Sparks is easily one of the top ten most influential pop bands of all time

Is this is a justifiable statement? Discuss.

http://www.worsleyschool.net/socialarts/hyperbole/hyperboletit.JPG

lol @ image.

Much as I love them, and I do, very much, I have taken Tom Ewing's observation to heart that they are simultaneously overrated by their committed fans and underrated by their detractors. That said, they are pretty much the only band I know that collectively set a path for Queen, the Pet Shop Boys, Faith No More and Franz Ferdinand, to name only four...

Anyway, will be seeing them again at UCLA a week from Saturday.

I think that image is referring to that common use of hyperbole, "I'm so hungry I could ride a giant crawfish"

mosquitos so big they can stand flat-footed and fuck a turkey (not pictured)

Franz Ferdinand

? I don't get this one

i wish they were more influential

The Franz Ferdinand dudes have been v. vocal about their love of glam-era Sparks and the bands have talked about some collaborative work at some point. Mutual admiration society stuff.

fair enough, I just don't hear much sonic similarity

I know NPR's Bob Boilen loves them. He played a cut from their latest album saying it was one of his favorites of the year. It's weird, because I've been obsessing over music for well over a decade, and last week was the first time I heard about this band. But they've released a ton of records!

I wonder if that is typical or if I'm just a weirdo.

they've never had any huge hits in the US and have bounced through several different scenes (glam, new wave, etc.) so no its not really that unexpected. kinda a prototypical cult band.

they're fantastic tho, btw.

How many have they actually influenced? I mean, surely, I'll give you Pet Shop Boys. And maybe some of the weirder underground stuff like The Associates and Orange Juice. But dunno generally.

influence on Queen is indisputable

Is this is a justifiable statement? Discuss.

it's the "easily" and "top ten" that i have a problem with.

i wish they were more influential

― crackers is biters (M@tt He1ges0n), Wednesday, February 4, 2009 10:02 PM (51 minutes ago)

I have taken Tom Ewing's observation to heart that they are simultaneously overrated by their committed fans and underrated by their detractors.

Isn't that the case with most bands?

Yeah, that just reads like a basic definition of what "fans" and "detractors" are.

This seems as good a place as any to mention it. Michael Silverblatt's radio show "Bookworm" will have the Maels as guests next week.
(http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/bw for us who can only hear this stuff online)

(Although oddly enough I feel like I can think of a few bands who are, in certain ways, underrated by their fans and overrated by their detractors.)

name names

I CAN DANCE LIKE SHERLOCK HOLMES

love this band so much but I hate a lot of their songs

No contest! They influenced both Milk 'N' Cookies and the Quick! Can't beat that with a cricket bat, can you?

Actually, they also sort of invented "new wave" (unless The Tubes did.).

(Although oddly enough I feel like I can think of a few bands who are, in certain ways, underrated by their fans and overrated by their detractors.)

― nabisco, Wednesday, February 4, 2009 11:02 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Simon and Garfunkel?

xp And don't forget U.K. Squeeze and, um, Jules & the Polar Bears. And the Yachts! (Hey, that makes them almost as influential as Creed. Okay, not quite, but you get the idea.)

it's the "easily" and "top ten" that i have a problem with.

I actually even have a problem with "pop"! (But then, I'm a Woofer In Tweeter's Clothing fan.)

Two fairly recent songs that struck me as unimaginable without Sparks are 1) "Read My Mind" by the Killers, and 2) "Potential Breakup Song" by Aly & AJ (the chorus, particularly).

I've always loved the fact that when I've seen people first listen to Sparks and know a bit about them they usually think they're a) English b) gay. The former isn't true, obviously, though they are Anglophiles, and I don't think either is confirmed to be homosexual. "They're from Long Beach and claim not to be gay" is always quite the shocker.

so many songs are neurotically female-centric I don't really understand why anyone would think they were gay

if anything they seem downright pervy/pedo more than anything (lolz Young Girls)

Wait....just thought of another one: Donnie Iris!

