Andy Scott – The Sweet’s Renowned Guitarist – Interviewed!

Innovation, excitement and flexibility are evident as Andy Scott shares his journey from humble beginnings to being the  guitarist and main songwriter in (The) Sweet. He discusses challenges, pivotal moments that shaped his career, the new Sweet record title FULL CIRCLE, and his vision for the future.

Welcome to the full transcription of my interview with Andy Scott, legendary – and still very active,  guitarist and songwriter for The Sweet. This interview was conducted in mid- 2024, and Andy discusses his career, challenges, and the inspirations behind his work. 

DF: I saw you guys in Blackpool. 

AS: Oh, you did?

DF: Yes, I did. That was phenomenal, AND I learned a couple of things…In England, I guess it seemed to me that Blockbuster was your most popular song

Andy: One of them, yes, because it was a number one record, and it was there for a number of weeks. I guess if you’re old enough, you would remember that.

DF: So, my orientation of The Sweet is from the US, and you were kind of packaged differently coming over here, the first album was more greatest hits, and so I was, surprised that Blockbuster seemed to be, from where I was in the crowd-  was the biggest sing along.

Andy: Yeah, we, we had a funny start in America. We got signed by Bell Records.I think his name was Larry something. Anyway, he was a good guy, and he tried to do his best. There was a guy out in California, Rodney Bingenheimer, was trying to push us. He actually had a thing called The Sweet Disco and it was just that album, which was a great album, and had all the things like Blockbuster and Hellraiser and songs like that on there, it just didn’t quite take off. He even had the original version of Ballroom Blitz on there, and they tried a few singles. The only one that made it into the charts was Little Willy, which was a really weird situation, because it arrived a year and a half after it had been a hit in the UK, and we had moved on from that kind of innuendo stuff into something a little bit more, shall we say ‘rocky’, you know, so, when we hit America, we didn’t support Little Willy, which was probably unfortunate. But as our then manager said, “if you’d supported Little Willy, and if you didn’t back it up, you’d have been one of those bands that would be in the annals of that was a nice one hit wonder band”. I don’t know whether he was completely correct, but we all wanted to go, – it’s America, of course we want to go. But everybody was kind of just saying, hold off, please. And the first thing that happened was, when he became a manager, he said, I’ve got a deal with Capitol Records, and we need to just be silent for six months, and everything will fall into place, which is what we did. We came over and did a fairly secret gig at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, and we could have sold 10 gigs. I think at that time, we did one show. The good and the great were there as usual. And it must have been quite a good gig, because everybody was talking about it for a little while. And yes, you’re right, the packaging of us, if you think of us as corn flakes, was, this is a slightly more dangerous version of corn flakes. And you shouldn’t really be eating this, unless you like rock and roll. I mean, look, I kind of get it. Also with Little Willy, I think we could have done quite a few TV shows. And he kind of stopped that, you know. Said, “No, you know, if you’re going to come and you’re going to do anything, you’ve got to be what you are now, not this innuendo band with a little cheeky smile”, and, wearing like our bass player, he used to wear hot pants. And, it was a different era. I mean, things, things moved so quickly in the UK, you know.

DF: And so about Little Willy, does it happen every time you play live that the audience says, “Go Home” too early?

Andy: Yeah, it’s become a thing. I don’t know if you remember Smokey with Living next door to Alice. You probably don’t. And there was an Australian band that had a band like, am I ever going to see your face again? Or they had some expletives that the audience used to shout at them between and Little Willys become one of these little Willy Willy won’t, and they all go, Go Home, and then you sing, Go Home,

DF: a call and response with the audience

Andy: yeah. Did we actually play that in Blackpool? 

DF: Oh, yeah. 

