Talent Is an Asset- The Story of Sparks

by Daryl Easlea

  A prospective tour of the States supporting Todd Rundgren came to nothing. Ron and Russell contacted John Hewlett. They wanted to come to England to work with him again. They initially considered taking the whole band with them, but the work permit situation disallowed this — or provided the Maels with a decent excuse to start all over again.

  Harley Feinstein: “There was no other activity going on. We sort of stopped functioning as a band. I was in a period where I was really into skiing. Russ called me up out of the blue and asked if I wanted to go to England.”

  Feinstein was given some time to think about it, but his sense of relief at being back in LA was strong, something he feels the Maels picked up on. He called back and said he would like to return with them but heard nothing. Harley was surprised when the husband of his then girlfriend’s sister saw the Maels having a garage sale. “Your buddies in the band say they’re selling everything and moving over to England,” he was told.

  Harley Feinstein: “I later heard they tried to put a deal together that would involve us, but it didn’t happen. I was never very sure about what had happened. James Lowe was rummaging through his possessions a few years ago when he came across a postcard from England from Ron, on which he said they really tried hard to get the whole band over — but ultimately just the two of them went.”

  “The worst time was definitely when Ron called me up one day and said ‘We’re leaving. Goodbye’. He was nice about it but I was upset,” Jim Mankey says ruefully. “I was pretty broken up about it but now I see that’s just the way things work. That was not fun. It was as simple as that, a phone call and goodbye. Pull off the Band-Aid quickly, I guess, was Ron’s approach. I think I would’ve had something to offer to them but it didn’t work out that way.”

  “In a way we were screwing the band, but there was nothing going on here,” Ron told Trouser Press in 1982. “We weren’t in a position to say, ‘If so-and-so can’t go with us then we’re not gonna go.’ We had two albums out that probably sold a combined 2,000 or 3,000 copies, so we packed up and went to England.”

  Russell was more up front in a 1993 Q interview with John Aizlewood: “We had to decide whether to save the relationship with our college buddies or cause a lot of resentment. We said fuck ’em and jumped on the first plane.”

  Jim Mankey is ultimately sanguine about the split. “It makes you reconsider your goals in life and to approach something else, so I went back to school and that was a good thing. I majored in electronics engineering.” Although he got on well with the brothers, Jim could never quite figure them out. “They didn’t really get very personal and divulge their innermost secrets but that’s OK, it suited me just fine. I was quite like that myself. I never expected them to be my pals, although they were my pals. They were good friends. They took their persona from here and there. There’s no telling what kind of people they really are underneath all their arty trappings.”

  Jim could also see that England was imperative if the brothers were to achieve their desired level of success: “There was nothing in this country even similar to what they were trying to do. Anything away from the norm was unacceptable.”

  John Hewlett: “The [Maels] got in touch and said to me that the band had broken up and that they were on their own and asked if I was still interested in managing them. I went away and looked into it.”

  The first edition of Sparks ultimately hadn’t worked out. Larry Dupont is still saddened that it didn’t necessarily achieve its potential. “I think the band was way too sophisticated for its audiences. Certainly too sophisticated for the people managing them. They had so many ideas in their heads and so many things they were trying and most of the time they were playing over the heads of the people who heard them.”

  Dupont admired John Hewlett, and once he knew Hewlett would be involved going forward, he could see the potential. “I think what John did was help bring them down to earth. They really worked well together. Once they were the group that John helped put together, it was always Ron and Russ’ group and only Ron and Russ’ group. Before that, everybody had an input and Earle’s input was certainly as strong as Ron and Russ’. Even though Ron and Russ really did the songwriting, Earle insisted on tossing in his two cents’ worth. There was a real sense of cooperation in the community.”

  After his exhausting spell in London, his 3am lights out and 7am starts, Dupont was glad of the break and joined Feinstein on the skislopes. Larry had played a key role in getting Sparks to this point and had done so on love and very little money. Roy Silver had agreed with Dupont that his 24-hour days should be rewarded with a percentage, but as always it was the usual case of finding the money.

