by Daryl Easlea
David Kendrick: “We were a little wary of playing ‘Mickey Mouse’. We worried if we’d need Disney’s permission to use it but we went ahead. It was a brand new audience again for Sparks and it was a pretty young crowd. We even started to attract some celebrity fans while in New York. We were at the same hotel while we were doing Saturday Night Live as Muhammad Ali. We met Andy Warhol. Danny De Vito came to see us a few times.”
‘I Predict’ came with a striking video that fell foul of the conservatism of MTV. Directed in the style of David Lynch by group friends, identical twins and occasional actors Doug and Steve Martin, it is crammed full of strangeness. Shot in a dimly lit bar outside LA, Ron, in drag, develops the bride theme from the album’s cover with Russell still wearing the cover’s wedding suit. And Ron is stripping. And Russell is watching. Something is clearly not quite right. With the attendant promotion and the video’s notoriety, ‘I Predict’ reached number 60 on the Billboard Hot 100. Sparks had finally achieved a US Top 100 single after a decade of trying.
Ira Robbins wrote warmly about the album: “They have synthesized their past into a newly impressive whole with the current Angst In My Pants LP” and published a Sparks retrospective in Trouser Press. The piece was one of their first major career overviews and introduced this ‘new’ band’s audience to the previous ten albums.
K-ROQ kept the group high on their playlist. Around half of Angst In My Pants was played on the network and, as a result, the album went to 173 on Billboard. Everything was moving in the right direction. Clearly delighted at how his charges were finally getting a soupçon of recognition in their home country, Joseph Fleury looked after his charges with care and diligence. What he may have lacked in managerial distance was made up for by still being their number one supporter.
David Kendrick: “He was very much a fan. I really liked him a lot. He was a good person. He was a fan of the band and he wasn’t a super high-powered manager type. He was a good liaison between labels because the times I was [in Sparks], we were probably on at least four different record labels.”
Fleury helped put together a tour that would capitalise on Sparks’ new-found American success. The band returned to the Whisky A Go Go, which gave them a slightly more rapturous reception this time round as opposed to their previous visit in 1973. As well as large clubs in the Midwest and Texas Sparks even returned to perform a televised concert at Magic Mountain, where, in a previous life, they had filmed Rollercoaster, which by now was a television staple. At an outdoor gig at LA’s Greek Theatre, the support act was a new band that welded funk to heavy metal. The Red Hot Chili Peppers, like previous support acts Queen and Van Halen, would eventually eclipse Sparks commercially.
One territory that failed to host a Sparks resurgence was the UK. The publication The Rock Album perfectly summed up in its review not just Angst In My Pants but this whole period of Sparks with the line, “clever European feel tinged with Californian surf-like teenage anxiety subject matters”. With Duran Duran, Culture Club and ABC, Britain had shiny pop of its own. As a result, Sparks albums were quietly released and then slipped by unnoticed.
“We were going to do a Whistle Test at some point and it didn’t happen,” says Kendrick. “There was just nothing happening there for us at that time.”
Angst In My Pants would go on to have a huge influence on future Sparks members. “My ‘in’ was Saturday Night Live,” Jim Wilson recalls. “I had heard ‘I Predict’ on Philadelphia radio and I thought ‘Wow, those guys are great’.” It sent Wilson off on a jamboree of Sparks collecting. “I had an Encyclopaedia of Rock with a photo of Kimono My House so I knew what the cover looked like. I’d heard it and it was so completely different to Angst In My Pants. I was just fascinated. I’d just never heard anything like it before. I would buy old Sparks albums from the vinyl store in Delaware at $1.99 each.”
“Angst In My Pants is my favourite Sparks album,” says Steven Nistor. “It’s the strangest-sounding Sparks record. It has some of the coolest drum parts I’ve ever heard, from any band. I love all of Ron’s lyrics but there’s something about the words on Angst In My Pants that has Ron’s unique combination of sarcasm, wit and earnest emotion. Every song is cohesive in that way. I have many favourite Sparks records but for some reason this one really stands out for me.”
