Sparks have been interviewed by Bob Stanley and the interview is in The Times T2 section today: June 11, 2004 Interview Talkin’ about my generator By Bob Stanley Sparks are back again, but it’s a long time since 1974 SPARKS put the fear of God into preteens with their debut Top of the Pops appearance. As pretty boy Russell Mael flashed his baby blues and the agitated glam of This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us rang out, the whole nation wanted to shout: “Watch out! Hitler’s sitting behind you! And he’s playing the piano!” But no, it was only brother Ron. He and Russell were child models, and later ice-cream salesmen, born and raised in southern California. They formed a band called Halfnelson in 1968 and were soon taken under the wing of the eccentric rabbit-boy Todd Rundgren. Two low-selling albums and a name change later, someone smart suggested that they try their luck in England. “It was a fantasy,” says Russell, back to play the Meltdown festival tomorrow. “We were real Anglophiles. And we were too naive to be paralysed by thoughts of failure.” It was 1973. Initially they were holed up in Beckenham, Kent. It may have a proud musical tradition (Bowie, Siouxsie, Haircut 100) but it held little allure for the Hollywood exiles. “We got tired of catching the 10.49 from Victoria, so we moved to South Kensington, to the basement flat of Kenneth Tynan’s house.” Impressively, Sparks earnt themselves a month’s residency at the Marquee Club straight away, which led to an Old Grey Whistle Test performance. “In America we’d played to six people at the Whiskey-a-Go-Go. In London there were queues around the block. We started a new life.” The rest of the original band headed home, so the Maels placed ads and found the guitarist Adrian Fisher, Martin Gordon, the first of a succession of bass players, and the drummer Dinky Diamond. Island Records signed them, and in April 1974 they released their first “British” single, This Town Ain’t Big Enough. There’s a theory that British bands play higher, tighter and faster than their American counterparts (think of the Beatles v Byrds, Sex Pistols v Nirvana) because it’s the best way to keep warm in a damp, cold rehearsal room. The Maels don’t buy it — Ron reckons the faster pace was due purely to the classical music he was listening to — but either way This Town was an astonishing blend of old Hollywood, Roxy Music and Monty Python that got ever louder, faster and shriller over its three and a half minutes. It hit the Top Three within a month. In June they followed it up with a blinding album, Kimono My House, a hyper, Dadaist stream of potential 45s. Amateur Hour, their second Top Tenner, was a tribute to adolescent dancefloor hell. Here in Heaven was sung by a dead lover to his girlfriend on Earth who had chickened out of a suicide pact. The dense, superloud Thank God it’s Not Christmas was a straightforward thumbs-up for the 364-days-a-year party life. “Their music is so obviously and totally different from anything we’ve heard before,” said Rundgren. It was clever and sharp, quirky and immediate, intense fun. “We had the screaming girls and the other fans who thought there was a deeper side to what we were doing,” Russell says. “They didn’t like the screaming girls.” The Maels soon settled into London life. Once in a cinema a rat ran over Russell’s foot — “That didn’t really happen in southern California. Or stores closing on Sundays. But we saw Roxy Music and the Sweet, who were really good, and we were fans of Indian food.” As a bona-fide pin-up, Russell wrote a weekly column in the girls’ magazine, Mirabelle: “Heady stuff. Favourite sweets. The pros and cons of pies. Colours — do you like them?” Unsurprisingly, the moustachioed Ron was spared the ordeal — it is believed that no feature was written about Sparks between 1974 and 1979 that didn’t mention Hitler or child molesters at least twice. In November they released another fine album, Propaganda. Readers of Melody Maker voted Sparks their brightest hope for 1975 as the utterly beautiful Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth graced the Christmas Top 20. With Indiscreet, though, the wheels came off as the Maels delved into Gilbert and Sullivan and flapper ditties a little too deeply. The kids didn’t need another Hinge and Brackett, and in 1976 Sparks disappeared from the charts. By the dawn of punk the jig was up. The Maels returned to America in 1977 to lick their wounds and await the first of several rebirths. The sauce and cheek to be found on Kimono My House in such songs as Hasta Mañana Monsieur (“You mentioned Kant and I was shocked/Where I come from none of the girls have such foul tongues”) had a strong effect on the young Morrissey. Now a neighbour in LA, he was invited chez Mael to hear the premiere of last year’s Li’l Beethoven, a beat-free album which bears no resemblance to any previous Sparks work — or anything else in pop. Russell considers it “unique and bold” and it’s hard to disagree. And now the Maels’ bravery has been rewarded with international praise and an invitation to play at Meltdown. Morrissey wanted them to play Kimono My House in its entirety. They agreed, but they will also be playing the whole of Li’l Beethoven. “We had mixed feelings about doing Kimono My House,” Russell says. “We were really flattered to be asked, but we’ve re-established our group as a current creative force. We didn’t know how we could justify doing it to ourselves. Doing both will make it an interesting and conceptual show. Li’l Beethoven is a modern equivalent of what Kimono My House represented.” Ron, a silent and eerie presence up until now, finally speaks. “It took me a lot more. But people grabbed me by the shoulders, and they shook me. Physical force always works on me. Eventually.” Sparks play tomorrow at the Festival Hall, SE1 (0870 4018181)