Talent Is an Asset- The Story of Sparks

by Daryl Easlea

  It wasn’t that the Maels had a grand disco masterplan. “We didn’t have a list of other ideas,” said Ron. “That was the only idea we had. A lot of people thought it was a step backwards, that we were entering this disco world. Our sensibility kept it so it was a funny mixture of elements. We were in that area and outside of it at the same time — the lyrics and Russell’s singing kept it separate from the wider world of disco. So much of that music was done by legitimate singers — Donna was amazing. Giorgio was uncomfortable with Russell’s singing at the start. It was a combination of things that kept it from being as slick and processed as some of the other people who were working in that area at the time.”

  Moroder needed to have complete control of the recording. First and foremost, this meant song selection. “He’s part German and part Italian and he can bring out the national characteristics of either, depending on the circumstances,” Ron said. “He’s very definite about what he wants. I’d be bringing songs to him and half the time he’d just reject them out of hand, which was kind of galling. Even worse, I usually had to admit he was right.”

  Four of the six on No. 1 In Heaven were Mael-Mael-Moroder co-writes — the only time that the group have shared a credit with any individual outside the band. As Ron said to Mojo in 2006, “Anytime we were stuck he would say, ‘Boys, let me go away for 15 minutes.’ And he’d go over to an acoustic piano and 15 minutes later he’d have come up with something. Even ‘The Number One Song In Heaven’ took him just 15 minutes at the piano.”

  Only two songs out of the batch Ron had written passed Moroder’s quality threshold, which meant there was a pretty clean sheet to work from. That freshness and spontaneity was a direct contrast to Introducing Sparks. “No. 1 in Heaven was pretty exciting to make because there were no preconceptions of how a disco producer working with an eccentric rock band would turn out,” Ron told Trouser Press in 1982. “This was the only album we’ve ever gone into with almost no material; only ‘Beat The Clock’ and ‘Academy Award Performance’ were written beforehand. Giorgio wrote the music for at least half the other songs. We tried to get as much of us as we could on No. 1, but at the same time we wanted an outside influence; obviously, we got it.”

  Recording in Munich, Westlake and Sound Arts in LA, the Maels and Moroder worked with British-born drummer and Moroder cohort Keith Forsey on live drums. It was Forsey’s sound as much as anything that made No. 1 In Heaven so special. “There wasn’t a choice actually,” Ron said in 2003. “Keith was skilled at playing the kick drum for 15 minutes at a time. We were purists for live drums. When making No. 1 In Heaven, you could use electronic effects that would give it a rhythmic feel but as far as solid rhythms, it always had to be played. It gave it something different.”

  The Maels were now so comfortable with reinvention that they would spend every new release concocting something different. No. 1 In Heaven was nothing short of a glittering comeback. From the 45-second lazy syndrum introduction to the frantic pace-gathering on opening track ‘Tryouts For The Human Race’, this was clearly a very different group from the one whose last offering was the overproduced Introducing Sparks. If an album needed to be called Re-Introducing Sparks, it was this one.

  In true Ron Mael style, the first song to reach the ears of more people than at any time since Propaganda was about sperm. That’s right, spermatozoon, with Keith Forsey’s live drums and the chorus vocals of Dennis Young, Chris Bennett and Jack Moran creating a very un-Beach Boys-like series of harmonies. With this opening six minutes, the Maels, with Moroder, wiped their slate clean and started over.

  ‘Academy Award Performance’ sounds very much a product of its era, ‘La Dolce Vita’ is upbeat with a fantastic breakdown in its fourth minute, while ‘Beat The Clock’ gave the group their first UK Top 10 placing since ‘Amateur Hour’ in 1974. A sprightly, hilarious Mael-tael about the speed of modern living, it showed Ron was writing better than ever. “‘Beat The Clock’ was like a Velvet Underground song when I wrote it at the piano,” Ron said in 2002 to Mojo Collections, “and if you listen to it with that in mind, you can kind of tell. But what Giorgio did with it was amazing.”

