by Daryl Easlea
While on tour, the Maels shared their love of fine food and faddish diets. “It was an understatement that we ate well,” Hampton recalled. “Most of the tours were planned around Egon Ronay or the Michelin Guide, as long as there was a decent restaurant there or on the way to the gig. As Brits we were used to the Blue Boar [a notorious rock ‘n’ roll greasy spoon] up the M1. The Rosette-awarded restaurants we never even knew existed — the Maels are true gourmets.”
Island’s laissez-faire approach was proving beneficial, having always been a nurturing presence.
“I kept an eye on their career when they were with us,” says Chris Blackwell. “I can’t say that I was involved in it a lot as I was really involved with Bob Marley. In the case of Sparks, they had their whole thing together in a way. With Bob I was moving him from a singles act to an album act.”
However there were the first hints of dissension in the ranks from those that had originally championed Sparks at the label.
“I probably realised the law of diminishing returns after the first album,” Tim Clark says. “I think the second album was a bit of a disappointment, compared with the first. Kimono My House was this wonderful piece of work, a real breath of fresh air. They didn’t follow it up too well”
David Betteridge: “It’s always a danger; artists have a short lifetime of experience that goes into this first album. It’s like they’ve filled the glass right up to the top. They have success; and then the second album syndrome happens that so many people haven’t got past. When we heard Propaganda we wondered where the big hit was; all artists have a crescendo.”
The Island team were largely supportive of their polite, if aloof, charges.
Tim Clark: “I had dealings with Ron and Russell during sleeve shoots, saw them at gigs. I knew them and worked with them insofar as it pertained to what we were trying to do for them. I didn’t spend huge amounts of time with them.”
David Betteridge: “They were a very interesting couple. Russell and I got on well but there was a shield there; there is always a shield between record executives and artists — the record company is always looked on as a suspicious character. I liked Russell, I found him a decent guy. Ron I never got to know at all.”
John Hewlett was a more reassuring and communicative presence.
David Betteridge: “John and I were good friends. I liked John a lot, I thought he was a very caring individual. In this period, we became good friends outside out of the music business. I thought ultimately he lacked the real strength and power of a lot of managers I knew. It’s a very interesting talent, a good manager. A manager can damage an act far more than anyone in the record company; you can really have managers who fuck up the artists’ lives and your investment. I think John cared deeply, but he lacked a certain amount of direction.
“He seemed a pretty straight fellow, he didn’t even smoke. John may have got drunk with me a couple of times. He had a great deal of good qualities, but somewhere in the small print of the management manual, there was something he was missing. He was very helpful to us but he was probably too nice. The music business takes no prisoners.”
Christmas 1974 provided the brothers with a chance to reflect on what had been a pretty crazy year. They had made some good friends in the business, one of whom was Island’s international man, Peter Zumsteg. “We were playing darts in a pub round the corner from Island in Hammersmith,” Zumsteg recalls. “Chris Blackwell wanted me to go to Jamaica with Bob Marley and then on to LA. This was the night before I went, so the Maels gave me the key to their parents’ house up on the hill in Hollywood.”
While on tour in Holland, Sparks outlined their hopes for their third Island album when interviewed by Max Bell for NME. “The next album should be recorded in America,” Russell offered. “Still with Muff, though we hope to have Earle Mankey, our old lead guitarist, engineering.” Mankey returning to Sparks at this point with the English band would have made an interesting proposition. “We do have the element of local-boys-made-good, and the English element as well, plus this is our best-ever combination,” Ron said. “There’s a lot of, I know this sounds kinda naive, youthful spirit. We aren’t the initial thing to latch on and so we do have a reputation preceding us. It will be a shock though, going back, after the success here.”
As fascinating as it sounded, the Winwood/Mankey collaboration was not to happen. 1975 began with a final piece of Propaganda business, the release of ‘Something For The Girl With Everything’, backed with ‘Marry Me’. Even with its Top Of The Pops appearances, it continued Sparks’ gentle chart decline with a number 17 placing. “Another song in the hyper-acrobatic melody style that Ron had initiated on Kimono,” Russell said in 1991. “We were now experts on the menu choices of the BBC canteen as a result of numerous Top Of The Pops appearances.”