David Kendrick: “As someone who really liked the Kimono My House period, I really think Whomp That Sucker and especially Angst In My Pants are among their best. I was really happy to have been part of it.”
The union between Sparks and Bates Motel had come at exactly the right time, and the fact they could enjoy some success at home felt good. Les Boehm, David Kendrick and Bob Haag’s band were now known as Gleaming Spires. Ron and Russell would often see the band live and gave them their seal of approval by penning the tongue-in-cheek sleeve notes for Gleaming Spires’ debut album. It was a mutually beneficial friendship where Ron and Russell met friends such as producers Greg Penny and Stephen Hague, who would both go on to work with Sparks.
There had now been a period of stability for three years, something Sparks had never experienced before. “They were never the hearty type,” Kendrick says with a chuckle. “Russell was kind of the social one and Ron was always a little more introverted and he was more the intellectual half, if you will. He wrote all the words, pretty much to everything, his brother sang and they were absolutely inseparable. On tours and off the road, they would get together like every single day. It was unusual. They almost never did anything apart. It was always like Ronandrussell.”
There was still a divide between the Maels and the others, but the band knew their place and, as they were all LA residents, there were no cultural barriers.
Sparks In Outer Space, their 1983 album, finds Ron receiving a custard pie on the cover, the ultimate comedy pay-off and very apt as the album is one big pie-in-the-face of a record. The first Sparks record to be entirely self produced by the Maels, the album — full of goofy, mid-Eighties US rock with a twist — was recorded at Synsound in Belgium at the studios of Telex — Marc Moulin and Dan Lacksman — with whom Ron and Russell had struck up a friendship in 1980.* Ron and Russell are pictured by the Atomium in Brussels on the album’s inner sleeve — the latest stop in the group’s nomadic career.
“Unlike the two preceding LPs, Outer Space had no rehearsals before recording; just a bunch of rough versions sung by Ron on his Walkman,” Russell said in his Profile notes. The record contained two tracks not recorded in Belgium; one of these was even more remarkable in that it finally delivered Sparks a US Top 50 hit single. ‘Cool Places’ was a duet with Jane Wiedlin, the co-leader of LA girl-punk pop act The Go-Go’s, who had allegedly been the secretary of her own non-authorised LA Valley Sparks fan club, although that seems another piece of Fleury-Sparks hokum. As Russell said in the Profile notes, “rather than sue her, we asked Jane if she would like to do a duet together”. Another story has it that The Go-Go’s all wanted to enrol in Sparks’ fan club, and their legendary International Fan Club Secretary, Mary Martin, aka the Maels’ mother, personally passed the letter to her sons. Russell sent back a note suggesting they collaborate — possibly for a Russell Mael solo release.
“What finally helped [Sparks] was Russell’s friendship with Jane Wiedlin and doing ‘Cool Places’,” Robbins says. “Suddenly it’s like, ‘Oh they’re friends with The Go-Go’s.’” And in 1983 The Go-Go’s were one of the biggest groups in America. From a selection of proposed songs, Wiedlin and the band recorded two tracks for Sparks In Outer Space at Giorgio Moroder’s studio in the living room of his Beverly Hills home. ‘Cool Places’ was completely of the moment: chugging synths, Ron’s conversational writing and a perfectly matched duet between Russell and Wiedlin. It headed up an album that, although not as good as its immediate predecessors, was sufficiently strong to maintain the interest of fans who had been won over by the single. It’s the sound of 1983 technology, and although the band were again shown on the LP’s rear sleeve, it is difficul
t to hear their input apart from the charming-yet-vacuous stadium grunge of ‘Prayin’ For A Party’.
Highlights include ‘Rockin Girls’, which allows Russell to pay vocal tribute to one of his heroes, Jerry Lee Lewis; ‘A Fun Bunch Of Guys From Outer Space’ develops ‘I Married A Martian’ from Whomp That Sucker to the point where it almost could be the same backing track; while ‘All You Ever Think About Is Sex’ is high-powered, witty hi-NRG, and the album’s second single.
