Sweet Legend Andy Scott Returns: A Triumphant Australian Tour Packed With Hits, Memories And New Energy

Led by legendary guitarist Andy Scott, SWEET return for The Final Blitz Tour of Australia in October and November! Few bands capture the essence of the 70s quite like SWEET. As one of Britain’s true rock treasures, they became a phenomenon in Australia, racking up thirteen Top 50 Australian Singles, including two Number Ones. SWEET have sold a staggering fifty five million records worldwide.

At the centre of it all is Andy Scott, the constant thread running from the band’s ‘’classic line up’’ days right through to the present. Under his direction, SWEET continues to bring the high energy performances and unmistakable sound that fans have loved for decades. Joining Scott are Adam Booth (Drums), Paul Manzi (Lead Vocals), Lee Small (Bass) and Tom Cory (Keyboards, guitar). Nostalgia runs high and fans can expect an ultimate Greatest Hits set including absolute classics; Ballroom Blitz, Fox on the Run, Love is Like Oxygen, Wig Wam Bam, Blockbuster, Teenage Rampage, Hell Raiser, Action and many more. The legendary Andy Scott talks to Rob Lyon about The Final Blitz Tour of Australia.

Awesome to be talking to an absolute legend. You must be really stoked to be returning this November for a massive Australian tour?
Yes, I’m really looking forward to it. I missed out on the last one. But I’m back… well, fairly healthy. There are enough days off between the gigs, which is good. I no longer want to tour in a way that means getting in a car or a bus or on a plane every day for three weeks. I don’t want to be doing that anymore. I just need a little bit of recovery time from time to time.

Absolutely. You must be stoked that the interest in this tour is super strong. You’re playing massive venues, and there are no signs of the music of Sweet petering out at all. There’s a lot of excitement.
Yeah, well, that’s great. I was last there on a tour with Suzi Quatro, and I could see that the interest was there. We had our band QSP, you’re probably aware of that anyway. She was her own support band. But going around, I could see the interest in the fact that Don Powell from Slade was on drums, I was on guitar, and she was on bass. The audience was there from the word go. So I immediately thought, why are we not coming back on a more regular basis? And it started to happen that way.

What were those early tours like when Sweet first came to Australia? Were they pretty crazy times?
They were mad. The Sebel Townhouse was in siege mode. There were a lot of kids and girls hanging around outside. Some of whom managed to make it inside, but we won’t talk about that. The weird thing is, the Sebel Townhouse was up on the way to Kings Cross, and Kings Cross at that time was a place we were told we shouldn’t really go, it had its dark side. Yet you’ve got this big hotel, where all the artists stayed, right on the border of it all. Interesting times.

It must be really pleasing to see that generational shift in the fan base, especially now on a tour like this?
Well, I think the internet, as we know, has its moments of being not so good. But then there are other parts of it where somebody hits on a website, maybe our official YouTube channel, and all of a sudden they see this band performing all the songs. Maybe it gets into the psyche, and some of the younger elements want to come along and see what it’s all about.

Are you continually blown away by the legacy these songs have created? It’s not just one or two, there are so many great songs in the back catalogue that still stand the test of time and are just as relevant today.
I used to mix with footballers in the 70s, and I remember talking to Kevin Keegan, who was an international for England. He was considering what he was going to do after playing, and I said, well, it’s the same for us, we’re musicians. You get ten years, like a footballer gets ten years and then you think, hang on… ten years on from that, in the 80s, we’re still going. The Rolling Stones are still going. Then it’s the 90s and the 2000s, and we’re all still going fifty years later. It’s incredible. It used to be only jazz musicians or folk musicians, maybe country musicians, who had the opportunity to go on and on. Pop and rock musicians used to fade out after about ten years, maybe go into acting or something. I’m so glad that the music we made is still revered by quite a few people.

I love it. There’s probably not a day that goes by where I don’t have some Sweet song on a playlist or go back to a particular album. But even when you go back to the 70s, did you ever think that, particularly with the first run of hits you had out, that fifty years later, these songs would still be just as impactful as when they first came out?
Well, people used to find singles disposable, which is why we don’t really have the actual master tapes. There’ll be tape masters, but the big, thick master tape that was recorded was often recorded over. I spoke to my producer and asked what he did with all the master tapes. He said, “Oh, tape is so expensive, we just recorded over it.” Because it’s a single, it’s gone. I said, “Well, it’s not now. Look at it now, Phil. Everybody wants remixes of things.” He said, “If only we had a crystal ball.” People keep everything now, but we were very frugal in the studio. Once we got the master, that was it. We could get three masters on a big roll of tape. So whenever we did an album, we had four tapes.