Sparks returned to America at the start of 1975 for further promo on Propaganda, making a televised appearance on Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, filmed at New York’s Beacon Theater, playing ‘Something For the Girl With Everything’, ‘Talent Is An Asset’, ‘Hasta Mañana Monsieur’, ‘Thank God It’s Not Christmas’, ‘B.C.’ and ‘Here In Heaven’.
Hewlett was delighted that, even with the personnel changes, the band were performing well. “Sparks were hot by that point. Just look at the Don Kirshner show. They were playing all the time. They were all good. Dinky was the machine behind it. He was a fantastic drummer.”
Round the various TV studios, Sparks saw and made friends, as Trevor White says: “We were doing one TV show and I watched Abba. Afterwards, the girls came up to us and asked us if we were in Sparks and they told us how much they liked our music. I thought that was something I’d keep with me forever.”
With a year that concluded with three Top 20 singles and a potential foothold in the US, it was decided that the next album would really be targeted towards America. Ron and Russell took a break and considered their next move. It was now time for the brothers to show what they could really do.
* Although they may not have always seen eye-to-eye during his brief tenure in the group, Ron and Russell were deeply saddened by Fisher’s passing.
* Ron is undoubtedly referring to Queen. On October 24, the two bands’ paths crossed again at Top Of The Pops. Sparks were plugging ‘Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth’ while Queen were singing their number two record ‘Killer Queen’.
* Ironically, the number plate of the Humber had the initials ‘MU’ on it — the abbreviation for the Musicians’ Union, which had blocked what would have been Sparks’ debut Top Of The Pops performance earlier that year, giving The Rubettes a leg up to number one.
Chapter Eight
Just Almost Overcooked: Indiscreet
“The versifying of Ron Mael introduced a new style of pop poetry and the scattershot pace of Russell’s vocals sounded like someone running out of a burning house.”
Morrissey, 2007
“Tony’s really affable — the combination of Ron and Russell meeting him was when it went off the wall a bit.”
Trevor White, 2009
Given that cinema had influenced Sparks’ work so greatly and that the group had been creating quite a visual stir, it was altogether appropriate that the Maels should wish to make a move into film. Jacques Tati and Sparks. Art-rock meets art-house. It was a thrilling proposition that just could have happened. Tati was one of the avatars of French comic film. Born of Russian parents, the young Jacques Tatischeff impressed his friends by being an accomplished mime. After a successful feature-length debut, Jour De Fête, in 1949, he introduced the world to his creation, Monsieur Hulot.
Hulot was a bumbling, well-meaning everyman, respectful but not stupid, at odds with the world in which he lived. This fundamental joke was continually magnified throughout the first three Hulot films. In 1953’s Les Vacances De M. Hulot, he is increasingly riled by a loud American, who has colonised the blissful Brittany beach at which they are both holidaying. In 1958’s Mon Oncle, it is the modernism of life with which
he comes into gentle battle.
By 1967’s Play Time, what went on in one house in Mon Oncle had by now permeated an entire city; the dislocation and alienation caused by the things designed to make our lives easier is written as large as the fake skyscrapers Tati had painstakingly constructed for the film.
However, as he grew older and wearier, Tati was still developing the ultimate Hulot adventure of them all, Confusion. In what seemed to be a never-ending cycle of pleas for fundraising, Tati held to his vision of directing the film in which Hulot, increasingly dwarfed by his circumstance, would be written out early — possibly killed. The action would then centre on a television director and technician stringing together a series of visual puns and strange soundtracks. Tati had struggled with his masterwork since 1969, after the ambitious, widescreen Play Time collapsed at the French box office. Although diverted by his 1971 Netherlands-funded Trafic, Confusion was on the agenda when Tati encountered Sparks in 1975.
