When Sparks Met the Bard: Sparks and Shakespeare

 

When Sparks met the Bard - Sparks and Shakespeare

What a spectacular collaboration this would have been!

In the final heart-rending scene of Annette, Henry’s words in the song ‘Sympathy for the Abyss’ (‘imagination’s strong/ But reason’s song is faint and shrill’) echo concisely the sentiment of Othello’s lament in the last scene of Shakespeare’s tragedy, thus aligning him with the jealous wife-murderer whose guilt destroys him. So…. can Henry McHenry be seen as an Othello for our times?

Sparks have previously directly referenced Shakespeare and his plays in a handful of songs.  In ’Let’s Go Surfing’ (from Gratuitous Sax and Senseless Violins, 1994), Shakespeare is namechecked directly, but the reference seems to be pejorative. In this fantasy of freedom from the dismal surroundings of a room ‘only Dickens could love’ in a cold, wet ‘land-locked town’, the narrator longs to go surfing in the sun. This may have been inspired by Ron and Russell’s time living in London in the 1970s, while surfing suggests freedom, hope and dreams (‘far from everything, far from misanthropes’). The dream of walking on white sand includes an encounter with ‘people called Kelley and Joe’, who are referred to as ‘too Shakespearian, too Wagnerian’ too impossible’, and ‘who have nothing in common with anyone we know’. Is the inference that they are too high brow, on a different cultural, intellectual level to the narrator’s acquaintances, and thus a comment on European social and intellectual snobbery?   But wait: since these passing characters are encountered on the sand, are they perhaps stereotyped Hollywood folk, perceived as over-dramatic and flamboyant?   Or are they the miserable and pessimistic misanthropes? Certainly, they are opposed to the carefree joy of catching the perfect wave in an ideal world where ‘somewhere there are dreams, somewhere there is hope’.

              Of course, Sparks had also already referenced a specific Shakespeare play: in ‘Here in Heaven’ from the 1974 Kimono My House album, an unnamed young man bemoans that he kept his side of a suicide pact, while his love, Juliet, didn’t. Although life in heaven is pleasant, the young man dwells on the question of whether Juliet thinks of him and in what way: ‘Do I qualify as dear departed, or am I that sucker in the sky?’ He suspects a cynical manipulation on her part: ‘Now I know why you let me the lead’. As in a number of Sparks’ songs, the woman is seen as unpredictable and unfathomable, and possibly unkind and controlling. (She probably didn’t turn up at the Equator either.) Or, did she just have second thoughts as he plunged into the sea, a ‘fall guy’ in more ways than one? He concedes that he had belated second thoughts too, and now, in heaven, it is hell for him knowing that her health ‘will keep her out of here for many, many years’. Shakespeare’s version of the lovers’ deaths in Romeo and Juliet (in which Juliet’s faked death is tragically misunderstood by Romeo and the faithful lovers are united in death) becomes here a sad and cynical tale of soured romance, self-interest and betrayal.

Another of Shakespeare’s tragedies had featured even more overtly in a song (‘Othello’) written for Christi Haydon in 1992, but not released until 2019, in the extras section of the new edition of Gratuitous Sax and Senseless Violins. It originally featured on a demo tape for an E.P., which didn’t see the light of day. This song has a completely different perspective from ‘Here in Heaven’. The singer is an uncomprehending Desdemona, who wonders what is wrong with her soldier husband – why is Othello ‘cold, dark, and strange tonight’? Is it the wine, the heat? Or something Iago said? It captures the perplexity of Desdemona, unaware that she is to become the victim of Othello’s murderous sexual jealousy and Iago’s cunning, although she suspects his involvement. To Othello’s accusation of adultery,’ she responds: ‘I say you’re mad’. She too yearns for a place far away where dreams can come true and jealousy doesn’t exist. This moving song, with its close references to Shakespeare’s play, is unusual in the Sparks’ catalogue as it specifically features a female narrator.  Uneasy relationships are frequent in Sparks’ songs, but seldom are they  seen from an overtly female perspective.

‘Life with the Macbeths’ from Hippopotamus (2017), in which Sparks create a brilliant analogy between Shakespeare’s blood-soaked tragedy and a contemporary television soap opera, is perhaps the closest one could get to a kind of collaboration!  I would like to think that the idea for this song was prompted by the 400^th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death in 2016, celebrated in the media worldwide. An audience’s delight in bloodshed, toxic relationships, deadly ambition and evil appears to be universal: the more horrific the plot, the more the ratings soar. That high culture and low culture may have the same ingredients is a provocative comment on human nature, and on culture itself (although, Shakespeare, arguably, has a better script!). In this T.V. show, even the actors are not impressed, (they ‘roll their eyes’), but it is a huge success, so why should they care. Here, the capricious and controlling woman is taken to the extreme, as the ‘lady’ urges on her husband to ‘depths unseen’.  In a kind of promotional trailer (‘same station, same time, new feuds’) we are promised cliff-hangers, but only one series, suggesting that nobody is left standing at the end. As in Shakespeare’s time, the critics are said to be split in their reactions (‘some not that into murder’). But is there actually some ‘deeper meaning’ beneath the gore?  Perhaps it is that the evil wife ‘prods her husband /and then regrets what’s coming’. The soaring soprano voice of Rebecca Sjowall complements Russell’s voice exquisitely, the beauty of the sound contrasting with the commercialised horror of the narrative. In a way, the unexpected operatic element bridges the gap between the two cultural levels, while drawing attention to it. With his background in popular theatre, Shakespeare would no doubt have thoroughly approved of this song! We should not forget, also, that one of the intruders in the pool in the title song, ‘Hippopotamus’, is none other than the Roman general, Titus Andronicus, Shakespearian tragic hero and, according to Sparks an excellent swimmer, wearing a snorkel!

And so to Annette (2021).  Comparison of many aspects with Othello is tempting, even if this was not necessarily a deliberate aim on Sparks’ part. Not unlike Othello, Henry McHenry is a hot-tempered jealous husband, whose uncontrolled emotion leads to murder. Henry and Anne’s intense relationship, like that of Othello and Desdemona, is unusual: they seem, even to themselves, a mismatched couple (’we’re scoffing at logic’). Just as Othello is a successful and admired soldier, Henry is famous, at first, as a comedian, and both are easily a prey to self-doubt on an emotional level. Henry’s jealousy of Anne is, however, more complex, notably a strong professional jealousy, as befits the modern age, and he has (allegedly) a past history of violence against women.  Like Othello, though, Henry abandons coherent language and reason as jealousy and rage consume him and lead to chaos, murder and guilt. His audience turns against his increasingly bizarre and offensive stage act. Anne, loved and admired by her public, also can not understand what troubles her husband, and ultimately becomes a victim of his toxic male self-obsession and jealous rage. She, however, is very different from Desdemona, and her death during the storm does not end her role in the plot, as she vows revenge through the voice of her daughter baby Annette.  (Interestingly, Shakespeare’s play also features a storm at sea scene, although his Desdemona survives.) Both play and movie also feature an ‘alternative’ lover: while in Othello, the young Cassio loves Desdemona but the relationship remains chaste, the Accompanist/Conductor in Annette, who adores Anne, had a brief affair with her prior to her meeting Henry. It is suggested that he may even be the father of baby Annette. Like Cassio, he too attracts the jealous wrath of Henry and becomes his next victim. At the end of the movie, Henry, having looked into the abyss of unspeakable emotions and acts, is consumed by guilt, but ends up in jail alone rather than killing himself like Othello. The final scene in which a real-life Annette chides her father and tells him that he has no-one now to love, reflects chillingly his lasting punishment. There are, of course, huge differences between Annette and Othello, notably the absence of a wicked Iago figure to play on Henry’s insecurities (although perhaps the press and public fill this role?), and, in Annette, the unexpected horror of both parents exploiting their child for their own ends, which creates uneasy ambiguities for the viewer. The role of baby Annette herself is obviously at the centre of the movie’s story and adds to the psychological depth and moving nature of the plot.

This may be striving too hard for comparison, but the echoing of Othello’s words in ‘Sympathy for the Abyss’, apparently written in response to Leos Carax’s request for a song to tie up the themes of the movie, succeeds powerfully in pointing us back to contemplate the universal complexities of human nature and relationships, and the fragile foundations on which love may rest. Just as Ron used the words of Socrates (‘An unexamined life is not worth living’) at the end of The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman, to underscore the resolving of Bergman’s temptation, the echo of Othello’s belated and fruitless self-realisation in a present day setting firmly establishes the timeless nature of these themes.

These are just my personal thoughts, prompted by that one phrase in Annette: there may well be other explicit or opaque links with Shakespeare’s plays that I have yet to uncover, so ideas would be most welcome!

 

Penny Brown

December 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sparks in Isolation: the Story of 2020-2021

 

Sparks in Isolation – the story of 2020-2021.

By Penny Brown

 Sparks had big plans for 2020: a new studio album, a European tour in the early autumn, and the premières of a documentary directed by Edgar Wright and their musical movie, Annette, directed by Leos Carax and starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard, both of which have been several years in the making. This was to be a major year in their long and distinguished career. But like everything else worldwide, these plans were badly affected by the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown in many countries. Although, fortunately, filming for both Annette and the documentary had been completed before the pandemic struck, their premières and release were delayed, with film festivals cancelled and the film industry as a whole at a standstill for months. The tour had to be postponed to May 2021 because theatres and other entertainment venues were forced to close and travel restrictions were in place, and even this plan has had to be revised because of the ongoing situation. The tour showcasing A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip is now scheduled for April and May 2022.

