The 1973 classic rock single that went from booed off stage to David Bowie’s approval: “A winner”
The hair, the costumes, the sound, everything about The Sweet screamed the 1970s: It was blistering and, indeed, blitzing.
That obviously was the real operative word in this case, as the band’s 1973 hit ‘Ballroom Blitz’ transcended the original chaotic scenes it came from and landed as a glam rock anthem, with a seal of approval even from the king himself. From Kilmarnock to the world, the violence from that one fateful night deserved some legendary status.
For a long time, the concept of a hit like ‘Ballroom Blitz’ was akin to hitting the motherload for The Sweet: something they’d always been in search of, and found in sporadic bursts with songs like ‘Funny, Funny’ and the number one ‘Block Buster!’. Yet what they really wanted was something so blazing, so eye-catching that it would last the test of time.
Then it arrived right on their doorstep. The London band had travelled north of the border all the way to Kilmarnock in East Ayrshire, Scotland, to perform a show at the town’s Grand Hall. But even though the crowd had paid and packed in to see the rockers, the event was far overshadowed by the chaos that ensued of their own creation.
One shove led to a punch, that punch led to a kick, and almost before anyone knew what was happening, the whole place had descended into a mass brawl. Suddenly, The Sweet themselves were no longer the main attraction, and as valiantly as they tried to carry on, there was no safe way they could do it.
They left the stage and abandoned the gig that night, but rather than being annoyed, as other artists might have felt at the situation, songwriters Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman were inspired. They translated the vivid scene into song and came out with ‘Ballroom Blitz’. The next thing was to send it fighting up the charts.
The tune reached number two and became one of the band’s most recognisably blistering hits, in doing so becoming a searing staple of the glam rock canon. But in doing so, it also caught the attention of the god of the genre himself, David Bowie, who said, “That’s a great song, that’s definitely a winner” when he heard it in the RCA label offices for the first time.
With a rubber-stamp of success like that, there was little that The Sweet could do wrong in the moment, having captured the fractious and broiling energy of the ‘70s mania into one cannonball of a tune, hammering through beats and rhythms to deliver one true final sucker punch of an anthem.
That night in Kilmarnock was both infamous and iconic in equal measure. It may have created some pretty bloody consequences for those who were in attendance, but at least as they iced their injuries and tended to their scars, they could rest in the knowledge that they had a better concert memento than anyone else in the world: an entire raucous song devoted to their exploits.
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