Talent Is an Asset- The Story of Sparks Read online

  Sparks’ first radio drama is an imaginary visit to Hollywood by Ingmar Bergman, one of their all-time favourite directors. Russell is wearing a Hollywood T-shirt on the cover of their second album, A Woofer In Tweeter’s Clothing. Alain Delon, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Clint Eastwood, Donald Duck, Lassie, Mickey Mouse, Meryl Streep, Toshiro Mifune, Paul Newman, Grace Kelly, Roman Polanski, Ronald Colman, Sergei Eisentein, Tsui Hark and Warren Beatty all populate Ron Mael’s narrative. One of their great disappointments to date has been their failure to realise their ambitions to make a film, Mai The Psychic Girl.

  Ron Mael was one of the first writers to develop proper irony in a pop song. Strange subjects of masculinity, white women, art galleries and things like this. There have always been many different meanings; Sparks were singing more songs about buildings and food while David Byrne was still at college.

  Talent Is An Asset is an exploration of Sparks’ extraordinary career drawing on hours of new interviews and research. It comes as close as possible to pinning down the quicksilver nature of two gifted musicians who have gone out of their way to remain unpredictable and elusive, forever entrenched behind a glittering gallery of jokes, impersonations and musical eccentricities.

  The duo are fiercely protective of their privacy; they tell all yet say little. They have a sort of southern gentleman air about them of incredible politeness and grace. Their inner circle also operates with a ring of politely tightly fitted steel — the very height of civility, but divulging very little. Like the inscrutable nature of Sparks’ music, this has attracted fans for years.

  So, let us embark on this journey that takes us from the Los Angeles suburbs in the Fifties to Sweden in the Noughties, taking in several world capitals, 22 albums, 33 or so band members and at least six managers. We skirt on glam, punk, disco and we hardly stand still. Talent Is An Asset is a fascinating tale from a pair of fascinating Maels.

  Chapter One

  It’s A Sparks Show Tonight!

  “The story of Sparks is also the story of an overnight sensation, six years in the making.”

  Joseph Fleury, 1975

  “Knowing less about us is probably better for the mythology. You know, like ‘What the hell is going on with those guys?’ I like that.”

  Russell Mael, 2008

  So much mystery surrounds Ron and Russell Mael’s upbringing that it is worth noting all the various possibilities that have been put forward over the years about their origins. It would, for example, be fascinating if their name was assumed. Or that they had been child models. Or actors. People who seek to correct these myths often carry a sanctimonious air that only they know the correct answers to the myriad web of questions that the brothers and their work seem to provoke.

  The Maels’ ability to fox is well-known; one of the most enduring myths is that they are the children of Doris Day. This was a gag that originated in 1974 in Flashes, the Sparks fan club magazine, and perpetuated in the 2002 edition of The Encyclopaedia of Popular Music and included as fact in a 2003 Record Collector article by this author. That their name appears to subvert the masculine to misspell ‘Mael’ has also given writers an opportunity to discuss how the pair’s image toys with male stereotypes and manly American icons.

  So let’s deal with the ‘D’ word straight away. To cope with the constant bombardment of similar questions presented by journalists over the years, “We started making up these … lies,” Ron Mael told The Times in 2003. “We’re Doris Day’s sons. That is hyperbole I guess,” Russell told Plan B magazine in 2007 in response to the question “Please quote your favourite hyperbole about your band.” Amusing because, of course, no one but themselves created it.

  It would have been fascinating if Doris Day had been their mother, as it was an apposite choice for them to pick; an actress with a strong image, so widely associated with purity and chastity that people believed her public image was the reality and public image is always a very significant factor when looking at Sparks.

  However, my apologies to all those who wish to trundle on the rumour mill; Mael is Ron and Russell’s family name and, let’s face it, it is a pretty unusual one, dating back to the fifth century and of Celtic origin. Once popular in Ireland and Wales, as well as Brittany, the name meant ‘king’, ‘chief’ or ‘prince’ and grew in usage after St. Mael, who accompanied St. Cadfan on his travels through Wales before reaching his destination on Bardsey Island off the Lleyn Peninsula, where he eked out his days living as a hermit.

