by Daryl Easlea
Earle Mankey followed up ‘Biology 2’ with the fabulous ‘Underground’. The Doors debt is again writ large with Ron’s throbbing organ chug. The simplistic tale of bands trying to make it in their basements almost undermines the grandeur of the rest of the album; all the pomp had been removed for something a lot dirtier. This is only a brief interlude as ‘The Louvre’ follows, sung by Russell largely in French. There was a lengthy studio debate as to whether the whole song was going to be recorded in French (Ron had got his friend Josee Becker to translate) or in English. As the session dragged on, it was decided to splice both versions together.
James Lowe: “I wanted to tap into the darker side of what they were doing as it seemed slinkier to me… when you’re engineering and producing a record, you are hands-on, whether you want to be or not. We had built up trust from the first recording so there were no egos or disagreements. I had been left alone with the band on the first record for a few sessions so we were not on unfamiliar ground.
The sense of play and experimentation runs riot throughout A Woofer In Tweeter’s Clothing, the product of a band who are clearly together. Jim Mankey enjoyed the experience: “Jim Lowe was a much more laid-back guy. Todd was always very judgmental and Jim was just a happy guy who tried to set the mood so you could play music without discomfort, whereas with Todd, the idea was instead of performance, he’d kick your ass.”
After the daft 44 seconds of ‘Batteries Not Included’, a song that let deviant minds think was about marital aids, the album closes with ‘Whippings And Apologies’. A song about domestic spankings that misled some into thinking the group were S&M freaks, it became the climax of the original band’s live set. The track builds and builds for a minute before Russell crashes in with his incredibly tremulous vocal. It was, as Ron described, “recorded loud and without bass. The bottom, if one exists, is the left hand of the keyboards. Two chords always make the best chord progressions.”
A Woofer In Tweeter’s Clothing was released in October 1972 but went largely ignored in the rock press. The sound was, as Joseph Fleury noted, “dense and acrid,” while the sleeve was another collaboration between Ron and Dupont.
Larry Dupont: “We’d been satisfied with the results for the two covers for the first album, so I photographed A Woofer In Tweeter’s Clothing. I never had any control over the artwork, but I had a degree of influence. I didn’t like the way that the band looked, so Ron and I manipulated the colours.”
A Woofer In Tweeter’s Clothing also marked the last time more than two members would be on the cover of a Sparks album.
When A Woofer In Tweeter’s Clothing failed to reach a wide audience, Lowe was devastated, having invested enough of himself in the project to call himself by his full name, Thaddeus James Lowe, on the sleeve.
James Lowe: “I left the music business and went into directing and producing TV shows because I thought I had lost the ability to spot a hit after we made that record. At that time if you didn’t get a hit, you didn’t continue in music very long. I thought Sparks should have gotten some recognition and I promised my wife if they didn’t, I would get out of that crazy business. They didn’t, I did.” Lowe went on to become a successful television producer, and left Sparks’ world behind. “I did see some album covers in stores. They always made me smile, whether they were in kimonos or hanging off the transom of a speed boat. Clever stuff.” *
Larry Dupont: “For me A Woofer In Tweeter’s Clothing is a masterpiece. I often wonder what the [original] group would’ve been like if it had stayed together. The combined influence… they worked well together. Their music could have been eye-openingly brilliant. It’s an early learning album. That was not a mature Sparks, that was a beginning. But you can see the things they were willing to try.”
It started becoming apparent that Sparks’ European sound could translate better overseas than in their native America.
Jim Mankey: “Ron and Russ had gone to Britain as backpacking tourists — they were college students at the time. They travelled to England and were obsessed by it. I loved all those bands but I didn’t have their level of obsessions.” Larry, Earle Mankey and his wife, Elise, had also been to London at various times.
Larry Dupont: “Roy Silver pretty well figured it’s easier to break [Sparks] in England than it was to break the States. Not only is it a smaller environment but the band would have the novelty of being American. That would pay dividends as they were so unknown in the US, they could come back as an English band.”
