Sweet - Any Love?

The music's fantastic, but not as original as the likes of Hellraiser, Ballroom Blitz, Teenage Rampage etc. I still absolutely love The Sweet, but would avoid playing their most lyrically awful tracks to people. I agree that these tracks are musically fine.

 

They sold a lot of records in the USA.
And yes they became an excellent hard rock band as evidence by the U.S. release of Desolation Boulevard, also Give Us A Wink and the underrated Off The Record.
Windy City anyone?

 

Yes the lyrics were awful in some songs but Give Us A Wink is a great heavy rock album.

 

Actually you need to be more specific than 'a lot of records'
In the USA Sweet had four top 20 singles and two albums that barely scraped into the top 30.
I can understand that you are a fan but you are in a thread with other lifelong fans, and trying to re invent Sweet as a successful hard rock band just doesn't wash.
In their fabulous Glam Rock pomp Sweet were one of the campest bands on the planet. When they tried to go hard rock they hilariously ended up looking even camper, looking like the biker guy from The Village People.
Much of their 'rock' lyrics were embarrassing juvenile misogynist sexist crap. And people saw this, hence loads of mega hit singles, meagre album sales.

 

Quite simply. I love Sweet. I probably first heard Little Willy in the early 70's but my real indoctrination came with the US version Desolation Boulevard which to this day is arguably one of the greatest Hard Rock records of the 70's. Give Us A Wink kicked my @$$!! Yesterday's Rain is one of my favorite songs of all-time and I managed to shred my vocal cords trying to sing it in a local band. I pretty much love everything Sweet did. The bubblegum stuff. The hard rock stuff. The quasi-prog stuff. Their image was certainly over the top and all over the map but they could play and they could harmonize with the very best of them. All 4 members had incredible voices. The musicianship was top notch. Mick Tucker was an amazing drummer. Andy Scott wailed. Brian Connolly had a VERY distinctive voice as did Steve Priest with his added backup vocal lines. Sweet are one of my very favorite bands of all time. Yeah, they were crass and over the top at times but for me....that's part of their charm.

 

Actually I don't have to be more specific, my statement that Sweet "sold a lot of records in the USA" isn't grossly overstated.
I don't have exact numbers, but do remember the singles and albums being a common sight in my high school friends collections.

And I'm also accurate in saying they put out three excellent albums in Desolation Boulevard, Give Us A wink and Off The Record.
Something you seem to not agree with?
At least that's the way we saw it over here in the States, and while your opinion may represent your generation in the UK accurately....I don't think you can speak for the the USA audience and their appreciation for Sweet.

Also your disgust with misogynistic sexist lyrics could also be applied to a great many popular hard rock bands.
We always perceived the lyrics by Sweet to be intentionally over the top, and somewhat tongue in cheek, and quite frankly a 17 year old couldn't care.

Lets not forget that this thread is to give Sweet a little love, not too much to ask....right?

 

Heck yeah, 'Desolation Blvd' and especially 'Give Us A Wink'. Man, how I wore out my vinyl editions when I was a kid.

When I was young'un and I first heard 'Little Willy' I thought it was a Marc Bolan track.

 

Yeah, unlike our UK friends, Little Willy was probably the first song any of us in the U.S. had heard by Sweet, and the only song up until Fox On The Run and Ball Room Blitz were released.
I have a theory that our perception of Sweet is different than that of the UK fans due to the fact that our exposure to Sweet was almost exclusive to the mid 70's releases of Desolation Boulevard, Give Us A Wink,Off The Record and Level Headed, with the single Little Willy being the only exception.
My friends and I had never heard of the early Chin/Chapman Sweet bubble gum pop hits until much later after some research.

 

Excellent assessment. Totally agree, our introduction and follow-up was so different than the U.K.

 

I couldn't agree more!

 

They sure had a number of catchy hit singles back in the day. A very talented quartet they were and it's a shame Andy and Steve have to front two different incarnations of the band these days. To be honest, they've probably exceeded their use-by date now. And Andy's wig trying to look like Brian Connelly just looks ridiculous. I don't know if that was his intent but is still looks ridiculous.

 

Absolutely spot on! I wasn't around at the time but it appears that people are trying to hype up records that were released to mass disinterest at the time, as being their peak, just because they "rock". I don't see what's so superior about rock music anyway. There's plenty of shallow and dismal rock music out there, some of it (not much though) by The Sweet.

I love the Sweet Fanny Adams and Desolation Boulevard albums but there's a lot about The Sweet as a rock band that's unconvincing and naff. They posed and dressed every bit as comically as Spinal Tap and wrote lyrics worse than Big Bottom and Sex Farm, but they were serious about it.

 

Personally I think its simple....and its been said many times over the years in UK Rock mags etc....
People or shall we say the Rock Fraternity etc could never look past the Bubblegum / Glam Rock beginning's.
They were typecast.
As regard lyrical content etc....as pointed out above...they were no worse than many so called heavy bands of that era.
I became a fan from Blockbuster.... and it was the B- sides of those Glam Rock classics that hooked me in.
Reputations aside....I'd take Sweet Fanny Adams, Desolation Boulevard, Give Us A Wink or Off The Record over many of the so called classic Rock albums of that 70's era.
They were a great Rock band.

 

Totally agree. Ridiculously expensive. A reissue series is in order.

