Ye Olde Metal: Sweet's Sweet Fanny Adams

The 2013 Martin Popoff short ebook about the making of the Sweet album, Sweet Fanny Adams.

 

Stateside, the big Sweet album was Desolation Boulevard, but as you’ll learn from Martin’s massive jaw sessions conducted over a number of years with both Andy Scott and Steve Priest (last surviving members of the hard glam quartet) that classic was a compilation of a UK record with that title and the album that is the focus of this eBook, Sweet Fanny Adams. Here’s the story of its classic proto-metal birthing, and the general weirdness that was Sweet’s hugely misunderstood career. Sweet F.A., No You Don’t, Into The Night, Set Me Free... these are some of the great early metal classic anthems out of the UK circa the low ‘70s, and they are the reason Sweet hit hard that spot between Deep Purple and Queen. “The way I see it, we probably kicked off the hard-sounding rock band with the high vocal harmonies,” says guitarist Andy Scott.


“Oh, Mick was amazing – an underestimated drummer,” says Steve Priest, when asked about what his rhythm section partner Mick Tucker brought to technical, fast songs like Set Me Free. “He loved Buddy Rich and he wanted to be as good as Ian Paice. I remember saying to him, I think you’re every bit as good as that, mate. And when you listen to some of those pop records, the interaction between the guitar and the drums is a lot of the secret of it, you know?”