Silver’s technique of getting the group to the UK had been to go into Bearsville every day and continually ask about when Sparks were going to England.
Larry Dupont: “He’d ask when the tickets were coming through and talk as though it was already happening, taking the view that sooner or later, something would happen.”
England with its fog, beefeaters, B & B’s, twitching curtains, hypocrisy and pride would provide the perfect backdrop for Sparks to feel at home.
* Although it has been said that Katherine Orloff was a friend of Halfnelson’s, she had no prior knowledge of them, and this interview was the only time they met (although she has continued to keep an eye on Sparks’ career).
* Cooper later recorded another song with a title borrowed from Sparks, ‘I Like Girls’ from his 1982 album, Zipper Catches Skin
* Although Russell said that it didn’t sound like a real song, it was in the Sparks Show sets of the early 21st century.
* At around the same time as Lowe’s retirement from the music industry, rock scribe Lenny Kaye, the compiler of Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era 1965–1968, placed ‘I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night’ by The Electric Prunes as the opening track of this influential collection of lost Sixties American garage and psychedelic groups. The album was to be the first step in the continuing interest in Lowe’s former band, eventually resulting in a Prunes reunion in 2001.
Chapter Three
A Cross Between Bobby Vee And The Mothers Of Invention Or Marlene Dietrich And The Stooges Or Frank Zappa Meets The Monkees
“People mostly thought that they were a bunch of shit.”
John Hewlett, 2009
In the first week of October 1972, Sparks made their New York debut at Max’s Kansas City, the legendary Warhol hangout. A review from the Village Voice edition dated October 5 suggested that “Sparks is a rock novelty act with a humorous approach”. Joseph Fleury wrote three years later, “The audience in New York was appreciative, but a bit strange. It consisted of a handful of hardcore fans, a few critics who felt they’d discovered their own personal little cult band, and a bunch of Manhattan pseudo-decos.”
This was all very well but their debut album had sold next to nothing, and hopes for their forthcoming release, A Woofer In Tweeter’s Clothing, were not high. Larry Dupont sensed there was stress between the Maels and their record company. Steeped in art, “Ron and Russ had a strong sense of how performers should behave. They could be very surly with people.”
Dupont had struck up a good working relationship with the team at Bearsville from the secretaries up to Roy Silver himself. “When we got to New York, I’d had prior meetings with Bearsville before the band got to them. Even though they didn’t know exactly how to deal with the band in terms of promoting them, the people there were looking forward very enthusiastically to pursuing them.”
The goodwill dissipated very quickly as Dupont remembers: “They [Mael brothers] showed up with so much added attitude and anger, full of ‘Why aren’t you doing more for us?’ They figured you could go in there like drill sergeants. In 10 minutes maximum, they completely undermined months of work. It was very exasperating to watch.”
However, enough goodwill and cordiality remained for the record company to be in favour (after a fashion) of Sparks’ visit to Europe. Plans for the visit had been hatched that summer when Silver suggested to Bearsville’s UK press director, Derek Taylor, that the band would be best suited to UK audiences. Taylor, the e
ffete, much-loved former Apple Records’ press officer, was a personal friend of the Silvers, and was staying with his family at Silver’s mansion up in the Hollywood Hills.
Taylor, full of resolutely old-world charm, was immediately struck by the Maels when they came to Silver’s house, and was delighted by the gift of bobbing head Beatles dolls they brought him — another from their stockpile of novelties and ephemera.*
Silver had been able to extract from Bearsville a sum in the region of $10,000 to take the band to the UK, though no one knew exactly how this budget would be managed.
James Lowe was not surprised that Sparks decided to decamp to England: “I had played over there and knew the audiences were much more ready for the odd spice of this concept. Americans needed someone to tell them it was cool first. I thought it was a good move on their part”
Nor was future Sparks producer Tony Visconti: “The UK was always open to eccentric people. I think of Sparks as a British group. Before they came over to Britain they probably heard that sound in their head and they realised where they had to go to get it.”
