Talent Is an Asset- The Story of Sparks

by Daryl Easlea

  “The event not to be missed” was released in October 1977. Most people missed it. Without the fanfare that Columbia had promised at the start of the year, Introducing Sparks failed to anticipate the success of new wave, which Sparks had been playing since the late Sixties and which had taken Ron and Russell off into far glitzier directions. At just over 35 minutes long, its nine tracks are polished, bright and catchy yet almost entirely bereft of soul. Ron has subsequently said that the album has no sense of edge; and he’s right. However, what did they expect when recording with session players in a big LA studio? The brothers have suggested that they should have taken a more stylised approach to the recording of the album, yet in some respects its straightness makes it an interesting addition to their catalogue.

  About the only similarity between Introducing Sparks and the previous releases is that it contains the Mael brothers. For one, the sleeve dispenses with all artifice and develops further the portraiture of Big Beat. For this, Bob Seidemann, famous for his shots of The Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin, and who had also shot the Blind Faith album cover, one of Russell’s personal favourites, was employed. The two lush portraits screamed there were to be no gimmicks, this was simply Sparks. Taken in a Hollywood pose, with Russell alone on the front cover and Ron on the back, we see the brothers both adopting the same posture, with one hand raised to camera. Dressed identically in red, with what looks like a fraternity ring on both their little fingers, it emphasises the brothers as twins. Their open-necked shirts suggest an easy formality. Russell’s direct stare suggested that he wants to be looked at, while Ron’s gaze is more distant, looking at the viewer. Russell’s hand is more open as if he is about to comment. The inner bag put the two together. The brothers are laying themselves open to their audience, like any new act that needs introducing. It looks like a picture you would see in a Vegas lobby advertising the evening’s entertainment.

  So what lurks under the glossy cover? Some well-written tunes for sure, which, for the first time in their career, were co-written by Ron and Russell. The difference kicks in 28 seconds into Introducing Sparks with the vocal chorus of opener ‘A Big Surprise’. This is proper, grownup harmonising recalling The Beach Boys. When Rotella’s guitar solo plays over the MOR horn section, it’s hard to believe that this is the same group whose previous opening tracks, from ‘Wonder Girl’ to ‘Big Boy’, had been among their boldest and most aggressive.

  ‘Occupation’ has witty lyrics, cataloguing a range of professions. The backing singers seem to be having a whale of a time as they reel off a list of jobs from sailors to undertakers — and Russell’s introductions to each profession as the song progresses is a touch that gives the album some character. ‘I’m Not’ strays into string-driven mid-period Beatles and is not a million miles away from what ELO were up to at that time. With all guns blazing and a mixed-down solo from Rotella, it attempts to add grit. ‘Forever Young’ clearly acknowledges punk, complete with Russell’s vocal tribute to Johnny Rotten’s ‘Anarchy In The UK’ yelp at the start. It’s one of the Maels’ best songs, yet the lack of bite in the arrangement lets it down. ‘Goofing Off’ is an expertly constructed song, based on a Russian folk dance. The cod-Zorba The Greek/Fiddler On The Roof-isms of this track are especially effective. Brilliantly written and played, it is a precursor to 2006’s ‘Dick Around’. “We thought we’d do something that would fit in with their corporate ideas,” Russell said. “But as you can tell from songs like ‘Goofing Off’, it’s still a Sparks album.”

  The album’s obligatory girl-related songs are the two that work least. For ‘Ladies’, Russell sings through a list of famous ladies, while ‘Girls On The Brain’ is a tale of a man unable to do anything as his skirt obsession is so all-consuming. ‘Over The Summer’, a tale of the duckling growing into a swan over the summer break, is the album’s most explicit tribute to the Wilson brothers and as a pastiche, featuring seven session vocalists singing their hearts out, it works perfectly.

  “On songs like ‘Over The Summer’ we used session back-up singers who had done all the commercials that were supposed to sound like The Beach Boys,” Ron recalled. “Our ode to summer romance,” Russell added, “whereby a guy’s girlfriend goes through a radical transformation over the three-month period. The demo has a naïve charm that we never could recreate using the high-priced session backing vocalists. There’s a lesson to be learned.”