“‘All You Ever Think About Is Sex’ is my favourite Sparks single,” states Steven Nistor. “I saw the video the first time I heard the song so it’s ingrained in my memory. You know the video with Ron taking all those pies in the face? That made an impression on me.” It was a development of one of Sparks’ most hilarious covers, with Ron being the fall guy this time.
“Every time I think of Sparks In Outer Space, it makes me laugh,” its designer, Larry Vigon, says. “I was lucky enough to be the one who threw all the pies — we had a stack of 12 of them. All these stylists, make-up people and photographer Jim Shea were all falling on the floor laughing. It was doubled-up, tears rolling down the face laughter. In between takes we had to clean him up and do it all over again. It literally happened 10 times in a row with hysterical laughing. Eventually we didn’t bother any more and the final shot is actually a composite. We added a couple of pieces of pie and we had to retouch a few little specks here and there off Russell’s clothing. It was a blast.” Vigon, who also recalled Russell frequently going to the window during the shoot to make sure his green ‘57 Thunderbird hadn’t been stolen or dented, is today a respected corporate designer and still has Sparks In Outer Space in his portfolio.
With a video shot by The Residents’ film-maker Graham Whiffler (“any director who would incorporate a photo of Mary Jo Kopechne into a pop video was all right with us”), Atlantic put their weight behind ‘Cool Places’. Sparks were put on a mammoth US tour supporting the Australian-born, Hollywood-residing actor-cum-singer Rick Springfield, who had just enjoyed a global hit with ‘Jessie’s Girl’. Springfield actually chose the group for the tour as he had been a fan of ‘Wonder Girl’, “He seemed pretty easy-going,” Kendrick continues. “His manager was another story…” Sparks’ scaled up their act — a rock band but with all Sparks’ characteristics — and played a seven-song set. By the middle of the tour they were getting a great reception.
Fuelled by MTV, “We started getting screaming girls again,” Russell recalled in 2008. “Only now it was in places like Kansas. There were huge concert favourites from this album [Sparks In Outer Space] that we played a lot in the Eighties.” It was another world. “We were playing [places like] Madison Square Garden, these 20,000-seat places, for months,” Kendrick recalls. “We got pushed into the Top 50. It was the one time when Ron and Russell reached out beyond their own fan base. A lot of people saw that tour but it was weird.” However being Sparks, something was bound to happen that would prevent them from becoming really huge. They seemed to play the part of perpetual outsiders, forever tripping on the banana skin, wilfully snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
The American honeymoon appeared to end abruptly. “Some of it had to do with business stuff at that time,” David Kendrick says. “It was a question of how much money Atlantic was prepared to subsidise us with.” Through no fault of their own Sparks were dropped from the Springfield tour to be replaced by Quarterflash.
Also, there was a question over how tough Fleury had to be on behalf of the group. Sparks had reached a lot of people, but there was uncertainty about how to develop this. Momentum was seemingly lost. The group went out on their own to smaller venues, playing festivals with The Go-Go’s and Joe Walsh. Oscar and Miriam, who like their sons had long since returned from the UK, manned the merchandise stall when the band played locally. Although their next album would produce a single that made the dance charts, Sparks’ dalliance with the mainstream seemed to be reaching its natural conclusion. It was off to be a cult band again.
“The only thing people paid attention to was Ron’s moustache,” Ira Robbins suggested. “No matter what Sparks did, all America would boil it down to was ‘He’s got a funny moustache. He looks like Charlie Chaplin’. Whatever you aspire to, or whatever you accomplish, it boils down to a gimmick, a trick or some attribute that people cling to.”
That gimmick had gained the group far more exposure than if they had simply been po-faced rockers. And now, the most familiar moustache in recent art-pop culture had gone. As a reflection of the changing times in the mid-Eighties Ron’s toothbrush moustache finally changed shape into something a little more Ronald Colman. After all the jokes about it and Russell singing about it on ‘Moustache’, there was the very real underside that some people found the ‘tache extremely distasteful.
“I really saw it as a fun thing to do and I just thought it looked cool,” he told Seconds magazine in 1995. “It had a really strong effect especially when we first moved to England. There were problems with people who took it in a non-Chaplinesque way. We got cancelled from a show in France because there was a bombing of a synagogue in Paris [the October 3, 1980 Rue Copernic explosion that killed four people] right around the time we were doing a TV show. I probably should have made a change earlier on, but I was pretty naïve about the effect it was having.”
