The Sweet - We Were Always A Rock Band (1975)

The Sweet were one of the biggest bands of the 70's, and in their heyday nearly every single went to No. 1 in the charts; but they didn't just explode onto the scene in 1972 with the glam-rock of 'Blockbuster', 'The Ballroom Blitz' and 'Hellraiser', as they'd already had a few minor hit singles before that with songs such as 'Funny Funny', 'Little Willie' and 'Wig-Wam Bam'. These were very much in the bubblegum pop style, and came from the pen of the duo who wrote all their hits, Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, who, together with producer Phil Wainman, moulded The Sweet into a hit-making machine. They were so obsessed with getting the perfect sound on the singles that the band weren't even allowed to play on their own records, only being let into the studio to put their vocals on top of the already competed backing tracks. Obviously the band were somewhat put out by this, as they'd always been a hard-gigging band and certainly knew how to play, and so around 1972 they gave ChinniChap and Wainman an ultimatum - either they played on their own records or they walked. Not wanting to lose their hit machine, ChinniChap and Wainman agreed that they could play on all the songs and also write the b-sides. This gave the band the chance to play the music they really wanted, and some of those b-sides are superb hard rockers. As the title of this collection says, though, they'd always been a hard-rock band at heart, and some of those early 70's b-sides were great period heavy rock, with Mick Tucker's 'Done Me Wrong All Right' even fooling John Peel's listeners, when he played it and asked them to guess the band and received suggestions ranging from Deep Purple to Led Zeppelin. This collection of b-sides should go some way to showing what a great hard-rock band The Sweet always were, even during their bubblegum pop phase, if only they'd been given more of a chance to show it.    

Track listing

01 Done Me Wrong All Right
02 Time
03 Spotlight
04 The Juicer
05 Man From Mecca
06 The Spider
07 New York Connection
08 Need A Lot Of Lovin'
09 Burnin'
10 Rock & Roll Disgrace
11 Own Up, Take A Look At Yourself
12 Someone Else Will
13 Miss Demeanor
14 Burn On The Flame