EVEN in their heyday when they were regulars on Top of the Pops, Sweet guitarist Andy Scott admits that the band were very much misunderstood.

With hits including Wig Wam Bam, Hell Raiser and the number one Blockbuster, Sweet were always classed as being part of the glam era of the Seventies. But at heart Sweet were - and remain - a rock band, at times a very heavy rock band.

“I’m not sure why but people didn’t quite understand what we were really about,” said Andy who joined the band in 1971. “There was always a clue on the B sides of our singles which were our songs and were pretty heavy.

“John Peel in the early Seventies would play the B sides but wouldn’t tell anyone who the band was. He even, one week, said he would give a prize to any listener who could guess what it was and only a few people got it right.”

Initial hits such as Wig Wam Bam and Little Willy did nothing to establish Sweet as a rock act, no matter how commercially successful they were.

Written by Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, the hits were, says Andy, only one element of the Sweet story.

“Mike Chapman was writing these nursery rhymes for everyone and we said to him ‘you haven’t got a clue what we’re like on stage have you?’ We told him to get in his limo and come and see us play in Glasgow.

“To his credit, he did - and he was shocked.

“The hits Blockbuster, Hell Raiser and Ballroom Blitz were all based around what he’d seen,” said Andy.

The classic Sweet line-up featured singer Brian Connolly who died in 1997 but who, due to ill health, stopped touring with the band in 1979.

In the mid Seventies, the band toured the States where they had major chart success.

“Really in the States only songs from Blockbuster onwards meant anything to us and to our audiences over there,” said Andy. “I think eventually we would perform Wig Wam Bam as part of an encore medley but really only under duress.”

Now Andy has a more relaxed attitude to the band’s back catalogue.

“We will be playing for getting on for two hours so within that there are all the hits, a few hidden gems and a couple of little surprises thrown in,” he said.

It is only in the last couple of years that the Sweet have been playing UK dates.

“It’s grown from a couple to a handful and now we’ve got 12 dates lined up before Christmas,” said Andy.

“People might not know but we supported the Bay City Rollers on their comeback tour and we also did a couple of dates with Rainbow and I think that has rekindled people’s interest in the band.”

Having a song on the soundtrack of one of the biggest films of all time has helped too.

“I went to the pictures a couple of years ago to see the latest Star Wars film with my son,” said Andy. “There was a trailer for a new film and the opening bars of Fox on the Run started up. My son got so excited. He said ‘dad, your song’s in Guardians of the Galaxy. That’s massive’. It can’t have done us any harm can it?”

So are the Sweet of 2018 as heavy as the Sweet of the mid Seventies?

“If we were as heavy as we once were we probably wouldn’t be playing as often as we are,” he said. “We have moderated which means we now have music for everyone.”

Sweet, King George’s Hall, Blackburn, Saturday, December 8. Details from 0844 847 1664 or www.kinggeorgeshall.com