 

If you listen to vinyl the Sweet Are You Ready box set is great!!!
CD's you are out of luck

 

A good point well made, but I disagree about the lyrics. There was a lot of putrid macho crap lyrics by rock bands of course, but I genuinely struggle to think of a band with more putrid and totally unconvincing lyrics than the ones on Sweet FA, Somebody Else Will, Cockroach and Yesterday's Rain. All of which are musically great. Except Someone Else Will, which is pathetic on every level.

I also think some of The Sweet B-sides are a bit overrated. I personally think Rock and Roll Disgrace and Burn On The Flame are the only ones that are great enough to be A-sides or strong album tracks. A lot of the others are very cliched (Done Me Wrong Alright or Need A Lot Of Lovin') or just sound like they are trying too hard. Not one of them is anywhere near as strong as Ballroom Blitz, Blockbuster!, Teenage Rampage, The Six Teens, Hell Raiser, Action, Fox On The Run or The Lies In Your Eyes. The Sweet were a great pop singles band and excellent musicians, which regardless of what they were, is far too often overlooked. Mick Tucker should be regarded as one of the best rock and pop drummers from an era of great rock and pop drummers.

On tracks like Set Me Free, Heartache Today and Solid Gold Brass The Sweet were a superb rock band, but they often let themselves down by trying too hard to me. Rebel Rouser should have been a single. I absolutely love that, even though it blatantly nicks the riff from Eddie Cochran's Something Else and it's title from Duane Eddy.

 

I love their singles, but do not own any of their studio albums. It is a shame they didn't end up producing more great music. Their legacy is a bit underwhelming.

 

The murky waters of the net contain many bootleg anthologies which contain studio tracks and demo versions of others. I snagged a cd copy of one called The Spider. The songs range from insipid bubblegum to really heavy rock. Quite unusual.

 

I'm aware that I'm coming across as negative about The Sweet. I love them and have almost all the UK RCA era records as well as have bought the Action DVD recently.

The only problem I have is their lyrics on a few tracks. Those are massively outnumbered by the tracks I love.

But, I think they were at their best as a pop group. This is where their most well known and memorable records are. Some of the best pop music of the era, which says a lot. I don't like seeing that dismissed and the rock side to them being hyped up at the pop sides expense.

Who really cares what genre they were? They were a great band who made a few bad judgements. Ballroom Blitz sounds almost timeless. I heard it on an advert the other day and it sounded great. I think there will be a fondness for them for a few years to come at least.

 

I bet Steve and Andy wish they had those physiques now.

 

Yeah, this thread is interesting. I'd like to see a poll that correlates (a) which period of Sweet folks prefer, and (b) what country everyone is from.

As I commented earlier in the thread, I'm from the U.S., and Sweet a la the U.S. version of Desolation Boulevard, Give Us a Wink and Off the Record is up there with my favorite music, period. If they'd had a career full of albums like that, rather than just three in a short period of time surrounded by other stuff, they'd be pretty high on my favorite artist list.

I don't dislike the earlier bubblegum stuff, but it's more of a curiosity to me . . . And then they more or less started falling apart after Off the Record (although Level-Headed is decent and has some touches of the heights they could reach).

But I'm getting the impression that most folks from the UK think of them almost exclusively in their bubblegum guise.

 

I'll take Heavy Sweet for a hundred Alex.
Desolation Boulevard was my childhood soundtrack-wore that sucker out. This is one of those roll down the windows and blast it summer albums.

 

Thats pretty decent chart action - and exposure. Thousands of acts would give their left n*t to have scraped so lowly!

Sweet were fairly popular here in the mid to late 70's. More like Thin Lizzy or Blue Oyster Cult, except Sweet got more AM airplay. If success is measured along the lines of say Queen or Bowie, then no not that level. But more successful than acts like Moot The Hoople. As far as their glam look I didn't find them much different than Bowie, the Stones, Aerosmith, Rush, or the many rock band dudes that wore eye shadow, lipstick, and women scarves. It was just part of the look of the era. Sweets stage clothing were at times a bit more garish but on the other hand, they had more robust male physiques than most rock guys. I remember girls in high school thought they were hot. Except some of them used more sexist descriptors. Speaking of, their lyrics were not far off the way we talked at that age. Maybe it was different in the UK but where I lived we most of us (gals & guys) were basically two-timing slu*s. With all the juvenile drama that goes along with that.

 

You could be right there, I wasn't born until 1974 either so I don't know the social culture of the time, especially in the US.

It does back up why I find them sometimes unconvincing. They weren't a US band. They went from being a band that were very intentionally camp and could only be British, to sometimes sounding like they were pandering to a US audience, probably in an attempt to make it in America. To be fair, they did to some extent. As bob60 said, they looked more camp as a rock band! In an era of Kiss and Aerosmith that kind of macho camp might not have looked as naff in the US as it does here. The US won't have known their background as a huge UK pop group either.

It does appear that some of the later Sweet records and all their albums were better received in the US than here.

 

Without doubt the songs you quote have crass lyrics....with Someone Else Will being the worst I suppose.
Even so...I still enjoy that song. I love the tough riff and Andy's guitar solo.
Andy always seemed to have a knack for short distinctive lead breaks.
I would agree about Rebel Rouser....a great single that never was!!!
Iike many bands, they stole riffs here and there....it's the bands influences to a extent.
The Lies In Your Eyes blantantly lifts The Stone's Satisfaction riff....but I still love it.
I often here Def Leppards Joe Elliott describing themselves as Pop Rock, as opposed to a Heavy Metal band. Sweet fit that description well.