  ‘My Other Voice’ completely leaves the orbit of previous Sparks songs; while the other tracks on the album resembled, albeit in a new-fangled form, something that previous versions of the group could have played, ‘My Other Voice’, with its reversed computer hi-hats, was stripped of any semblance of structure. It could be called, for want of a better term, ambient house. Sparks, never a band to play to the mellow, had inadvertently created a chill-out masterpiece.

  This mellow mood was continued by the closing ‘The Number One Song In Heaven’, the highpoint of the writing collaboration between the Maels and Moroder. The first three-and-a-half minutes is swooning, woozy electronica and then, as if a reminder of how remarkable a group Sparks could be, the final pay-off is one of the best pop songs ever to grace a Sparks album. Its speedy, breezy rush marries the old and the new — like a punk version of ‘I Feel Love’. Of course, being from the pen of Ron Mael, there would be an edge somewhere, with a sly jibe at the lack of depth in disco’s lyrics — it was all about the music. ‘The Number One Song In Heaven’ is little short of rapturous. It was this closing section that was chosen to be the first single from the album.

  Sparks now needed another label — their fourth of the decade. Virgin Records seemed a perfect resting place for the group, as quirky and pioneering as Island had been half a decade earlier. Owned by the entrepreneurial Richard Branson, the Virgin label had hit paydirt from its debut release, Tubular Bells, by the 19-year-old reclusive prodigy, Mike Oldfield. By 1977, Oldfield was known as Mike Oldfart, and his money had gone to funding tens of critically lauded, commercially collapsed acts such as Henry Cow, Faust and Hatfield and the North.

  However, Branson’s acute ability to tap into the Zeitgeist was vindicated when the label signed The Sex Pistols who were on the rebound from both EMI and A&M. Their album Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols, was released in October to a barrage of controversy and huge sales, reaching number one on the UK chart.

  The negotiations for Sparks to be on Virgin were swift. Branson remembered their success of 1974 (Virgin had been distributed by Island at that point) and welcomed them on board. Although a recognisable figurehead, Branson was a very different chairman from Chris Blackwell.

  “Branson and Blackwell are a million miles apart,” says David Betteridge, who by now was working for RCA and would soon steer Adam Ant to superstardom before working with Branson at Virgin. “Richard, and he will be the first to say this, is not a music man and never has been. Simon Draper was his music man. When I was there I reported to Simon. Richard could get people together, if he wanted someone he would go after them. He’s a putter-togetherer.”

  Draper engineered the deal and it was decided that a great deal of promotional clout be put behind the duo.* A lot had changed in the UK music industry since 1975. It was the beginning of a phase in marketing when the music alone was simply not enough. In the era of wacky merchandising, Virgin embraced the contemporary wave of gimmicks and pressed No. 1 In Heaven and its singles in coloured vinyl.

  The album was trailed by the March 1979 release of the title track, issued in a 7″ and, for the first time for a Sparks release, a 12″ single version. The album followed in the UK the following month and, for the first time since Kimono My House, Ron and Russell did not appear on the cover, opting instead for fashion models. Its stark white and light blue sleeve, shot by Moshe Brakha, who went on to become an extremely influential fashion photographer, has the air of a slightly funky clinical trial. Designer Steven Bartel worked with the brothers to come up with the idea of putting a laboratory assistant on the sleeve, looking as if they’d just been knocked backwards against the wall from a possible blast. The microscope in the models’ hands reflects how this work was a scientific experiment; the fluorescent strip light above their heads underlines the modernity of the moment. The spar
k plug logo suggests sparks of creativity, of making something new. The picture is replicated on the rear cover, referencing the twinning of Introducing Sparks, with a darker-skinned model.

  No one quite knew what to make of the album. Sounds said, “I don’t think No. 1 In Heaven will go down in history as one of the all-time hot 100 albums, but it’s icy sharp and fresh,” while Tony Ryans in Melody Maker despised the record, calling it, “pathetic…obsolete poses, clapped-out fantasies, undirected satire, tired routines”.

  Friends and associates of Sparks were surprised at this new direction: “I wasn’t totally in love with the electronic direction but it was logical,” Tony Visconti says. “I think they had to do it.”

  “It was a jaw-dropping moment when they reappeared with Giorgio Moroder,” former bassist Ian Hampton said. “I was really surprised to see them, but then I thought good luck to them, they’re branching out again, but then using Giorgio, I did think they were stepping on the bandwagon of the era.”