  Larry Dupont: “I don’t think Ron and Russ really ever understood how much of a role I actually played. I know Roy did and John did as he asked me but you know… that’s life. People view things differently from their own perspective.”

  Dupont is anxious, however, that after all these years, his hand is not overplayed: “I’m overstated in some areas for what I did and understated in other areas. One thing is for sure, I was not in any way the sixth Spark!”

  Dupont went on to be a photographer and designer, Jim Mankey went into bands and had great success with Concrete Blonde; Harley Feinstein became an attorney-at-law. It is only Earle Mankey, the Maels’ right-hand man for the first three years, who continued to work intermittently with Sparks. He became a renowned producer/engineer and worked for The Beach Boys’ Brother Studios.

  There were two final factors in Sparks’ relocation to the UK: family and Vietnam. Amazingly, Miriam and Rogie were now living near Clapham Junction in South London, having relocated the previous year. Also, the spectre of the Asian war still played a part. Although conscription ended in December 1972, as Dupont noted, “These were very strange times because, although the war was scaling down, a whole bunch of us in the back of our minds were still thinking ‘We don’t want to serve in Vietnam’.”

  Everything was about to change and, stylistically at least, everything was in place. Writing in 1975, Joseph Fleury said that Sparks’ early work “represented the beginnings of a musical concept that is still ‘basically the same’. In 1972, Sparks weren’t a country band, or a soul act, who got the whiff of a new trend and jumped aboard the bandwagon. No, Sparks have certainly progressed, but they haven’t really changed at all.”

  * Taylor later wrote how thoughtful the brothers were in his 1983 autobiography, 50 Years Adrift (In An Open Necked Shirt).

  * John’s Children’s few recordings were released on the Los Angeles-based White Whale label and their first single, ‘Smashed! Blocked!’ (re-titled to the less controversial ‘The Love I Thought I’d Found’ in the UK), received much airplay on local LA stations in late 1966.

  * Harris didn’t call Sparks “mock rock,” though — that was a put-down reserved for The New York Dolls the following year.

  * The Sparks (aka Halfnelson) album was never officially released on its own in the UK. To capitalise on Sparks’ success on rival label Island, Warners re-released Sparks and A Woofer In Tweeter’s Clothing as part of their double 2Originals Of series in 1975. A beautifully packaged album, it came with a 16-page booklet containing a fascinating ‘early days’ biography by Joseph Fleury. There were also full lyrics and commentary from Ron and Russell. Although not a huge seller, it was a perfect introduction to that tricky early Sparks era.

  Chapter Four

  Island Life

  “It was like a recipe; with Ron and Russell you had the major ingredients, but you can’t make a great cake without the egg.”

  John Hewlett, 2009

  Ron and Russell Mael had made the decision that they were going to come to England to make their name. Sparks’ strange, extended promotional tour of late 1972 had demonstrated that no matter how tiny, there was far more of an appetite in the UK for their music and off-the-wall style than there was in Los Angeles. After all, not only was this the land that had produced The Beatles, The Kinks and The W
ho, it was where glam rock had now taken over and had made lots of former struggling Sixties musicians who previously hadn’t quite fitted, including David Bowie, Slade, and, of course, Marc Bolan, into stars. British comedy, too, at this point seemed to share a lot of Ron’s lyrical subject matter. It was either repressed or innuendo-laden regarding men old enough to know better, continually on a bird-hunt (the tail end of the Carry On film cycle, On The Buses), or deconstructive and arty (Monty Python’s Flying Circus). And the UK was so near continental Europe where all of Ron and Russell’s film heroes resided. Aesthetically, every box was being ticked for their emigration.

  On top of that, art and pop had melded perfectly with Roxy Music, who had emerged in 1972, initially championed by Melody Maker writer Richard Williams. Roxy Music was the first post-modern pop group. Although everything they did was presented knowingly and with considerable irony, Bryan Ferry sang, in that strange, otherworldly manner of his, love songs of great sincerity, whether it was to women, motorbikes, motorcars or blow-up dolls. And they had a strange personage poking away at a keyboard behind him. Surely there would be room for something similar with an exotic, American twist.

