Russell Mael
Yeah, we've been offered lots of advice over the years about not moving on from something that is successful, but it's just in our nature to need to feel that what we're doing is exciting to us.Collection: Moving
There are still some people - it's hard to believe - that aren't aware yet of Sparks. So we still kind of go at what we're doing with the same spirit we had when we were first starting out: that we've got a point to prove; that we've got to do stuff that's not middle of the road pop music; and that has a voice and a stance.
There was nothing radically different about what we were doing musically or image-wise, and yet in L.A. there'd been total indifference, so to come to London and then have this 180 degree turn in the reception to our music was really baffling.
When you're a fan of somebody you want to be a fan in all sorts of ways.
After a few aborted attempts at movie projects, to have 'Annette' be so well received to be the opening night film at Cannes was like a dream come true for us.
For all artists... you want to be loved and adored by as many people as you can. But the moral we've learned is, if you fish for that, you will lose your integrity.
We feel that the only way to move forward, the only way to have anything happen or have an audience be aware of what we are doing, is to continually come up with something new. So if there's a period when things aren't going as well, the alternative isn't to just get lazy and do nothing. For us, the alternative is to prove everybody wrong.
Occasionally and all-too-infrequently a song comes along that jolts you and you prick up your ears.
Sometimes you feel like you're working all alone out there as a band and you have no soulmates in how you see pop music to be.
I think we've always been a bit delusional and at the start we really did feel we were a cool, British-style band, but it was apparently not connecting in that way, and was always seen as something more esoteric and odd. But then in failing to emulate British bands, a style emerged that became what we are.
We were so naive. You know, like thinking that playing one gig out in the middle of nowhere in Texas was going to be a good thing, and not realising that we were going to have objects thrown at us.
We're never lumped in as being an L.A. band in any kind of context.
It's a strange thing: We are an L.A.-based band and we do spend all that time in Europe and are visible over there. Yet we've had this lengthy career, but no one ever associates us with Los Angeles.
We're seen as more part of an English scene.
In one way, we think it's kind of an amazing achievement what we've done. At the same time, we'd like 6 million more people to know about what we're doing.
We always wanted to have a movie musical be made and be seen by a lot of people.
Annette' came out I think the same week as 'Jungle Cruise,' and it's kind of almost working in two different mediums. They both get projected onto a screen, but I can't think of anything further apart. And there's nothing wrong with an entertainment movie - that's fine, too.
We had the project 'The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman' that we had done for the Swedish National Radio as a radio music drama. After we had done that, we thought it was really something worth pursuing as a movie project as well, so we went there to try to get meetings regarding that.
Our entire career has been unplanned. Things have really happened by chance, despite our best efforts to do things in a more orderly fashion.
When you have a lengthy career, you always want to keep trying to push yourself in ways you haven't before.
Our goal is always to do something fresh within the confines of what pop music is and to keep challenging ourselves and our audience.
In music, there seems to be a myth that being authentic and genuine has to be confessional, and we think what Sparks is doing is 100 per cent authentic and genuine, and still dealing with people's emotions - albeit via a different way of doing it, with situational lyrics that are almost little novellas.
There's still substance and depth, but we a have a different approach to what we think that lyrics to pop music can be.
I like when somebody is able to create their own universe, have a consistency to it and not break from character - that's something that's always been important to Sparks.
We're proud of the position we're in in pop music - we feel like we're in a unique class.
Rollercoaster' is probably something we should have said no to!
You can retire from your career after having a Beatle portray you in any sort of way, let alone in a music video that lasts forever.
If Andy Warhol asks if he can take your photo, you say yeah!
That album, 'Lil' Beethoven,' was special to us because we wanted to try to figure out a new context to place our music in, and not rely on the usual instrumentation - guitars, bass and drums - that gives rock or pop music its power, energy and excitement.
There are all these safety nets in pop music.
We wanted to do something that couldn't be pigeonholed.
We were this evil thing disco.
Over time I think we've gotten better at kind of sensing when we're just kind of going through the motions and when we're doing something that really kind of shows the passion that we want to demonstrate in the record.
People have always commented along the way that, 'You guys are always so visual in what you do.' The songs have always had a lot of visual imagery in them that's not necessarily orthodox subject matter or themes or the way those themes are treated are kind of unorthodox. They could be taken as little mini films without the visuals.
We'd been approached various times during our career about a documentary, but we always hesitated to say yes, because what we do musically speaks a lot better to what we're trying to do than verbalizing it. Besides, if it wasn't the right person or the right sensibility, it wouldn't be something satisfactory.
I think it's one of our strengths that we can put on blinders when it comes to our history and just focus on what's next, and what do we have to do to get the message out there that's vital for the next period.
When the idea of doing all of our albums in their entirety came up, we went for it because it just seemed so audacious. We thought, no other band would ever do this - and for that alone, we probably should do this.
A lot of people build up a backlog of songs and you can kind of go, 'Let's explore that song we did six years ago,' but we feel that's kind of lazy.
We thought of a boring name, Sparks, and put a boring photo of us on the front of the second album, 'A Woofer in Tweeter's Clothing,' and proved it wasn't in the name.
In England in live concerts there is going lo be a big reaction to our hits.
We loved the Beach Boys, bands like that, but our originality came out of our lack of ability as copiers. They did mostly complicated, hard stuff.
There's no question that radio and especially television commercials were a big influence on our style. We love the idea of having only one minute to say everything you've possibly got.
We're more L.A. than those guys sitting on their porches in Laurel Canyon.
We lived at the beach for three months every year when we were going to school. That was our whole thing.
We had played places that were really cool that are less on the map, like the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. We played that in the '70s, when we were still living in London.
If there is such a thing for Sparks as a mission statement, it's more general in that we want each new album to be musically and lyrically provocative. We want to really go at it as though this might be the first album that anyone will ever hear of Sparks.
The 'Annette' movie is something really unique and special for us, as we were able to create not only the story for it, but also the music.
We feel that you kind of learn about our political views and our stance on things in a more general way by what we choose to write about and just our whole personalities.
With 'A Steady Drip, Drip Drip,' some of the subjects that are written about on the album have come to be even more prescient in a certain way than we had hoped for when they were written.
When you have done something that was really well received, it's a challenge to follow it up.