Sutton Sparks

1969 to 1979. Every Album, Every Song
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-78952-123-8
Verlag: Sonicbond Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 144 Seiten

This long-overdue book charts the career of Sparks from 1969 to 1979. Every album and every song is examined, including some which are still officially unreleased, beginning with their early recordings as Halfnelson/Sparks and when they were a band of five. After that band split, Ron and Russell Mael retained the name and spent much of the seventies working with a succession of sidemen and collaborators, although this was not always evident to some! They ended the seventies on a high note with the collaboration with Gorgio Moroder for 'No. 1 In Heaven'.
Many who worked on their records have shared their thoughts in the book. The list includes Dean Detrick, Simon Draper, Harley Feinstein, Martin Gordon, Ian Hampton, Rupert Holmes, James Lowe, Sal Maida, James Mankey, John Mendelsohn, Adrian Munsey, Ralph Oswald, Peter Oxendale, Mike Piggott, Terry Rae, Thom Rotella, Suzi Ronson, Paul Rudolph, Richard Digby Smith, Karl Stoecker, David Swanson, Trevor White, Muff Winwood and Luke Zamperini.
But this book adds much new information for fans as well as lively opinions on the records. It's essential reading for anyone who wants to know more about how Sparks developed in the decade which saw them create much of their best work.

Chris Sutton has been a Sparks fan since their legendary debut on Top Of The Pops in 1974. His favourite album by them is their second, A Woofer In Tweeter's Clothing. He manages Smethwick Heritage Centre museum, for whom he has written several publications and he has also written several plays. This is his fifth book on music, following on from books on Alice Cooper, Black Sabbath and AC/DC. He also writes for Power Play magazine, and has contributed to a documentary on Alice Cooper.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Sutton, Chris

Leseproben

Chapter 2

Halfnelson/Sparks (1971/1972)

Personnel:

Russell Mael: vocals

Ron Mael: organ, piano

Earle Mankey: guitar, vocals, bass on ‘No More Mr Nice Guys’

James Mankey: bass, guitar, vocals, lead guitar on ‘No More

Mr Nice Guys’

Harley Feinstein: drums (except ‘Roger’)

With:

John Mendelsohn: drums on ‘Roger’

Elisa Mankey: voice on ‘Biology 2’

Todd Rundgren: backing vocals, vibraslap on ‘Saccharin And The War’

Produced at I.D. Sounds, Hollywood in Autumn 1970 by Todd Rundgren and Thaddeus James Lowe

Label: Bearsville

Release date: September 1971 as Halfnelson, July 1972 as Sparks

Highest chart places: UK: -, USA: -

Running time: 40:23

All songs by Ron Mael, except as noted.

The new four-piece Halfnelson saw Russell playing bass, but according to Harley: ‘That didn’t last very long. Russell didn’t want to be saddled with the bass, so we had to find a bass player so Russell could sing like Mick Jagger. We went through a bunch of guys, but none of them worked.’ They eventually settled on Earle’s younger brother. James Mankey (born 23 May 1952, Washington) duly came in on bass and occasional guitar. John Mendelsohn remembers that the decision baffled him: ‘The odd thing about that configuration was that Jim Mankey was quite a good guitarist and Earle wasn’t. It seemed to me to be an example of shooting yourself in the foot.’ Earle famously explained to Sounds (10 October 1970) that ‘Jim is a better guitar player than I’d ever hope to be, but he’s playing bass because I’m bigger.’ James laughs when I mention the story to him:

I don’t think that’s true because it was Earle who brought me into the band. So he can’t have been too threatened. Earle was always helping out his kid brother; he found the first garage band that I ever played in. I guess he thought I could contribute to Halfnelson.

The dry-humoured and self-deprecating James settled into the band, gravitating towards Harley: ‘He was the heartthrob of the band; the girls loved him. We got along pretty well, maybe because we were the youngsters in the band.’

While the group worked on material, Mike Berns aimed to get the band signed to a record company. He invited reps out to see them play at their Dog Bunk Bed Factory (aka Doggy Factory) rehearsal room. James recalls:

We had a lot of common struggles between all of us, trying to get somebody to come and see the band play. One time we were waiting for a big producer to turn up, who was Jack Nitszche. He was coming to our rehearsal place, the Doggy Factory, and we were all set up and ready to play and show him what we could do. It was like midnight/1 am when he finally showed up, but we were all doing this Three Stooges bit where we traded snores. He did not find it amusing and he did not sign us. Things might have gone entirely differently if we had been a little more respectful to the guy.

Nitzsche and others failed to bite, and the continual failure to attract record company interest would have been fatal, but for Todd Rundgren. His regular engineer (and former Electric Prunes vocalist) James Lowe recalls how the link-up occurred: ‘I had been doing some records with Todd and we were finishing up something and he asked me if I wanted to get involved with this band. Miss Christine of the GTOs was the one that turned us on to them.’ Miss Christine (Christine Frka) was Rundgren’s girlfriend at the time but was also at some point romantically linked to Russell.