  The album closes with ‘Those Mysteries’, which is the Sparks song most in need of Broadway. Through a child’s eyes Russell wonders about the big questions that surround him. With its well-arranged strings (the demo version shows how accomplished the song was before getting to the studio), Russell plays every possible musical lead.

  Introducing Sparks was supported with a brief tour and a set of promotional pictures. Ron and Russell’s zaniness was again paraded for their new army of fans to devour, as the brothers appeared in a variety of poses — in gorilla suits; Russell pretending to have stabbed Ron; Russell under the legs of a model in a bikini…

  ‘A Big Surprise’ was released as a single in the UK and ‘Over The Summer’ in the US but neither charted. Sparks seemed out of step with what was happening in the contemporary music scene on either side of the Atlantic. If reviewed at all, the notices were not especially favourable: Rolling Stone commented on the duo starting from scratch, but “old fans have disappeared and new ones are few and far between”.

  Hewlett was not pleased with the new direction; he didn’t like the pretentiousness of the cover image or the fact that the brothers were supported by anonymous session players.

  John Hewlett: “We did radio shows and some lip-syncs with it, but it was hardly rock’n’roll. I’d come from a band. They’d been a band threatening to be big and then we were doing this. The [Maels] don’t care if others like it or not. To them it’s another album. It was another lame step after Big Beat; trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.”

  The recording of a European TV appearance encapsulated the gulf between the brothers and the audience. Playing with a large orchestra, the pair performs ‘A Big Surprise’. Russell leaps around while Ron sits at the piano, until the end, when he runs into the crowd and smashes his chair (the ‘big surprise’ of the title, naturally). The audience sit motionless. This was the era of big surprises coming in the form of Donna Summer erotically intoning ‘I Feel Love’ or The Sex Pistols singing about abortions or putting ‘bollocks’ in their album title. Not a deadpan, Chaplin-esque pianist smashing his stool at the climax of an unremarkable song.

  Like Big Beat before it, Introducing Sparks simply disappeared, as did Columbia’s interest. As 1977 became 1978, the band seemed woefully out of step with the times. It was either the brothers’ headstrong nature or simply receiving bad advice that had got them to this position. Four years before, they had created a landmark sound with a landmark album. Now they were out of contract again, unloved and on the way to being forgotten.

  One of the reasons Introducing Sparks didn’t work was that it mostly seemed to recreate the sound of fellow Californians The Beach Boys.* One of the key problems was that The Beach Boys themselves were a huge commercial proposition again, thanks to the unexpected success of the 1974 Endless Summer compilation. In 1976, 15 Big Ones had been the band’s biggest new album for some time, and ’77’s Love You, although not as big, had certainly kept them in the public’s consciousness.

  When asked in 1995 to name the worst record that they had ever made, Russell plumbed for Introducing Sparks. While frequently regarded as an embarrassment, it could not be further from the truth. Over three decades after its release, Introducing Sparks would prove to be one of the highlights of the brothers’ 21 Nights series of shows, which saw their back catalogue being played chronologically in its entirety. “When you go back, you realise it was brilliant,” says Sparks’ current manager, Sue Harris. “There are just some great songs on there. That was one of the joys of the 21 Nights, to stand on the stage and listen to the quality
of the words and music — it’s an amazing record.”

  Ron seemed finally to warm to the album when playing it again, telling Keyboard Player magazine that it was “as strong as the albums of ours which were better known because of more commercial success.” The album was finally issued on CD at the end of 2007 and, at last, it got some attention in the music press that had so sorely neglected it 30 years earlier. Mojo identified “slick tracks whose humour failed to tickle the American psyche and whose smoother patina didn’t connect with their UK fans”. Record Collector said that “nothing by Sparks can be a total failure and this has its gems”. Classic Rock, however, was not so kind; “Kimono My Arse” it said, rather snottily. Toby Manning went to town in The Word writing that Sparks, even on an album as variable as Introducing Sparks, were “a vital antidote to all that is po-faced, self-important and depressingly ordinary in rock, they are also proof that humour and music can not only co-exist but bond, mate and give birth to something between cartoon superhero and freak — monstrous yet muscular, gruesome yet gorgeous”.