Ron has spoken movingly of the effects of the situation for him personally, saying early in the pandemic that he felt bewildered and has struggled to remain creative, particularly as their normal strict routine, working together in Russell’s home studio, has been crucially disrupted by the stay-isolated-at- home imperative. A video announcement for the new album, A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip, of them standing two meters apart in a local park, wearing masks, was a sad reminder of how they, like everyone else, have had their lives turned upside down by the pandemic. In an interview for the July/August edition of Classic Pop, Ron confesses to a more existential angst, that he feels dwarfed by the whole situation: ‘trying to come up with a reason why you’re significant at all when all this is going on. The inspiration to think one has significance at all is hard, but I’m trying to find a way through it all’. Russell has been less forthcoming about his personal feelings, although he has repeatedly confirmed that he misses being able to work together and their visits to their favourite coffee shop. He has, however, become increasingly upbeat about the effect on their work, describing it in an interview in Entertainment Weekly, accompanying the recent première of the home-made video for ‘Left Out in the Cold’ (18 February) as a ‘really good challenge’, forcing them to think about doing things in a new way: ‘You have to find ways of moving forward and not be paralyzed’. The spirit of Sparks can still flourish, but in a different way.

Flourish it certainly has. Despite these disappointments and frustrations, Sparks have risen to the challenge of maintaining their public profile and keeping the connection with their fans, entertaining us in a multitude of imaginative and innovative ways. This is, of course, entirely typical of Sparks who, throughout their career, have persevered in their self-belief and work ethic despite setbacks and let downs and have always managed to rise above circumstances with an enviable and ingenious talent for adaptation and self-reinvention. Their activities over the past year have gone far beyond the common run of Instagram images or occasional videos of housebound acoustic performances, and demonstrate their dedication to their work, their creative hunger, fertile imagination and sense of fun, and the desire to foster the sense of community amongst their fans worldwide.  Russell has said that he dislikes the approach of some musicians to just pick up an acoustic guitar when it is ‘totally contrary to what you musically believe in’. Full use has been made of the possibilities offered by social media and other online platforms to keep up the momentum. In effect, Russell has asserted, they had been, paradoxically, even more visible this past year, as normally they would be travelling abroad on promotional visits of the new album. In the current circumstances, they were doing similar things and more, but in a much more visible way.

The new studio album, A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip was released digitally on 15 May 2020, as originally planned, but the release of the physical album was delayed until 3 July as a consequence of the pandemic and the nearly three-month lockdown in the UK. The decision to go ahead with the digital release was a deliberate strategy to avoid disappointing fans. In the Classic Pop interview Russell explains that delay would only have been a marketing decision, and they didn’t think that fans should pay the price of such considerations. Short promotional videos in May and July featured both Ron and Russell and the ‘Sparks’ Spokesperson’ (a model female head wearing a broadbrimmed hat, the voice impersonated by Russell). Previews of individual songs (‘Existential Threat’, ‘Lawnmower’, ‘One for the Ages’, ‘I’m Toast’, and ‘Self-effacing’) were posted in June and July to whet fans’ appetite. The album received widespread acclaim, reaching no 7 in the UK album charts (as did Hippopotamus before it), and extremely positive reviews and articles on Sparks were featured in many newspapers and music magazines. Classic Pop featured Sparks on its cover as well as an eight-page spread inside which included an interview with Edgar Wright about his forthcoming documentary. Ron and Russell also did a number of interviews about the album, virtually of course, with each responding to questions separately from their own homes, for American, English and French outlets.

Several of the songs on A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip are in fact relevant to the modern age, such as ‘ I-phone’ and ‘Please don’t fuck up my world’, but none more so than  ‘Existential threat’ (premièred 3 July). This seems uncomfortably prescient in its evocation of a man in the grip of a constant dread, and could well stand as an anthem for the Covid-stricken world. The official video by the graphic designer and animation artist Cyriac admirably captures in a highly coloured and gruesome way the frenetic panic of the obsessed character in the song, who feels besieged by dangers everywhere, in his food, in his toilet, in the street and in his car. This is not one for those of a nervous disposition! Cyriac also provided a ‘guide to making a music video’ (21 August), to celebrate the two million viewings of ‘Existential Threat’, which makes it look ridiculously easy! There have been other official videos too: the entertaining story for ‘One for the ages’ (27 March), hand-drawn and animated by Chintis Lundgren, depicts a cartoon cat-like figure who secretly writes his soon-to-be-great opus while doing a humdrum office job.  A large cast of animal-like creatures, all wearing a tie (presumably a symbol of their corporate oppression!) talk about him over the water cooler, and, in his fantasy, acclaim his success. It should not escape a fan’s notice that the dreamer has floppy dark hair while the boss wears round glasses and a moustache! The ‘office’ is also invaded by sinister ball-like creatures, wearing shades and carrying guns, perhaps the characters from his great project or an externalisation of the would-be star’s feelings about his day job. In complete contrast, the home-made video for ‘Lawnmower’ (14 May) reflects typical Sparks’ humour as scenes of a rather sinister-looking Ron in a bowler hat pushes on an unseen lawnmower behind a singing Russell, intercut with scenes of a young woman packing cases into the back of her car, and various images of lawnmowers going about their work. The video, (29 December) for ‘i-phone’, has Russell (and sometimes multiple Russells) singing against the background of a computer-generated suburban residential road, while Ron (and sometimes multiple Rons) passes back and forth obsessively studying his phone and taking selfies.  The most recent video (18 February 2021), for ‘Left Out in the Cold’ takes a similar approach. Multiple versions of Ron and Russell, muffled in overcoats, scarves and gloves, shiver rhythmically against a haunting background of a frozen waste, with, at the end, a humorous touch as an elegant woman in overcoat and sunglasses crosses the scene with only a passing glance at them. At least she has the sense to wear a hat. Perhaps she is the Uniqlo supervisor, sent to check them out!  Russell explains, in an accompanying interview in Entertainment that they made their contributions separately and, ‘by the magic of film making’ put them together. He describes the nearly year-long restrictions of the pandemic as a continuing challenge that forces them to think in different ways and come up with things that they might not have normally done. This positive approach is their way of not succumbing to ‘the horrible situation that’s out there in the world’, and moving forward.

In the absence of live shows, we have also been treated to’ live in isolation’ performances, in which Ron, Russell and other band members play ‘socially distanced’ in their own homes, the different parts put together seamlessly, a considerable feat of synchronisation and technical wizardry. To date, these have featured ‘All That’ (11 June) and ‘Lawnmower’ (25 December). The band members featured are familiar to us from the Hippo tour: Steve Nistor (drums), Evan Weiss (guitar), Eli Pearl (guitar) and Alex Casnoff (guitar). In the ‘Lawnmower’ video, the latter two are humorously shown ‘otherwise engaged’, Eli busy with a book and a nail file, and Alex with a laptop, although they join in the singing, since the main focus of the music is Ron’s keyboard, Evan’s guitar and Steve’s drums. In October, November and December, we were further treated to a series of videos on Fridays of the lyrics from ASDDD, with the words shown dripping in the now familiar ASDDD primary colours.

In March 2020, when no-one foresaw the extent of the devastation wrought by the pandemic, we were given a humorous video satirising panic buying, in which a white budgie tries to fill a miniature shopping trolley with toilet rolls, to the tune of ‘Something For the Girl With Everything’. Both Ron and Russell have separately treated fans to short videos, which by their contrasting content and presentation reflect the different personalities they cultivate in Sparks. The first, posted on 23 March 2020, was a short piece by Ron on his ‘International Hand Sanitiser Collection’, a topical subject early on in the international health emergency. In his characteristic laconic manner, Ron presents and comments on the qualities of a number of bottles of sanitiser collected on his travels abroad. Many fans commented that it was strange how a boring subject could somehow be so hypnotic and compelling. A week later (30 March), and again on topic, we were treated to ‘A day in the life of Russell, a self-isolating Spark’, a speeded-up gallop through a typical day to a superb instrumental version of ‘The Amazing Mr Repeat’. Russell is seen waking up at eight, having a healthy breakfast, reading the New Yorker, collecting his post, exercising, twice taking a nap on his couch, sorting through his records and hats, watering his garden, playing around with a theremin, practising singing, repeatedly washing his hands and going to bed at 11.30. Despite its pace, it captures the boredom and search for time-occupying activities experienced by everyone in this unprecedented situation, as well as demonstrating the good practice of exercise and frequent hand washing, in an hilarious manner. Described on the NME website as ‘a wholesome video’, it also offers, of course, a tantalising glimpse for fans of various parts of Russell’s house and garden in complete contrast to their usual secrecy about their private lives.

              This was followed up by a series of suggested ‘activities’ from Russell: first, an invitation to the stir-crazy to join in ‘One for the Ages: Russell’s Self-Isolation bop’ (8 April), in which, to an exciting new instrumental version of ‘One for the Ages’, he dances, if that is the right word, with a miniature guitar and a fan, and wearing a black mask.  Over the next few weeks, we were offered two ‘Exercise Classes’, with Russell demonstrating various physical exercises from his living room (20 April and 26 May), which the viewer is invited to join in to ‘beat the self-isolation clock’. In the first video Russell wears a tee-shirt with Shibuya printed on it, a souvenir perhaps from their performance in Japan in 2018 at the Shibuya Club Quattro, while in the second he wears a ‘Moog’ tee-shirt (in honour of Moog synthesizers). Although the advice about pacing oneself and keeping hydrated (although Russell’s frequent slurps from a can of cola is perhaps not the most recommended way to do so) are presented in a serious manner, the ‘demonstration’, to the tunes of ‘Beat the clock’ and ‘Sports’ (‘ready, get set, work out’), is speeded up, so the result is manic, hilarious, not to mention impossible to emulate. Similarly, we were offered two singing lessons, one, headlined ‘A free singing lesson with a top professional’ (11 May) starting off simply, but moving on to feature the impossible ‘Equator’ and a speeded up operatic aria and the other (7 August) a rendition of the entire Kimono My House album in 90 seconds. Well, a line from each of the songs, at least! The energy, humour and element of surprise of these videos present a striking contrast to the gentle and more soothing atmosphere of Ron’s videos.