Andy: Oh, we did. Yeah, yeah. Because that week we’d done a few heavy rock festivals, one of them being Wacken, the big one in Germany. And we said we certainly didn’t play Little Willy, Wig Wam Bam at that festival. But I remember the last time we did Rebellion in Blackpool, the whole punk movement, they love the songs. And, I mean, all the guys there, they were just fabulous. And you were probably there then when there was that little bit of a problem on the streets, you know, all these right wing nutcases trying to disrupt stuff, and the police were there with their barricades and everything. I had to do a question and answer the night before the show, so I went along with Mike Peters from The Alarm, who is also a cancer guy like myself and the two of us were watching the police keep these people back, on the corner of the street from where the The Winter Gardens, The Empire Ballroom, where we were going to be performing the next day. And we’re thinking, is this going to go ahead? And then a whole pile of punks arrived and stood behind the police and the other lot moved on. They didn’t want to come down this street anymore. They were going to go down another street. I think the punks scared the life out of them.

DF: I bet they did. Yeah, yeah. I was, I was going to go out for lunch, and I couldn’t get out the door. And I tried all the doors in The Winter Garden, and we were not allowed out, but nobody said anything from the stages, so it didn’t escalate from inside.

Andy: When we were coming down during the day, a couple of our guys wanted to go to one of the famous fish and chip places on the seafront. And they were told, go back to your hotel and stay there, you know, by a couple of guys from the police saying, “you won’t get to where you want to go. It’s a famous place, and there’s a little bit of stuff going on on the streets around there. We don’t want you to be involved”. So when I got back to the hotel, the the general affair was; Right! Well, we better get a table in the hotel and eat. And the food was very good, thank God, you know, because I think we were all looking forward to something a little bit more traditional.

DF: It was a great weekend. Yeah, it certainly could have gone wrong. So I should cut to the chase about the new LP. Full Circle and the closing lyrics, lyrics to the title track are “where it starts is where it ends Full Circle.”

Andy: I was in one of my sort of Lord Byron moments, you know, getting a little bit ethereal. And it kind of fell into place that the lyrics of the song, I was accessing my Game of Thrones ideology and trying to bring it up into it could be today, you know, with the way that people go from being peaceful to thinking, right? Well, you know, we can now rule the world, and then you get beaten down again, and then it all starts again. You find peace. You know, it’s a the circles going on all the time. And it also made sense to me, because at the time, at that time, when I was coming up with a title, my brother reminded me, in 1963 I did my first proper gig with the with friends from a school. We played at one of the Brexton Youth Center, which was in a church hall in the center of Wrexham. We played our first gig. We probably only played for about 30 minutes. We only knew six or seven songs, and we were probably awful, horrible. And then he said, here you are coming to Wrexham in 2023 playing the University Hall, which is just up the road from where we played 60 years later, and I went, well, that truly is full circle. My hometown is Wrexham, where Ryan (Reynolds) and Rob (McElhenney) have bought the football team and turned it into a global phenomenon. You know, their show on Disney: Welcome to Wrexham is a big hit, you know, and they haven’t asked me to be in it yet. But then why would they? They’re more interested in a little bit of the football in the background and people who live there on the street the characters that live in Wrexham. And I think that’s, that’s what’s made the TV series. It’s, it’s fantastic. It really is.

DF: You could get a tie in there.

Andy: Yeah, well, you never know. But they are doing a fourth series. So, you know, I met some of the camera crew a couple of times, and they basically said we’d like you to do something. And I said, Well, get the angle right, you know, and, and I’m there!

DF: I guess it was this year that three black and white YouTube videos were released from possibly a 1971 TV show. The songs were Alexander Graham Bell, Wig Wam Bam and Blockbuster. I forget the name. 

Andy: It must have been 73 then.

DF: There were three videos that were kind of incomplete. They were lousy quality, but you had thought they had been lost. You did an introduction for them.

Andy: Yes, I know exactly what you mean now. Yeah, this was found. It had been filmed on magnetic film rather than proper film tape, and it had been filmed on the reverse side. Now somehow it had stuck, and it had been locked into a metal box, you know, one of these circular metal boxes, and had not been opened for years. So they had to be very careful when they opened it, and when they realized that there was something on it, they then had to digitize it as quickly as possible because of the deterioration. And when I heard that they found it, it was from, I’m pretty sure, it was from a BBC Radio DJ, who actually had his own TV show called The Dave Cash Show. And we appeared on it a few times. I think this video was, was from that era. Of course, you know, the BBC, back in the day, in the 60s and 70s, hardly kept anything. Up until about 1975 I think they used to keep one Top of the Pops from every month! You know, now, who made that decision? God only knows, but, they’ve lost appearances, you know, by all kinds of bands and and artists who, who are probably, you’d have loved to have seen their first appearance on Top of the Pops, but it’s gone forever.