  John Hewlett, who had moved from his humble offices in Purley to Westmount Drive, West Hollywood, finally laid his cards on the table. “It was in Munich in 1978,” Hewlett told Sausade magazine in 1990. “We were in a hotel and Ronnie broke down and cried and said I didn’t care any more, that I didn’t care for his music, which of course I did.”

  “Ronnie is a sensitive man and Russell as well, we all are,” Hewlett counters from a 2009 perspective. If you put effort into a work and your manager is critical or you can see they don’t like it, it is devastating. That’s why I could never really engage with Introducing and Big Beat. I was still recovering from this great band and hearing supposedly quality musicians playing. Introducing Sparks doesn’t sound like something I would buy. I’m sorry I upset him. I’d give him a big hug now, but I could only be honest at the time.”

  In October 1977, Hewlett had seen The Dickies, a crazed, hyped-up LA punk band, who reminded him very much of the exuberance and energy created not only by Sparks in rehearsal for Kimono My House, but also of John’s Children. “The Dickies just blew my mind,” said Hewlett. “In their initial line-up, I would put them on a par with the Stones.” This exuberance was something Hewlett hadn’t been feeling his principal act had generated since Propaganda. With his antipathy to their recent material and his enthusiasm for this new act, Ron and Russell sensed that their managers’ loyalties were elsewhere.

  * The Maels might have been able to achieve this at less expense if they’d spoken to Earle Mankey who was, by now, engineer at Brother Studios for The Beach Boys.

  Chapter Eleven

  Tiny Actors In The Oldest Play Or Disco

  “Guitarists are jokes. They’re just so old-fashioned and passé that any band that has got a guitarist is just a joke.”

  Russell Mael, Melody Maker, 1979

  “I wouldn’t be caught dead in a disco!”

  Russell Mael, Melody Maker, 1979

  To provide a story-so-far moment: Sparks had not always been a duo, they had not always made electronic music, but the Giorgio Moroder-produced edition of Ron and Russell’s masterplan from 1979 seemed to change the Sparks dynamic forever. It focused on the small rather than the grandiose in terms of manpower and approach, and created a sound that was, at times, rather enormous. It was also to provide a template that enabled later double-acts, from Soft Cell to Blancmange to Pet Shop Boys, to shuffle the deck of irony and have their turn to sing in front of the machines that go ping.

  Although highly unfashionable in rock circles, the Italian-born Moroder was possibly the hottest thing in popular music in 1978 when he received an approach from the Maels to work with them. Recording in Germany, he had begun his production work in the late Sixties and truly found his stride with the 1972 Chicory Tip hit ‘Son Of My Father’ (‘Tu Sei Mio Padre’), propelled along by primitive synthesisers. However, the working partnership that was to define his career was struck in 1974 when he started recording with an American expat also living in Germany. Donna Summer had achieved great success in the German stage version of Hair!, so she stayed on in the country to capitalise on this. Moroder and his engineer, Pete Bellotte, were so impressed with her full-throated, gospel-trained voice that they began to combine her soulful authenticity with their studio mastery — and, as digital technology became readily available, their increasing use of the synthesiser.

  The first single to attract attention was ‘Love To Love You Baby’, released in 1975 and a slow-burning hit around the globe throughout 1976. Sultry, late night and dreamy, its infamy was guaranteed by Summer’s prolonged simulation of orgasm during the record’s climax. Chiming with the post-Emmanuelle, pre-AIDS world this seemed as modern as one could possibly get. However, it was their 1977 collaboration that sealed their reputation and partnership. Heard today, ‘I Feel Love’ still sounds as revolutionary as it did then. Its use of sequencer was practically unheard of and its grinding, synthetic repetition, combined with Summer’s strange, space-like vocal and robotic movements, was at once of the time and entirely ahead of it.