Seriously, though, I'm curious about the Queen connection. I've been hearing for decades that they were Sparks-influenced (Billy Altman, 1978, Rolling Stone Record Guide first edition, Sparks review: "Docked one star per album for being somewhat responsible for Queen.") Is this from something that Freddie Mercury said in an interview once, or are there actual Queen songs that people think sound Sparks-like? I guess I sort of hear it (in, say, "Killer Queen"?), but really not that much. What Queen stuff am I not thinking of?

Actually I think its something Brian May said in an interview once. Something to do with being inspired by Sparks' TOTP performance...? There's also the mustache connection haha

anyway I definitely hear similarities (combo of glam bombast w/classical affectations, operatic vocals, nudge-nudge-wink-wink lyrics, etc.), and prefer the Bros Mael

It's that plus other stuff -- IIRC the Maels offered May a role in their band before Queen's own breakthrough with "Killer Queen."

I think it was before Night of the Opera came out that they had offered May a job as guitarist, but May thought the album would pan out and politely declined.

Okay, guess that makes sense. Still don't think I ever would have made the "Queen sound kind of like Sparks" connection if it hadn't been made for me (and I've been listening to both bands for forever.)

Another somewhat major band my ears probably never would have connected with Sparks, by the way, though Robert Christgau did in 1977 (see if you can guess who): "A debut LP will often seem overrefined to habitues of band's scene, so many CBGBites felt betrayed when bits of this came out sounding like Sparks....Like Sparks, they are spoiled kids, but without the callowness or adolescent misogyny."

Talking Heads

Is that motherfucker side-straddling a mosquito?

The eponymous debut, otherwise known as Halfnelson, released in 71, introduced a sound predating New Wave pop by a good 6 years -- that's before Roxy Music had done anything.

No.1 in Heaven, produced by Giorgio Moroder and released in 79, provided a sonic middle point between the early synth-pop of the producer and the eccentric glam of the band and proved a massively influential style to '80s acts such as Depeche Mode and New Order.

Evaluate.

Well, it's hard to say Half Nelson was "influential" if nobody ever heard the thing, which I assume almost nobody did. Not clear to me that Depeche, New Order, etc, were actually inspired by No 1 In Heaven (the last Sparks album I care about fwiw), either; seems a couple other new wave 1979 synth-pop precursors (M's "Pop Muzik" definitely, and maybe Gary Numan's Replicas) were more widely heard. (Was that Sparks album a big hit in the U.K., though? If so, it may have been a bigger inspiration than I've ever realized. In the States --- where "Pop Muzik" was a #1 single -- No. 1 In Heaven didn't even go Top 200. But then, it's not like most synth-pop was American, obviously.)

Roxy Music's Manifesto was 1979 too, right? That's a real big one. And I mean, I guess I always figured Spandau Ballet, Human League, Soft Cell, Depeche, etc., got their ideas more from Roxy Music than Sparks. (Not to mention directly from disco and r&b, and Kraftwerk, and maybe Devo and even B-52s and Ian Dury and all the other dance-oriented new wave that was hitter bigger than the Sparks in '79.)

Was that Sparks album a big hit in the U.K., though? If so, it may have been a bigger inspiration than I've ever realized.

Not sure about the album but the title track and to a lesser extent "Beat the Clock" both charted there, though they might have both done better in Germany. I recall reading somewhere that Jimmy Somerville (Bronski Beat, Communards, etc.) took "Number One Song In Heaven" as one of his early inspirations, and he's performed the song with the band in studio and live.

xp Also 1979 (and I'm assuming bigger than Sparks that year): Blondie "Heart of Glass" (actually late '78) and Eat to the Beat, Lene Lovich "Lucky Number," Marianne Faithfull "Broken English," Flying Lizards' "Money," Talking Heads' "Life During Wartime." (XTC and the Police probably figure in there somewhere, too, actually.)

And duh, the Cars. (Candy-O from '79 actually more synth-poppish than their '78 debut. But were the Cars stars in England too, or unknowns? I actually have no idea, I just realized.) Also, not sure whether anybody danced to Wire's 154 or not. (Okay, probably not.)

recall reading somewhere that Jimmy Somerville (Bronski Beat, Communards, etc.) took "Number One Song In Heaven" as one of his early inspirations, and he's performed the song with the band

Yeah, I can see that, but he was clearly a disco guy, too. A Sylvester guy. Plus he also covered Thelma Houston's "Don't Leave Me This Way," right? So while I'm not surprised that he liked Sparks's Morodor move, I'm guessing he would've been on his way toward being a dance diva even without them.

