POP GLAM RULES THE CHARTS
From ’72 to ’74, The Sweet, Suzi Quatro and Mud had 16 Top 10 singles, including such stomping Number 1s as Can The Can, Block Buster! and Tiger Feet. The common thread? Songwriting/production power duo Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn, AKA Chinnichap. But the hits couldn’t compensate for rivalry, fatal fame and personality clashes. “Amps were cranked up to 11,” muse the protagonists. “But Chapman and Chinn became bigger stars than their bands…”
Phil Wainman: The Sweet played at my wedding. The actor Paul Nicholas said, “I’ve got this band, they’re from Ruislip. And if you produce them, I’ll manage them.” And that’s how it began. [Debut 1968 single] Slow Motion was a good record, and they were a great little band then. They were kind of my age group. Brian [Connolly, singer] was a little older than me. They were my first production. I was introduced to Nicky Chinn and we tried writing together, but it just wasn’t happening. And then he turned up with a waiter from [London nightclub] Tramp, Mike Chapman.
Mike Chapman: I first met Nicky in late 1969. I was in a struggling band named Tangerine Peel and needed to do something to pay the rent. I’d been writing pop songs for a couple of years. Nicky was a regular customer at Tramp – a rich English kid with nothing better to do than go out every night and dance very badly. After he told me he’d heard I was in a band and that he, too, was a songwriter, I took my guitar to his apartment in Mayfair, and we set about trying to write together.
PW: The big song at the time was Sugar, Sugar by The Archies. I said to [Chinn and Chapman], “Sugar, Sugar is done by a band that don’t exist. They’re kind of like a cartoon band. Bubblegum is kind of happening at the
moment. Why don’t we come up with a song like Sugar, Sugar that we know there’s a market for? But we’ve got an act that can actually play and look good.” And that was Sweet, and the record was [1971’s] Funny Funny.
Andy Scott: I was living in Shepherd’s Bush in a bedsit and the audition for Sweet came up. So, I went along. Phil Wainman said, “We were looking for a decent guitar player for a nice little pop band and we got fucking Jimi Hendrix.” Mick Tucker was an outstanding drummer, and Steve Priest [bass] when I first joined the band was like John Entwistle. It was like being in The Who but playing three-chord pop singles.
PW: I was playing drums on the first five records [up and to and including Little Willy, released May ’72]. I had a really nice, tight little team that could go in and within an hour we had the track down. But the boys said to me, “Phil, if we don’t start playing on our own records, then we’re out of here.” I said, “OK, but if you cost us any more than it would cost us if I played it, you’re gonna have to pick up the cost.” And when they went into the studio, they gave it 150 per cent. They played their arses off on Wig-Wam Bam [September ’72].
AS: Wig-Wam Bam was all our own work, immediately followed with Block Buster!, which got to Number 1 [in January ’73], so it was the right decision. The engineer played a big part in the sound of our records, a guy called Pete Coleman. Pete had an ear… great drum sound. I used to stand in the control room with a 30-foot cable going out to the tape store where my amps were cranked up to 11.
PW: They started off as this little bubblegum band. And bit by bit, they were absolutely going in Andy’s direction. The records were getting meatier and harder hitting with every one.
Suzi Quatro: Then Mike and Nicky wrote [June ’73 Number 1] Can The Can for me. Mickie Most [RAK Records] came to Detroit in 1971, saw me in Cradle, and offered me a solo contract, and I came to London. It took about 18 months before I had my first hit. I was just… Oh my God, so alone. Walking every day to the top room at the RAK offices and writing songs on a tape recorder. Mickie said, “I’ve just signed these new songwriters. They’re very good at crafting the three-minute single. Maybe they can make this elusive [hit] single.” A lot of my songs were very boogie-based. So, they were smart enough to pick up on that. And out came this wonderful song.
MC: I don’t know how on earth I managed to do it, but I managed to pull it off.
SQ: When Can The Can was ready to come out, Mickie said, “Oh, this is gonna be a Number 1. Now we’ve got to discuss your image. What do you want to wear?” I said, “Leather.” He said no. I said yes. He said, “OK, what about a jumpsuit?” I thought that it was a sensible suggestion. Because
I bounced around a lot on-stage. Everything would stay in place. I had no idea it was going to be sexy. That’s how dumb I am. Lenny [Tuckey, guitarist] my ex, and I were watching Top Of The Pops on TV, and we said, “Let’s get a drink to celebrate.” We walked into the pub and I got mobbed. When we got home I went, “What happened?”
AS: Mike Chapman came up to Scotland to see us play. He had already made an attempt at writing a heavy rock song after Block Buster! with Hell Raiser [Number 2 in May ’73].
