February 23, 1948 - June 4, 2020
THE SWEET’S LAST surviving co-founding member has died of an as-yet unrevealed cause. Steve Priest - once warned by David Bowie: “You know you really are putting much too much make-up on?” - was the band’s king of pantomime high camp. The Middlesex-born bassist, who once appeared on Top Of The Pops wearing a sequinned jumpsuit featuring the words ‘fuck you’ on its reverse, was always on the lookout for an opportunity to offend. When the show’s producer tried to make Priest remove said garment, he flatly refused. On the Christmas 1973 edition of TOTP Priest dressed as “a gay Nazi”, daubed in layers of make-up and sporting an SS tunic, complete with swastika armband and a Hitler moustache.
Every rock fan of a certain age remembers at least one of Sweet’s spots on TOTP. Paul Gray, bassist with The Damned and UFO, still recalls his father entering the room during that Christmas performance: “He stood there bristling for a long moment, before uttering the immortal words: ‘They’re nothing but a bunch of bloody savages with banjos!’ and leaving the room in a huff.”
Sweet were in the midst of a joyous run of Mike Chapman/Nicky Chinn-written bubblegum Top 10 UK hit singles that included Little Willy, Wig-Wam Bam, Blockbuster!, Hellraiser, The Ballroom Blitz and Teenage Rampage, but their notoriety would haunt them after the band decided to move on from working with the Chinn/ Chapman team and write their own material and pursue a much heavier direction. The 1975 singles Fox On The Run and Action declared a new spirit of independence, but it would be three more year before Love Is Like Oxygen became their next, and final, UK Top 10 hit.