“We’ve got to the point where we know where we’re starting and know where we’re finishing. It’s that little bit in the middle where things can change.”
Andy Scott
The Sweet have been a musical institution since the early 1970s after bursting onto the scene with their debut album Funny How Sweet Co-Co Can Be in 1971. Their Who-influenced hard rock style, supplemented by a striking use of high-pitched backing vocals, struck a chord with youth the world over, propelling them into a career which continues with much love, fervour and respect to this day.
With a succession of hit singles, including Ballroom Blitz, Fox of the Run, Love is Like Oxygen, Wig Wam Bam, Blockbuster, Teenage Rampage, Hell Raiser, Action and countless others, The Sweet were always the darlings of the music scene in all incarnations of the word. They toured relentlessly and continually sold out larger venues, in the process building for themselves a musical legacy that will stand the test of time in comparison to most others.
To put it simply, The Sweet have been, and remain an iconic force in the world of music with no signs of slowing down just yet.
So it is with a touch of sadness that The Sweet soon hit Australia for what has been dubbed The Farewell Tour – Greatest Hits. To run us through what to expect and take us on a trip down memory lane, HEAVY sat down with guitarist/vocalist Andy Scott to get the full rundown.
“We’re coming to Australia to tour in November,” he began. “With me will be my singer, Paul Manzi, my bass player Lee Small, my drummer Adam Booth and our younger, genius, second guitar player/ keyboard player Tom Cory. Also, I’ve just been told yesterday, that it looks like we’ll be going to Tassie and then finishing in Perth.”
We ask what fans can expect from The Sweet in 2024.
“We’ve been through many phases, as you would imagine with the difference in music styles,” he explained. “Fifty-odd years of a catalogue with almost three hundred songs in it… try picking twenty from that (laughs). I think most of the set writes itself, and we’re certainly going to do about a dozen of the hits. Then we’re gonna fill it with things like Set Me Free and some of the heavy rock stuff. Because we’ve been releasing some stuff more recently, we’ll probably chuck a couple of the new ones in. It depends how long and whether we’ve got supports on all of the dates. It depends how long we are going to be playing, so the set might change slightly. There’ll be something for everybody, I can tell you that.”
In the full interview, Andy talks more about what to expect from The Sweet on the tour, the extra shows at Airlie Beach Music Festival and on Rock The Boat cruise, coming up with set lists to appease the fans, adapting to change over the years, memories of the band’s first Australian tour in 1975 and more.
