Boneshaker –Sweetness –The Mike Berry Story Part 3

Boneshaker –Sweetness/ Badman Strikes Again –London HLU 10332 (1971 UK)

Sweetness is another magic Mike Berry production of a great song –it’s real ’67 psych with a pinch of Russell Morris’ The Real Thing and some commercial Steam catchiness (Na Na Na), it should have been a hit.

Sweetness was written by Bill Parkinson, a session man Mike used on many of the cover versions he did for Reditunes. At the end of a session at Radio Luxemburg, Mike recorded Sweetness at the 4 track studio there. The band on the track were the same guys who recorded Hey Hey Jump Now/ Goodbye (CBS 7760) as The One Hit Wonders.

The track also has a strange monophonic Phasing/Flanging effect quite unlike the swooshing phasing so prevalent in ’67. MB “The original phasing was great. I first heard it on Timi Yuro’s The Hurt. The second time I heard it was when I was in Regent Sound Studios when The Small Faces recorded Itchycoo Park. The engineer let me have a go at it. I’m not sure if my attempt at manual phasing (releasing one ¼ tape slightly after the other) was used on the record, but I just love phasing”.

Sweetness was the first British record to come out London American … MB: “ Nobody wanted to release it, but a friend of mine went to Geoff Milne at London Records who loved it, but we had to pretend it was an American record!”

The B side is a fun Creedence Clearwater Revival recreation with a C&W bent and masses of gunfire sound effects.
“It had nothing on the B side except a backing track that I had done when in my John Fogerty mood. I loved Bad Mood Rising and we basically just tried to get the sound they got on Cosmo’s Factory. It was a tribute to John Fogerty.”

Click on title for a soundclip of Sweetness