“A guide for somebody who doesn’t know anything about Sparks and wants to learn more?’ muses Ron Mael. “I’d say, don’t just listen to one track and figure that’s what we’re all about, because it won’t be right.” It’s no more possible to understand the vast, marvellous world of Sparks from hearing a single song than it is to compose a pithy introduction neatly doing justice to the prodigious scope of their career. Spanning five decades and counting, their music is too captivating, anachronistic, baroque, mordantly funny and visionary to be tidily summarised in a sentence or two.
Formed of brothers Ron and Russell Mael – born and raised Los Angeleans who came of age in the seismic cultural shifts of the 1960s – Sparks’ breakthrough in the UK came in 1974 with their grandiose, genre-defying single This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us, which shot to number two in the charts following their arresting and deranged performance of the song on British television. They’re each other’s perfect onstage counterpoints: on vocals, Russell is an irrepressible choirboy – lithe, lively and disarmingly beautiful – to keyboardist Ron’s unnerving, implacable poise – a matinee star from the silent era who’s been teleported against his will onto Top of the Pops, debonaire moustache intact.
Over the years, they’ve retained something of that initial incongruity. In the words of their recent single, Sparks “do things their own way”, consistently creating exceptionally inventive albums which haven’t always found the audience they deserve. There have been brief interludes when culture catches up with them for a moment, resulting in a series of brilliant renaissances – from their surprising and sublime departure into disco, No. 1 in Heaven (1979), to the anthemic single When Do I Get To Sing ‘My Way’ (1994) and the masterpiece of minimal, mesmeric pop, Lil’ Beethoven (2002). In 2021, their film Annette, a musical romantic drama directed by Leos Carax, starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard, was released to a flurry of glittering awards. That same year, director Edgar Wright made a documentary, The Sparks Brothers, celebrating the band’s influence and tenacious creativity.
But the Maels are not interested in looking backwards. They’re excited by what they’re working on now and what schemes they have planned for the future (including another musical, this time directed by John Woo – an unlikely but intriguing prospect).
I met up with Ron and Russell Mael in London as they prepared to embark on a world tour with their latest album, Mad! – another perfect offering from the duo. Over the course of the following conversation, I probed them with 50 questions on wide and far-ranging topics – from whether they believe in aliens to their preferred mode of interior design and what gives them the ick – yet the throughline is that they seem to have already written a song on most of the subjects we touch upon. Given that Mad! is their 28th studio album, it’s little wonder they’ve covered a lot of ground. Yet, unlike many of their contemporaries, the particular territory they occupy continues to remain their own extraordinary, previously unmapped terrain.
1. How are you both today on a scale of one to 10? One being totally desolate.
Russell: 4.8
Ron: On the jet lag scale, I’m about a one. But on the sunny weather scale, about a 10.
Russell: So maybe you meet in the middle at 5?
2. Could you describe your new album in three words?
Russell: Pretty. Fucking. Good.
Ron: Mad!
Russell: Three, though. You have two more words.
Ron: Mad! Mad! Mad!
3. Why did you name the album Mad!?
Ron: It seems to define the times both in an obvious, direct way in terms of what’s going on. But also just a general feeling that people seem both irate and crazy now.
4. What most recently made you feel mad?
Russell: Just Donald Trump. Period.
5. Your lyrics contain all sorts of dexterous language and literary illusions. What are the most unlikely words you’ve ever managed to smuggle into the lyrics of a song?
Ron: Well, maybe ‘counterintuitive’ for a song on the soundtrack of our film, Annette. Quite hard to rhyme, but it’s not my problem
Russell: Also, ‘Jansport backpack’ is pretty fresh as a subject.
6. What gives you the ick?
Ron: People talking too much about themselves.
7. Okay, by contrast, what do you find alluring or intriguing?
Ron: One thing I really like about Japan is that people don’t feel the need to fill in every quiet gap. There can be moments of quiet where you’re still connected with people, but it’s just not verbally.
8. What are your favourite works of literature?
Ron: Huckleberry Finn and Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Russell: A Murakami short story called Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey about a monkey who works at a Japanese onsen. It really hits home.
9. If you were trying to describe Sparks to someone who’d never heard of you, what would you say?
Ron: I’d tell them not to listen to one track to get an idea of what we do, because we kind of jump around a lot.
10. You lived in London during the 1970s. In what ways has London changed for the better and worse since then?
Russell: There are coffee places now. And more than three TV channels.
Ron: Food in general is vastly different now. When we lived here, all we ate was Indian and Chinese food.
11. What are your favourite London haunts?
Russell: Harrods.
Ron: Khan’s Restaurant in Westbourne Grove.