Rundgren was invited to a showcase set at the Doggy Factory, turning up with Miss Christine and James Lowe – the latter also bringing his wife, Pamela. The band threw everything into their show and even had waitresses on hand and a tape of audience applause. Lowe was very impressed: ‘I thought they were unlike anything that was out, at least here in LA, so that made them interesting.’ Rundgren, too, heard something unique. He was further convinced that the band had something when he heard a four-track demo he was sent comprising of ‘Fa La Fa Lee’, ‘High C’, ‘Slowboat’ and ‘Wonder Girl’. Rundgren later told Words And Music (1973) that: ‘Sparks’ songs are like little designs, both musically and lyrically. If they seem incongruous, it’s because they are musical designs extracted from a lifestyle that’s inaccessible.’ Rundgren told Bearsville supremo Albert Grossman to sign the band. The intention now was to record an album of their newest material with Rundgren producing and Lowe engineering. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Mike Berns left as manager, with Roy Silver coming in just as things were really starting to look up.

Contract now signed with Bearsville, the band got a nice bonus, as Harley recalls: ‘We were allotted a fund to buy the instruments of our choice; I got a really nice Rogers drum set, which at the time was the best one around. Ron chose a Farfisa organ. I remember him always using that; that was his instrument.‘ Indeed, a key part of the sound on the album is the Farfisa, which Ron habitually uses throughout.

The band had disparate influences musically. Harley sees it like this:

Earle always seemed to lean towards greaser doo-wop. You can hear that coming out in ‘Biology 2’. It kind of has that ‘Oh baby’ 50s doo-wop feel. That was very different to how the rest of us felt. Ron and Russ were all excited about the British invasion and Jimmy was more into headbanging psychedelia; Blue Cheer was his favourite band. I would play whatever the other guys wanted.

When pushed for influences, Harley went for ‘Surf music – Dick Dale, The Pyramids, Chantays, you know? Similar to Keith Moon, that was one of his original interests. I used to get into trouble at school for playing ‘Wipeout’ on the desk.’

The band, Rundgren and Lowe entered I.D. Sound in the autumn of 1970. Harley says that ‘it took a couple of months to record. We worked all the songs up in our rehearsal studio without any recording devices.’ Lowe kind of concurs, saying that the recording was ‘very quick and we were able to fool around and do some different ideas on it, so it was interesting to record.’ Two songs from the demo album made it onto the album – ‘Roger’ and ‘Saccharin And The War’, both written by Russell. It’s interesting that none of Ron’s songs were chosen to be re-recorded.

Rundgren mixed the album so that Ron’s Farfisa and piano playing stands out as the melodic heart. He didn’t radically alter the band’s sound, just some smoothing here and there. ‘We were thrilled to have him around us, one of the coolest guys going’, says James. ‘I don’t think anyone was complaining about him coming along; he was perfect and he was nice to us.’

Russell was also happy with Rundgren, as he outlined to Soundonsound. com (2013):

To his credit, he didn’t wanna change what we were doing; he just wanted the fidelity to be a little better. So we were going into an expensive recording studio with Todd, but still banging on cardboard boxes and all. The way we were recording was a fair part of what we were and what made us interesting as a band to him.

James was nervous and found the sessions hard at first: ‘I was 18 or 19 and I had never been in a recording studio. I had no idea what I was doing and it was kind of stressful, ‘OK, tape’s rolling, Jim, it’s time for you to do something’’. Rundgren helped put the young musician at ease: ‘He treated me quite well, although he probably thought I was one of the lesser musicians in the group.’

While Rundgren doesn’t play guitar on the album, he does sing: ‘Todd did some harmonies on the first album’, confirms Lowe, who, for his own part, adds: ‘I didn’t do a bunch of editing or tape manipulation, they didn’t need it. They were already kind of goofy enough.’ So the album is Halfnelson with all their delightful quirks and idiosyncrasies intact.

There was allegedly one snag during the sessions. Circus magazine (1972) said that the relationship between Rundgren and the band ‘cooled’ when he ‘lost’ Miss Christine to Russell halfway through recording the album. But Rundgren’s connection to the band was still strong enough that he commissioned Ron to take and arrange the photographs on the inside sleeve of his album Runt: The Ballad Of Todd Rundgren, which was released in June 1971.

Halfnelson/Sparks is an absorbing record full of intriguing vignettes of people going about their lives. None of it sounds much like anyone else at the time and it still sounds unique today. And it’s very obvious, in spite of the Mael songwriting domination, that this is the work of a band. The album originally came out as Halfnelson, with the cover using an ad by Oldsmobile, which Ron got permission to use. It features a radiant Grace Kelly lookalike in the back seat of an Oldsmobile, on which Ron has pasted the band looking in through the windows. The band picture on the back cover shows no special favours to...