At Christmas 1974, I was given a cassette player and along with that, I was given the cassette version of the album everyone wanted that year, Propaganda by Sparks.
Sparks had earlier that year in May broken into the UK single charts with This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both Of Us and followed that up with Amateur Hour in July.
They had achieved this success after leaving their native Los Angeles and relocating in London. During their initial stay in London, they had a residency at the Marquee club, which included a support act called Queen, it was after this gig that Ron and Russell Mael having lost their guitarist invited Brian May to join their band, he declined!!!
Sparks were a band that looked so different to anyone else, when you saw them on Top of the Pops, Russell, with his bouffant hairstyle prancing and dancing around and brother Ron, sitting still and sneering at the camera, with his menacing eyes and Hitler-style moustache, while playing the keyboard. There was always one group on the programme that you liked and your Dad would say, “look at these pricks!’
Mine at the time were Sparks.
Over the years Sparks have re-invented themselves many times from rock, glam-rock, electronic, disco, new wave and synth-pop.
I remember the summer of 1975, going on my first over-seas holiday to Douglas in the Isle Of Man with my friend David Castle-Smith and his parents. There were two things that we kept going back and forth to shops in the High Street to look for - both of us were eying up Adidas t-shirts from a sports shop while next door was Woolworths and I ws desperate to get my hands on the new Sparks’ single Get in the Swing.
It was trying to buy these items that highlighted to us the difficulty of living on a wee island in the middle of the Irish Sea in the seventies, where every product had to be brought in by a ferry that only arrived twice a week, but even now all these years later Mrs. Castle-Smith reminds me of how impatient we were, turning up at the shops every day to find out if the shirts and the single had been delivered. But it was worth it as David and I were the first to have red Adidas shirts in Kirkcaldy !!!!! But only now has the the though occured to me...........why the hell did I want a single on holiday, when I had nothing to play it on??
In 1979, Sparks relocated again, this time to Munich to work with Georgio Moroder at his Musicland Studios on their album No 1 in Heaven. The Mael brothers had heard the successful work done by Moroder on Donna Summer’s worldwide hits I Feel Love and Love to Love You Baby and wanted to replicate the synthesisers sound and electronic drum sound. Interestingly, Keith Forsey, who would go onto co-write Simple Minds’ American No1 Don’t You Forget About Me, played drums on the album.
Their ability to change their musical style has seen Sparks stay at the forefront of modern music and their musical influence is cited as important to many performers such as Morrissey, Franz Ferdinand, Depeche Mode, Arcade Fire and New Order.
Morrissey’s admiration for the brothers, saw him invite the band to be his first pick to play the Meltdown Festival in 2004, when he was curator of the festival and then Sparks replied to him on their 2008 album Exotic Creatures of the Deep with the track Lighten Up Morrissey. The Meltdown Festival is held annually in London and, is a mixture of music, art, performance and film. It numbers Elvis Costello, Jarvis Cocker, John Peel and Nick Cave as previous curators over the years.
I never managed to see Sparks until after they released their 2006 album Hello Young Lovers. The album had some of the most innovative sounds and songs that I'd heard in years. The first single Perfume, was as fresh and different to anything else that was released that year and without doubt was my personal favourite track of the year. I turned up at the Carling Academy in Glasgow, as excited as I was when I went to bed that Christmas Eve back in 1974.
I was also very fortunate to be on the guest list, as I was at the gig with a good friend of mine, John Richardson, proprietor of Ripping Records in Edinburgh and his wife Margaret. Sparks were like no other show I’d ever seen, the gig was a mixture of music, theatre and an interactive film show. The show was split into two parts, first half they played the whole of their new album and then they came back after a short break to play a selection of their ‘hits’.
Throughout the first half, Russell still jumped around as he done all those years ago but the big change was Ron who on tracks like The Very Next Fight, he got up to have a fist fight with an animated shadow of himself!!! During the break, a friend of John Richardson came up to him and said, “How wonderful Sparks were and it wasn’t a gig it was a HAPPENING!!”