PW: The boys said to me, “OK, Phil, we’ve got the demo [for The Ballroom Blitz]. What do we do now?” And I got behind Mick’s kit and I played the intro. Their faces were an absolute picture. Because they went, “Holy shit. We didn’t see it like that at all.” They got it straightaway. What they were doing was blowing my socks off. Everybody was so excited, because Sweet had turned a corner. We were kind of making it up as we went along. But when we were making it up, it seemed to get better and better.
AS: The gig in Glasgow [at Birds ‘N’ Bees, January 26, 1973] is the one I think that Mike was talking about when he wrote The Ballroom Blitz. Brian and I got pulled into the crowd. There were scissors trying to cut our bloody hair and all sorts. Not enough security… two guys, one either side of the stage. Not a hope in hell with Glasgow women.
PW: We ended up with two singers on that because Brian couldn’t do the tricky stuff. Brian
“THERE WERE SCISSORS TRYING TO CUT OUR BLOODY HAIR AND ALL SORTS.” ANDY SCOTT
had a unique voice, not a wide-range voice. But nobody sounded like him. We had to work hard with Brian to get vocals out of him. But Steve… if I said, “Steve, can you be the lunatic?” he would turn on the lunacy [The Ballroom Blitz hit UK Number 2 in September ’73].
AS: I remember Mike Chapman talking to me and saying, “Are there any other good bands on the circuit that you’ve just left?” Because we’d moved up the ladder. And I said, “Well, there’s a band called Mud.”
Rob Davis: We were quite rated on the circuit up north. We were pretty experienced. Les [Gray] was a great frontman in those days as well. We did a bit of everything. Bit of rock, bit of pop. We had a few records out, but nothing massive. Chinn and Chapman came to see us in Nottingham. We did the send-up on some Elvis tunes and the whole bit. They said, “We’re going to write you a hit.” We thought, “Oh, yeah, we’ll see…”, and they did.
MC: I was so focused on what I needed to do next, whether it was the next hit for The Sweet, Suzi Quatro or Mud.
RD: Crazy [Number 12, March ’73] and Hypnosis [Number 16, June ’73], we didn’t play on those. They were ready-made tracks and we had to learn them, and we had to remake them for Top Of The Pops as well in those days. So, on the third record, we played.
Dyna-mite [Number 4, October ’73] felt heavier and slightly more commercial. It was written for Sweet originally and they turned it down.
AS: We did Block Buster! for Christmas Day Top Of The Pops in 1973. Steve marched into the dressing room with black masking tape on his top lip, and a World War 1 helmet with a spike on the top. I remember being on the floor creasing with laughter going, “Are we going to get away with this?” Whenever that [clip] is now shown, [his Swastika armband] is blocked out. We didn’t give a toss by then.
RD: Us and Sweet, there was definitely a rivalry. I think maybe it was a little bit aggravated at first, but then we all got to know each other. With Suzi, we toured Germany with her, so we got close. Mike played us Tiger Feet [Number 1, January ’74], just him with the acoustic guitar and singing. We thought, “What?” We were sort of talked into Tiger Feet – Mike would gee us up, and we were into it in the end. With the Tiger Feet dance, we used to play this club in Derby. And there were these rockers, and they would do that [monkey arm-waving] dance thing. We copied it. But also, they would have a pint of beer and they’d flob it up in the air and the next guy would drink it in midair. Completely mad. So yeah, we stole the dance from them.
PW: As time went on, I was getting so pissed off with Mike Chapman and
Nicky Chinn. They became bigger stars than their bands. I didn’t like the way they were doing that. They were outshining Sweet; they were taking the credit for all my work. Sweet had a decision to make… whether they worked with me, or whether they worked with them.
AS: There was a bit of a confrontation during the recording of The Six Teens [Number 9 in July ’74]. Mick Tucker basically saying [to Nicky Chinn], “If you think that you don’t need us any more, erase it.” And he backed down. We all went, “That’s the end of that, then.” [The Sweet left the Chinnichap orbit in 1974; Mud followed a year later.]
Nicky Chinn: I grew to hate the studio. I didn’t just grow tired of it… I grew to loathe it.
SQ: I was always very close to both of them. We just worked together well, and it was a nice arrangement. Mike was probably the creative force. Nicky was more just business. I’m not saying Nicky didn’t do anything. Nicky was very important to [Mike] at the beginning.
PW: I did the Sweet Fanny Adams album with Sweet [April ’74]. Everyone was saying, “Oh, wow, what a great album.” That was the first toe in the water, to see whether they would be accepted as more of a serious rock band.
AS: We were a bit hedonistic, a bit headstrong. We used to tell people to ‘Foxtrot Oscar’ rather too often. And I’m afraid you don’t do that. We were probably punks before the punks. Which is why the punks quite liked us as well.
Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn quotes from Sound On Sound and Melody Maker. For current Sweet and Suzi Quatro activities, go to www.thesweet.com and www.suziquatro.com