Elton John didn’t believe in them. Dick Clark was a friend to them. Guitarist Brian May almost left the band Queen to join them. People can rarely say these things, and the two men who can are very rare people.
Brothers Ron and Russell Mael formed the eccentric pop group Sparks in 1970 when they were 22 and 17 years old, respectively. Almost 40 years have passed and they’re still going strong. On Saturday, they return to their alma mater to perform at Royce Hall for their first show in America since the release of their 21st album “Exotic Creatures of the Deep.”
Sparks followed their album release in 2008 with a 21-night stay at London’s Carling Academy Islington, where they performed an album a night. They played virtually everything they’ve ever made together for some of their biggest fans: about 1,500 people a night.
“It was a really amazing thing that many people came, and by and large it was sold out for most of the nights,” said lead singer Russell Mael. “People came even from America, Japan, Russia, all over. It was just a really heartwarming thing to see people wanting to come.”
Mael can appreciate his fans’ international support, especially since he and his brother didn’t feel so welcome in the beginning. Many artists face a rough path at the start of their careers. Whether Sparks’ ahead-of-its-time musical styling or Ron Mael’s unfashionable toothbrush mustache led them out of the country, the band crossed the Atlantic Ocean to England.
“We had played in Los Angeles quite a bit in the early ’70s, and there was not really much of a reaction to what we were doing,” Russell Mael said. “We were given one TV show (in England). All of a sudden there was a huge reaction to what we were doing, and then people were lining up around the block to come and see Sparks.”
This newfound commercial success didn’t exactly urge the boys to return to the States. When the invitation to stay across the pond came along, they jumped at the offer.
“We were anglophiles,” Mael said. “We just loved British music at that time, so for us getting that offer was like a dream. … We sold all our worldly possessions and just said, “˜OK, we’re going to go off on this adventure.'”
This adventure brought the brothers to a part of the world where their music could flourish. In 1974, they released a landmark album, “Kimono My House,” which included their first major single, “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us.” That single led to what Mael calls the “infamous Elton John story.”
John was friends with the album’s producer, Muff Winwood, and bet him that the single wouldn’t break into the British charts. “This Town” not only broke through, but climbed its way to become the No. 2 song in England, achieving similar success throughout the rest of Europe.
“So Elton lost. Elton has no ear at all for music,” Mael said jokingly.
Even with all this success, Sparks couldn’t sit still. They traveled the world and even visited the U.S., feeling somewhat like foreigners, to appear on a handful of episodes of Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand.”
“You have an image of (Clark) being … more conservative in his taste, but he really thought there was something special in what we were doing,” Mael said. “He would constantly have us back on the show even when we weren’t having, like, big commercial success.”
Sparks also found support from another rising band in England by the name of Queen.
“We had two albums out already … and (Queen) actually supported Sparks, if you can believe that,” Mael said. “We were talking with Brian May over a period of time … about possibly joining Sparks. It was before Queen had really broken through big in America. … It didn’t work out, obviously.”
Sparks is very familiar with things not working out. More than a dozen record labels have produced the band’s 21 albums. Mael credits this to the fluctuations of the record industry, claiming a label will drop musicians when they’re low and hold on to them when they’re high.
“Well, that’s just the nature of the beast, so to speak,” Mael said.
But he also recognizes artists’ decreasing reliance on money-hungry record companies and the industry’s bleak future. “The record industry is like this dinosaur that kind of didn’t learn a lot of lessons that it should have, and so as a result of that, the whole system has just collapsed.”
Saturday’s performance will present Sparks’ audience with the old and the new. They will play 1974’s “Kimono My House” and 2008’s “Exotic Creatures of the Deep” in their entireties along with various songs from their 21 albums.
“We’ve always been really active, and unfortunately we’ve been less visible in the States … than the rest of the world,” Mael said. “That’s why the show at UCLA will be something really special. This is a really good place for us to resurface.”
They may be resurfacing in the U.S., but Sparks is in no way resurfacing in the music world. The band produced almost two dozen albums and toured the world repeatedly over the last four decades with no breakup or temporary hiatus in its time line. Ron and Russell Mael witnessed what most people today only read about in the music scene. They jammed with some of the greatest and experienced it all first-hand. They are the Forrest Gumps or Benjamin Buttons of music, if you will.
While they recognize the immense changes within their genre, not much has changed for Sparks. Ron Mael’s toothbrush mustache may have slightly progressed into more of a pencil mustache, but the band’s adventurous take on pop music hasn’t changed at all. Sparks may never have received the recognition it deserved in the U.S., and Russell Mael said plenty of people still think they’re a British band. But the Maels did what it took to reach their place in music, and they have no intention of leaving.
“Pop music, in a certain way, is a medium that has potential to reach lots of people,” Russell Mael said. “So there’s always that question of whether pop music should be serving the masses and all of that or if it can have more substance to it and be something special, something beyond that.”