Into 1973 with a hop, skip and a jump, and a question. Can a song that begins with an air-raid siren ever be anything less than brilliant?
Block Buster!, by The Sweet (their 1st and only #1)
5 weeks, from 21st January – 25th February 1973
1973 is going to be the year in which glam rock peaks. Scanning down the list of #1s for the coming year, ten of the seventeen chart-toppers are glam. And we kick it all off with a classic of the genre. Air-raid siren, riff, drums, Ah-Aaaaaaah-Ah-Aaaaaaaaah!
You better beware, You better take care, You better watch out if you’ve got long black hair… Night falls, and Buster is about. Who, or what, Buster is is never established, but he’s dangerous. And he’s coming for you… Nobody knows, Where Buster goes, He’ll steal your woman out from under your nose…
The lyrics are dumb, but at the same time, were they delivered less theatrically, they’d be terrifying. There’s every chance that Buster is a serial killer. Does anyone know the way, Did we hear someone say…? And then the best bit of a great record – the squealed: We just haven’t got a clue what to do! Does anyone know the way to block Buster? Probably not. Even the police can’t do anything.
As a title, ‘Block Buster!’ is great. It grabs the attention as much as the air-raid siren. ‘Here’s the blockbuster new record from Sweet, called ‘Block Buster!’ That sounds fun. But then there’s the play on the term in ‘blocking’ the eponymous villain of the piece, the one with the disc-eyes and the taste in dark-haired women. It’s a clever record, underneath all the silliness.
It’s also a great rocking record. The bluesy riff raised some eyebrows at the time as it sounded a lot like David Bowie’s very recent hit ‘The Jean Genie’. Sweet knew this, considered it, and put their record out anyway. ‘The Jean Genie’ had sat at #2, behind Little Jimmy Osmond of all people, meaning Bowie will have to wait a while longer for his first chart-topper. My only complaint about ‘Block Buster!’ is that the guitar, the drums, the whole production, could have a little more oomph to it. Imagine this tune, played on Marc Bolan’s crunchy Les Paul…
But I’m knit-picking. This is not a quiet record; it has everything thrown into the mix, including the kitchen sink. Screaming, reverbing chords, huge drums, and a frenzied, chanted finish: Buster, Buster, Block Buster! It’s dumb, it’s zany, it’s brilliant. It’s somehow the Sweet’s only #1 single. Their two other 1973 singles peaked at #2, and are even better than ‘Block Buster!’ – the near garage rock of ‘Hell Raiser’ and the brilliant glitter-stomp of ‘The Ballroom Blitz’.
Sweet, like most glam rock acts, saw their chart fortunes plummet around 1976. They reacted to this by going heavier and more experimental. In the eighties, different band members toured with their own versions of the band. Lead singer Brian Connolly struggled with alcohol addiction, and died in 1997. Drummer Mick Tucker died a few years later and bassist Steve Priest passed away just a few weeks ago. We’ll leave them here, on our journey through the years, but, if you’re only going to score one number one single, then you better make it a good one. Like this. 1973 is off to a cracking start!
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The way they dressed makes me beg for the conservative styles of the 50’s. But I guess I’m boring. LOL!
Haha… Trust me, there’s weirder to come before the 70s are through!
The Sweet was an odd band…a lot of their singles sounded like different bands. Little Willie, Love is like Oxygen, and this one…I like them a lot. This one I haven’t heard as much as their others but I like it.
Yeah they were very… eclectic? They started off very bubblegum, then went glam, then by the end of the seventies had gone quite heavy. I like them, though. They look like a lot of fun!
That is the word! I really liked them…them and Slade.
This one reminds me of Ballroom Blitz with the goofy sounding voice…Priest, I think.
I just read that three of them are dead, now, with Priest going June 4 of this year. Scott is the only one left.
Great band. Very unique.
Yeah, that was their trademark! The three singles from 1973 – this, Ballroom Blitz and Hell Raiser – are all brilliant. All great fun songs
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Loved Sweet. Loved the bubblegum coco, the camp wig wam bam, the manic 1973 hits you mention, the blistering Teenage Rampage held off the top by another Chinn Chapman act, the serious Six Teens, the self written Fox On The Run, and the final biggie Love Is Like Oxygen. So many peaking at 2! Saw Brian Connolly’s Sweet not long before he died, and it was very clear he wasnt well at all, his band were doing their best to make him look as well as they could but he was clearly out of it… sad.
Yes, so many #2s! If I could trade I’d have ‘Ballroom Blitz’ as their only number one – if they could only have one – but ‘Block Buster!’ is still fab.
Me too, Ballroom Blitz is their crowning moment, no question 🙂
Sweet were incredibly underrated as musicians, particularly Andy and Steve. It’s ironic that some of the music critics loathed them while the likes of Pete Townshend and Dan McCafferty could see them all along for the powerhouse rock group they really were. I never saw Brian live, but Andy’s Sweet put on an amazing show when I saw them in 1996 (with Ian Gibbons from The Kinks on keyboards).
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It’s funny. Back during this time in ’73, I suppose – I wasn’t born until the late-90s so I have no idea what it was actually – that Donny Osmond and David Cassidy were more popular than Sweet. At least in the UK. Thanks to films like Guardians of the Galaxy and Suicide Squad, and the pure awesomeness of their singles, nowadays, Sweet is way, way more popular than those guys, especially with young adults and teens. I mean, “Ballroom Blitz”, “Fox on the Run”, “Blockbuster”, “Action!”, “Love is Like Oxygen”, “Teenage Rampage”, these songs are undeniable.
I didn’t realise until researching Sweet how popular these guys were worldwide. They were huge in Oceania and Europe. Like, Beatles-level popularity in terms of have consistently huge singles. If anything, the UK was one of their least popular markets. They were the only glam-rock-adjacent band to consistently score hits in the US during the entire 1970s even after glam rock died out – “Little Willy” peaked at #3, “Ballroom Blitz” and “Fox on the Run” were both #5, “Love is Like Oxygen” #7, and several other Top 40 hits in the States. Their sound was definitely a huge influence on the glam metal bands in the US during the 80s.
Rating: 5/5
Like most people between the age of 18-30, I first heard of The Sweet thanks to Guardians of the Galaxy and Suicide Squad (“Fox on the Run” (5/5) and “The Ballroom Blitz” (5/5)). “Block Buster!”, wow, this is a really fun and silly and campy song. Never heard this song before but it’s fantastic. A well-deserved No.1, though unfournately, it would be their only No. 1 in the UK. Researching The Sweet, I was surprised by how internationally popular they were. They were the only glam rock band to have sustained success in the US (though this song didn’t crack the Top 40 there) and were massively popular in Europe and Oceania. Even T. Rex and Slade didn’t have this level of success internationally. I think this can be attributed to their sound being less overtly British and less overtly 50s rock and roll influenced than the other glam rockers. Despite the glam influences, a lot of their songs veer into bluesy hard rock. Great band, underrated nowadays. And a huge influence on early glam metal.