EYEWITNESS

From ’72 to ’74, The Sweet, Suzi Quatro and Mud had 16 Top 10 singles, including such stomping Number 1s as Can The Can, Block Buster! and Tiger Feet. The common thread? Songwriting/production power duo Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn, AKA Chinnichap. But the hits couldn’t compensate for rivalry, fatal fame and personality clashes. “Amps were cranked up to 11,” muse the protagonists. “But Chapman and Chinn became bigger stars than their bands…”

Interviews by TOM DOYLE

Yes, she Can Can: Suzi Quatro in 1974, with deluxe ‘one man/ two-fags’ smoke machine for maximum mean-and-moodiness.

Portrait by ROGER BAMBER

Phil Wainman: The Sweet played at my wedding. The actor Paul Nicholas said, “I’ve got this band, they’re from Ruislip. And if you produce them, I’ll manage them.” And that’s how it began. [Debut 1968 single] Slow Motion was a good record, and they were a great little band then. They were kind of my age group. Brian [Connolly, singer] was a little older than me. They were my first production. I was introduced to Nicky Chinn and we tried writing together, but it just wasn’t happening. And then he turned up with a waiter from [London nightclub] Tramp, Mike Chapman.

Mike Chapman: I first met Nicky in late 1969. I was in a struggling band named Tangerine Peel and needed to do something to pay the rent. I’d been writing pop songs for a couple of years. Nicky was a regular customer at Tramp – a rich English kid with nothing better to do than go out every night and dance very badly. After he told me he’d heard I was in a band and that he, too, was a songwriter, I took my guitar to his apartment in Mayfair, and we set about trying to write together.