  John Hewlett knew there was one company that would suit Sparks down to the ground: Island Records. Island had been a relatively small independent label started by its founder, Chris Blackwell, in Jamaica in 1959. It moved through licensing Jamaican tracks to UK audiences to licensing its artists to other labels, to, in 1967, establishing its legendary ‘pink’ Island logo.

  Soon, Island had a reputation second-to-none for a variety of left-field artists, drawing mainly from Blackwell’s love of Jamaican music, but also tapping fully and earnestly into the folk/hippie movement. “The label was enjoying its success,” former head of A&R Richard Williams says. “The sales and marketing people were music enthusiasts, who gave the place — apologies for period slang — a real family vibe. At that time everybody was working towards the same objective. The tone was set by the number of off-duty musicians hanging around.”

  The year 1972 was probably the peak of Island’s album success — 20 albums, covering a broad range of music, were in the Top 50. The roster included John Martyn, Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, Bob Marley and the Wailers, Jimmy Cliff, Cat Stevens and Vinegar Joe to name but a few. It also licensed the work of Chrysalis, which meant Jethro Tull were on the label, co-owned Manticore with Emerson, Lake and Palmer and, from an art-pop perspective, the EG management stable.

  That same year, the label had released Roxy Music’s debut album through EG. Their bright, ironic, cinematically informed work displayed a clear precedent for Sparks to find a perfect home at Island. The label also had a small, committed team headed by Blackwell, operating out of St Peter’s Square in Hammersmith and Basing Street Studios in Notting Hill, both in west London. Blackwell had already begun to step back from the running of the business as he was taking care of the acts in which he had a personal stake. “At that point I had been with Traffic and they were touring a lot in America,” Blackwell recalls. “1973 was, of course, when Bob Marley started coming on the scene and I started getting involved with that. It was a period when I was mostly travelling and in the studio.”

  In his absence, Island was run by David Betteridge, who headed up the day-to-day affairs with his team of Tim Clark as Director of Marketing, Richard Williams, Head of A&R, and former Spencer Davis Group bassist, Mervyn ‘Muff’ Winwood, as the Head of A&R at Basing Street studios.

  “I’d joined Island in September 1962. I’d worked with Chris when he was with Leslie Kong,” David Betteridge recalls. “We’d built a solid base when we had the West Indian label, and by the early Seventies we were cooking with gas.”

  By 1973, there were two distinct camps within Island — Blackwell and his people in one and Betteridge, Winwood and Clark occupying the other. Betteridge, whose forte was marketing and promoting, had his own A&R team and an unwavering belief in what he was selling. John Hewlett struck up an excellent relationship with Betteridge and, on hearing of Ron and Russell’s intentions, Hewlett got an initial handshake deal to bring them over.

  Although nothing formal was yet in place, Betteridge had heard of Sparks. The approval of Winwood would seal the deal and Hewlett played him the Bearsville albums. Like Hewlett, Muff had been a bass player in a Sixties four-piece and, also like Hewlett, he was arguably the least musical of his group. Winwood’s first major signing to Island had been his younger brother Steve’s progressive act, Traffic.

  Muff Winwood: “I was aware of John when I worked in A&R at Island. He asked if he could come and see me because he’d got this record from America and he wanted to bring the band to England. This was the time when rock was just exploding with the big heavy guitar bands really starting to make their name. Suddenly, I hear music that is so weird but still incredibly rhythmical.”

  Tentatively impressed by what he heard, he asked to see a picture of the band. If he thought the music sounded weird, he was now staring at a picture of Ron Mael. “That did the trick,” Winwood exclaims. “They looked so bizarre; you just had to give it a go.”

  Hewlett got the air fares arranged, and secured a provisional deal. “I could get into companies because I knew people in the industry,” says Hewlett. “David gave me money and I was able to do what I did to bring them in.”

  Muff Winwood: “I met them and that was enough really. It was obvious to me that they were so different from anything else that was happening. I knew that somewhere down the line they would strike a chord and John Hewlett seemed like the kind of guy who would make things happen.”

  Although verbally committed to the principle, Betteridge and Winwood still needed the decision rubber-stamped by Chris Blackwell.

