Making music for more than half a century, Sparks plays Riot Fest Friday
LOS ANGELES — They’ve spent more than half a century together as band mates, putting out dozens of records. But brothers Ron and Russell Mael — the duo behind the art-pop band Sparks — have no intention of retiring anytime soon.
The band’s sound has been ever-evolving since its inception. Ron, 79, and Russell, 76, view resisting any impulse to remain the same or rest on a previous record’s success as a central priority. This year they released “Mad!,” their 28th studio album, and they’re playing this year’s Riot Fest on Friday, Sept. 19.
The pair spoke with The Associated Press earlier in the year about why they keep working, not waiting for inspiration to strike and why it’s been so meaningful for younger generations to find their music. The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Q: Talk about how you approach making new music after all of these years.
Russell: After 28 albums, the challenge is just trying to find new ways to kind of retain the universe that Sparks has created, but to obviously try to make it fresh for people that have been following the band for a long time. And the other thing is also just to try to make an album that maybe doesn’t sound like it’s from a band with a 28-album-long history, so that if someone were to pick up the new “Mad!” album, and this was the first exposure they had to Sparks, that it would be as poignant and provocative in all sorts of ways as anything we’ve done in our past.
Q: You both grew up in Los Angeles during a pivotal time for rock music but moved to the U.K. early on in your careers for a bit. Do you feel like your surroundings inform your creative process?
Ron: When we first started out, we had never even been to Europe or anywhere. But we kind of pretended like we were a British band because that was the music that we really responded to. And we always kind of liked bands that had an image. LA bands, in general — at the time we were starting — an image was something that ran counter to musical integrity. And we always thought that was ridiculous. So, we kind of were, in general, just really attracted to British bands.
Other than a few things like The Beach Boys and that sort of thing, in general, we weren’t influenced by LA bands at all.
Q: Have you given much thought to why you make so much music?
Ron: Other people tell us we’re prolific and we don’t really sense that. I mean, the one thing we do do is not wait for inspiration. We kind of have to pursue it. When you wait for that lightning bolt, it kind of can take more time than you really want to take waiting. We work a lot knowing that not everything is going to pan out. But in order to kind of give the appearance of being prolific, we have to actually sit down and pursue those things rather than waiting for some kind of divine inspiration.
Q: Have you guys ever thought about retiring?
Russell: Retiring? What’s that? If your whole thing in life kind of is creating stuff, there’s no, you know, there is no such thing as doing something else, so, you know, it hasn’t crossed our minds. Maybe we’re blind or something to that, but no, we’re really happy.
Q: I’m sure you know that The Last Dinner Party covered your song, “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us.” Have you been surprised by younger listeners connecting with your music?
Russell: We’re happy with the younger following and really diverse following also that Sparks has. It’s just kind of reassuring to us that what we’re doing is connecting in a modern way to younger people and really diverse sorts of people as well. And so that’s almost the most satisfying thing. Obviously, we’re happy that we have fans that have stuck with us from Day 1 and that they’re still there. But then having new fans that are kind of coming with a different reference point to what Sparks is — with some of the older fans, it’s like, “That was the golden era,” or whatever, but the younger fans don’t have those reference points in a really healthy way, we think. And so, from the last few years of albums that we’ve had, those for them are the golden era of Sparks and right now is the golden era.
Q: I read that you guys grew up in Pacific Palisades. How have you been processing the fire?
Russell: To even kind of comprehend that all of the Palisades is just … you know, it was really sad. The elementary school that I went to got completely destroyed, so it’s just hard to comprehend. It’s pretty staggering.
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Riot Fest
When: Sparks plays from 5:05-5:50 p.m. Friday, Sept. 19, on “Weird Al” Yankovich’s Weird World Stage
Where: Douglass Park, 1401 S. Sacramento Drive, Chicago
Tickets: Start at $130 for a one-day pass at tixr.com/