In the summer, we saw more of the boys’ collections: on 16 June, Russell treated us to a tour of his international fridge magnets collected on his travels, which he says helps to keeps his spirits up by ‘thinking of all the wonderful Sparks fans from around the world’. To appease fans who fail to see their country represented on the display, Russell cannily informs us that he has many more tucked away on a drawer. In interviews, Russell has also talked of his collection of Russian dolls and shown one of his favourites, of Abba, bought in Stockholm.  In complete contrast, on 26 August, Ron, wearing the new Sparks beret, showcased ‘The Ronald D. Mael Collection of Souvenir Stones and Shells’ acquired on their many trips abroad, an addition to the ‘burgeoning cultural scene of Los Angeles’. In this slightly mystifying yet strangely compelling film, he presents a small number of plastic boxes containing stones or shells from Mexico, Italy and Japan, which, he hastens to tells us, have been legally acquired. On 8 July, a video billed as Sparks’ first U.K. television appearance of the year featured the Sparks’ ‘spokesperson’, who greeted us with an Irish ‘Top of the Morning’, and promoted the new album for the UK chart week. A deliberate(?) gaffe occurred when ‘she’ referred to the record company as BMW, instead of BMG, and the promised link with the Mael brothers in Los Angeles results in mere static crackling. Who knows whether this an intended joke or not? I suspect it was, because the announcer seems unfazed by the situation.

A major contribution has been the ‘Lyrically speaking with Ron Mael’ videos, a lengthy series in which Ron reads the lyrics of Sparks’ songs, beginning on 5 April 2020 with perhaps appropriately, ‘Self-Effacing’ and continuing every Sunday for a full year. Ron sits in front of a bookcase which displays a different book each week for fans to identify and ponder its possible relevance to the chosen song (although often ‘Probably Nothing’). Above the bookcase we see cases of his often spoken-of collection of Air Jordan sneakers. His different outfits are a further source of interest and speculation: not just the typical white shirt and tie, but occasionally a dark hoodie, a beret for ‘I am Ingmar Bergman’ and ‘When you’re a French Director’, and a snazzy red shirt with Christmas motifs and matching mask and white beret for ‘Christmas Without a Prayer’. His choice of songs has included all the tracks from A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip, plus songs from throughout their lengthy catalogue, some very well-known, others less so: ‘ Let’s go surfing’, ‘Probably Nothing’, ‘High C’, ‘I Married Myself’.  The reading of ‘Johnny Delusional’, from the hugely successful FFS collaboration with Franz Ferdinand, was prefaced by a dedication to ‘Alex, Bob, Nick and Paul – it was a great time’.  Fans have been delighted to hear more of Ron’s voice, which in these presentations is soft and soothing, and his relaxed, even stoic, delivery. His genius as a songwriter is all the more apparent when he is seen to deliver his own words, and the focus on the lyrics has the effect of suggesting different meanings and arousing different emotions, as fans’ reactions testify. One memorable week (30 August), we were introduced to a ‘guest speaker’: Russell, who presented ‘Hasta mañaña monsieur’, for which he penned the lyrics, in a comically serious and straight-faced manner. There is a degree of irony in this, as Russell is known to be a good linguist, who contributes fluently in French in interviews, and often says a few words in the language of the host country at live shows. It is fascinating to see both doing their own very different thing:  Russell’s sporadic and varied videos are generally manic, full of humour and energy while Ron’s regular appearances are calming and restrained and, for many fans, have offered a focal point to the week.

Sparks have also followed a new lockdown trend of participating in live streamed programmes, broadcast from both the US and the UK.  A Tim Twitter’s Listening Party took place on 20 May, to celebrate A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip, in which participants were invited to play all the tracks from the album and follow a live commentary with Tim and Sparks. A two-hour radio programme followed on 7 June in which Sparks joined Tom Robinson’s ‘Now Playing @ 6Music, Bring Your Own…Sparks’ on BBC6 Music, to talk about some of their favourite music as well as their own work. The eclectic track list included Billie Holiday’s iconic ‘Strange Fruit’, covers of Sparks’ songs by Gemma Ray and Martin Gore, collaborations with Franz Ferdinand (FFS), Les Rita Mitsouko and SebastiAn, and music by artists and composers from The Who, Kraftwerk, Hot Chip, Franz Ferdinand, and the Pet Shop Boys to Nervous Norvus and Teleman.  On 13 November, the U.S. Cucalorus Festival featured a 90-minute retrospective of Sparks’ music videos, ‘Visual/Sound/Walls’, hosted by Aaron Hillis, with a live chat where the listeners could send in questions and comments.  

Another new venture was the introduction of the online Reinforcements Official Community Fan Group, administered from Sparks HQ at Republic Media. An official statement tells us that it was created, not to be in competition with other groups, but as an official platform where Sparks HQ can initiate fan-only contests and activities, and was inspired by the success of the ‘Sparks For The Ages’ playlist competition on Spotify. It aims to reach out to super fans (Sparks’ reinforcements) more directly, and although under the official eye, fans are encouraged to celebrate their fandom in any way they want, as long as they abide by the group rules of course. Their fans are ‘some of the kindest and most inclusive people’, we are told, and are a source of pride for Team Sparks. At the time of writing there are 1.2 k members.

The official Facebook site (allsparks.com) remains the main focus for posting news and photos, including Throwback Thursday pictures of past events and photos, fan art and links to online interviews. There have also been photos celebrating the boys‘ birthdays and occasions like voting in the November US election, Christmas and New Year, promotion of the new album, and a number of ‘checking in’ pictures to reassure fans of their wellbeing.  Many of these are repeated on the official Sparks Instagram account. While obviously, these social media sites can no longer offer glimpses of the many places Ron and Russell visit on their travels, fans can still keep track of how their heroes are faring under the conditions that are affecting us all. Early in the pandemic (20 March), they posted a ‘socially distancing’ advice picture, showing Russell in a mask turning his back on Ron, two meters behind him, not wearing a mask. In later rare pictures of them together in the open air, both are, of course, wearing masks. As well as the merchandise related to the new album, the Sparks’ store also offered a superb jigsaw featuring all Spark’s albums up to and including ASDDD and, ‘getting in the swing’, a couple of new items of new merchandise for the times: a hand sanitiser pouch and a mask, although sadly, for technical reasons, the latter did not materialise (no pun intended).

Despite the pandemic, 2021 is still to be a great year for Sparks.  The première of Edgar Wright’s long-awaited documentary, The Sparks Brothers, took place at the Sundance festival (streamed online this year) on 30 January and 1 Feb 2021, and was available only to viewers in the US, much to the chagrin of fans elsewhere.  A tantalising official clip was, however, posted on 30 January, featuring some of the many celebrities who talk of their love of Sparks, and finishing with Ron and Russell expressing less than warm enthusiasm for the title of the film. It is typical of the shared sense of humour that Edgar Wright should leave this in! The film has received hugely enthusiastic and positive reviews in the music and movie press, and ecstatic comments from those lucky fans who were able to view it. It was also selected to feature in this year’s virtual SXSW film festival (première 18 March), with an accompanying Q and A session.  Team Sparks and Team Edgar Wright must be absolutely delighted and Ron and Russell in particular must be elated at the reception of this major project, not least because it is such a wide-ranging, detailed and affectionate tribute. The large number of live interviews via Zoom with Ron, Russell and Edgar discussing the documentary have delighted fans and whetted their appetite for the wider distribution of the film and even better, in DVD form! In fact, news has just appeared that the worldwide rights to the film have been acquired by Focus Features, who will distribute it domestically, with international distribution by Universal Pictures. It will be in US cinemas on 18 June, with a UK release scheduled for 30 July. Bring it on! (Update: The Sparks Brothers is now widely available on DVD for all to enjoy.)

The most recent activity is the digital release of ‘Your Fandango’ in April, their collaboration with Todd Rundgren (who produced their first album), that came about as a result of their meeting during the filming of The Sparks Brothers. This lively earworm of a song is presented in grandiose terms as polyphonic pop that layers Spanish music, Neopolitan cantatas, baroque fugues and glam rock in one epic composition, and more than lives up to this description. The release was accompanied by a stunning video by Finnish media artist Liisa Vääriskoski, premièred on Sparks’ YouTube channel on 23 April, in which an elegant woman in an eighteenth-century portrait comes to life and embarks on an Alice in Wonderland-like excursion through fantastical scenarios. Visually gorgeous and characteristically humorous, the video is a complex collage of images, including various cameos of Ron, Russell and Todd, that brilliantly complements the complexity of the music. It is a superb addition to the many eye-catching videos released to accompany Sparks’ new songs these past months. The song is to be released on vinyl at a later date.

The next step in the Sparks’ saga is, of course, the première of Annette, which will fulfil a lifelong dream of Sparks. A tantalising and highly dramatic trailer for the film has just been released and it has been announced that Annette has been chosen to open the Cannes Film Festival this year on 6 July – an honour that must surely exceed all Ron and Russell’s hopes and expectations. (Update: Ron and Russell were able to attend the Cannes festival and Annette received a standing ovation. Leos Carax won the Best Director award, and Sparks also won an award for the screenplay music.) The movie will then go on general release in France and on international release at a date to be announced. Fans are clearly both enormously excited by this news and hugely proud of their favourite duo at the success of this project which started life as an intended Sparks’ album.

In conclusion, fans are immensely grateful to Ron and Russell and all their associates for giving so much time and effort to create joy in a time where this is otherwise in very short supply. Moreover …… a picture has recently appeared showing Ron and Russell in their studio (masked, of course) with a placard saying ‘Shhhh! Sparks recording!’.   A new album? Despite the horrors of this past year, it is still a great time to be a Sparks’ fan.  