12. What are the worst and best things about life in 2025?
Ron: For me, technology’s the best and the worst part.
13. What were the last gifts you received?
Russell: A framed illustration of us with Cate Blanchett from our music video for The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte. So it’s nice … if you’re into Cate Blanchett. And us.
14. Are you minimalists or maximalists?
Ron: We’re both, in a way. You mentioned earlier that we’re kind of verbose, but then we have a song on the new album, A Long Red Light, which is just a repetition of that one phrase.
Russell: Yeah, but musically, we’re usually pretty maximalist – we go over the top. More is better.
15. And what about your approach to other areas of style, such as interiors?
Ron: I prefer Japan, where it’s more minimalist. There’s a spareness about it, but a beauty also.
Russell: And there’s some relation to that in Scandinavian design. We have a song about that too.
16. Do you believe in aliens?
Ron: We grew up on science fiction movies, but as far as people being swept up by a flying saucer and having weird sexual experiences, I don’t really believe in that. In fact, we actually have a song called, There’s No Such Thing As Aliens.
Russell: But none of our songs are necessarily autobiographical, so it could be about somebody else who didn’t believe in aliens, and we might actually believe in them.
17. Yes, but don’t you also have a song called I Married a Martian?
Russell: Yeah, we’re kind of all over the place.
18. Do you believe in ghosts?
Russell: I don’t.
Ron: Maybe more in a Buddhist way.
19. Do you believe in God?
Ron: Not necessarily defined in that specific way. I don’t like being told how to act.
20. Do you believe in life after death?
Ron: I guess it’s one reason why you do something in the arts, to have life and after death. As far as there being an afterlife, physically or even soul-wise, I don’t know. I’ve never been there.
How would you define glamour? “It’s kind of like how the Supreme Court in the US once made a definition that pornography is whatever you identify as pornography … You know it when you see it, but it’s hard to define” – Ron Mael
21. Do you believe in love at first sight?
Russell: Yes, I’m down with it.
22. What are your guilty pleasures?
Ron: It doesn’t sound very decadent, but French bread is my weakness. I’m totally against the anti-carbohydrate philosophy.
23. If I were in Los Angeles for 24 hours and you were taking me on a whistlestop tour of your hometown, where would we go?
Russell: The beach. We live on the Westside, so it’s a 40-minute drive to the ocean. That’s one thing we've got going for us.
Ron: We could take you on the I-405 to show you where our song took place. But the I-405 doesn’t take you to the ocean, so you’d have to make a choice.
Russell: Choose the ocean. We’ll take you there.
24. Who is your most enduring celebrity crush?
Ron: Greta Garbo. That’s just me.
Russell: I’ll take Cate Blanchett. She doesn’t know. Well, maybe she does know. But, yeah, put me down for her, let’s see what happens. It can’t hurt.
25. What’s your most prized possession?
Ron: I have some Air Jordan Ones that are pretty prized. If there were a fire in my place, I’d grab them before I ran out.
Russell: It’s not worth anything, but a collection of these figures from Japan called Sonny Angels. They’re meant to be for the lonely office worker woman, so she’s never alone – that’s their original purpose – it's a little guy, who's naked and has fruit on his head, or something.
Ron: So you’ll never be lonely, as long as you have a guy with fruit on his head.
26. What are your favourite current television shows?
Russell: I like K-dramas, the good ones.
Ron: A Japanese show called The Solitary Gourmet. It’s a hybrid of reality and fiction where a business guy goes into real Japanese dives for his lunch hour and the rest of the people are ordering things that look more interesting than his meal.
27. What’s your most controversial opinion?
Ron: Sometimes, just defending Sparks is a controversial opinion.
28. When was the last time you were starstruck?
Ron: I think that’s a Cate Blanchett question.
Russell: Please see the previous five questions.
29. If you weren’t in a band, what would you both be doing now?
Russell: Probably owning a pâtisserie in Paris – Les Frères Pâtissiers, depuis 1974.
30. Do you believe in any conspiracy theories?
Ron: In Los Angeles, there’s this conspiracy that soy is somehow bad for your health and has high estrogen. They won’t serve it any place, even though that claim has been refuted.
Russell: It’s been proven that it was just some crank, probably from the oat milk or cattle industry, who came out with that story. And now I can’t get soy in my cappuccino anywhere in LA. What’s up with that?
31. What’s your favourite tourist destination?
Russell: Lake Como.
Ron: Well, to keep the lake theme going, I’ll go with Lake Biwa – the biggest lake in Japan.