Confusion began as an idea for a television series in 1969. The project was given a further lease of life when, while Tati was touring what was to become his final film, Parade, in 1974, writer and broadcaster David Frost’s David Paradine Productions announced it would back the film. To give it a contemporary edge, it would have cameo roles from a variety of current celebrities. James Harding, writing in Jacques Tati: Frame By Frame, suggested that “Tati prepared a scenario in which he made concessions to satisfy potential backers: he would have guest stars as a means of ensuring wider distribution.” In early 1975 Sparks would have fitted that bill perfectly with their European sensibilities and star rating.
Ron, Russell and Tati were introduced by Peter Zumsteg, who was coordinating Island’s promo and marketing activity in continental Europe. Working out of St Peter’s Square and a small office in Zurich, Zumsteg was a colourful character who thought that Tati would be enchanted by Sparks’ left-of-centre approach. A meeting was set up between them at the Paris Hilton.
Peter Zumsteg: “We’d spent a lot of time together. I knew where Ron and Russell were at and what they were interested in. At the time it was very difficult to find out how you could contact people like Jacques Tati. I’d been phoning friends and friends of friends in the business. Finally, I managed to talk to his assistant, Marie-France. We managed to organise a lunch meeting. Tati walked in, just like the guy out of his movie, like he was M. Hulot.”
Zumsteg “had thought there were similarities in sensibilities between Tati’s world view and ours,” Ron said in 2006. “We were under no illusions as to the relative genius of Tati versus Sparks, but we kept our mouths shut and a meeting was set up.”
Surprisingly, the whole band were also invited. “I was familiar with Jacques Tati’s films,” Trevor White recalls. “Ron and Russell were ensconced with him, making plans.”
The meeting was weirder still for John Hewlett — he realised he knew Tati’s assistant, Marie-France Siegler, from cycling with her while in France years previously, although not making her connection with Tati.
On March 15, a press release was sent out with an accompanying photo of the French legend with Sparks and Zumsteg.
“Comic Genius Jacques Tati has joined with Sparks’ creative sparkplugs Ron and Russell Mael for a major motion picture, tentatively titled Confusion, and planned for filming later this year, with Tati and the Maels co-starring. Oscar winner Tati has been developing the script in Paris, with continuing consultation from the Maels, and he’ll also direct. Sparks likely will perform the Confusion title tune, to be written by Ron Mael.”
A series of meetings happened throughout the year, culminating in a Swedish television show on which all three appeared. Tati explained to the brothers the scope of his idea: visual puns such as characters leaving the frame of the film mid-dialogue, colours running through the frame and out-of-context sound effects being deployed. Tati seemed obsessed with exposing the artifice of motion pictures. This had, of course, been done before, especially in 1952’s Singing In The Rain, but this enterprise was to be more Brechtian and discomfiting.
As if to underline Sparks’ desire to work with Tati, Ron Mael was quick to put a ‘Confusion’ theme song together, which was delivered as something of a goodwill gesture and statement of intent. However, the project simply ebbed away. As Ron stated in The Sparks Guide Book, “Soon our meetings with Jacques Tati occurred less and less frequently. Perhaps there were financial problems. Perhaps there were health problems. We never knew. Finally sometime late in 1975, our meetings stopped.”
Sparks never did realise their dream of appearing in an art-house film. The missed opportunity is one that weighed heavy on the brothers. Ron was later to reflect, “How ironic that after 30 years as a musician, my sole regret is not being able to have appeared in a French film, a Tati film.”
Tati himself continued trying to raise funding, and died in 1982 with the project still to be realised.
But were Sparks pop or were they art? This dichotomy was epitomised by the February 15, 1975 edition of UK teen mag Jackie. At a time when the Maels desired to work with Jacques Tati and stretch out their art, they were in the pages of the teeny press alongside David Essex and Suzi Quatro talking about Valentine’s Day. “That’s the most fun day of the whole school year,” Russell said. “Over here, it’s different, because you don’t sign them,” Ron added. “That’s no fun — it doesn’t take any courage! In America, everyone knows who’s sent the card, so you’re really committed.”