 

               Penny Brown

              May 2021 (updated February 2022)

 

 

 

                    Sparks Take On The world in The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte

In 2023, Sparks not only carried out a hugely successful world tour, encompassing dates in four continents, but took on the world in a different sense in their latest album, The Girl is Crying in her Latte, with an unprecedented number of songs commenting explicitly on the current state of the world. This is not, of course, a new topic for them: with the focus on the desires, frustrations and insecurities of human beings, born of acute observation of behaviour and manners, Sparks’ songs are implicit comments on modern society. When asked in an interview in 2009 (Newsletter 21.6) about whether they were optimistic or pessimistic, Ron opts for the latter, adding that they had ‘a basic antagonism towards ‘something’. We’re not sure what. Maybe the status quo’.  This pessimism is however clothed in the imaginative stories, humour and infectious melodies of their songs, such that they could never be categorized as ‘Grumpy Old Men’*, even if they have earned the right!

However, Ron and Russell have, for the most part, cultivated an image of being non-political in its strictest sense, avoiding overtly political statements both in their work and in interviews and their social media presence.  In recent years, though, there has been a glimpse of their feelings from occasional generalised expressions of exasperation and urgings to vote posted on their websites. Similarly, their comments on the world we live in have become more specific and graphic.

Some of the songs on TGICIHL build on ideas from earlier albums. There have been a few veiled allusions to political situations before: the 2006 song ‘Can I invade your country’ (Hello Young Lovers) which includes the American National Anthem, sung to a jaunty tune, followed by ‘and one more thing: Can I invade your country’, suggested a reference to the invasion of Iraq by the US led coalition at the start of the Iraq War (2003-11). The idea that everywhere is fair game for invasion (‘countries, planets, stars/ Galaxies so far’,) followed by the paradox: ‘Don’t let freedom fade/ Baby, let’s invade’, can be seen as a damning critique of Western military intervention, an issue still debated today, only partially hidden behind the more obvious idea of sexual conquest. 

More recently, in the wider sense of the word ‘political’, overt concerns about the state of the planet can be seen to be underpinning a number of songs, mirroring increasing public awareness of such issues. The 2017 eco-ballad on Hippopotamus, ‘Please Don’t Fuck Up My World’ co-opts the Coldwater Canyon Youth Choir to emphasise the need to tackle the damage being done to the planet for the sake of future generations. The shock effect of the F-bomb in the children’s chorus diffuses any potential sentimentality, and the sincerity of this appeal is underlined by not being cloaked in humour.   (Although ‘Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth’ (Propaganda, 1974) has been seen to have a similar message, that song is actually referencing the power of Nature and its indifference to human affairs, of which as natives of earthquake-prone Los Angeles, Ron and Russell are well aware.) The hilarious ‘What The Hell Is It This Time’ (Hippopotamus) offers the point of view of God, frustrated with the constant demands of self-absorbed humanity about their ‘band-aid affairs’ when there are wars, famine, crime and ‘wholesome clean air’ to be addressed. Society’s materialism had, of course, already been critiqued in ‘Irreplaceable’ and ‘It’s a Knock Off’ (Balls, 2000). When A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip was released in 2020, ‘The Existential Threat’, which depicts an hysterical state of panic about unspecified dangers in a precarious world, was seen as unnervingly prescient in the light of the subsequent coronavirus pandemic. A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip in fact features other narrators unhappy with their existences, while the fury of ‘I-phone’, with its repeated injunction to ‘Put Your Fucking I-phone Down And Listen To Me’, offers a more specific and strongly worded irritation with an aspect of contemporary life, akin to the less graphic ‘Your Call Is Very Important To Us. Please Hold’ of 2002’s Lil’ Beethoven. (Does this song suggest that Sparks share the annoyance expressed by other artists at being watched through phones at their concerts?)

So, is The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte Sparks’ most political album to date?

It seems that Sparks have now felt the need to express more strongly and consistently their feelings about the frightening and sometimes unfathomable state of the world today. The title song itself exemplifies a kind of undefined universal angst, described elsewhere by Ron as ‘the melancholy of the times’, grounded in a privileged Western world. The narrator is unsure what ails a young woman in a coffee shop until the situation is repeated with ‘so many people’, and, after ‘trying to figure their game’, he concludes ‘guess this world is to blame’.  It was suggested to me that his initial reactions (‘bad’, ‘sad’, ‘wow’) had uncomfortable echoes of a former President’s communication style (thank you, Jo and Christian), and, indeed, one reviewer commented on a ‘lack of empathy’ in the narrator’s observations. It is certainly possible to interpret this song as a critique of the West’s failure to go beyond merely crying in our expensive latte while we sit in a warm coffee shop.

The twenty-two-hour old baby in ‘Nothing Is As Good as They Say It Is’, who takes one look at the world and is not impressed, takes up the theme suggested in ‘Unaware’ (Hippopotamus, 2017), which lists banal events that create headlines in a materialistic world and culminates in the warning (Wish I could warn her/ Don’t turn that corner/Stay unaware of it all’). The point of view shifts to the baby of 2023 who quickly recognises that life is ‘a bad surprise’, plagued with ‘ugliness, anxieties, phony tans’ and begs to opt out of ‘a place like this’, where ‘your standards must be so very low’.  Despite the humour of their desire to return to their pre-birth ‘former quarters’, we sense that this child, though a winner in the ‘Tryouts for the Human Race’ stakes, is probably doomed to end up as another person crying in their latte. Any sense of despair or cynicism is, however, mitigated in typically Sparksian manner by the implausible humour of the situation and the catchy, jaunty melody.

The same idea appears in the bonus song on the Japanese release (‘This is not the world I signed up for’) which, in its focus on lost pleasures of a carefree youth (walking on the beach, wild parties), suggests more a lament for the reality of adult life today, fraught with anxieties and responsibilities.  In ‘When You Leave’, and ‘It’s Sunny Today’, however, such activities are also seen to generate social anxieties and insecurities, and have lost that pleasurable meaning.

Another wannabe escapee from the world is none other than the Mona Lisa (‘The Mona Lisa’s Packing, Leaving Late Tonight’) who, unlike the rebellious statue in ‘Le Louvre’ (A Woofer in Tweeter’s Clothing, 1973), takes matters into her own hands. The choice of such a famous icon of Western civilization is a potent conceit to illustrate the discontents of the times. The repeated emphasis on ‘Nobody knew she was so disturbed (uptight)’ in the chorus, because her enigmatic smile hides her deep-seated angst, highlights the disconnect between individuals in modern society already suggested in the title song. To pick up on another theme in this album, her image has never been that easily defined (‘she seemed imperturbed’), but she can no longer mask her fear with that mysterious smile.  She opts out of the current atmosphere in a world that is ‘agitated and ill at ease’ in favour, perhaps, of an island in the sun, although there are dangers for her there too (the sun might ‘fade her priceless imagery’).

 A different kind of escape is described in ‘Take Me For A Ride’, in which a respectable middle-class couple escape from the tedium of their daily lives by creating a fantasy of lawlessness. The song evokes a movie-style car chase, a fugitive highjacking a woman in her Chevy Powerglide car, urging her to drive ever faster to escape capture. Despite clues that all is not what it might seem, the reveal is withheld until the last verse when we are told: ‘They repeat this ritual each Friday night at nine’, in which they ‘live a moment that makes them alive/Fighting off the boredom of both their daily lives’. Whether this fantasy is actualised, or remains in their imaginations is left uncertain.  Interestingly, the twinkling intro to this song was used at the start of the recent concerts, perhaps to indicate that the audience were about to be taken on an exhilarating journey.

‘A Love Story’ depicts a guy who believes that getting drugs for his girlfriend is ‘the perfect gift for a love that’s sublime’. Is he insecure or possessive? He fears losing his place in the queue and someone hitting on his girl in his absence. While boasting that the drugs prove the strength of his love and his ability to pay for them, he is at pains to distance himself from her habit, suggesting an uneasiness about his situation: ‘’Aint my thing, it's her thing’. Despite the minimal plot, this little scenario speaks volumes about the complexity of relationships in the modern world.

There are two songs on the new album which stand out for their clear political reference. ‘Veronica Lake’ tells the true story of the film star whose iconic ‘peek-a-boo’ hairstyle caused accidents on production lines during the Second World War and was deemed a threat to the war effort. Veronica Lake was asked to change her style for the country’s sake, and her ‘sacrifice’ of her defining image had dire consequences for her (‘she will kill her career all for the sake/ Of our winning the war’.)  There are multiple inferences in this song – apart from the power of celebrity, already highlighted in ‘That’s Not Nastassia’, (Whomp That Sucker’, 1981), and the need for a little fantasy in stressful times, we also see the fickleness of public opinion and the price of fame. In agreeing to demands in the national interest, Veronica Lake effectively became another ‘casualty of war’.  Such an historically based story is almost unprecedented in Sparks’ work and it is certainly ‘Educational’ (Balls, 2000)

The second song is ‘We Go Dancing’, a deceptively anodyne title for an astonishingly daring and explicit political subject. It depicts satirically the regimented view of life in North Korea, by casting Jim Jong Un as a DJ directing the ‘dancing’ of its brainwashed, automata-like citizens (’he rocks our world’), from the point of view of one of them.  Here discipline is a clearly defined moral and social imperative, following orders is paramount, deviation out of the question and injury ignored. The rejection of YouTube music highlights the outlawing of Western values (‘Kim Jong-un don’t like their vibe’), although the speaker evokes dancing comparisons (‘we don’t have a lot of moves, but our one move is tight’).  The song ends on the sound of marching feet – definitely not music that you can dance to. Although the analogy is humorous, this song, highly unusual for Sparks in its political specificity, is profoundly unsettling.