Did "I Feel Love" with Bronski Beat (and Marc Almond!) too. (Though I guess it's possible Sparks/Morodor may have been his gateway drug.)

Probably a combination of things. Let me ask some of the folks on the mailing list who were there at the time, there's at least a couple of UK folks who swear by that album in terms of how they got into the band at the time.

(I should also say that No 1 is my favorite album by them, hands down!)

Well whatever else can be said, they're on fire these days, based on last night's show. Hell of a backing band now.

I recall reading somewhere that Jimmy Somerville (Bronski Beat, Communards, etc.) took "Number One Song In Heaven" as one of his early inspirations

No wonder. I have to say I find the singing voice of Russel Mael somewhat annoying (although I do like Sparks for a number of other reasons), and Jimmy Sommerville's I cannot stand at all.

To me No. 1 in Heaven definitely sounds like precursor to 80s synth pop, even if there other equally influential records around in 1979 too. "La Dolce Vita" especially sounds like the template for Pet Shop Boys and other similar bands.

Sparks influenced Queen? Oh, come come! The timelines don't fit at all.

combo of glam bombast w/classical affectations, operatic vocals, nudge-nudge-wink-wink lyrics, etc

Yes, but this was all in place within Queen's music, well before Sparks' UK breakthrough in the spring of 1974. "Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke", goddammit!

Add Andrew WK to the list of followers. And Superconductor as well.

Again, what AWK stuff sounds Sparks-like? (Not saying there isn't any; just wondering how they might have influenced his music, or if the point is just that he's called himself a fan in interviews.)

As for timelines, I don't see what would have prevented Sparks from influencing Queen's later music, at least (though, from what I can see, Sparks debuted in 1972, and Queen not until 1973.)

There's a 1978 or so Greil Marcus review of a very early L.A. punk compilation called Saturday Night Pogo (on Rhino I think) where he says some of the bands seemed influenced by Sparks (who he seems to hate, by the way). Don't think he spells out which ones, though. (This is pre-hardcore, obv.)

The only thing I'd argue were *influenced by Sparks* is The Simpsons, and maybe, maybe The Magnetic Fields.

Otherwise, I'd say "influenced by Noel Coward, George Formsby, Milton Berle, megamusicals."

Mike T Diva and Chuck - Queen opened a series of dates for Sparks during the period when Sparks were based in England. The Maels and their allies had stumbled on a winning formula that would literally take them to the tops of the charts ("This Town..."), TV, etc... and geez heck yeah that formula directly inspired some of Queen's best known work. And then there's the clothing... Anyways this isn't secret history, it's been written about many times (I did a piece on that era for Mojo a few years ago)...

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Again, what AWK stuff sounds Sparks-like? (Not saying there isn't any; just wondering how they might have influenced his music, or if the point is just that he's called himself a fan in interviews.)

The pop songs on his first EP, "Girls Own Juice," are influenced by Sparks early melodic pop (Half Nelson), while I Get Wet taps the pounding repetition of Kimono My House-era Sparks. Andrew's sense of the theatrical is very much inspired by Sparks. The way he fuses anthemic guitars with twinkling pianos. The whole record has a kind of Teutonic bounce at its core that to me just sounds very Sparks. It's relentless and dense like the Mael brothers' music.

Yeah QN, has AWK ever said this? Doesn't seem like something he would've come across.

fwiw, found the relevant bit from that old Mojo piece...