  Ronald David Mael was born on August 12, 1945 in Culver City, California to Meyer and Miriam Mael. Younger brother Russell Craig Mael arrived on October 5, 1948 in Santa Monica, California. The brothers are three years older than many of their biographies have suggested. Lying about your age is hardly a pop crime, and if ever a group were showbiz enough to have shaved off a few years, Sparks certainly qualified. For all their quirkiness and left-of-centre nature, Sparks are the epitome of showbiz.

  The brothers grew up in the affluent, largely residential area of Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles. Located between Brentwood to the east, Malibu to the west and Santa Monica to the south east, ‘where the mountains meet the sea’, Pacific Palisades also contains the western end of Sunset Boulevard. The Maels first lived on Washington Boulevard before moving to a house on Galloway Street on a grid of streets off West Sunset Boulevard. The area has several popular culture references: its local high school was the setting of Brian De Palma’s 1976 chiller, Carrie, and the long-running James Garner TV detective vehicle, The Rockford Files, was filmed there.

  The America the brothers grew up in was prosperous, triumphant, yet deeply troubled. It had recently successfully fought a war on two fronts and by ending a period of isolationism, had taken its place as a superpower in world hegemony. Less than five years later, the United States had seen the advance of Communism in Eastern Europe and China; the Soviets develop their own atomic weaponry; and was facing very real concerns about internal security. Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy had sprung up to exploit the prevailing mood of fear and uncertainty with his activities on the House Un-American Activities Committee.

  While the idyllic surroundings of Pacific Palisades shielded the Mael household from what was going on, the rampant imperialism of the US combined with a reinforcement of decent moral values would give the Maels both a reference point and source material across the years.

  One of the Mael brothers’ earliest public appearances was captured in a newspaper cutting from 1954. It finds the brothers in Native American dress at the fourth annual Fiesta La Ballona festival in Culver City. Fiesta La Ballona days began in 1951 as a week-long celebration of the region’s early settlers. People would go to events dressed up as Native American Indians, rancheros, señoritas, cowboys and cowgirls. “Cowboy and Indian costumes held a bright spotlight in the Fiesta La Ballona Kiddies’ Parade,” the paper harks. “Winners in this division, left to right are: Russell Mael, 5; Ronnie Mael, 9.” Both in face paint and holding weaponry, the brothers are unmistakable and their enthusiastic participation demonstrates their early willingness to put on a show.

  The story about being child models and actors was another product of the Mael spin. Or was it? Again, there are interviews suggesting they were in the Sears catalogue, and although the brothers denounced the tales to Michael Bracewell in The Times in 2003, they were still regaling journalists with stories of their modelling career in 2006.

  “It wasn’t really child acting,” Ron told Record Collector in 2003. “We did some catalogue modelling things. It was more standing in front of a camera and smiling more than Shakespeare.”

  “There’s nothing to show for our hard-earned hours spent out there,” Russell added. They have said that their mother was a “typical Hollywood mom” who pushed them into modelling, but that she was also a teacher and a librarian. Perhaps she was all three. What is indisputable is how big a fan Miriam was of her children (and remains to this day).

  Music was already on the agenda in the Mael househo
ld. Ron took piano lessons from the age of six to nine, while their father was a keen follower of both film and popular music. “Our father bought us ‘Hound Dog’ by Elvis and ‘Long Tall Sally’ by Little Richard, so they were the first records we owned,” Ron told The Guardian in 2002. “I don’t know what his inspiration was for doing that … they weren’t the kind of records you usually bought as educational tools for your child.” Russell’s first record was ‘Breathless’ by Jerry Lee Lewis. “I thought [Jerry Lee] was amazing,” Russell said. “I still listen to that record now and I just get as big a buzz; it’s not nostalgic in the slightest.”