  Session drummer David Humphrey: “I’d say they went very sort of pop commercial instead of disco. It seemed to click OK. I don’t know what arrangement they had with Virgin but I presume they did very well out of it.”

  What Sparks had achieved was to become noteworthy again. After two albums where they were simply ignored, with No.1 In Heaven, Sparks became the first ‘rock’ band to go fully fledged ‘disco’. Since The Bee Gees had reinvented themselves as southern American R&B gentlemen in the middle of the decade and gone interstellar by soundtracking Saturday Night Fever, many other rock artists had been adding touches of disco to their work or releasing one-off singles — examples being The Rolling Stones’ ‘Miss You’, Kiss’ ‘I Was Made For Loving You’, Rod Stewart’s ‘Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?’ and Mike Oldfield recording ‘Guilty’ in New York at a time when that city was ruled by the wonderful Chic.

  From a modern perspective it can be seen how different these artists can be and how far removed No.1 In Heaven is from ‘Stayin’ Alive’, but at the time it was all seen as the same. And in the UK, it was viewed, at best, with deep suspicion.

  In a Melody Maker interview with Harry Doherty, Ron revealed that this suspicion surprised him: “It seems like everybody is thinking more of the motive than of the music, which is ridiculous. All parties came into this album not really having a clue how it was going to end up. When we’d finished it, none of us had a clue what the category of the thing was.”

  Russell’s comments in the interview were prescient. “We’re really resentful of how our other sound has been emulated about a hundred times since Kimono My House. Just wait six months from now and watch all of the new-wave, synthesiser, disco bands which will be popping up, and disco music becoming very respectable in hip circles. And then somebody else will capitalise on what we’ve done. The same feller that reviewed our album will be raving about disco synthesiser albums by some band that spits on stage.”

  Indeed, within six months many synth acts, who had been underground, became popular. Gary Numan was just about to break through with Tubeway Army and, for a brief period in 1979, The Human League were the hippest band in the known universe. Whereas Sparks were viewed as chancers.

  “It wasn’t the pejorative ‘disco music’ — call it ‘dance music’ today and it’s cool again!” Russell said in 1983. “England really picked up on that album. In an interview recently, The Human League cited that record as the thing that got them excited and focused on what they were doing, showed the possibilities. We’ve achieved enough success now that people can come out of the woodwork and say, ‘Sparks? Yeah, I always liked them’.”

  As the sprightly, uptempo zing of the seven inch edit of ‘The Number One Song In Heaven’ started its slow ascent up the charts, on May 10, five years and a day after ‘This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both Of Us’ made its debut on the programme, the band were back on Top Of The Pops. This time there were no Wombles surrounding them but The Damned singing ‘Love Song’ and The Monks performing ‘Nice Legs Shame About The Face’. For everyone who remembered Sparks’ dramatic appearance in 1974, it was delightful to have them back.

  Like many sleeve-reading teenagers of the time, the author automatically assumed that the drummer appearing with the brothers was Keith Forsey. However, Forsey was too busy in the studio to honour promotional commitments and after their initial appearances a regular session player, David Humphrey, was hired. Humphrey was quite unique in the annals of Virgin Records as he was possibly the only person to work with the stylistically opposed Mike Oldfield (as a Top Of The Pops studio drummer on his disco record, ‘Guilty’) and Johnny Rotten.

  David Humphrey: “I was actually working with Public Image Limited and I was in the middle of the Metal Box album. I worked on ‘Albatross’ and ‘Swan Lake’, which was to become ‘Death Disco’.”

  Humphrey got the gig in P.i.L. when original drummer, Jim Walker, left because the manager of Humphrey’s jazz-rock outfit was friendly with P.i.L guitarist Keith Levene. After recording with the group (and being replaced by Richard Dudanski), Humphrey became a regular around Virgin’s Vernon Yard head office, which is where he was asked to play with Sparks.

  David Humphrey: “When I was growing up in my teens, I would listen to ‘This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both of Us’. They were very well known from that era to me but to actually work with them as well five years later was surreal. It’s quite weird, as you can imagine.”

  For the next six months, Humphrey became part of the UK promotion for the No.1 In Heaven album.

