— David Hepworth
In the liner notes to the 2019 three disc compilation Past Tense, critic Simon Price ponders why Sparks were never a much bigger act. This is worth wondering about since Ron and Russell Mael had their chances. They've enjoyed the "support" of major labels and have been championed by many figures in pop and some in the media. They scored a pair of memorable hits with "This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us" and "Amateur Hour" back when they were a glam rock five piece and had a best selling LP, 1974's Kimono My House, to go with it. The brothers later adopted synthesizers and jumped into the world of disco with further success. Now well into their seventies, they still have a devoted following and have admirably avoided the tempting retro route that so many of their contemporaries have taken.
Yet, they seemed incapable of building off of their successes. Propaganda, a quick follow up to Kimono My House, did well but it and accompanying singles "Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth" and "Something for the Girl with Everything" underperformed compared to their predecessors. Things bottomed out completely as the decade progressed and it was only their synth transformation in 1979 that brought them back into the charts. "The Number One Song in Heaven" is a gorgeous song but it did less well on this earthly body. Despite their return to the top 20, however, the No.1 in Heaven album failed, a worrying sign that sustained success might still elude them. This was confirmed a year later when album Terminal Jive missed the charts completely. (They would find more success in Europe but that too was erratic)
"When I'm with You" kicked started an eighties that would see them go hitless in the UK. ("Change", which also appears on this blog, came the closest) Price argues that the Maels "laid the template for every synth-based duo of the eighties — Soft Cell, Yazoo, Associates, Yello, Blancmange, Pet Shop Boys, Erasure" (as well as, presumably, adjacent groups Eurythmics and Tears for Fears) yet they couldn't come close to the popularity of any of them (even if, long term, they have outstripped many of these acts). The trouble was, they came with a decade of baggage that the groups they influenced didn't have. Like once sex-crazed, drug-addicted, booze-fuelled miscreants who suddenly become born-again Christians, Sparks were keen to disavow their past life ("any band that has got a guitarist is just a joke", as Ron Mael once infamously stated) but this was far more difficult to shake than simply noodling on keyboards might suggest. Critics from more elevated rags than Smash Hits took them for chancers and, given how quick they were to bring back the guitars and the bombast when the hits again dried up, they may not have been entirely wrong.
But David Hepworth digs "When I'm with You" and Red Starr would be similarly impressed with Terminal Jive a month later. If poor reviews were hurting their popularity then more encouraging evaluations weren't helping much. Assuming the public got a fair chance to hear their latest single — did they have cancel culture back in the eighties too? — it's understandable why they may not have been overly tickled by it. Russell's gentle voice lulls the listener into the realms of a love song but the "it's the break in the song..." bridge upends such preconceptions. The Buggles were knowing in "Video Killed the Radio Star" but they dispensed with subtlety in doing so; the Mael's give a wink to an audience that isn't in on the joke. Then, the real negativity starts presenting itself.
I could be giving the punters too much credit. There are masses of people who think R.E.M.'s "The One I Love" is a sincere expression of the romantic ideal, they could just as easily have been fooled by Sparks being all arch. But then we return to their baggage: in Red Starr's album review, his nibs admits that he typically finds them "irritatingly silly" and, though it was his favourite LP of the fortnight garnering a nine out of ten score, he may not have been alone in thinking so. Starr considers "When I'm with You" one of its highlights but with the group's background is it any wonder so many buyers stayed away? And if that didn't turn people off then what about that promo they shot? I'm sure a grinning ventriloquist Ron holding a dummy Russell seemed like a good idea at the time but it's grotesque and makes a good case for why the toothbrush mustached keyboardist should henceforth always remain as sternly dictatorial looking as possible.
The Maels could have taken the Ian McCulloch approach to their relative lack of success by claiming that could easily have been Queen (and, again, just like the Echo & The Bunnymen-U2 dynamic, it's much more likely that Queen could easily have been Sparks). The two acts rose to prominence in the days of glam rock and both would flirt with a variety of genres but only one managed to do so as a consistently successful chart presence and concert draw. The difference was the Maels weren't able to connect with casual listeners the way Freddie Mercury and co. managed so effortlessly. Queen knew when to be silly and when to be taken seriously; for Sparks the situation was much muddier and they would be resigned to the same fans, the only people smart enough to "get" them.
As I have said before, it is probably best to appreciate Sparks in retrospect. Fans of their commercial peak as a glam rock group could easily have been turned off by what became of them over the remainder of the decade; those who got into them in their synth period might find their rebirth as an operatic chamber pop at around the turn of the century to be a bit much. But from the vantage of examining the whole of their fifty year career, one may conclude that they were an indie Beatles stretched out over half a century or like if Scott Walker had never lost his way in the seventies. And one can better appreciate the overall body of their work even if individual tracks and periods fail to impress. In isolation, "When I'm with You" isn't quite one of their classics but it is a good enough number and I can certainly understand it following Hepworth into the bath; I take showers but it was with me there too.
~~~~~
Also Reviewed This Fortnight
Suzi Quatro: "Mama's Boy"
Old school rock 'n' rollers frequently have trouble moving on. They appear youthful and rebellious and serve up short anthems that get fists in the air. Suzi Quatro did so on "Can the Can" and "Devil Gate Drive" but it couldn't last forever. The 1978 hit 'If You Can't Give Me Love" suggested that maturity was on the way but then she got sucked into believing that she was one of the "real punks" and so it was back to the kick assery of old, only her stuff wasn't able to kick ass any longer. That said, "Mama's Boy" is okay, albeit in a sounds-exactly-as-you'd-expect kind of way, and Quatro probably couldn't have gotten away with going all reflective so she was probably better off screaming away. She couldn't win either way but that's rock 'n' roll for ya.
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