“Wonder Girl,” the album’s first single did make it in to the Top 100, and the band made several American TV appearances, including a spot on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, (“Dick Clark called my brother a no-talent,” says Earle, “which is hard to tell on his show, because everybody lip synchs.”) The band recorded a second album, A Woofer in Tweeter’s Clothing, before traveling to Europe, where they would be more warmly received.
Russell: “Warner Bros couldn’t figure out how to get us beyond the 12 groupies at the Whiskey that really liked us. And they thought what we were doing might possibly appeal to a British audience. So they sent us to England, and got us on the Old Grey Whistle Test. All of a sudden, people were coming to see us.”
Sparks played the Marquee, with a little-known band called Queen opening for them, and toured around England and Europe, playing shows, making TV appearances and being chased by screaming teenage girls. They returned to America, buzzing, but Woofer’s release in March 1973 was another commercial underachiever. The label seemed either unable or uninterested in breaking Sparks in their own nation.
“It just didn’t seem like they had their heads screwed on right,” says Mankey. “They could never come up with the money. And the band basically broke up. We all floated around Los Angeles for many months. I got a job with a recording a console company that eventually got me in with the Beach Boys, and the drummer and my brother were going to school. Really, we were just milling around doing nothing.”
Meanwhile, back in England, industry wags were still interested in this strange band that had made a quick splash in a short time. Island A & R man Muff Winwood, older brother of Steve and former bassist in the Spencer Davis Group, had seen them on television and was impressed.
“They looked different, they sounded different, but in the end--they weren’t that different,” he says on the phone, still enthusiastic about Sparks three decades after signing them. “Russell had a good pop voice, they had a fantastic image, their music was accessible, they were doing something completely different to anybody else--but the instant you saw it, you got it! That doesn’t happen very often. ”
The Maels got out of their deal with Bearsville/Warners, signed to Island and immediately relocated to London. Their mother had recently moved there with their stepfather, but the brothers had to fend for themselves.
“We sold every possession we had,” remembers Russell.
“Aside from going there with no possessions and no band, we went there with no songs,” says Ron. “We were just so thrilled to be there as a band living in England, doing what we were doing, that it never occurred to us that this could be a disaster. It was funny. ‘Oh, we’re in England. We’re putting together a new version of the Who. Let’s put out an ad in Melody Maker to get some musicians, let’s write some songs. It’s a little cold, but it’s not that bad.’”
Living in Kenneth Tynan’s basement (they had no idea who he was when they rented the space, they claim), the Maels started work on writing new songs, assembling a new band and attracting Roy Wood (of their beloved Move) as a producer. The songs, amazing as they were, were the easiest part: the Maels, especially Ron, were on a creative tear. Assembling a band that could meet the Maels’ peculiar requirements proved more difficult.
“We were always image-conscious,” says Ron, “and we went to England thinking that everybody there, especially people that are musicians, looks cool. We found out not everyone that’s a musician in England looks cool. And also we had to find people that could play what we were doing. It was hard finding a guitarist in particular, someone who could play really well, who could be heavy but also kind of adaptable to pretty stylized songs too. It took a while.”
With songs written, a band assembled, and Roy Wood unavailable, Sparks went into a studio with their A & R man, Muff Winwood, to record demos that Winwood hoped would give prospective producers an idea of what the band was up to. What they came up with was good enough to release.
“All the producers couldn’t see what this act was all about, and I could,” says Winwood. “So I took them in the studio, and that’s where we kind of hit on putting a good chunky guitar underneath things. It kinda *lifted everything--it stopped it all from being kind of twee, y’know, and gave it some balls. Very quickly, we realized that we’d got an interesting sound.”
“This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us” was one of the first tracks Sparks cut with Winwood. It would be the advance single for the album. a three-minute six second a stomping pocket opera with the aforementioned chunky guitar interspersed with vocals that dipped and soared, tricky time signatures, dramatic instrumental passages and wry observational lyrics like “Census/the latest census/There’ll be more girls who live in town though not enough to go round/Heartbeat, increasing heartbeat.” The song instantly caught on, eventually reaching Number Two on the UK charts. But it wasn’t the music alone that sent the song to the top of the charts: there was also the band’s visual presentation in television appearances.
“They were marvelously weird,” remembers photographer (and future Sparks collaborator) Gered Mankowitz. “There was this wonderful visual contrast between the sort-of matinee idol Russell and the weird, vaguely manic, deranged Ron. Russell was in his own little groove, looking gorgeous, waving to you vaguely from the distance, as though he was in some sort of Dunhill cigarette advert, and there was Ron, looking as though he’d escaped from some mad school for budding Hitlers. Absolutely wonderful.”
