Sparks: as British as apple pie, as American as fish and chips
The Sparks Brothers is a fitting tribute to rock’s most enduringly creative bands. Many reviewers found the documentary too long at two hours and 20 minutes. I didn’t.
It’s true that the praise from a galaxy of pop stars is repetitive. There are only so many ways you can say that Sparks are underrated and influential. And some of the celebrity endorsements are dubious: saying that the duo inspired Pet Shop Boys is like hailing Jane Austen as a precursor to Barbara Cartland.
But most of the movie consists of archive footage, and I couldn’t get enough of it. Like most fans, I have dipped in an out of their work over 50 years: an overview of their oeuvre made me aware of the stuff I’d missed.
The film also includes interviews with the principals, Ron and Russell Mael. The star is the keyboardist-songwriter Ron, an introvert who speaks with a Larry David drawl (if you can imagine such a hybrid) and revels in his own shyness. He is as funny on camera as he is in his lyrics.
I learned a lot about the brothers. They are from California, not England. Their reputation as quirky geniuses unwilling to bow to pressure from the industry or their own fan-base is an oversimplification: Sparks did crave commercial success and were devastated whenever their projects bombed — as quite a few of their 25 albums did.
I learned that in the late 1970s they collaborated with Giorgio Moroder. He turns out to be an actual person, and not a computer-generated myth (he looks like your grandfather, with a moustache and an Italian accent.)
I learnt nothing, though, about the Maels’ personal lives — apart from the fact that they start the day by (separately) drinking coffee at LA’s Original Farmers Market. The private mystery on which they built their public persona is intact.
The focus of The Sparks Brother is where it should be: their art. One particular aspect of it is worth stressing. I have alluded to the fact that they are often mistaken for an English band. Their Gilbert-and-Sullivan playfulness, their sound, the inflections in Russell Mael’s voice are all steeped in Britannia. They fantasised lyrically about owning the BBC. No wonder they first made it big in mid-1970s London, under the Island label. And no wonder an Englishman made this film.
One of Sparks’ overlooked idiosyncrasies is their love of Britishisms. One of their songs is entitled “Piss Off” (a polite American would say “Get Lost”); the single “Johnny Delusional”, about a man who hankers after an inaccessible beauty, includes the line: “I know I haven’t a chance” (as opposed to “I know I don’t have a chance.”)
True, both songs feature on a 2015 album that was a collaboration with a British band — but the lyrics were written by Ron Mael.
An early illustration of Sparks’ Atlantic fluidity was “Hospitality on Parade”, off their 1975 album Indiscreet (my own introduction to them). The song starts with the narrator, a patriot during the American Revolution, highlighting his commitment to independence thus:
“One day we’ll have one extra coast line
We’ll tire of the Atlantic
By then we’ll be rid of you lot
A shot heard round the world will soon be shot, will soon be shot.”
Coming from ardent Anglophiles this is clearly ironic. Sung with a mock English accent, it is doubly so. I’m not sure who exactly they are lampooning, but the song is a giant “piss-take”, as Brits would say. It’s also a ripping tune.
And note “you lot” and “round the world”. These phrases seem to have confused the (presumably American) people who transcribed them online. “You lot” — a phrase used in Britain to dismissively refer to a group you’re addressing — is rendered as “your lot”, which makes no sense; and the preposition “round” gains an apostrophe (‘round) as if to mark a missing “a”.
I’m referring these forthwith to the great website Not One-Off Britishisms. I suspect that delving into Sparks’ 300-odd songs would turn up many more such gems. Someone should write a thesis on it — or perhaps a dissertation?