32. What bands are you listening to and enjoying most at the moment?
Russell: Maybe The Last Dinner Party. We first discovered them because people were telling us, ‘Hey, there’s this band that sounds like they’re influenced by Sparks.’ And then they did a cover of our song, This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us.
33. How would you define glamour?
Ron: It’s kind of like how the Supreme Court in the US once made a definition that pornography is whatever you identify as pornography. It’s the same with glamour. You know it when you see it, but it’s hard to define.
Russell: There are so many different ways of being glamorous. You can even go anti-glamour and be glamorous.
34. You have to get a tattoo. What will it be?
Ron: I heart Sparks.
Russell: Me too. I’d get it on my arm, like a sailor.
35. You’ve already worked with some notable people. Dead or alive, who would be your dream collaborator?
Russell: I would work with Little Richard and do some duets. I think our voices would go well together, being so un-well together that it would be cool.
Ron: I once propositioned Chuck D, but I’m still waiting for that call. I’d love to do a collaboration with Chuck D or Flavor Flav.
36. What’s been your favourite decade for music?
Russell: Well, it’s boring talking about the past, but a lot of cool stuff was happening in the 50s and 60s.
Ron: We don’t like to be locked into the past, but as far as classic songwriting – particularly lyric writing – I like the great writers of the 30s and 40s. But, really, we love working in the present.
37. Sorry, this is actually another question about the past! Style-wise, what is your favourite decade?
Russell: Maybe the 40s, where you see photos and everybody’s dressed up, even at a train station or a baseball game. Now, when you go to an airport, everybody looks not like that. You kind of wonder what happened.
Ron: We need to bring back a dress code.
38. What creative rituals do you have?
Ron: Mainly, it’s just doing it continuously. Don’t ever wait for creative inspiration, always pursue it.
39. You are creatures of habit in your routines. What does your regular daily routine look like?
Russell: Well, if it’s a period where we’re working, we have a studio in my place and he drives over and we work, kind of like nine to five. And then he goes home and comes back the next day, if he’s not pissed off.
40. Cinema is a big inspiration for you. What are the best films that you’ve watched recently?
Ron: A Romanian film called Don’t Expect Too Much From the World. I thought that was pretty amazing.
Who is your most enduring celebrity crush? “I’ll take Cate Blanchett. She doesn’t know. Well, maybe she does know” – Russell Mael
41. Which film protagonists do you most identify with or aspire to?
Ron: I was named for Ronald Colman. My mother must have been a big fan, so I always pursued that dapper-ness and, just by coincidence, I had a moustache like him.
42. Apart from Annette, what are your favourite film soundtracks?
Russell: Umbrellas of Cherbourg, that one theme that plays over and over again through the entire movie, and then in the final scene where the guy in the film sees Catherine Deneuve one final time. It’s very tragic.
Ron: My favourite scores would be anything by Bernard Herrmann. He scored Citizen Kane and the Hitchcock films like Psycho and Vertigo.
43. What song do you wish you’d written?
Ron: Lush Life by Billy Strayhorn.
Russell: I’d take True Love from High Society. It‘s the most romantic song.
44. Russell, the sheer range of your voice might make Sparks the least karaoke-able band of all time. But what’s your go-to karaoke song?
Russell: Hymne A L'Amour by Edith Piaf segueing into Pretty Vacant by the Sex Pistols.
45. You’re about to embark on a world tour. What’s on your rider?
Russell: We recently said, ‘No more Subway sandwiches!’ We’ve said it has to be at least one level up from Subway.
Ron: Soya milk.
46. What‘s your biggest vice?
Ron: Can I say French bread again?
47. When did you last tell a lie?
Russell: Well, it’s not recently, but we once had this story that Doris Day was our mother, so that’s probably the best lie we ever did.
Ron: We went to Scandinavia and the publisher of her music came to see us and said he had a royalty check for our mother.
48. What are you doing after this interview?
Russell: We’re doing another interview. Boo. But yours is going to be better.
49. Could we consider mine the definitive Sparks interview?
Russell: Yeah, it should be it, because it tells more about us than questions supposedly trying to get more at the bottom of who we are. This one is actually more revealing.
50. I have probed you quite hard. What questions are you normally asked?
Russell: ‘So tell me what‘s your album like?’ Well, it‘s got singing on it. It‘s got some drums – sometimes drums, not always. It‘s got chords.
Ron: ‘What can we expect to see on stage from you?’ That’s another good one. Well, we’re going to do our songs, there’s gonna be some lights and it’ll be fairly loud. Some of the songs are fast and some are slower.
Russell: Or, ‘What’s it like being brothers?’
Ron: Oh, yeah, that classic.
Mad! by Sparks is out now via Transgressive Records.
