For months prior to the fan club meeting Morten and Per of 'Off The Record' had been working hard organising everything, and I believe they ran into many more problems than they had ever imagined. One thing that was particularly difficult to carry into effect was Morten's excellent idea of renting a bus on which those of us who lived in the eastern part of Denmark (where Copenhagen is situated) could travel to Braedstrup, which is situated in the western part of Denmark, several hours from Copenhagen. The bus ride would be a perfect opportunity to meet and talk to some other Sweet fans, but as the trip would include a fairly expensive ferry crossing there would have to be at least 20 passengers or so from eastern Denmark in order for the trip to be feasible.

Fortunately we managed to get just enough passengers for the bus ride and everything worked out right in the end, so on June 28th at 6:30 AM (zzzz) we left Copenhagen on a large bus with posters of AS Sweet in the windows. It was Morten who drove the bus - he was up at 3:30 AM to get the bus etc. What a great - and unusual - feeling to ride on a bus listening to Sweet on the stereo, rather than 'just' on a walkman! A little later there was a lottery for a t-shirt and two CDs and afterwards we saw some excerpts from Kevin's latest videos: Live At The Marquée and All That Glitters, which are both highly recommendable. I especially enjoyed seeing Steve Priest in All That Glitters - playing one of their old songs and looking rather effeminate with clear, perfect skin etc. - BUT he also had a little black 'Inspector Clouseau' moustache. There was also an excerpt from an interview with Steve from that period. Even though it was a fairly serious interview, it looked as if he was trying very hard not to break into laughter.

We arrived at Braedstrup early in the afternoon, about three hours before AS Sweet were due to go on stage. The wait didn't seem long, however, as it was great talking to a lot of other Sweet fans. There were some who knew A LOT about Sweet's music, had all their records/CDs etc. I think we all enjoyed being able to talk so much about Sweet. Many of us have no friends who really like talking about Sweet, some have (or used to have!) partners who won't/wouldn't let them play any of Sweet's music, and many of us still remember being mobbed at school as teenagers. Some even had parents who wouldn't let them attend their concerts (let alone try to meet the band!).

Around 4 PM Damian (Andy's son) and some of the band members arrived and started checking the equipment for the special set that Sweet would play as part of the meeting. About 30 minutes later Morten got onto the stage to welcome the band and the meeting started with a Questions and Answers session. We had written our questions on bits of paper in advance but as it turned out that many of us had asked more or less the same questions the session was a bit short.

The following were some of the questions and answers:

Are there any videos from the Rainbow concert in '73?
Yes, on the new official video (ie All That Glitters, see above)

Is X-Ray Specs on your new album?
Yes, if you buy the special edition (ie the fan club edition of Hitz, Glitz and Blitz).

One fan wanted to know what had happened to Andy's Gibson guitar, to which Andy replied that the last time they were in Denmark someone stole some of their guitars. That could have been his Gibson, so Andy thinks he'd best leave it at home.

Andy wrote the words for Love Is Like Oxygen five years before it was released. He couldn't find the music to go with the words at that point.

Jeff was a 'Sweet maniac' before he joined the band.

When asked for his opinion of heavy rock today and ten years ago, Andy replied that there is more real play today - something which had been missing for a long time. Ten years ago bands didn't play live.

Cockroach and White Mice are not in the set.

Things we learnt a little later: Andy is 48 years old - NOT 50. The picture of Andy opening a bottle of champagne on the cover of the great album Berlin Blitz was taken when they had their first no. 1 hit in England (with Blockbuster).

When the band had finished answering our questions they played some of their songs. The sound was GREAT! Of all the gigs I've been to, I think this was the one with the best sound! And they played much longer than I expected. They started out with Funny Funny, Co-Co and Poppa Joe (songs I had never heard live before) which were followed by Wig Wam Bam and Little Willy. To my surprise Little Willy really took my breath away - this was probably one of the best of all the good things that happened that day! I must admit I never really like that song before - I prefer their later material. However AS Sweet's live version of the song has always been MUCH better than the original version and it must gradually have become better and better - until on that day it was just fantastic, sounding the way it was always meant to sound.

Then they played what Andy described as an experimental version of Blockbuster, followed by a country & western version of Turn It Down and a short version of Love Is Like Oxygen. As the last song, Andy introduced what was 'probably the most requested song ever': Windy City! GREAT to hear that song - hope will be a permanent part of the set!

Sweet then came down from the stage to sign all kinds of items: CD and record covers, pictures so old Andy didn't know when and where they were from, guitars, scarves .... and those who were not too shy had their pictures taken with Andy. I didn't talk to Andy personally, but he seemed very pleasant, relaxed and in a very good mood, and at the gig in the evening Andy said: 'I think we had a lovely afternoon in the tent'.

After a while the band left and Morten drove them back to their hotel. The rest of us spent a couple of hours chatting, drinking beer and trying out the local culinary 'specialities' (interesting things like equal parts of salt, fish & chips ....).

The gig in the evening was a real 'Braedstrup Blitz'! Even though there were some problems with the sound, I found that on the whole the sound was great - although perhaps a little too loud for those of us who always HAVE to stand right at the front .... They played Windy City again - 'for the diehards', as Andy put it. And Turn It Down (in a version that is very close to the orginal one) seems to have become a more or less permanent part of the set. This is one of my favourite songs - I don't understand why it wasn't a big success in the 70s.

I know it sounds like a cliché, but when Andy is playing the guitar everything feels so right, probably because of his unique style, great skill, perfectionism and experience, combined with the fact that he clearly enjoys what he is doing. It was nice seeing his relaxed, smiling face. The others are great too, and something I really like is that they seem to enjoy playing together - they look at each other with smiles on their faces etc. At one point one of them made a mistake, which caused a great deal of confusion among the band. For a minute or so they tried laughingly to continue playing - then Andy said: 'Sorry, we made a mistake - we'll do it again ....'.

After the gig we were allowed to walk through the backstage area in order that we could find our bus without anybody getting lost on the way. It seemed the band were using the bus as a dressing room. When they had got dressed Andy came up to us and said it had been great meeting us all.

We then got on the bus and headed home. That night we kept saying to each other over and over again what a great day it had been! Even though I had got very little sleep the night before I didn't want to go to sleep - I just wanted to talk about all the things that had happended and hear what the others were talking about. It would have been almost impossible to sleep anyway as there was an icy wind about force 5 blowing inside the bus and a man snoring so loudly that someone said it must be a ground for divorce ;-).

Thanks to Morten and Per, to the band and to everybody else who contributed to making this such a great day! I can't help hoping Morten and Per will want to do it again (this time with more help from the rest of us) when they've forgotten how hard they had to work organising this meeting. And I hope Sweet will come to Denmark again later this year - although they've already done many gigs in Denmark this year (they might as well move to Denmark ....).

Eva Jorgensen (the maniac with the red SWEET scarf)