  David Humphrey: “They made me really welcome and part of the team. I thought that Russell would be probably quite chatty and Ron would be subdued but it was the other way around. I found that Ron had a very dry sense of humour but both were really likeable guys. Russell was very quiet and I think that was just him but I got on really well with them.”

  ‘The Number One Song In Heaven’ reached number 14 in the UK charts and remained on the listings for 12 weeks. It was a good start for the campaign, seeing Sparks return to the Top 20 for the first time in five years. The next release would see them climb even higher into the Top 10. ‘Beat The Clock’, one of the two songs that passed Moroder’s A&R policy for the album, was chosen as the next single and given a lavish push.

  As it crawled up the charts, the Maels and Humphrey toured the TV studios. The drummer also got the opportunity to appear on the re-recordings that the Musicians’ Union demanded of all groups appearing on Top Of The Pops. “I was given the single to go over and learn the actual drum part. That had to be recorded so that it could be played and mimed to, so I actually was on a Sparks recording.”

  A third single from the album, ‘Tryouts For The Human Race’, was released in November, completing Sparks’ busiest year since 1975.* The brothers and Humphrey mimed the single on children’s TV show Crackerjack, possibly not the most appropriate place to hear its subject matter. November 1 marked what was to be their final Top Of The Pops appearance. Also on the show were The Jam with ‘Eton Rifles’, Thin Lizzy performing ‘Sarah’, Legs And Co dancing to Earth, Wind & Fire and Lena Martell singing the then current number one, ‘One Day At A Time’.

  A starstruck Humphrey was amazed at the people who either knew the Maels or passed through to pay their respects in the BBC canteen. “It was somewhat surreal — The Jam and Phil Lynott sat down at our table and started talking. These were the guys I’d been listening to for a few years and the next thing you know you’re sitting next to them. I’m so glad that I was given the opportunity to do it.”

  Sparks brought in fellow Virgin artist Clive (or Peter Cook as he was better known) to do some amusing PR puff on the run-out grooves of the ‘Beat The Clock’ and ‘Tryouts For The Human Race’ 12″ singles.

  Despite all this sterling promo, ‘Tryouts…’ climbed no higher than 45. It would be the last Sparks single in the UK charts until 1994. The album only reached number 73 in the UK album chart — hardly the Top 10 escapades of 1974, but the biggest ri
pple since Indiscreet.* Ultimately perhaps the album’s disco element was to its detriment as disco was a dirty word in certain circles. In America, this reached its apogee with the Disco Demolition Derby of July 12, 1979, where, at Chicago’s Comiskey Park, the crowd, egged on by local DJ Steve Dahl, blew up 12″ vinyl disco records. It was probably for the best, then, that No.1 In Heaven was never released in the States.

  Working with Giorgio Moroder had liberated Sparks. They had seen the future. At this moment, they were the future. In the Melody Maker interview with Harry Doherty the brothers underlined their modernity, while taking a swipe at those players that they clearly felt had held them back over the years: “Guitarists are jokes,” Russell said. “They’re just so old-fashioned and passé that any band that has got a guitarist is just a joke. We’ve found a way to work that’s kind of sprung us from the guitarist mentality — which is a pretty low mentality. The weakest part of Sparks has always been the guitar-playing, because it was imposed on what we were doing.” If Earle Mankey, Adrian Fisher or Trevor White were in any doubt about their old employers’ feelings, now they knew.

  “Now we’re finally a more pure version of what we’ve always been. We want to completely strip away the whole idea of bands and the hipness of rock music, because that area is now just like a caricature of itself. Every rock band is a cartoon now, with a guitarist and drummer and bass player and marijuana smoke and that sort of thing. Every single band is a variation of somebody else’s, and, to me, no band is any better than any other band. They’re all bands.”

  Sparks even seemed more ahead of their closest 1974 rivals, Roxy Music and David Bowie. That year, Roxy had reformed and made the pleasant, easy-listening album Manifesto, a UK-centric take on New York disco, with only the title track pointing towards their experimental edge. Bowie had just released Lodger, an oblique album of songs of alienation and travel that was not as progressive as his preceding works, Low and “Heroes”.