DF: Yeah, for sure. I wanted to ask you, because some of my favorite album illustrations are yours from 1978 and 79 the extreme audio close ups on Level headed and Off The Record and Above The Rest. Whose idea was it to do that kind of artwork? 

Andy: Well, I remember the first one, I think was Off The Record, wasn’t it? Or was it the Give Us A Wink with a winking eye?

DF: Yeah, that one had the die cut.

Andy: They were done by two different people. The guy who did Give Us A Wink was, think it was a Canadian guy, but he used to hang out with us, and we had this idea, when we knew we wanted to call the album Give Us A Wink, which had, should we say, another meaning, that nobody got, and the record company were saying, “let’s really get something winking”. And of course, they came up with an idea of  – do you remember, badges that, when you turn them, the character went from that to that? We had one of those on there, but it never stuck properly. So the second run, we had this pull out, so you could go from a closed eye to an open eye, which worked quite well. And then, of course, subsequently, it’s now a half closed eye. When you buy the reruns of the record and it’s that brick wall then lent itself to the graffiti, you know, people spraying things on the wall. Then the next one was Off The Record. And this was an engineer who worked in the studio with us, a guy called Norman, Norman Goodman, and he was a great artist, with airbrushing and the sprays and all that stuff, and, you could give him a title, like, ‘off the record, and he comes up with this idea of an arm, almost like a spaceship floating on top of the record. Off The Record with the word Sweet instead of, Shure, yeah. When I saw that, I was blown away. I thought that was fantastic. And then the next record was Level Headed. Now the Americans, I think, used the guitar with the cassette, in the middle between the pickups. We were trying to say, don’t mind, you know, play LIVE! This is not the way to go. That was the idea behind it. Or if you have an idea, if you had a guitar with a cassette in the middle, you could record your idea there. It was all these weird ideas going on. But in Europe, a guy, a good photographer, friend of ours, came to the studio while we were recording Level Headed. We’d done most of the recording in France, and we’d come back to finish it. And he just said, ‘Oh, stand over here, the four of you’, and we stood there in white t shirts. We hadn’t washed our hair or anything. We were just in the studio, and he took the photograph, and everybody said, that’s the best band photo we’ve had in years. And it went on the front cover in Europe because we had a gatefold. What you saw in America was the inner sleeve. 

DF: Oh, wow. 

Andy: In Europe, what you got on the pull out was the photograph that I’m talking about, the black and white photograph. So that was quite interesting. And then there’s the one where it’s the real big reel to reel tape for Cut Above The Rest. I don’t know if you realize, but it’s supposed to be three inch tape. Not two inch it’s supposed to be this fat tape. And as it’s going through, there’s a razor blade, and there, just below it, is the rest. You know, the the sign for the rest, you know, in other words, the music stops. So he was going to cut where the rest is, you know, and it, it’s quite clever. I’m not sure whether everybody got it all ,but, but a lot of those sleeves ended up in being noted in, like, the best sleeves of, as you say, 76, 77, 78and it’s good to have that kind of thing, I think.

DF: Oh yeah. Well, you’re known for so much. When you mentioned photos, I’ve seen a photo of the band live where Mick and his kit are in front of you guys playing. Was that for a live thing, or was it for like a TV or photo shoot?

Andy: That would have probably been a TV thing, although towards the later days, Mick had a drum riser on wheels. So when he used to do his drum battle with himself on the films above his head, the road crew would get behind it and push him to the front of the stage. All this, remember, before you have the kind of digital maneuverability. We thought about putting him on a forklift, but we couldn’t really get a forklift that was heavy enough to so that he didn’t topple into the audience. So the best thing that we could get was he had a high riser anyway, get a couple of the guys from behind take the brake off and push the drum riser to the front while he was playing, and then when he finished, they had the job of winching it back. 

DF: That’s outrageous. That’s ahead of its time and and it’s easier to do now.

