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SWEET - Steve's Ready Page 2
by Martin Popoff

Have you noticed that any of the songs have been fairly difficult to pull off?

"Yeah, I was quite surprised, actually," answers Steve. "Because I just used to play them. I didn't have to pull them apart. But when we did, there were some very funny timing things, like in 'Teenage Rampage', there are a couple of bars of 5/4 in there. I mean, I don't remember that (laughs). But it follows the vocals, so it doesn't sort of skip. It just follows the vocals, but it means there's like half a bar here or there that shouldn't be there. 'Action' is not too bad. You know, it's hard work. They all are, actually. I mean, not hard work as in, I don't like it, but as in, it's physically hard."

Don't look for the band to be all glammed up however. If you recall, Sweet were part of the brief UK glam boom in the early '70s, and some of the outfits they wore were downright blinding... "Yes, well, the very worst... I had a pair of silver lame hotpants once, and I added a silver shirt, and it was a little risque. Of course I had silver boots. Also I remember, I was doing one TV show, and I had these women's boots on - I have no idea how I got into them. But they were extremely high and we had been imbibing of champagne before the show, and I nearly fell over; I nearly broke my ankle (laughs). But as always, I got used to them."

Pomp and spangle aside, Sweet were an enormously talented early metal band with a complicated history. The early '70s saw them as a glam singles band in the UK to be sure, but Desolation Boulevard, Give Us A Wink and Off The Record in the mid '70s - bigger in America than back home - offered some of the most proficiently written and played thinking man's metal there ever was, up until that point.

"Brian was incredibly unique," muses Priest, thinking back on the boys, half the band now dearly departed. "He had a very distinctive voice, a good command of the stage. He was very self-confident. Or at least he looked it. No, he was a great front man."

SWEET - Steve's Ready Page 3