Twenty-year-old Russell had always slotted perfectly into the traditional pop singer role onstage, but keyboardist Ron, now 25, seemed to have created a unique stage persona in order to feel comfortable.
“From the very start when we were playing live, I never knew what to do. Drummers and guitarists and bass players and singers, they can all look variations of some kind of cool in some kind of way, just doing something generic. But a keyboard player? No offense to Rick Wakeman, but I didn’t want to be that kind of over-the-top thing. So I decided to just sit there and well, to me, not do very much of anything. It wasn’t anything cooked up-- ‘Let’s figure out how to amplify the differences between us and we can come up with a real show biz kind of thing’--it was just frustration at what the theatrical aspect of a keyboard player in a rock band is, which is kind of pathetic. It was just trying to figure out something to do with it and it had that effect.
“It feels natural for me. To this day, people make the comment about Well you seem so different offstage than you seem onstage. I don’t know exactly how to answer that because it’s like, I don’t feel like I’m putting anything on when I’m onstage. It was just one of those things that came about out of desperation of not being able to figure out what to do to fit in with four other people in a band who were doing something interesting. When that was transferred to television, it blew up because... It was kind of a perfect thing for rock television at that time because it was made for close-ups. Everything else was based on motion and what I was doing, wasn’t.”
But Ron wasn’t only getting attention from audiences because of his comparative non-demonstrativeness. Shortly before their first TV appearance in support of the This Town single, Ron had his hair cut, and he slicked back what remained. Combined with his brush of a moustache, Ron bore a strong resemblance to Adolf Hitler. What was he thinking?
“It sounds disingenous and all, but it really was unintentional,” he explains. “I was really doing it as something like a logo -- like a Chaplin-esque kind of thing. I didn’t mean for it to be shocking in any kind of neo-fascist kind of way, at all. So when that got blown up and made more of an issue than the music we were doing, it had the wrong sort of effect. If I’d been sensitive to that earlier, I would’ve done something about it earlier.”
Ron eventually did change his moustache -- today it’s pencil-thin -- and in 1982 he would write a Sparks song entitled (of course) “Moustache” that addressed the subject (“I tried a handlebar design/My Fu Manchu was real fine/My Ronald Coleman made ‘em blink/My Pancho Villa made ‘em think/But when I trimmed it real small/My Jewish friends would never call”). But in 1974, he kept it on, and it played a part in making an odd band into a genuine pop sensation, as the band released several hit singles, made a promotional video for This Town that predicted (or inaugurated) most of the nascent form’s soon-to-be cliches, and a second album in one year, Propaganda, which continued where Kimono left off. Screaming teenage girls accompanied the band’s TV and concert appearances, while the press flipped for the absurdly quotable and photogenic Mael brothers. Fellow musicians were open with their admiration: some right away, some years later.
Brian May, guitarist for virtual Sparks tribute band Queen, would later admit that “I did like the band. I loved This Town Ain't Big Enough For Both of Us” while smugly retelling how he had turned down the Maels’ overtures in late-‘74 to quit his band for the much more successful Sparks: “They came 'round, the two brothers, and said, ‘Look it's pretty obvious that Queen are washed up. We'd like to offer you a position in our band, if you want.’ I said, ‘Well, I don't think we're quite dead yet.’”
“I don’t know how we even made the initial contact with him,” says Russell, “cuz they (Queen) had supported us at the Marquee but we weren’t in touch with them at all. And then somehow, it seemed like a few-month period we were in touch with Brian. I think they’d been to the States or something, I don’t really know the chronology, and Queen hadn’t been broken through yet on that level, so... He was considering it. From what I remember, he seemed to like what we were doing, the general thing.”
But the Maels’ choice for Sparks’ next guitarist was ultimately less important than their compositional ambitions. Sparks approached T. Rex/Bowie producer Tony Visconti to help arrange and produce their next album. Visconti, a fellow Anglophile American in London, was already a fan, of course.
“This Town was so clever, and I love clever pop,” he remembers fondly. “Harmonically, it was quite a different: they were using a strange chord structures; melodically it was leaping up and down like an aria or something like that. . I’d have to count on my fingers to figure out exactly what the time signature was. It’s something you would find in jazz and classical music, but very rarely in pop. I thought, with all these things, these guys have to be geniuses. Bowie liked them at the time--everyone really respected Sparks because, like the Beatles, with the Sparks, you never knew what they’d come up with next. That was the charm of them.”