On the artistic side, the Maels knew that they had stretched the Kimono My House formula as far as it could possibly go with Propaganda so for their next Island album they wanted to do something different and more experimental. Muff Winwood, who was very much up for a change in direction, thought his old friend Tony Visconti would be superb for the job. With Visconti sharing the characteristic of being a US exile in the UK and with their knowledge of UK pop history, Ron and Russell were eager as well. John Hewlett knew of Visconti through his work with Hewlett’s former John’s Children bandmate Marc Bolan and through Visconti’s then-wife, Mary Hopkin, as Hewlett had dealt with her publishing during his time at Apple.
The transplanted boy from Brooklyn was one of the most fashionable producers of the early Seventies for his work with Bolan and T. Rex and had recently renewed his professional relationship with David Bowie, having just returned from Philadelphia where he had produced Young Americans. Visconti had also worked with acts as diverse as Gentle Giant and Wings and was later to work with Irish hard rockers Thin Lizzy.
David Betteridge: “We wanted to do the right thing for them [Sparks] and us. Tony Visconti had a great pedigree. His track record was such that if you didn’t bow, you certainly nodded your head to the man.”
John Hewlett: “I’d known Tony for a long time and thought he was cool. He took [Sparks] further down a road that took them away from rock. Ron and Russell thought, because he had done Bowie and Bolan, that he was going to do wonders for them.”
Tony Visconti: “I remember ‘This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both Of Us’. That’s when I first became aware of Sparks and it had an amazing effect on me. I couldn’t believe that this pop record was so well made. No one had ever done anything like that before… Muff summoned me to Island and told me that I would be a good producer for them. I think the world of Muff as a producer but he told me that he had one trick — getting a good sound on the instruments and then double-tracking everything. That’s pretty much how most people made records in those days so he knew he couldn’t do what they wanted. It was out of his realm. He didn’t work with string players and brass players and all that. He gladly handed the baton to me. That decade of my life was just so busy. I was asked to do Hall & Oates around the same time but I just didn’t have the time.”
Visconti and the Maels hit it off immediately: “It was so refreshing to talk to them because they weren’t like a rock’n’roll band. They were very cultured and that’s pretty much the way Bowie is too. Russell and Ron were so articulate
and intelligent and knew exactly what they wanted.”
After Propaganda, Indiscreet was to be a remarkably complex record. “We wanted to get more outside instrumentation,” Ron told Trouser Press in 1982. “Tony Visconti knew about scoring. We had done two albums with the band format and wanted to elaborate on that more, which isn’t necessarily a good idea. We had a lot of songs, but I don’t recall the recording taking that long.”
On March 17, Ron and Russell began recording in Visconti’s home studio in Shepherd’s Bush, west London. It was one of the first domestic recording facilities in the UK as Ron recalled, “Tony had a studio downstairs the size of a phone booth. There was no room for a bass amp, so bass speakers had to be built into the walls. It was incredibly tight, but it gave you the feeling you could concentrate without anyone knowing what you were doing.”
The brothers were impressed by what the producer brought to the table. Things such as him playing the bass part to ‘The Man Who Sold The World’ just prior to recording ‘Happy Hunting Ground’ had the brothers in awe. There was a feeling something special was in the air and that a masterpiece was about to be created.
Tony Visconti: “That’s what we set out to do. I knew it was going to be stunning in the end and I kept questioning the guys ‘Are you sure you want to go all the way in that direction?’ and they told me that it was the band that was always holding them back. They were probably quite envious of the way The Beatles and George Martin worked post-Revolver, where you hear all these radically different sounds on one artist’s album. Russell and Ron were looking for that kind of a relationship and they couldn’t get that from Muff. They told me point blank they couldn’t get it from the members of their band either. They really needed a person like myself to add the things that they could hear in their heads but we were trying to make it damn good and interesting and, of course, pop art.”