  However, the Maels’ childhood idyll ended abruptly when Meyer, a painter and graphic designer for the Hollywood Citizen, died in February 1957 at the age of 40. “It was a heart condition,” Ron later told Mojo. “I was 11 when he died. It was very sudden and unexpected. There was no build up. He was so young and … it just wasn’t like what happened in movies or books. I really learned a big lesson, that things can happen totally out of the blue and there isn’t a rational order to things.”

  Miriam did her best to cope. “She seemed to roll with it, as they say,” Russell said. “I guess because she had been married to an artist, she kind of understood what we were up to, having aspirations towards being musicians.” Miriam kept her children entertained not only by playing music, but by taking them to countless movie shows. A strong work ethic was instilled from an early age with Ron selling ice-cream to supplement his studies. “I know the two of them worked really hard,” future Urban Renewal Project member Ronna Frank says. “Their father died and their mother strove to put them through college. They were both really nice people.”

  After a period of “rolling with it,” bringing up two boys single-handedly, Miriam remarried, but the bond that Ron and Russell had with their stepfather, Oscar ‘Rogie’ Rogenson, was variable. “They had this weird relationship; they treated him civilly but they never really were easy with [Rogie],” original Sparks bassist Jim Mankey recalls. “Maybe over time they found it easier but they were having that problem that many young people have when the father goes and the new one comes along. They liked the guy, they just didn’t really seem to accept him.”

  “By the time I was on the scene, they already had a very long history with him and yet there was definitely a tension whenever [Rogie] was around,” Mankey continues. “It’s like an after-school special. ‘You must get over it, your father’s gone, your mother wants this new guy and it makes her happy and you guys can move on if you don’t like it.’ It undoubtedly shaped their lives.”

  Despite such testimonies, there is little to suggest that the tension was too great. Rogie and Miriam doted on the boys, who became inseparable; Ronnie, as he was known (and still is by those close to him) kept a protective eye on his younger sibling and the two began to retreat into a world of art and dreams. “It’s common for mathematical geniuses’ creativity to flare up and it burns away at an early age,” Mankey recalls. “They were already old before their years when they started and they’ve still got it.”

  The Rogenson family ran what at best could be called a head shop, or otherwise, a novelty shop in Pacific Palisades. The Gilded Prune was a small store with a huge glass window, whose stock would often overflow home.

  “Their house was just full to the brim,” Mankey laughs. “It was stuffed full of weird items that made you laugh when you saw them: plastic rubber lips around; books full of fart jokes; kitchy-doodads. ‘Oh look a piece of soap that you sing into like a microphone’ — whatever! I think Rogie probably did sell some bongs and cigarette papers, too. As far as I know, he was the one that brought in all those novelty items, although possibly their mother had something to do with that. Miriam was a really funny person.”

  It’s clear that the brothers’ strong sense of humour and warped way of looking at situations came from the sense of play infused in them by their mother. Future Sparks’ drummer Harley Feinstein remembers it with affection: “They had all kinds of crazy stuff in there. Their house was also full of newspapers stuffed halfway to the ceiling; they didn’t throw anything away.”

  In a rare acknowledgment of his family, Ron Mael told Nick Kent in a 1974 NME interview that ‘Pop’ Mael was “one of them guys who hangs around Century City in the tall buildings there, importing garbage — posters, newer trendy stuff like you get from Habitat — nouveau semi riche, y’know?” Surrounded by oddities, it’s little wonder that the music that the Maels would go on to record became odd. A later picture of the group, taken by friend Larry Dupont in their Pacific Palisades living room, hints at the bric-a-brac filling their abode. To Ron’s left there is a bobbing head model of Paul McCartney, between his legs there is a plate with Franklin Delano Roosevelt on it. Figurines and cuddly toys abound.

  However one should not get the wrong impression by such kitsch possessions as Miriam and Rogie were lovers of high culture too, a love they instilled in the boys and something that was to blossom further when, in 1964, Ron went from Palisades High School to one of the most prestigious universities in America, the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), to study graphic design. One of the first friends Ron made at UCLA was industrial design student Larry Dupont. Their love of collecting gave them a strong bond.