Sparks, with Larry Dupont now playing the role of de facto tour manager, set off for London and took up residency at the South Kensington Hotel, near South Kensington tube station. Taylor and the UK wing of Bearsville, part of the enormous Warner-Elektra-Asylum empire, would look after the band while they were in Europe.
Taylor’s reputation and suitably lavish business approach meant that the group was going to be well cared for.
Harley Feinstein: “Derek Taylor pretty much assumed responsibility for us; he showed us around, took care of us, and compared us with The Beatles. One word from Derek and things would happen.”
One thing Taylor couldn’t influence, however, was the weather. “When we went to England for the first time, it snowed,” Jim Mankey recalled. “I’d never seen the stuff before.” Taylor was able to help them stay warm, as he recounted in his memoir 50 Years Adrift. “Roy had told me that even in California, Ron and Russell slept in pyjamas and I realised that winter in England would seem to them especially cruel. When they arrived, therefore, I pushed for the company to buy them all leather overcoats and my wish was granted, though not without demur.”
While no dates had actually been booked for Sparks, there was a belief that something would turn up.
Larry Dupont: “We were set up in the hotel, and the band wanted to imitate real bands and so we had numerous headaches I had to deal with in the hotel and various other places,” says Dupont. “Somebody thought it would be fun to play with a fire extinguisher. Ron and Russ developed a certain level of mischief. They thought it was cool.”
Realising that the band needed somebody with experience to guide them in London, Roy Silver informed the band that they would be greeted by John Hewlett, whom Silver had met when he visited Apple Records back in 1968. Silver had called Hewlett and asked him if he would manage Sparks’ affairs in the UK.
John Hewlett: “It wasn’t like I had notice to do it — it was a case of ‘They’re coming over, can you get some things going in a short space of time?’ It wasn’t a matter of panicking, it was a case of doing what you had to do. It was fun.”
Born in Surrey, Hewlett was encouraged into music by his parents. Leaving Carshalton Technical College where he’d been studying history and English, he became the bass player in John’s Children, a freewheeling, Surrey-based art-pop-mod combo. Originally known as The Silence, the group also featured vocalist Andy Ellison, drummer Chris Townson and guitarist Geoff McClelland, who was replaced by Marc Bolan.
Bolan stayed in the group for around four months, starting in March 1967, and it was during this time that they released his composition (and John’s Children’s third single) ‘Desdemona’, which was banned by the BBC for Bolan’s simultaneously saucy and mystical lyric, “lift up your skirt and fly”. Hewlett, who would be the first to admit that he wasn’t the world’s greatest bass player, became something of a protégé of the group’s manager, Simon Napier-Bell.
Napier-Bell was the epitome of a UK music-biz hustler. Larger-than-life, openly homosexual and encouraged into management by his friend, Ready Steady Go! editor Vicki Wickham (with whom he co-wrote Dusty Springfield’s 1966 hit, ‘You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me’), Napier-Bell managed The Yardbirds for a brief period that same year (which included the release of Sparks’ favourite ‘Happenings Ten Years Time Ago’). According to Napier Bell’s recollections, after being approached by The Silence, he renamed them John’s Children after Hewlett, the weakest musical link in the band, so that the others wouldn’t sack him.
After John’s Children imploded, Hewlett got a job at Apple Publishing through Napier-Bell’s friend Terry Doran. While at Apple, he’d signed Scottish songwriters Graham Lyle and Benny Gallagher and also worked closely with Paul McCartney. Hewlett recalls with a mixture of horror and amusement sitting in John Lennon’s office while a stark naked Yoko Ono was having a dress fitting, without Lennon batting an eyelid. He can also clearly be seen in the Let It Be film watching The Beatles play their final gig on Apple’s Savile Row rooftop on January 30, 1969.
Hewlett, who made his first forays into management looking after McGuinness Flint, met Roy Silver at Apple when Silver and his partner, Artie Mogul, had come to discuss the US distribution of Lennon and Ono’s Two Virgins.
“I enjoyed Roy Silver’s company,” Hewlett says. “He was the typical Jewish entrepreneur in LA. Coming from Surrey, I hadn’t met many of those before. He was a huckster, full of the chat without a great deal of substance. He ran a Chinese restaurant as well. Roy was a character. He had a huge office, but when you looked further there was no secretarial support.”