Finally, two songs that reflect on fundamental existential questions. In ‘Not That Well Defined’, the speaker lacks the subtlety to understand someone who appears to defy straightforward, accepted binary categorisation (‘Things are either black or they are white’). He is at a loss when faced with values that do not fit a clear definition (‘Can a person say that they exist/When so far they’ve managed to resist/Any definition, any key’). Perhaps this song reflects the entrenched views often found on social media, lacking awareness of ambiguity and relativity. The majestic anthem ‘It Doesn’t Have to be That Way’ which in its reference to music and creativity clearly reflects Sparks’ own experience and vision, acts as a kind of response to the concerns raised in the rest of the album. This song argues in favour of difference, rejecting the status quo (represented by the unspecified ‘They’), the limitations imposed by societal or artistic expectations, stereotyping, in fact any ‘well defined’ attitudes or demands. The lyrics endorse individuality and staying true to one’s own vision, as Ron and Russell have claimed to do throughout their career, even though this may come at a price. Their resigned but determined approach is fully evident in Ron’s words here (‘no chart bound song, I’ll pay for it, I’ll pay for it’) as is their rejection of the idea that art should reflect the artist’s life or strife: they do not subscribe to the washing of personal linen in public, a common feature of much contemporary confessional pop.

The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte intensifies the themes of tedium, regret, frustration, dissatisfaction and missed opportunities found in other Sparks’ songs, as in ‘Edith Piaf (Said It Better Than Me)’, Hippopotamus, and ‘Left Out In The Cold’, A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip). Even ‘It’s Sunny Today’, which seems laid back and relaxed suggests a state of unmotivated drifting and half-hearted decisions with its echoes of ‘Popularity’ (Sparks in Outer Space, 1983). However, these concerns are linked strongly with an overt and disconcerting critique of modern society, despite their wonderfully catchy tunes. It is an album that manages to be melancholy, thought-provoking and joyous all at the same time. That’s the wonder of Sparks.

 

*Grumpy Old Men – a UK TV show in which celebrities of a certain age aired their pet grumbles.

Penny Brown

December 2023

 

 

 

Sparks in Europe 2023 – the ‘Latte’ tour

 

‘It’s impossible not to be swept up in their manic delight’ (The Guardian)

‘Sparks are arguably making the best music of their career’.  (Louder Than War)

 

              Sparks’ eagerly awaited 2023 tour of Europe, the USA and Japan was timed to coincide with the release of their acclaimed 26th studio album The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte on 26 May, the first on Island Records since 1976. In fact, fans at the first two gigs in the UK, in Oxford and Glasgow, on May 23 and 24, were privileged to have a preview of the album, as up to seven of the songs were included in the set list for the tour.  It was announced by Ron and Russell in a video during the tour, that the album had reached number 7 in the UK charts (as did Hippopotamus) and number 1 in the UK physical charts. The latter is what really matters, Ron informed us, and the video concluded with a gracious heartfelt message from Russell to other bands: ‘Suck it up!’.

Unlike the 2022 tour, which started in the U.S., this one began with 18 dates in Europe, including several open-air festival events (most notably Glastonbury), followed by 12 in the US and 3 in Japan. Fans and reviewers alike have commented on the extraordinary feat of maintaining the same high standard of energy and excellence in performance with such a gruelling schedule, but Ron and Russell and the band showed that they thrived on the excitement. They played to packed houses everywhere they went and, of course, reached particularly emotional heights by achieving two sold out nights at the Royal Albert Hall in London and a gig at the Hollywood Bowl in their home town. It has recently been announced that they will go to Australia for four shows at the end of October, including the Sydney Opera House, so this year will go down in Sparks history as the year they played in three of the most iconic venues in the world. In Europe, there were new city venues too – the gigs in Oxford, Wolverhampton, Nîmes and Marseille were new additions to the schedule.  Fans who were unable to attend any of the shows were still able to share some of the experience thanks to the many photos and video clips posted on fan sites by those who were there. A big thank you to everyone who did that.

‘Here we come…’

As usual, we were treated to photographs on the official website and Instagram announcing Sparks’ arrival in each place on the tour. A big shout out to the Sparks social media team for these daily updates satisfying our desire to follow the band’s progress across Europe. The photos always featured an entertaining location or background which fans enjoyed trying to identify, sometimes lamenting that they had been in the same place ten minutes earlier, thus just missing the opportunity of a lifetime to greet their heroes. Ron and Russell were seen outside the castle and jail in Oxford, and Le Grand Rex in Paris, in front of the Roman arena in Nîmes and standing on the stage in an empty Royal Albert Hall. In Marseille, Ron is shown standing in front of the appropriately named Monsieur Chouette (meaning ‘brilliant’ in colloquial French).  Especially memorable were the impromptu performances on pianos at railway stations (‘Nothing Is As Good As They Say It Is’ at St Pancras station on the way to Wolverhampton and a snatch of ‘Gee, That Was Fun’ at the Gare du Nord in Paris with Russ saying ‘Au revoir Paris! A la prochaine fois’), with travellers passing by, seemingly unaware that they were so close to greatness. Many of the photos demonstrated that Ron was honing his selfie skills, as he was often in the forefront of the picture.  Of course, there were also the end of concert ‘thank you selfies’ with the band and the audience ‘making like they were at a Sparks’ concert’. Apart from allowing fans to eagerly scrutinise the photos to identify themselves, these pictures gave us really good images of the concert halls themselves.

The Band   

              This year’s line-up was substantially the same as in 2022, though without extra keyboards. The combination of Evan Weiss and Eli Pearl on guitars, Max Whipple on bass and Steven Nistor on drums produced a fantastically accomplished and exciting sound that has been widely praised by reviewers and fans alike. The energy was palpable and the tightness and precision faultless. The buzzing techno background of some of the songs from the new album translated really well to the band format and, if anything, some fans felt that the songs were even more striking in live performance. This was particularly the case with ‘Escalator’, which came to replace ‘Veronica Lake’ as the tour progressed. The band also seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely!  Eli won a lot of fans (and hearts) with his dance moves, especially during ‘Music That You Can Dance To’.

A special mention must be made of the support act, Mr B, the Gentleman Rhymer, who has opened for Sparks in the past. He told us that he felt that he shared a sensibility with ‘the chaps’, in that they were all extroverts on stage and introverts off stage, and paid a surprise homage to that affinity by opening with his version of ‘Here Comes Bob’, and, after a couple of his own witty and catchy pieces, performing a medley of Sparks songs in his own inimitable style. An EP of this is now available to download, which is certainly a little bit like fun.

The Venues

The venues, like last year, were hugely contrasting in size and architecture, from the nineteenth-century splendour of the New Theatre, Oxford with its dramatic red and gold proscenium arch and the sumptuous 1930s Art Deco décor of the Paris Grand Rex, to the very contemporary Tivoli Vredenburg in Utrecht with its industrial style metal and glass exterior, the elegantly modern Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, the SEC Armadillo in Glasgow, which has the appearance of a mini Sydney Opera House, the Tempodrom in Berlin , with its extraordinary roof echoing the shape of the circus tents of its original location, and the Cirque Royal in Brussels, with its semi-circular auditorium.  Sparks had previously appeared at the latter way back in 1975.  There was a notable difference this year in that the venues were all seated in traditional theatre style. This caused some dismay amongst fans who like to spend the entire evening dancing in the mosh pit, but in many places the Security were audience-friendly, and allowed fans to dance in front of the stage.  For the most part, the audiences were soon on their feet in any case, because it is almost impossible not to want to dance at a Sparks’ show, especially when they play ‘Music that you can dance to’!

The UK dates culminated in the two sold-out dates at the magnificent and historic Royal Albert Hall in London. Opened in 1871, and known world-wide for its circular shape and Italianate style architecture, the Hall has hosted many of the world’s top artists.  The capacity is over five thousand, which is a lot of Sparks fans in one place.  (If you want to know how many holes it takes to fill it, ask the Beatles). The ‘arrival’ picture of Ron and Russell in the empty theatre, emphasised the dimensions and grandeur of this extraordinary place.  Looking round at the vast auditorium with its multiple galleries during the show, Russell told us how, when they lived in London in the ‘70s, they used to pass the Royal Albert Hall and say ‘that is where the big bands play’, adding that with two sold-out shows there, they ‘must be one of the big bands now’.  The huge ovation and cheering confirmed that this is indeed the case.  As with the Hollywood Bowl show later, both Ron and Russell spoke of this being a dream come true for them and were visibly very moved.

 The Festivals

Between the UK and European dates were shows at the Primavera Sound festivals in Barcelona in Spain and Porto in Portugal (June 2 and 10), where Sparks attracted a lot of positive attention, huge crowds and excellent reviews. The proposed Primavera Sound festival show in Madrid on 8 June was, unfortunately, cancelled because of the weather conditions – an electrical storm made the open-air event too dangerous. The organizers clearly feared attracting more sparks on stage than expected! In Barcelona, the boys did an interview with Miranda Sawyer, who asked some interestingly different questions, and elicited a description of how their song writing method had changed when they acquired their own home studio. Ron also spoke of how it is less constraining to write the music first, rather than the lyrics, and how he and Russell play around with the sounds created with their state-of-the-art equipment.

On 23 June, Sparks appeared on the Park Stage at the Glastonbury Festival. This was the first time that they played Glastonbury as Sparks, although they had appeared there in their FFS guise in 2015. The set list for the festivals was reduced to 13 songs including three from the new album: ‘The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte’, ‘Nothing Is As Good As They Say It Is’ and ‘We Go Dancing’. One of the highlights of the set this time, to the surprise and delight of the crowd, was the appearance of Cate Blanchett in her bright yellow suit, replicating the role she plays in the video for ‘The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte’, a PR master stroke that wowed both audience and reviewers. Inevitably, many press pictures featured Cate, and both these and informal images posted on social media showed how much she was enjoying herself. The reviews of the set speak for themselves: The Times described it as ‘a delight from start to finish’ and Mojo as ‘a unique and glorious experience’.

The Outfits

The outfits of the band, who remained on a slightly raised platform at the back of the stage, were dark and casual. Ron surprised in a pair of wide grey jogger-type trousers with a light stripe down the sides, paired with a white shirt under a dark jacket, and a tie that varied in the course of the tour (but included my personal favourite, the ‘balls’ tie). The most colour on stage was Russell’s striking two-tone red and black jacket worn with dark trousers and shirt. The jackets alternated each night between one with red on the top half and sleeves and black on the lower half, and vice versa, with a rosette in the contrasting colour on the lapel.  His shoes, which aways attract a lot of fan attention, were also red while Ron‘s were white and black.