The second half of the show was everything that been waiting all those years for. The band were tremendous with the female drummer Tammy Glover, producing the heartbeat of the back catalogue. I also got to see Ron Mael’s famous keyboard with it’s special front that instead of reading Roland (the manufacturer) has RONALD on it. And after all those years, I didn’t have to wait long to see them again as they returned to Glasgow at the ABC just 8 months later.
The Mael brothers ability to be innovative is still there. In May and June 2008, they played 21 nights at the Carling Academy in Islington where they performed their 20 albums in chronological order before on the last night they premiered their newsest work, the aforemetioned Exotic Creatures Of The Deep, complete with Moz 'tribute'.
On a recent Word Magazine podcast, a reader posed the question, “If it ever kicked off between Sparks and the Pet Shop Boys who would win ??”
Neil Tennant in reply said, “It has kicked off!! There was an article in the Q (music magazine) where Sparks were asked about their massive musical influence on electronic pop duos, one of the Mael brothers retorted, “I mean, there are actual Pet Shop Boys’ hits that we’ve written!!!” Tennant tells how he got really annoyed and wrote an angry letter to Q and they printed it. Needless to say the following week, after it went to print, who should he bump into a London rehearsal studios, but Sparks!! Mark Ellen then asked Tennant is the meetinmg had been cordial. Tennant, “They were apologetic and nice”.
Footnote: My wife Alison tells of when she used to play her copy of Propaganda, her mother thought on the track Reinforcements.... Sparks sang " be a Postman !!!"
mp3 : Sparks - Perfume
mp3 : Sparks - Lighten Up Morrissey
mp3 : Sparks - Bon Voyage
mp3 : Sparks - (Baby Baby) Can I Invade Your Country?
John Greer, Monday 1 August 2010
7 comments:
Kimono and Propaganda are amazing, undervalued albums. The decline began thereafter tho Indiscreet had its moments. They kind of got some momentum again with Big Beat but nothing ever again would ever have the sparkle of those first two. (The late 70s and early 80s would give them some of the success they deserved but it never sounded to me like their hearts were in it.) They're still doing interesting work today after, what?, 40 years? Even with its flaws, their canon is amazing.
Nice article John. First band I ever saw live at Dundee Caird Hall in 1974. Was bedlam, like Beatlemania. Loved their music ever since and still do.
Alan Liddell
Good piece John. I reckon you are spot on with Sparks influencing a good number of acts over the years. I liked a quite a lot of the singles. Can't say any of the full albums actually held my attention. Never did see them live but have heard that they always put on a great performance..
Steve Fleming
Enjoyed reading this fine bit of writing about my favourite band.
In the late 70s, the iconic Mael Bros were the model behind the proliferation of pop duos that followed and flourished in the 80s, (and intermittently revisited the format until their L'il Beethoven musical revolt). Regardless of how much inspiration these (often more commercially successful) bands openly attribute to Sparks (Communards and Erasure give them a nod), the parallels of energetic singer with stoical synth player are evident in virtually all. In fact, as a wee boy I thought Soft Cell WERE Sparks!
Glad you saw the two Glasgow performances of "Hello Young Lovers", which showed that the duo in breaking new artistic ground, had lost none of their credentials when resuming the form of a serious rock outfit. Good ol' Glasgow had rustled up a great crowd for both. The atmosphere was only topped by the some of the 21x21 performances in Islington of their bewildering diversity of albums, which drew audiences from all over the country, plus Canada, the States, Scandanavia, Russia, western Europe, Japan etc.
Steve Wallace. Great article John, saw Sparks at the Shepherds Bush Empire in 2000 or 2001, they were fantastic! Love them!
Not heard much of their recent stuff but they sure are a band I'd have liked to see live in their heyday.
Great article wee man, saw Sparks do Propaganda (in full) in London in London 2 years ago and then later the same year Kimono and Exotic Creatures in their entirety.
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