You’d think that Andy Scott of the glam-rock band Sweet would be a happy man. After all, he is among the survivors from the days of cheesecloth and flares — David Cassidy, the Osmonds and David Essex to name but a glittery few — touring this year in the wake of the 1970s revival.

However, the guitarist who played on such teenybop anthems as Wig-Wam Bam and Ballroom Blitz is in pensive mood as he shows me his converted barn in Wiltshire. “My wife, Maddy, left me in September when I returned from a long tour of Australia, and it was a big shock,” he says. “Every day is an exercise in what the Americans call ‘life laundry’. I’m rearranging things in the house and buying in new stuff, just to assert myself here.

“It’s not the house’s fault we split up, so I’m trying to dissociate it from Maddy. I hope it works, because I don’t really want to leave here.”

Scott, now “in my mid-fifties”, was part of the vintage Sweet line-up with Brian Connolly and Mick Tucker, who have since died, and Steve Priest. He has lived in the barn since 1998, having bought the shell of the broken-down old farm building for £100,000 and spent £300,000 renovating it. Similar properties in the area now sell at about £800,000.

His architects wanted to divide the 100ft x 30ft room into smaller spaces, but he would have none of it. “I wanted a bold approach to let the light in and use all of this wonderful space,” he says. “I made sure the open mezzanine gallery would span only half of the living area below, so you get this feeling of light and space.”

The house has five bedrooms, three bathrooms and a recording studio. Scott’s friend from the glam-rock era, Suzi Quatro, recorded here last year.

Scott’s career graph can be marked by his property buys. Thanks to Sweet’s success, in 1974 he and his first wife sold their cottage in West Drayton for £20,000 and moved to a detached house in Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire. “That was a real rock-star pad, it cost £40,000. Now it would be worth a few million.”

Towards the end of the 1970s, his marriage broke up and Sweet’s audience shrivelled. Scott sold the Gerrards Cross house for £150,000 in 1979, but lost all his equity when he split from his girlfriend of the early 1980s. During these years he worked as a songwriter and producer, but in 1985 he formed a new version of Sweet and bought a flat in Maida Vale in northwest London for £58,000. The band have toured extensively in Europe ever since.

In 1988 he married Maddy, who was a neighbour, and sold the Maida Vale flat for £95,000 in 1991, moving to a cottage in Pewsey, Wiltshire. He bought it for £120,000 and sold it for £190,000 before taking on the barn conversion.

Much of the decor owes a lot to the absent Maddy. The biggest pieces are the sofas, which have an Indian look, the coffee table, made out of the wheel of a Chinese cart, and an unusual antique table. “Maddy chose it. It’s made out of Indian sheesham wood. She left me 18 years, almost to the day, from when we first met. There’s nobody else involved,” says Scott. “I just hope she achieves happiness in life. But this table’s not much use to me now — I’m not throwing dinner parties any more.”