I’ve heard stories about the Rolling Stones going in to record, and for the whole period they’re in the studio, someone is changing the tape. They come out with forty or fifty reels of tape, thousands of pounds worth of tape. How many tracks have they got on there? They don’t know until they start listening through it. I don’t know which way is best. The Stones have turned out some really good stuff. It’s just two sides of a coin, really.

Are there any hidden gems in the back catalogue that you’ve only just discovered, or that still haven’t seen the light of day?There are things that do pop up. We’ve released two albums, Platinum Rare 1 and Platinum Rare 2, the Sweet Platinum Rares. They’ve got things we’ve found on them. Also, we found some footage of the band in black and white from 1972, where we’re just starting to wear the silver leather suits. It’s quite an incredible piece of footage. We’re working on trying to get the best out of it before we start showing it to people. But there’s very little of Sweet that hasn’t been seen or heard. It’s a difficult one. I love your T‑shirt, by the way.

Ah yes Cheap Trick, awesome band….
Well, they supported us when we first went to America and then two or three years later, we were supporting them.

Oh wow. Yeah. Are there any particular songs you wish had a greater focus, ones that didn’t get the limelight when they came out?
There are a few tracks that didn’t hit the mark. In the very late 70s, we had a song called Fever of Love. It was a hit in Germany and a few European countries. It got to number 30 in the UK, but everywhere else it didn’t really get the momentum it needed. There are some oddball tracks. I remember saying to our record producer when we were doing Sweet Fanny Adams and Desolation Boulevard, there’s a song I’d written called Set Me Free. I said, “That could be a single.” And at the time, he probably wasn’t wrong, he said, “No, no, it’s too heavy. We need to work our way into that.” And of course, four years later, Saxon released it and had a big hit with it. So… what do I know?

Were there any particular moments, especially in the heyday, that still stand out proudly for you?
Being number one in the UK is a biggie. I remember us in the dressing room with magnums of champagne. You’re not supposed to have alcohol in your dressing room at the BBC, but we did. Just hitting that moment, it was the only number one we ever had in the UK. There’s another interesting story about Peppermint Twist, the big hit in Australia. We didn’t even know the record company had released it as a single. We got a telegram, that’s how long ago it was, sent to our offices saying, “Congratulations on your number one record in Australia.” So of course someone’s on the phone: “What’s this number one?” Yeah, Peppermint Twist. And we thought, well, you take them wherever you can.

Absolutely, you must have lost track of all the number ones over the journey, there’s been that many.
Well, there’s been a lot of big hits. Germany was probably one of our bigger territories, like Australia. We had about nine number ones in Germany and the last album we released, Full Circle, went into the German charts last year as well. So we’re still… I think we’ve been in the charts for six decades now.

Is it still important to keep being creative for yourself, rather than just relying on a bankable back catalogue of hits?
You can never just sit on your laurels. It’s hard, that. I think there’s going to come a point, though, with my age and health, where I have to make sure everything I do isn’t going to react in me having a problem through performing. I actually think that, as I said to my wife, there’s no point in thinking about completely retiring. I may not want to do tours anymore, but I still want to do some shows.

Why not, I guess it must make it hard when you’ve got so many hits, trying to fit them into am hour or two. Nice challenge to have?
Maybe what we should do is start doing gigs where we play two nights in the same place, and basically say the first and second night will have different songs in them.

I’d be up for that. Sounds pretty good to me. Returning to Australia, what do you look forward to the most?
I’ve been out and about everywhere in Australia, but I haven’t been out and about there for ten or twelve years. It’s always worth the first day off to make a bit of a foray and have a look, see if there’s much change down in the docks of Sydney, or Darling Harbour. We used to go across to Luna Park on the boat, and that was quite fun. But in the 70s, if we were walking around, kids would follow us. It wasn’t that easy.

When you look at your career, is there anything you would’ve liked to have done differently if you had the chance, or does everything just happen for a reason?
The one thing that comes to mind is trying to keep the original band together for a bit longer, if Brian hadn’t turned to alcohol. The original singer, that would’ve been… well. I never have regrets, because you can’t. It’s like when someone says, you put the egg in a frying pan, you can’t now unfry it. It’s there and I believe in that in life, through the good and the bad. Even when I’m having bad times, I think, something will happen around the corner. It won’t be like this forever.

Exactly right. We’re really looking forward to this show. We saw Sweet when they came to The Gov last year, and that was unbelievable. It’s going to be even better now that you’ll be here with us this time.
Yeah, apparently the band really… they had two sides of Randall, the guitarist who was stepping in for me. They said there were moments where he was fantastic, hilarious, and then other moments where they thought, we shouldn’t have let him loose with some alcohol. That kind of thing!

Interview By Rob Lyon

Catch Sweet on The Final Blitz Tour on the following dates, tickets from Metropolis Touring…