What Happened To Brian Connolly Of The Sweet?

 What happened to Brian Connolly of The Sweet?

Ballroom Blitz

“Oh, it’s been getting so hard

Living with the things you do to me, ah-ah

My dreams are getting so strange

I’d like to tell you everything I see…

I'm reaching out for something

Touching nothing's all I ever do

Oh, I softly call you over

When you appear there’s nothing left of you, ah-ah”

My first article in ages was going to be Where Did Punk Really Originate? But I found myself as Im going into research about the The Sweet, Glam Rock etc (and John Lydons’s recent assertion that UK Punk was influenced by Glam Rock.) changing tack and my first article is actually "What Happened To Brian Connolly?"

Brian Connolly was the lead singer of The Sweet from its beginnings to 1979, a while after he’d been viciously attacked outside a venue and his throat severely kicked in. An end to a golden, kick arse voice? Well, not really because you can still hear his dulcet tones (he really could sing) on arguably The Sweets greatest hit, written by themselves "Love Is Like Oxygen" (1978).

Connolly, half brother to Taggart’s Mark MacManus was haunted in some sort of way by his 'orphan' roots. Left in a hospital in Glasgow, as a baby by his teenage mother - and suspected of having meningitis — he was adopted by the MacManus family at the age of two. His father probably was Mark MacManus father too. But no-one was saying. They both saw the resemblance though.

Steve Priest is quoted as saying that Brian told him about his orphan status within the first half hour of their meeting. Brian, says his ex wife Marilyn Walsh wanted to be a star. He looked like one. She did his blond hair into the classic seventies shaggy mullet. He was a dynamite frontman for The Sweet. And in a very cool way, actually looked really 'sweet’.

The Sweet had a string of hits from the early seventies on - Little Willy, Hellraiser, Blockbuster, Teenage Rampage (see the punk thing?) Fox On The Run, Ballroom Blitz, Love Is Like Oxygen.

Brian took to the rock n roll lifestyle, Little Willy is apparently about his penis. (Chapman and Chinn wrote the song inspired by Connolly's love of night clubs)

He drank too much. He says in an interview that was the norm, the band had events, receptions, gigs etc to go to. He didnt seem to think it was a problem. Even years later.

Big mistake. After he’d been sacked by the other members of The Sweet, in 1981 he had twelve heart attacks, caused by alcohol and a diuretic he was prescribed for bloating.

So life went on -for a star like Andy Gibb, also an addicted personality, life ended pretty quickly. (He died in 1988 of heart failure) But for Brian Connolly it was business as usual, he toured in various bands as his version of The Sweet and wound up playing in Butlins (so did Marty Wilde mind you), old before his time, limping, misshapen, barely able to walk, doing interviews on TV only to be ridiculed for his music and seventies style.

He died in 1997 February 9th - not long after his half brother Mark MacManus, who also died of an alcohol related illness.

Maybe he was reaching out for something?

But...touched nothing.

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