Andy: Oh, yeah. Well, look at what the guy from, Motley Crue does, you know, spinning around are all sorts.

DF: Yeah, well, they have a lot to thank you guys for. That’s that is certainly for sure.

Andy: Yeah, well, I’ll tell you where they can send the checks.

DF: Exactly. Was there any truth to the rumor that DIO was in talks to join the band after Brian left?

Andy: We did some gigs in America when Brian was not at his best, with Rainbow. Dio was not happy to be in the same room with what must have been Richie and a couple of the other guys. But he used to come into our dressing room and we’d chat and because I’d met him when he was in a band called ELF, when we were when we were recording Fox On The Run. We recorded at Ian Gillan’s studio that he bought just before we went in there in 1974, and we were all itching to go in there. And I remember just before Christmas, we made the decision to go and record Fox On The Run there. But Brian and I popped in there and Roger Glover was producing the band ELF. I got chatting to to Ronnie, and we got on like a house on fire. So then there we are, like, three or four years later, on tour, and he said those very words. He said, ‘You’re going to have problems eventually, you know?’ He said, ‘Brian’s just not up for it anymore’. And I said, I said, ‘Don’t I know it, but he’s the singer with the band. You know, you don’t just – we’re not like that.’ You know, you you do what you can to help until you can’t anymore. And then that moment came when my manager in America, the decision had been made that Brian was no longer in the band, and he said here is Ronnie’s number in LA, but I’ll get him to call you first. And he called us in the studio, and I was chatting to him, and Steve in the background said, ‘I don’t want another singer now we’ve decided that Brian’s not not going to be there’. He said, ‘we’ve been doing it without a singer on stage when Brian’s been very drunk and couldn’t sing. Why are we looking to to add somebody to the band where we that we don’t really know?’ And I was, disappointed, because I thought that might have taken us off in a different area. But it has to be a majority. That has to be a full majority as to what goes on. You cannot be, well, I’ll vote for it, and you vote for it, it always puts the guy who just doesn’t vote for it on the wrong footing. So we just had to move on. Met Ronnie a couple of times afterwards, and he made those words when, when I said, “Look, we’re going to stay as we are, Ronnie,” he said, ‘Well, maybe you should leave and come and form a band with me.’ I was thinking, hmmmm. And then I thought, if I leave The Sweet, The Sweet folds now. The Sweet finishes now, because none of the other guys were, how can I put it? There has to be somebody who looks after the order of things. I don’t mean a leader, but you need somebody who says, right, we need to do this, and everybody kind of does it, you know. So that’s that. Anyway, it’s the past. You can’t do anything about it. And I’m not a believer in thinking, God, I wish I’d done that, because that’s destructive, you know.

DF: Oh, yeah. Well, and your present moments have always been wonderful. I mean, the band sounds good. Got tours coming up. You’re touring for the rest of the year, pretty much, right?

Andy: Yeah, I just hope my health allows me, you know, I probably don’t get back at Christmas time and my wife says, Oh, God, that was worth doing, wasn’t it? You know, having to put me to bed and look after me. So I’m hoping that I’m going to come through this. Maybe I’ve been holding back a little bit. I find myself having the most immense fatigue, I can’t describe it. Once it hits, I just have to stop and sit down. Which is why I try and aim my days for what’s going to go on, on stage when I’m when I’m awake, I don’t do other things. People say, Oh, do you want to come down and have a walk? We found a shopping center about half a mile down the road from the hotel. And I say, ‘Go and enjoy it!’  I’ve done all these things in the past. I would rather have some air conditioned bliss, read a book, read the newspaper, and maybe watch a couple of episodes from a TV series that I’ve been stockpiling. 

DF: Well, you deserve to be able to do that. I mean, you’ve been a rock star all your life, you know how that goes, and you have habits that allow you to continue to do that. You absolutely have your priorities straight. 

Andy: I hope so. 

DF: I have no doubt. And I wish you absolutely the best of health! Do you love the lineup right now? How satisfied are you with the band at the moment?