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I interviewed Andrew twice: (1)just after the release of the first EP, Girls Own Juice and (2) just before the release of I Get Wet. He's a HUGE Sparks fan. We talked the most about Kimono and No. 1 in Heaven. Forget that jock boy persona, his knowledge of rock history is pretty darn good. He knows everything form Sparks to Pearl Jam to Cabaret Voltaire to Def Leppard to Obituary to Throbbing Gristle.

But I detected a Sparks influence before he even said anything.

You calling them "virtual Sparks tribute band Queen" and Brian admitting he liked them does not mean they were what you say. There are similarities, but I think you are overstating things a great deal.

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QN: Fascinating! I interviewed him for LAWeekly ahead of I Get Wet and he obv knew a lot of music but he was pretty young and didn't know Slade, so Sparks seemed like even more a reach to me...
EZ: Yeah you're right "virtual Sparks tribute band" is too much, I think we Xed that out of the final draft. Queen, who I love, were known (and proud) thieves, and if you check the timelines and read the biographies and the contemporary papers and interview the people close to the action from back then, you should be able to put the picture together for yourself.

Interesting. I was actually going to say this before: Andrew's glam sensibility is more Sparks and Queen than Slade in the sense that he's not particularly bluesy or rockabilly-inspired like Slade for example.

Early on Andrew was basically a sponge. He had a group of friends, mainly Michigan dudes who are hardcore record nerds (members of Wolf Eyes, Sightings, etc.), who turned him on to all kind of music. I mean, I know the guy who fed him a lot Sparks music.

QN: But Slade had plenty of melodic singalong rocknroll pounders and the attitude was good fun/positivity in broad strokes. That's what AWK was. Can't say that for Sparks or Queen, no way jose.

EZ: There's more than the music to do with the Sparks/Queen influence/imitation thing. Take a look at the way Freddy (bless him) presented himself pre and post-Sparks, for instance.

I guess for me I see more in terms of style - like how Freddie changed - than substance. Or, maybe I should say for me, any imitation quickly gave birth to something different and entirely their own.

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QN: But Slade had plenty of melodic singalong rocknroll pounders and the attitude was good fun/positivity in broad strokes. That's what AWK was. Can't say that for Sparks or Queen, no way jose.

On certain level I def agree. But Andrew's music is also dense, manic and meticulously crafted far more like Sparks. Plus, a lot of his lyrics aren't that feel good. Sure, the choruses might say one thing, but much of the verse isn't like that.

Then again, Sparks had wonderful sing-along choruses, too. What about "Amateur Hour"?

Sparks were, for a time, very big in England (and Europe) because of their sensational TV appearances, which seem to have scarred (for better or worse) everyone who viewed them. And at that point in time, practically everybody (kids, adults, bands, media, record industry) apparently watched Tops of the Pops.

QN: Point taken!

My fave Sparks appearance:

Totally insane!

Part II is even better:

Jump to the 3:19 mark to see Ron Mael smash the piano bench. Fucking genius. Dude is getting all conceptual performance art in a b-flick about a serial bomber obsessed with rollercoasters.

Oh my god, I've seen that film - and I never noticed that Sparks were in it.

I remember stumbling across this one Sunday afternoon when I was too hungover for anything say channel surfing. Needless to say my jaw dropped to the floor.

“Wonder Girl,” the album’s first single did make it in to the Top 100

Not to be pedantic, but no it didn't. At least not in the U.S. Sparks only hit the Top 100 twice, according to Joel Whitburn -- "I Predict" #60 in 1982, and "Cool Places" (with Jane Weidlin) #49 in 1983.

xhuxk - Ha! I stand corrected. It apparently wasn't Billboard's Top 100 but in fact Cash Box. But I don't have the primary docs in front of me so I'll defer to anyone who does. Point remains, though, doesn't it?