The Set List

The set list was, as always, generous, with around 22 songs from 14 of their 26 albums including six or seven from the new album and very few changes throughout the tour.  After entering to the twinkling notes of ‘Take Me For A Ride’, they opened, of course, with ‘So May We Start’, followed by a storming rendition of ‘The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte’. Fans were surprised, and for the most part highly delighted, that there were songs scarcely ever performed live, or at least not since the 2008 Sparks Spectacular, like ‘Beaver O’Lindy’ (from A Woofer in Tweeter’s Clothing, 1972), ‘Bon Voyage’ (Propaganda 1975) and the title track of Music That You Can Dance To (1986). It was a revelation to hear these numbers performed with this current band as the excited reception clearly demonstrated.

The inclusion of ‘The Shopping Mall of Love’ was a big hit once again, with Ron charming the audience with his spoken lines, particularly the ‘laughter’ on ‘she makes me laugh’ and the straight-faced fist-pumping ‘Yeahs’.  At most shows, the auditorium erupted when the opening notes of ‘Number One Song In Heaven’, and ‘This Town Aint Big Enough For Both Of Us’ rang out. A huge hit at the UK dates was ‘Eaten By The Monster of Love’, but for some reason this was later dropped. In Paris, ‘Bon Voyage’ was dedicated to Leos Carax, the director of Annette. The new songs, especially the bouncy ‘Nothing Is As Good As They Say It Is’ and the more reflective ‘It Doesn’t Have To Be That Way’ were greeted with huge cheers by audiences everywhere.

The encore featured either the new ‘A Love Story’ or ‘My Baby’s taking Me Home and finished with ‘All That’, thus creating the perfect bookending for the show.  In many places, during the latter, fans waved their phone lights in the air, creating a stunning starry environment for the end of the show.   The short version of ‘Gee that was fun’ (The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte) at the end of the show caused some consternation amongst those fans always looking for signals that Sparks are going to announce their retirement. However, this was quickly dissolved by the statement everywhere that they would be back real soon.

Russell’s energy throughout was astonishing, his leaps, twirls and skipping covering the whole width of the stages, causing many reviewers to remark that he moved like a man half, even a third, his age. He appears to have lost none of his vocal range, and still attacked the highest notes with confidence. No lip-synching here, nor teleprompter needed for the lyrics.

The audience was rivetted

It is clear from the many fan sites that Sparks have gained a lot of new fans after the widespread popularity of Edgar Wright’s The Sparks Brothers documentary, and this was very apparent at the shows. In the audiences were people of all ages, often including children with parents or grandparents, and many clearly knew all the words of most of the songs, even those from the new album, joining in enthusiastically. The delight was palpable and euphoric. It did not take long for people to get to their feet, and even those remaining seated waved their arms in the air and bounced up and down. Extensive applause and cheering erupted after many numbers and a lengthy standing ovation at the end of the show was almost routine.

Reviewers commented repeatedly that you could feel the love in the room – hopefully, Ron and Russell and the band were able to feel this too. Sometimes gifts and letters were tossed onto the stage, and a large ‘Merci Sparks’ banner was unfurled in Brussels. In some places, Russell walked along the front of their stage, briefly touching the imploring hands of fans, an experience which some appeared to find overwhelming. (Who wouldn’t?)  Ron meanwhile remained aloof, explaining that Russell is ‘more of a people person than I am’.

Lighting

The lighting for the shows was sophisticated and stunning, featuring a background grid of rectangles filled with lights which constantly changed to form different patterns, spelling Sparks during ‘So May We Start’ and ‘Beaver O’Lindy’ letter by letter, as Russell spelled it out. The arrangement was particularly effective during ‘Escalator’ as horizontal rows of lights ran up and down behind the band. There were also the obligatory flashing lights, different colour washes over the whole stage and, of course, spotlights, including the highly dramatic blue spotlight on Ron at his keyboard in ‘Number One Song in Heaven.

 Reviews 

Reviews were overwhelmingly positive from the beginning and often highlighted the uniqueness of Sparks as this remark in the Oxford Mail illustrates: ‘ [Sparks] put the unimaginative crop of top 40 chart botherers in the shade’. The Guardian reviewed the Liverpool show as ‘timed to perfection like all great double acts, the surreal moments also intensify the power of the more earnest moments by contrast’. In France, Les Inrockuptibles enthused that in this ‘magnifique concert’, ‘Sparks nous a emporté vers la joie,’ (Sparks carried us away to joy). Most reviews commented on the astonishingly youthful physical and vocal performance by Russell, the moment in Ron’s dance where his usual stoic demeanour was transformed by a manic grin and the clear reciprocal affection between the Maels and their fans. The band was also universally praised, as was the inspired choice of Mr B as support act.

The Speeches

 The end of show speeches seemed even more emotional than on previous tours. Both Ron and Russell said repeatedly that the reactions of fans were ‘very precious’ to them, and they were clearly deeply moved and thrilled by their reception, seeming almost reluctant to leave the stage at times. In Paris, Ron made a heart shape to express his gratitude for ‘the best gig ever’. Each member of the band was warmly cheered when Russell introduced them, commenting on the lengthy membership of Sparks of Steven Nistor in particular, and also Evan Weiss. There were humorous moments too: in Wolverhampton, Russell introduced Ron by sitting on the stool next to him and saying: ‘I have a big brother who plays keyboards and writes some of the songs- big ego trip’. Ron, of course, retained his usual impassive face.  

 Highlights (and the odd glitch)

There was the occasional inevitable hiccup: at Manchester, there was a problem with microphones during ‘Number One Song in Heaven’, which caused an exasperated Russell to throw down two faulty microphones and proceed to conduct the audience in singing ’Oooo, la la , la la la, la la’ before drawing the song to a close.  In Brussels, a catastrophe nearly struck, as Russell tripped at the front of the stage and fell forward. Fortunately, and according to which version you read, he managed to right himself, or, was saved by the willing outstretched arms of fans in the front row. Either way, he managed to carry on singing. Of course he did, he has experienced worse! At Wolverhampton, there was a funny moment when Russell, having described the story of ‘Nothing Is As Good As They Say It Is’, could not remember the title of the song and had to ask Ron!

As always, there were many especially memorable moments. Everyone will have their favourites: these are just some of them.

               The gasps and cheers of surprise and delight when the more unusual numbers from their past catalogue were announced made the occasion feel extra special. Russell’s skill in acting the songs with movement and gestures was mesmerising. There was a nice moment in ‘Eaten By The Monster Of Love’ when he mooched across the stage, shoulders hunched and head down as though the monster had really got him in its grip. Ron’s facial expressions and gestures in ‘The Shopping Mall of Love’ were greeted with reactions of (bawdy) laughter and not a little yearning in some quarters. You can guess which lines elicited these emotions! Posts on social media commented on how well the rapport and change in performance dynamics worked here, with Ron centre stage and Russell ceding vocal prominence to him. Ron’s dance elicited huge cheers of approval everywhere and extended chants of ‘Ron, Ron, Ron’.

As always, positive efforts were made to engage the audience in each place. The Oxford Mail commented that despite being a ‘musical rock god’, Russell was ‘endearingly humble in his address to the audience’.  French reviewers appreciated that Russell spoke in French, while the Berlin audience reacted loudly to Russell’s ‘I told you it’s gonna be fun in Berlin!’. In Copenhagen, loud cheers greeted Russell’s leaps at the beginning of ‘So May We Start’. To the delight of the audience in Liverpool, Russell treated them to a brief snatch of ‘Ferry ‘cross the Mersey’, the Gerry and the Pacemakers song associated with the city. (They resisted the temptation to include a Beatles song though.)

Director Edgar Wright and some of the team who were involved in the making of The Sparks Brothers documentary were in the audience on the first night at the Royal Albert Hall, and Edgar put in a surprise appearance to take the end of concert photo (as he also did at the Hollywood Bowl). Copies of this were later sent to fans who had purchased the Latte vinyl record on the official website, a doubly treasured memento.

                                        Fun, joy and love

After they delivered shows that excelled in captivating energy, a wide range of brilliantly executed numbers and sometimes delirious audience participation, Sparks sent us off with the promise ‘We’ll be back real soon’ ringing in our ears. What more could a Sparks’ fan want? A heartfelt thank you to everyone involved in creating such a glorious experience.

 

Penny Brown

September 2023.

