Yuku free message boards

Interesting topic!

I think Mike Chapman still are having some major problems with that it actually was Sweet who wanted to terminate the collaboration and not the other way around! Sweet were his/their first big vehicle (milk cow) for his/their hits in the 70s. It was the work with Sweet who broke him/them too, as composers. I guess they still wanted to treat them like their livestock (some reports on how Chapman used to work on at Brian to sing in a certain manner, more like Chapman wanted it, have surfaced over the years) after first having "broken" them. When the contracted "mercenaries" didn't want to follow that order, Chinnichap went to America - to try their luck, but also perhaps to make Sweet realise just how dependent they were on him/them; something that surely backfired then. I think Sweet made the right move. It was a 'do or die'-thing. Their credibility as musicians in their own rights would never have been recognised otherwise - as it never was to the full extent anyway (and I still think that Chinn's/Chapman's overall attitude concerning the split had something to do with this, either directly - with backstabbing/talking within "the business"- or indirectly, through "gossiping", etc. If one had a very vivid imagination and conspiratively made up mind one could perhaps also think that the assault on Brian was "a job ordered by someone"; without mentioning Chinn/Chapman then of course! Sweet should "know their place"/"stand in line". Is that what the lyrics for "Sweet F A" is all about? This is is probably only a figment of someone's imagination then...).

But I think that they - Chinnichap - took it very personally when Sweet opted for their own career as it were. It became an end of an era, of sorts, even if he/they could continue with Smokie and try their luck in America again later on, etc. That videoclip on Youtube shows a rather bitter Mr Chapman. The fact that he seems to be pretty plastered doesn't cover the bottom line: he/they felt "betrayed" by their "milk cows".

I think it's interesting to listen to "the blueprints", Chapman's first demos, to see how much Sweet/Phil Wainman actually added to the final result! Sweet could perhaps not have made it without Chinn/Chapman in the beginning, but the other way around was true too.

Sweet did the right thing. Perhaps they should have done it a bit earlier too; perhaps directly after The Sixteens, skipping "Turn it Down" (even if it has a cool riff, but that riff was Andy's, he could have used on another song) and "I wanna be Commited" (which never happened anyway). In that way perhaps "people" would have had to realise sooner what good musicians they were, and perhaps their career would have been more respected, not only as "puppets on a string" for Chinnichap.

Hi Meady!

I had to check on the cd I bought at Devizes ín ´02. On that cd is says that tracks 1-11 "are early demos of the Sweet's hits played and sung by Mike Chapman and Brian Connolly". These are all blueprints, many of them only sung and played out with an accoustic guitar (played with the chords that ended up on the final product, but not as heavy/electric of course).

But for the last track, track 12, it says: "Track 12 is Sweet's demo version of the Desolation Boulevard album track "Turn it Down". It's a very rough version of what ended up on vinyl finally. But there's no "blueprint" with only Connolly/Chapman on it like with the others, only the whole group's take on it. SO, I shall not come here and really claim fro certain that Andy actually came up with chords to "TID", but there's no evidence of Chapman coming up with that riff either... Maybe he did, or maybe he just provided the "scaffold" for the song, like with most of the others, and then Andy himself thought of this explicit riff structure to frame it in?

Anyone else got a clue?

An interesting detail to this is that there is actually a raw blueprint to "I want to be Committed" (with only Chapman/Connolly), which - in consecutive order - came in after "TID" then. There you can't hear the intricate guitar work that Andy must have provided himself later on...

("Moonlight in Baskerville" is also here, very raw/naked; was this meant for the project "Ocker the Rocker"?)

Fun/interesting/Anorak-listening anyway; to compare from idea to finished product as it were.

But, I still think they should have closed down the shop with Chinnichap after "The Sixteens". It would have given them a year or so more to sharpen up their own writing skills. (It would also have meant an earlier release of "Fox on the Run" - autumn of ´74 already? - and insetad of getting banned on TOTP like "TID" was, it would have gotten the full exposure, and also "Action" would have fared better than no 16 then I think).