  “At that time, Island was one of the first places for an act to try and sign,” says Blackwell. “As I was on the road a lot, they’d come and see David, Muff or Tim. Tim had signed Roxy Music and Muff brought me Sparks.” To say Blackwell was initially cool towards the band is an understatement. Many recall his view to be similar to his attitude when first encountering Roxy Music — ice cold.

  “Sparks was not Chris’ sort of music,” Tim Clark recalls. “It showed in what he signed and liked — look at Steve Winwood, Robert Palmer and Bob Marley and you get an idea of the outstanding singers that he went for. He was ambivalent; he certainly wasn’t very involved.”

  John Hewlett: “Chris didn’t like Sparks; I mean really didn’t like them.”

  However, Blackwell believed in the people around him, and soon warmed to the idea of having these American brothers on the label. “I thought it was totally different to anything I had heard before,” Blackwell states. “They were and are totally unique — there’s nothing like them. I’ve always been attracted to something that is really different, so although it wasn’t immediate for me, I got there. Their whole thing, their graphic sense, their sense of show business, it was to become so much more than just regular records. There was something about them — they had a style all of their own.”

  John Hewlett: “Ron and Russell were under contract to Bearsville and Roy Silver. As along as the contractual situation was sorted, I said that I would be happy to bring them over. That was that.”

  Although Roy Silver had a great deal of confused affection for his group, he realised that the game was over. Bearsville released Sparks from their contract in summer 1973 with not a jot of protest.

  Larry Dupont: “When they left Roy in the dust, I felt really bad for him. He had given many months of his life to try and break them.”

  Silver continued with his stable of artists, eventually making Bill Cosby one of the highest-grossing television stars the US had seen.

  Ron and Russell arrived in London in the early summer, initially staying with Hewlett at his house at Northwood Avenue, Purley, south London, while visiting their mother and stepfather up in Clapham at weekends. They came armed with, according to Nick Kent in his 1974 NME interview with the brothers, an album’s worth of de
motapes — crammed with tunes like ‘Marry Me’, ‘When I Take The Field Friday’, ‘Green Thumb’, ‘I’m About To Burst’, ‘Alabamee Ride’ (sic), a paean to the supermarkets of America, and ‘My Brains And Her Looks’ — that might never make it to record. It was now a case of turning these demos and their undoubted potential into something that would be commercially viable.

  With his experience at Apple, Tetragrammaton and Feldman’s, Hewlett negotiated a competitive publishing deal for Ron and Russell with Lionel Conway at Island Music as well as part of the package, with rights reversion to them after 30 years. The final signing of the recording contract would take a little longer to complete.

  Winwood loved the material he heard and the initial demos, but thought them too weedy and that they needed the raunch of a conventional group behind them. Along with Muff, Clark and Betteridge were very much Sparks champions at Island, impressed by the low-key yet charismatic approach of Hewlett. Hewlett, of course, had worked with Bolan first hand and seen his old John’s Children cohort go on to be the biggest thing in British pop. It was wholly possible Hewlett’s association could do the same for Ron and Russell.

  Tim Clark had achieved much recent success with Roxy Music. “Roxy influenced our whole thinking with Sparks,” he admits. “As I had been working closely with [Roxy co-manager] David Enthoven, we saw [Sparks] as a new, very glammy Roxy Music. We weren’t trying to slavishly copy them, but we knew we wanted that same sort of glossiness. The very name Sparks meant to us that the music would lend itself to a very glossy and arty feel.”

  Not all saw the similarity, however. “There was something more different and complex about Sparks with their stops and starts and tangents,” Chris Blackwell opines. Richard Williams, too, was not so sure. “I wasn’t so keen on them, actually, but I didn’t bother voicing the opinion inside the company because it wouldn’t have been helpful. I hadn’t signed them and they didn’t need my assistance. I certainly didn’t think they’d do the label any harm. I didn’t think we had the ‘new Roxy’, although I’m sure others did. But apart from the fact that I was indifferent to their music, I didn’t think they had the capacity to propel cultural change in the way Roxy had done.”