A Hollywood Odyssey: Sparks take Ingmar Bergman on a journey to hell and back

 

                                                                                                                                       

          A Hollywood Odyssey: Sparks take Ingmar Bergman on a journey to hell and back

             Since Joseph Campbell's seminal work The Hero with a Thousand Faces  was first published in 1949, it has been accepted that the metanarrative he describes as 'the Hero's Journey' can be seen to underpin, albeit with many variations, not just worldwide myths and hero stories from Gilgamesh, Homer's Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid to Dante's Inferno, but fairy tales, folk tales, modern travel and adventure stories, comic book tales and, especially, many stories for children and young adults and video games. The basic structure of this narrative is described by Campbell as one of 'separation, a penetration to some source of power, and a life-enhancing return', a pattern which has been absorbed in different periods and cultures and recreated in many new forms.¹  Although the specific elements and import may be uniquely relevant to, modified and informed by their contemporary cultural or historical context, retellings of the story or stories based on this metanarrative can have a satisfying and meaningful impact on a readership or audience, precisely because the fundamental pattern may have been encountered elsewhere. One need look no further than the huge success of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books to appreciate the ways in which the essential elements of the metanarrative have been revived and reinvented in a modern fantasy that appeals to young readers. These elements can also, however, be seen to surface in other and perhaps unexpected creative contexts. This paper proposes that the flexibility, universality, continuing relevance and potential for interdisciplinarity of the Hero's Journey narrative has been demonstrated in recent times by the musical drama The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman (2009), devised, composed and performed by the art-pop band Sparks (Los Angeles based brothers Ron and Russell Mael), whose musical longevity, constant self-reinvention and widely acknowledged influence on other musicans have made them iconic figures in contemporary popular music.²

 

            The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman is a fantasy about an attempt to lure the internationally acclaimed Swedish director into making blockbuster movies for a mythological Hollywood studio in the 1950s, and has been hailed repeatedly as an original and compelling work of musical genius, an 'engrossing and enriching piece', a 'what-if fictional fantasy', and 'a fascinating and powerful discourse on the struggle between art and commerce'.³  Originally commissioned by Swedish radio and broadcast from the Södra Teatern in Stockholm on 14 August 2009, with a British airing in English on BBC Radio 6 Music on 28 October, the work, lasting approximately sixty minutes with twenty-four sub-sections, was also released as an album in 2009, and transformed into a theatrical experience, or a staged readthrough of a planned film, in the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre at the Los Angeles Film Festival on 25 June 2011.⁴  There are still ongoing plans to make it into a feature film. The Swedish broadcast featured actors Jonas Malmsjö and Elin Klinga, both of whom had worked in Ingmar Bergman's productions, while amongst the actors involved in the Los Angeles production (ironically in the heart of Tinseltown), was Finnish actor Peter Franzén.  The translation from sound only piece to a potential film script was effected visually by the Canadian film director Guy Maddin reading aloud stage directions to introduce and link each sub-section and filming some of the action from the side of the stage .  The performance was warmly received by audience and critics, and described as 'sexy, savvy, absurdly catchy, funny as hell and dazzling in its audacity'.⁵  The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman is, like Sparks themselves, all of these things, and more, and this paper proposes that much of  the power of the work also stems from its affinities with the age-old story of the 'Hero's Journey' which enhance its themes of integrity and vision versus corruption, greed and corporate cynicism and the clash of artistic and cultural sensibilities in Europe and America .  

 

            There is already a clear link between the metanarrative of the Hero's Journey and the ethos of movie making: in his 1998 book The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structures for Writers , Christopher Vogler, himself an industry professional, offers an exhaustive discussion and plentiful examples of the different aspects of the Hero's Journey and how they may be (and have been) applied in Hollywood screenplays. He cites  films as diverse as The Lion King, Titanic, Pulp Fiction, The Full Monty, The Wizard of Oz, Beverly Hills Cop, and the Star Wars movies as examples which draw on the story in different and innovative ways. This book, based on Vogler's earlier Practical Guide, carries testimonials from scriptwriters, directors and producers praising it as one of the standard Hollywood guidebooks for the screenwriting craft, which demonstrates the wide-ranging and continuing relevance of Campbell's argument.⁶   The ingenuity of The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman is that the narrative structure so often reworked in Hollywood movies operates here, together with the manipulation of many of the conventions and cliché​s of both musicals and adventure films, to satirise the commercialism and corrupt methods of an imaginary studio, and the dangerous consequences of the obsession with celebrity and box-office receipts. Although the tale is set in the 1950s, and the studio is a composite of the powerful studios of the period, these themes clearly remain relevant to debates about art and commercialism in many cultural fields in more recent times (most notably, currently, in the case of television). The Maels themselves are not strangers to the vicissitudes and disappointments of  trying to bring a screenplay to fruition in a highly competitive, cut-throat, profit-obsessed world.⁷  The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman is indeed, as many reviewers of the album and show in the U.K.and U.S. press remarked, a dark fairy tale or fable for our times that, like many traditional fairy tales, manages to be funny, tragic, frightening and thought provoking at the same time.⁸   The comparison with fairy tales and fables is not inappropriate or inconsistent: Bergman himself declared in an interview in 1971 his interest in fairy tales, especially cruel ones, and according to Ron Mael, although they did not have a specific tale in mind, the notion of Ingmar Bergman appearing in a musical creates in itself a surreal and dreamlike quality.⁹   The Maels have also spoken of their 'liking for inconsistency': in this case both musically and dramatically, as the music encompasses different styles (echoes of Kurt Weill, synth pop, classical, polka, vaudeville, jazz) and instruments (piano, orchestra, guitar, drums), and the plot and characterization feature anacronistic images and  juxtapose stereotypical American clichés with Bergman's severe, existential stance, always 'thinking of big things'.¹⁰   This paper does not pretend to do justice to the varied and evocative music of the piece, which both accompanies and reflects the sung and spoken words and comments upon the action, but focuses on the effect of the elements of the 'Hero's Journey' narrative which can be identified in this compelling fantasy.

 

            The basic structure of this narrative, as defined by Campbell, involves the hero leaving home, either on a quest or unintentionally, and entering a strange and often dangerous world: 'a place of strangely fluid and polymorphous beings, unimaginable torments, superhuman deeds and impossible delight' , a definition that could equally well apply to the world of movies.¹¹  Here he (or she) encounters dangers, temptations and threats from monstrous opponents which he is finally able to overcome, often with help from a beneficent being, and from which he returns home, having achieved his goal, to welcome and reward. Asserting that myths give symbolic expression to the unconscious desires, fears and tensions that underlie human behaviour and communicate traditional wisdom, Campbell embraced the ideas of Carl. G. Jung to argue that, as well as a literal adventure, the journey may be seen as an inward one, the dangers encountered by the modern hero symbolising aspects of the unconscious, his struggle with personal inner demons on a journey of self-discovery leading to wholeness and the confirmation of individual identity.¹²  Just as retellings of this fundamental narrative often draw on contemporary concerns, so the reactions and interpretations by any readership or audience are likely to be influenced by their own experiences and cultural context as well as by any prior knowledge of similar stories. Intertextual references and echoes of other narratives are commonly used to create the pleasure of recognition and to reinforce a point, as evidenced by the frequent use of images from fairy tales in advertising.¹³ In The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman, there are multiple levels of  interdisciplinarity which embellish the basic structure of the hero story with allusions to Bergman's films, references to typical Hollywood film soundtrack music and echoes of songs and musical styles from the long and distinguished career of Sparks. At the broadest level, the theme of the journey, both literal and metaphorical, plays a structural and thematic role in many of Bergman's films (notably Wild Strawberries, 1957), as it does in the 24 episodes here.¹⁴  The major themes of Bergman's films are, in effect, not unlike those found in myths and fairy tales: the binary oppositions of good and evil, the existence of God and the devil, dream and reality, art and life, the mask and the face, life and death, the conscious and the unconscious, the struggle to find meaning in life, and all of these can be seen to feature here.¹⁵  Moreover, the real Bergman had strong views on the struggle between art and commerce: in an interview in June1968, he asserted that after his making of This Can't Happen Here (1950), he said to himself that never again would he make a film for money or allow anyone to buy him, because 'if I start playing fast and loose with ethics, I'll lose my inherent value as a human being, everything that gives me the feeling that I have a right to make films'.¹⁶  Similarly, in an interview given on the day of the Los Angeles staged performance, Ron and Russell Mael acknowledged that, although the theme of art versus commerce was not initially a conscious personal statement, it could indeed be seen to relate to their own career, describing temptations to depart from their own artistic vision as a 'battle of selling their souls to the devil'.¹⁷   Alert Sparks fans will also pick up on themes running through many of their earlier songs, which are themselves often like mini-operas (the uncertainties of life and love, cynicism and dishonesty in relationships, self-doubt, fear of humiliation and betrayal, the precariousness of identity) and familiar characteristics of the lyrics (such as concise and understated wit, layered meanings, repetition, allusive innuendo). They will also  recognise the significance of the dichotomy between European and American artistic sensibilities, an issue that has played an important role in Sparks' career path.   Not least, they will be delighted and hooked from the start by the subtle reference to Sparks' iconic song 'This town aint big enough for the both of us', from the 1974 album Kimono My House, in the third episode as the Bergman character arrives in Hollywood.

 

            The origin of The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman as a radio musical has important implications, not least because Bergman himself wrote for the medium which, he felt, had special possibilities, being at once 'more intimate and poetical than visual theatre'.¹⁸  Arguably radio drama is all the more evocative because the listener's imagination is more acutely stimulated and is forced to become active, to collaborate in the enterprise without the distraction of visual elements.  The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman, as both radio play and album, blends the spoken word, song, music and sound effects to tell a story in a highly innovative and ingenious manner.  Whereas in Stockholm, the work was played in a theatre in front of a screen that showed only a picture of Bergman, the transition to a staged version employed large surreal projected images behind the stylised movements of the live actors which challenged a realistic interpretation and enhanced the  illusion of fantasy.¹⁹  These included huge sketched faces of Bergman and other figures, snatches of the lyrics and collages blending vintage imagery from Sweden, Los Angeles and Bergman's films: thus, the famous Dance of Death image of silhouetted figures against a dark cloud in The Seventh Seal is reproduced against a Californian sunset with tall palm trees, and in another the giant head and shoulders of Greta Garbo are seen looming over the Beverly Hills Hotel and figures on a beach.  It is, of course, essential in any medium to catch the audience's attention and interest from the start with the title of a piece, and the opening scene. This title evokes the erotic promise of many of Bergman's titles (Illicit Interlude (1951); A Lesson in Love (1954) for example) as well as intriguing the audience members who may expect a sensational drama-documentary of Bergman's personal life. The opening scene-setting sequence or prologue is the excited announcement, in three languages with drumbeats and enthusiastic applause, of the jury's prize for 'poetic humour' awarded to Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night (1955) at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival, an honour which allegedly took the director by surprise.²⁰  This immerses the listening audience directly within the Cannes event, both contextualising the story and pointing towards the central theme of international recognition and acclaim which is the foundation of the temptation the fictional Bergman is to undergo: whether to be seduced by Hollywood into allowing his often proclaimed artistic integrity to be perverted by celebrity status and the commercialism of the American film industry, or to resist, because, as Bergman himself put it in 1968, 'What you say 'yes' to, and what you say 'no' to in your work. Nothing else matters'.²¹