Silver appointed Hewlett to run the UK wing of Tetragrammaton. After the label collapsed, Hewlett went to Feldman’s publishers, where he met Albert Grossman and Bob Dylan. While at Feldman’s he also met Ian Kimmett, who formed a group, Jook, with mutual Surrey music friends, ex-John’s Children drummer Chris Townson, Trevor White (guitar), and Scottish bass player Ian Hampton, with Hewlett managing them. Hewlett was a methodical, straightforward but pleasant hustler and his vision would become central to Sparks’ success.
The Maels loved the fact that their new British manager had been part of the harder ‘mod’ sound from mid-Sixties London. John’s Children’s maverick (if amateurish) approach to performing was very much up their street. “Ron and Russ were aware of every detail of John and John’s Children,” Jim Mankey confirmed.* As they were that Hewlett had worked with Marc Bolan, who, in 1972, was enjoying his final year of superstardom in Britain and Europe.
Hewlett was impressed if somewhat bewildered by what he saw. “My perception of LA music was Linda Ronstadt and Crosby, Stills and Nash. So when I heard Sparks it really appealed to me. They were cool. They were professional, interesting and definitely had potential. I liked them all. They were young people my age and had their act together, but it was obvious it wasn’t going to work because they were an ‘act’ rather than a band. It was somewhat contrived, intentionally so. The heart of it really worked, but there were elements that you thought just weren’t sensational. Ron and Russell were really good at their parts.”
Warners had an unusual and somewhat schizophrenic approach to their new act: if it involved taking the band out for a lavish meal where the executives could join in, that was fine; if it meant buying new equipment, this was not so fine. It all seemed rather calamitous.
Larry Dupont: “The record company people eventually showed up but that was very informal. By that point we were playing a shell game with them. The [American record company] had pulled the wool over their eyes. They had funding to get us there but we didn’t know what it was. Roy would occasionally be in touch, but it was my job to relate with the record company. Roy used to con people right, left and centre. He knew that nobody knew what to do with [Sparks] in the States and the reason nobody knew what to do with them was that nobody understood who the hell they were…”
The band was still waiting for an itinerary. At this juncture, not knowing a definite schedule of exactly how long they’d be in the country was all part of the adventure.
Larry Dupont: “Mandy Newell was Derek Taylor’s secretary and she was most involved with following what was going on. I started to get the feeling that Mandy was starting to question where the hell the money was.”
Sparks finally found a place to begin their UK gigs — the reopening, after renovation, of The Pheasantry, on King’s Road, Chelsea. The Pheasantry was a historic Georgian building, originally used to raise pheasants for the royal household. Princess Astafieva opened her Russian Dancing Academy on the first floor in 1916. The princess’ most famous pupil was the young Peggy Hookham, who later became Dame Margot Fonteyn.
By the mid Sixties, the Pheasantry had become an artists’ colony that had a club in the basement. Oz artist Martin Sharp roomed there with his friend Eric Clapton (Sharp designed the sleeves for Cream’s Disraeli Gears and Wheels Of Fire) and Germaine Greer wrote The Female Eunuch within its walls. The Pheasantry hosted gigs by Queen, Lou Reed and was also the venue where Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice first discovered Yvonne Elliman for their rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar.
It seemed a fitting location for Sparks to make their UK debut. However, Chris O’Donnell, one half of the Morrison-O’Donnell management partnership, doesn’t have quite such fond memories of The Pheasantry. “It was where you played if you couldn’t get any gigs anywhere else. It never really cut it as a venue.”
Hewlett, too, took a negative view of the venue. “It was a naff place to play. It was the sort of place you played if you couldn’t get the Marquee. It wasn’t the greatest of gigs, but then they weren’t the greatest of bands and it was a gig. The main thing was them playing anywhere. At that point they were West Coast-looking, playing this off-the-wall music. I think people mostly thought that they were a bunch of shit.”