Ron and Russell seemed unsure what to do with their new level of recognition. They were regulars now on a variety of film soundtracks, and talk of film roles and film opportunities was on the agenda. However the music they were making was now becoming too samey, with a law of diminishing returns. It was clear by the time of Pulling Rabbits Out Of A Hat, Sparks’ final release on Atlantic, that the company was losing interest in them. There had also been a change in personnel — John Thomas joined the group as keyboard player, replacing Jim Goodwin.
Pulling Rabbits Out Of A Hat was the first Sparks album since 1977’s Introducing Sparks to be recorded solely in America. It was produced by British producer and engineer Ian Little, who was in vogue thanks to his work with Duran Duran on ‘Is There Something I Should Know’ and the album Seven And The Ragged Tiger. Little received his first credit working with Roxy Music as production assistant on Avalon and, of greater significance, his engineering on one of the Eighties most unusual albums, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark’s Dazzle Ships. It made him an interesting candidate to produce Sparks.
However his reliance on sequencers and the Fairlight made Pulling Rabbits Out Of A Hat too homogenised, and it lacks the personality that the previous three albums had. It was clearly the era; Sparks weren’t the only band sounding like this at this time. In a way, that’s the problem, Sparks fans were too used to each album sounding different. ‘Everybody Move’ is a case in point. While everything is in the right place, it sounds like something off the Footloose soundtrack. ‘A Song That Sings Itself’ could be Flashdance, the keyboard sound is so generic.
David Kendrick: “There was a slight tapering off, really. We were still very popular live then but I don’t think we played as well on that album. It wasn’t quite as intriguing to me. There were a couple of good songs on it. Ian Little was an engineer-type producer. There wasn’t like an amazing session. It was a little more elaborate production-wise with mainly sequenced keyboard parts. To me, it wasn’t as immediate and wasn’t full of the good things I loved about Sparks.”
Of course, Pulling Rabbits Out Of A Hat was not without its moments — it was a Sparks album, after all. The title track is classic Ron Mael. In the style of ‘Angst In My Pants’, it is a tale of a lover trying to impress his partner with a series of audacious feats. The touching ‘With All My Might’ was a standout. “When we would do a song that was softer in tone, people often wondered what our motive was,” Russell said. “They wanted to know what the punchline was for Sparks doing such an atypical song. There was no punchline.” (Released as a single, it reached number 28 on the Billboard club play chart. Its striking video was set in a studio backdrop of the Amer
ican West.) ‘Love Scenes’ has a riff that borrows from Joy Division’s ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ and ‘Pretending To Be Drunk’ is like a lesser version of ‘I Predict’. ‘Kiss Me Quick’ has a lovely, understated feel to it, amid the standard, mid-Eighties handclaps. It’s not without its charms, but expectation levels were now higher as Sparks hadn’t made a bad record since 1980.
Although claims are made for Terminal Jive, Pulling Rabbits Out Of A Hat is, to these ears, the weakest Sparks album, almost totally bereft of any personality. The machines whirr and whine, and the band seem lost within them. The best thing about it was the Larry Vigon-designed sleeve. Moving away from the twisted portrait shots of the last three albums, Ron and Vigon commissioned an illustration from American artist Stan Watts. Brightly coloured and unnervingly realistic, the drawing develops the theme used in the ‘When I’m With You’ video, showing Russell as a glove puppet on Ron’s right hand.
Released in the US in October 1984, the album failed to chart and became the first Sparks album not to get a UK release. The experience convinced Ron and Russell that they had no need to use outside producers again. “Pulling Rabbits Out Of A Hat was the last album that we had a formal producer for,” Russell said in 2008. “We decided that from the people we’d worked with — Giorgio, Tony Visconti, Todd Rundgren and Muff Winwood — we’d learnt a lot of techniques, and we felt we could best interpret how we wanted to be perceived and what we wanted to do musically. We wanted more control.”