  Introducing Sparks had taught Ron and Russell a valuable lesson: things had to change. The rock format as they knew it was, for the moment, finished. Working with session players, too, was not viable. Two records they’d heard while making Introducing Sparks made them stop and think: one was a cover of Harold Melvin and The Bluenotes’ ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way’ by Thelma Houston. The other was ‘I Feel Love’. “It was now time to approach it in a completely different way,” Ron said. “We heard ‘I Feel Love’ and we thought that there must be a way to apply that sort of sound and thinking to what we were doing.”

  “It was a real ‘What do we do now?’ moment,” Russell told the author in 2003. “We had nostalgia for England and Europe, again America was not for us. So we went to Germany. We just said ‘Screw it, we’re tired of what we’re doing and we’re tired of the area we’re boxed into’. What if we apply the strengths that we have — the songwriting, the lyrical slant and the singing style — and apply it in a different framework? We contacted Giorgio Moroder.”

  The story has often been told that while being interviewed by a German journalist in LA, Ron and Russell had discussed working with Moroder. The reporter happened to be friends with the producer and made known their desire. That may have indeed happened, but the reality was somewhat more prosaic.

  In one of his final acts as Sparks’ manager, John Hewlett made all the arrangements — and he was instrumental in the new direction. “I recall being bowled over with electronic sounds at that time, especially The Man Machine by Kraftwerk,” Hewlett says. “I recall encouraging Ron to embrace synths and electronic sounds in general, and the Moroder idea was a natural part of our conversation at that time. I would not claim it was my idea or indeed Ron or Russell’s, although I do know I made contact via his office and arranged the initial meeting between Moroder and the Maels.”

  Moroder was aware of Sparks: “I’d seen Sparks for the first time on a TV show in England,” he said in 2007. “I was immediately interested and intrigued with the way Russell was singing and the way that the group was performing, with Russell being the outspoken guy and Ron playing the more austere guy who doesn’t smile.” The meeting occurred and the brothers and Moroder gelled immediately. Moroder offered to sign them to a production deal.

  “Giorgio was interested in working with us,” said Russell, “because at that time he had never worked with a band — he’d only really worked with solo diva-esque singers. None of us knew where the thing was going to go and we didn’t know about electronics at the time and Giorgio did. Sometimes you have to put yourself into situations where you are not comfortable and you’re not sure what the end result is going to be — then you arrive at your most interesting stuff.”

  Shortly after the producer’s introduction, and after nearly six years as Sparks’ manager, John Hewlett was dismissed in a Beverly Hills hotel lobby by Moroder himself. Typical
ly, Ron and Russell said little.

  John Hewlett: “They had obviously met and [the brothers] had made their decision. I got them involved with [Moroder] and then I was ousted. Giorgio Moroder told me that they didn’t want to work with me any more. They were there, sitting very sheepishly in the background. I was really upset. He saw the potential and went for it. He wanted me out and him in. Before the record was cut, he took over.”

  Although he had not been happy with their last two Sparks albums, Hewlett was still a friend — and a fan. “Business-wise, I’d set them up properly, helped them buy their properties. I got them good publishing contracts with rights reversion. We saw their lawyer and drew up an agreement. I was now involved with the hot band in town, which I thought could only add to the credibility of the management.”

  That hot band was The Dickies. In March 1978, Hewlett was instrumental in getting them signed to A&M. He’d arranged for Derek Green, the man who had signed and then dumped The Sex Pistols from the label the previous year, to take Jerry Moss to see them, and they were snapped up on the spot. Hewlett called Earle Mankey and the two of them produced the band’s debut album, The Incredible Shrinking Dickies, at Brother Studios. “The Dickies just blew my mind,” Hewlett says. “Their live performances were something else. That’s why it was easier parting from Sparks. I wasn’t going to stand in Ron and Russell’s way.”

  Hewlett became A&R man for A&M in the early Eighties, where he oversaw Captain Sensible’s 1982 number one, ‘Happy Talk’, and attempted to sign Sade. A path of spirituality and a return to further education was to follow.* With Hewlett now gone, Joseph Fleury was promoted to the role of Sparks’ de facto manager, a role he’d been rehearsing for all this time.