Andy: Oh it’s very good. For the first time in a little while. I enjoyed the lineup previously, until the singer, and I understand this, He is a singer who’s come in, rather than somebody who has been part of the formative area. He’d been with us for for quite a while as well. He’d been been with the band for something like 12 or 13 years, and he formed with two other lead singers from other bands like the Hollies and 10cc, a band in Germany that was like Crosby, Stillls and Nash with acoustic guitars. And, they were very good. And they used to put in, like, a couple of Hollies songs, a couple of 10cc songs, couple of Sweet songs in their set. And it worked really well. And the other guy, who was a good singer who had been doing some of the lead vocals. When we said, well, you could be the lead vocalist, all his bad habits came back, the alcoholism, and I can’t deal with that for a second time. There’s no way that I would want to be in a band with  an unstable person, who you don’t know who you’re going to get each time you walk into the room, if he’s had a drink or not. So two people left the band. This was 2018-19. And luckily, I found two brilliant guys who can both sing fantastically. And it was almost as if we didn’t stop running. Somebody just joined in, and carried on with us. Paul the lead singer. He had also done some deputy work where we needed a keyboard player who could play guitar and sing, so he would come in, or he would be the lead singer, when the lead singer was off doing a couple of things. The only person who can’t be deputized in this band, is me, and that’s why, I keep saying to all these guys who have their other little things that they’d like to do, ‘I wouldn’t mind a little thing I’d like to do.’ So, when we stop and we have, like, a month off, that’s my time. Don’t start thinking, could we do this? Because you’re not working. No, I’m having my time now.

DF: I’m really appreciative of everything you’ve done for the world. And the music world thanks you. You’ve got a gargantuan body of work. What is it, 55 million albums, or something like that?

Andy: Well, it’s, it’s actually units. I’ve been told, I know that somebody’s written in one of the bios, it’s albums. Well, if it was 55 million albums, we’re talking, Rumours, and Michael Jackson here. Apparently, it’s units, and it involves all kinds of things that involve downloads, clicking and proper vinyl, CDs, anything. And even so, it’s still a lot. I’m pretty guaranteed it’s more than 50 million. But, 50 million what? I’m not sure. I know we had quite a few of the singles that burst the the million and that first album, that Desolation Boulevard album, went to Double Platinum, or something. So you know that there are a few interesting sales there.

DF: Oh yeah. And, I mean, and full music scenes were launched because of you guys. You were so influential and and set the bar. I mean, who has four lead singers, you know? 

Andy: Yeah, that’s true. Have you you’ve got a copy of the album? Were you sent a copy?

DF:  Yeah, I have the download. I have a digital copy.

Andy: The Full Circle album, yeah?

DF: I’ve not seen the cover. Oh no, I’ve seen a picture of the cover, it’s a train, right?

Andy: Yeah, you haven’t heard the album yet?

DF: I have heard the album.

Andy:  Oh good. I’m really proud of of the finished product and the way that it kind of knits together. I’ve had many people now turn around and go, there aren’t many albums I’ve heard recently from bands that I would say virtually all killer, no filler. I will take that because the way it’s ended up, we all think of us in a similar way, the two new guys, Paul and Lee, when I say new, they still were six years here, but they write together. I write with the guy who’s helped co produce us, the studio engineer, Tom, and even the drummer has contributed a song on the on the album. And it’s all interesting. It’s, almost as if we all like a bit of commerciality, you know, something that you can sing, not, just a guitar riff, not somebody shouting, you know, it’s, it’s a bit better than that, you know,

DF: Oh, yeah. Well, and I think that your guitar sensibility is a perfect blend of pop and rock. You just have that sound that can be crunchy, but is certainly accessible, and people get it.

Andy: And the solos, I remember Eric Clapton saying something years and years ago about “I like to be able to sing my guitar solos.” This isn’t just somebody doing something, you know, -it can be off the cuff, but if you know where the notes are, you can make something sound quite, quite melodic. It doesn’t have to be, just a blur of notes that you’re finding where the hell, oh god that’s clever, you know. You want to be able to go, for example, his guitar solo in White Room, Eric Clapton with Cream. It’s one of the best sounding solos around, you know. And it’s like Dave Gilmore, he is a master of that, one or two notes making them mean something, you know!

DF: Words from a master, about a master!