  “Ron is a collector like me,” Dupont says. “One of our professors, John Newhart, used to work for [designer] Charles Eames. Eames was an antique toy collector, and now he’s somewhat considered just a couple of steps away from Da Vinci. Because he worked on film, Newhart was an influence on us; he exposed me way back then to toys. Over a period of time we went crazy collecting stuff.” While Russell was often too busy playing sport, collecting obsessed Ron. “I collect things; it’s like a disease,” Ron said in 2003. “I collect sports figurines … Beatles trading cards. When I was little, I used to go to all the automobile shows because I loved cars. And so I’ve got a collection of all the new automobile launch brochures going right back.”

  After finishing at Palisades High on Bowdoin Street, Russell followed Ron to UCLA in 1966 to study theatre, arts and film making. Unfortunately, the fruits of Russell’s labours were never to be seen, as he told Mark Leviton in 1983. “When I got to UCLA I was in theater arts, undergraduate film work. They flunked me on my first film, actually. One professor thought it was like early Polanski, but the rest gave me an ‘F.’ It’s the same old story as our musical career — we’re either considered brilliant or get an ‘F’ in work habits.”

  The drive and ambition that Russell and his older brother shared was already apparent to Larry Dupont. “I think Ron was far more determined to make the thing work but you put the two of them together and they were both unwavering. I did an awful lot of stuff with Ron and Russ together. Ron and Russ always came as a package.”

  Much has been made over the years of the fact that the Mael brothers have never wed; there have been relationships that simply got in the way of their principal concern — making music. “Neither of us is married — we’re too busy having a good time,” Russell said in BAM Magazine in 1983. “On the surface, maybe we look less ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ than the average group, but on the other hand we’re more ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ than those pictures of Led Zeppelin on the farm with their wives and kids, Rock ‘n’ roll lifestyles mean you have a wife and then cheat on her, so rather than do that, we’re honest and stay unmarried. I don’t know anybody in any other band who’s as un-tied down as the two of us. We dislike homey things — for ourselves anyway.”

  “We have friends who have families,” Ron told The Word magazine in February 2006. “I get it vicariously; having a traditional family would be a real restriction on what we do.”

  Like so many American teenagers of their generation, Ron and Russell were stopped in their tracks by The Beatles’ February 1964 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. On August 20 that year, they saw The Beatles perform at the Las Vegas Convention Hall and the following year, Ron and Russell, accompanied by Miriam, saw the
Fab Four at the Hollywood Bowl. Strongly influenced by music and popular culture, the brothers absorbed whatever they heard whether it be listening to Motown on Boss Radio KHJ and KRLA, watching The Supremes on The Ed Sullivan Show, or collecting singles from rock’n’roll through to surf music. They also strove to see as many shows as possible and can be clearly seen in the audience during The Ronettes’ appearance in The Big TNT Show, a prototype concert movie filmed in Los Angeles’ Moulin Rouge Club on November 29, 1965, featuring Ray Charles, Petula Clark and The Byrds among others.

  Although the Maels had a shared love of The Beach Boys, it was British music that was to influence them most; as the Sixties progressed, their Anglophile tastes expanded into the sort of psychedelic-influenced mod pop that usurped Merseybeat. “‘Tattoo’ by The Who — we used to listen to that and think we wanted to be as cool as that,” Russell said in 2003. “‘Waterloo Sunset’ … not only did we like it musically, but it was speaking of this utopian England.” Within a matter of years the brothers would be in London. “We came over and went to Waterloo Bridge and Waterloo Station — it’s not quite as romantic as it was on the record!”

  However there was one single, ‘Happenings Ten Years Time Ago’ by The Yardbirds, that really hit the spot. Produced by Simon Napier-Bell and released in October 1966, it was three minutes of surreal, psychedelic aural imagery. Ron and Russell would listen to it and marvel at its wonder and it was to become something of a touchstone for their early work.