "Slade" beginning to fade away from the charts by 1975 and "Sweet" lasting longest (in Germany) until 1978.

 

as a young teenager of the time 13, in 1973, i regarded this period of pop music at the time as extremely depressing and could not wait for it to be swept away as the Beatles did with the last bad period 60-63, only a few pop groups to me seem to rise above the dross that proliferated, 10cc, Queen - for a couple of years, T.Rex ditto. However time heals and we can now look back more objectively and see that some other groups did have merit. However the Sweet once they joined RCA and were taken over by chinnychap were a much more manufactured band than Slade, for that reason alone Slade are in a different catagory than Sweet imho, Sweet's catagory would be at the head of the manufactured artists of the likes of Mud and later the Bay Sh*tty rollers, Slade were way better than that.

 

My perception of Sweet is based solely on their singles, but I always found them a little too lightweight. Slade was a favorite for a couple of years, and I still crank "Gudbuy t' Jane" and many of their singles occasionally.

 

Love them both but The Slade for me.

 

This thread is some coincidence – it has caught me listening to “Ballroom Hitz – The Very Best of the Sweet” (which I heartily recommend to anyone looking for a nicely mastered compilation). So, while I'd agree that Sweet might sound a bit "light" to some, my vote is The Sweet for sure. Admittedly, they were a band whose musical style changed with the times (compare CoCo or Alexander Graham Bell to Blockbuster and later Oxygen) whereas Slade always, well, sound just like Slade. Sweet also had one of the best and most underrated Brit drummers ever (the late Mick Tucker) and a “hell-raising” lead singer (the late Brian Connolly) who had a voice and vocal range which to my ears leave Slade’s Noddy Holder standing. All this said, while growing up through the glam years, I never really thought about which band were the best of the two, they were just different. But, 30 odd years on, it is Sweet that I’m still playing and it is their quirky early stuff that I'm enjoying most.

 

Slade. Always bring back happy memories of my youth, watching them on Top Of The Pops. I liked Sweet a lot too, until they started taking themselves seriously.

 

To me its less about how they sound, Slade wrote their own material, the Sweet became a chinnychap manufactured band so artistically it is not comparing like for like imho...

 

i had a lot of 45s from both.
alexander graham bell, coco, poppa joe, little willy, right up to turn it down[my favourite sweet song] and fox on the run.

slade i had 'coz i luv you', up to 'how does it feel?'

i've always considered the sweet to be quite a heavy band really. sweet fanny adams and desolation boulevard both had heavy stuff on them.

i watched a sweet doco on youtube a while back which had a very ill looking brian connelly still performing in really small clubs, it was actually sad.

 

I'm not sure whether or not Slade authored all of their own stuff, but certainly you are right that Sweet used a lot of Chinn-Chapman material, like many artists of that era. On the other hand, Sweet members had enough song writing talent to pen a couple of their own hits after they peaked (Fox on the Run and Love is Like Oxygen, according to my Hitz CD). My own preference is based simply on how they sound to me now, plus some fond memories of listening to each of them back in the day.

 

Slade as far as i can recall penned most of their songs ( not all but most of the hits are theirs ) Sweet weren't a bad band at all but their success was mainly from the chinnychap era....ps for the record have no axe to grind, i like Slade but I am not a fan fan and i don't dislike Sweet in the same way i dislike Mud or the BCR's etc so i am just giving an artistic merit opinion !!