 

            The fictional Bergman, like his real counterpart, encapsulates the qualities of the composite hero figure in a number of ways: he has exceptional gifts within his sphere (in his case, his achievements and a strong sense of his artistic vision), and is honoured by his own society.²²  He also displays universal emotions such as moments of self-doubt and fear. In episode 2, against a background of sweeping orchestral music reminiscent of many a movie opening, he introduces himself, directly addressing his audience who, he recognises, may or may not have heard of him or his films and, like Dante in the Divina Commedia, proceeds to tell the tale of what happened to him at a critical moment in his life. The detail about Bergman and his career in this introduction is minimal but enough for the audience to appreciate the import of what follows. He recounts that the success at Cannes of Smiles of a Summer Night, a comedy unlike his usual work, triggered a strange and unexpected reaction in  him, the urge to enter a cinema to watch an American action movie of the sort he detests ('Have you ever felt compelled to do something against your will? I have. I have.') He ponders why he should have endured 'escapist art of the worst kind' for ninety minutes, wondering whether it was an urge to do something mindless or simply 'the urge to do something...unlike Ingmar Bergman?' (episode 2).   Whether this is a moment of self-doubt, the subconscious pull of the opposite or, since he is already on the verge of difference with Smiles of a Summer Night, a nascent temptation to take his work in a new direction is left unanswered. This moment is what Campbell calls 'the Call to Adventure', when 'destiny has summoned the hero and transferred his spiritual centre of gravity from within the pale of his society to a zone unknown'.²³   This lure is not always understood by the hero himself and, in Bergman's case, its embodiment in a film foreshadows the unknown world he is about to enter.  Bergman's uncertainty, which suggests a vacillating sense of identity and hence vulnerability to temptation, would support the interpretation that what follows is a dream, one that exemplifies an inner struggle between his integrity and the prospect of critical, popular and commercial success suggested by the Cannes accolade. The movie theatre, appropriately, represents the portal to the unknown world in which this hero's adventure is to take place.  This is a notion that the real Bergman would have appreciated: he has described the starting point for his film Wild Strawberries (1957) as a fantasy about opening a door and going back into one's childhood, then opening another door and returning to reality or a different period of one's life.²⁴  Here, going through the exit, Bergman finds himself in an unfamiliar street in a world that is both real and, yet, as the general perception of Hollywood as Tinseltown suggests, not dissimilar to the worlds of fantasy or fairy tale. Just as the unknown world contrasts with the hero's ordinary world, so here the contrasts between Bergman's Sweden and the United States are manifested at many different levels, from the weather and food to language and cultural tastes. It is strange, yet strangely familiar, a parallel world where Bergman finds himself the protagonist in a new narrative in which he is clearly expected but where he is no longer in control even of his own movements.

 

           In the 'unknown world' of myth and fairy tale, the hero typically encounters both dangers and dangerous delights, challenges and a range of obstacles and antagonists. These may include guardians of the threshold at the entrance to this 'zone of magnified power'. who block his way or test his powers, ogres, sirens, shapeshifters and, usually, an arch villain or enemy.²⁵ The limo driver who meets Bergman as he emerges from the portal is the first of the threshold guardians, a sort of Charon of the freeways who ferries the visitor to his destination against a background of street noises, squealing tyres and a discordant and insistent beat. The  sycophantic trivialities of his conversation in response to Bergman's increasingly anxious protests  demonstrate a nightmarish lack of communication and a latent menace. Unlike the guide figure of myth, or Dante's Virgil, who may impart helpful information, the limo driver's  refusal to depart from his tourist- welcoming platitudes exacerbates the reluctant Bergman's agitation and futile attempts at self-assertion, signalled by rapid piano notes racing ever more frantically up and down the scale.  In accordance with the next stage of the Hero's Journey, Bergman is conducted to another portal (the studio gates) which will lead him into the part of this strange world that will hold the most dangers and temptations and where the battle for his soul will begin. The motto that Dante finds over the entrance to hell, 'Abandon hope all ye who enter here', irresistibly springs to mind.  Here the dramatic question that, as Vogler describes, must motivate the piece and hook the audience  is posed: will Bergman submit to the seduction of Hollywood or overcome the challenges to his independence and stay true to his artistic vision?²⁶  His meetings with further threshold guardians, the automata-like doorman and concierge who retain his hotel keys, and the telephone operator who, in a Kafka-esque scene, claims that there is no such place as Sweden on her list, reveal the typical isolation and vulnerability of the hero far from home, for although Hollywood promises Bergman freedom, he is in fact imprisoned and controlled at every turn, the victim of an apparent conspiracy.  The values of this world, based it would seem on the criteria of money, sex and getting a tan, are revealed in the wonderfully funny episode of the 'Hollywood Welcoming Committee' (episode 8), a beautiful hooker sent by the studio to relax and persuade the still reluctant Bergman. Like Circe in the Odyssey, she represents the dangerous delight of sexuality that will threaten the hero's self-control and power, offering, instead of Circe's magic potion, a cup of herbal tea.  She acknowledges that she represents a blatant attempt to persuade him to stay because of his well-known 'weakness for the girls', and her blandishments mingle a picture of a life of artistic freedom in Hollywood that corresponds to his professional desires and frustrations ('budgets for what you want to do/ Crews that can read your mind and work all night/ Work all night') with the allusive promise of sexual gratification ('Tell me how best to make my case, any ol' way or face to face').  

 

            The hero's main adversary at the film studio is the Studio Chief, spoken and sung by Russell Mael channelling a smoothly sinister screen villain, a tempter whose cynical and shallow manipulativness is revealed in his hushed advice to his people on how to handle Bergman on his arrival. The rhythmically chanted repetition of a refrain ('Here he is now'), a frequent stylistic device in Sparks' songs, creates a menacing atmosphere reminiscent of  'The Rhythm Thief' from the 2002 album Lil' Beethoven.  His jokey politeness to Bergman in episode 5 is false and sycophantic, like the mask worn by the evil archetypes of myth.  After patronising him with Swedish mineral water and a totally unnecessary translator, he reveals the pure self-interest of Hollywood's motives in wishing to acquire Bergman's talent and reputation ('we need you to help erase/ Image problems, self-imposed/ Art and commerce, never close/ You can bring us both of those') and at the same time, his dismissive disdain for 'art' in the concession that 'Works of art can also work/For some Midwest creepy jerk'. There is a real life context for this scenario: in the 1950s, the old Hollywood studios were in decline because of the decrease in movie audiences and were seeking to expand their international activities, and the old movie moguls were eventually being replaced by a new generation of studio heads tasked with reversing the drop in profits .²⁷ The first stage of the attempted seduction begins with the Studio Chief's crass and fatuous praise of Bergman's films which, with its repetition of the word 'great' paradoxically deconstructs the notion of inherent value (as in the Sparks song 'Popularity' from the album Sparks In Outer Space (1983)) in terms of both language and artistic sensibility. His promise of  rewards of financial and artistic freedom, a deal that emphasises the benefits of mutual help to Bergman himself come across like the proposal of a gangster or protection racketeer.  However, just as the hero of myth is exposed to temptations that correspond to his deepest fears  and thus are all the more seductive, this enticement insidiously alludes to the economic difficulties Bergman experienced with the Swedish film industry, which ceased production altogether for an unspecified period in 1951.²⁸   The Studio Chief can thus be seen as what Vogler calls the 'Shadow', a dangerous enemy because he is to an extent a magnified and distorted reflection of the Hero's desires and fears.²⁹  The posing in this episode of the central themes of The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman, art versus commerce and the clash of artistic visions, is the more forceful and insistent for each line being dutifully repeated in Swedish by the interpreter.  The Studio Chief's assertion in episode 6 that Bergman will come around as others have done indicates both a smug assumption of the superiority of the Hollywood way and a cynical view of human nature.  Bergman now has to face the conflict engendered by the seemingly rational arguments of his antagonist, the 'weasel logic of the powerful vulgarian', which cause him, like many heroes of myth to hesitate.³⁰ As the limo ferries him back to the Beverly Hills Hotel, he ponders that he should not be too hasty in rejecting the proposition while at the same time recognising the downside, notably communication problems and what he finds most distasteful in much American output, its 'abominable' music, 'ridiculous' method acting and destructive cult of celebrity. The contrast in imperatives is underlined by the insistent beat accompanying the driver's words and the orchestral sweep of the music signalling Bergman's (spoken) interior monologue.

           

            The central test for Bergman comes in episode 10, 'The Studio Commissary', an apt equivalent to what Vogler calls the 'Inmost Cave' where the hero faces death.³¹   Here Bergman becomes like the ancient travellers Odysseus and Aeneas, or Dante, in their descent to the Underworld, confronted not with shades of his past, a vision of the future or the fate of sinners, but with a pantheon of other famous emigré directors who, for different reasons, personal and political, have come to work in Hollywood, and are now happily gorging themselves with steak and cake in this land of plenty. Against a background of chatter and clattering cutlery, the shapeshifting Studio Chief attempts to lure him into a Faustian bargain with ambiguous half-truths and flattery, identifying directors with whom Bergman might empathise and who allegedly overcame anxieties about the cultural divide between Europe and America: 'Their vision made it here unscathed, none felt a whore/ none felt he caved'.  He even answers his reservation about language difficulties by confidently asserting that English is the common tongue of cinema, an observation on the universal pervasiveness of American culture and an implied denigration of other foreign language films that amount to a provocative display of cultural imperialism. The directors enjoying symbolic physical gratification like robots in the Commissary were indeed all famous names in the 1950s or earlier (Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, Fritz Lang and Jose Von Sternberg among them) and worked for a variety of studios of which this is an imaginary composite. The films named in the Studio Chief's recitation of their achievements (Sunset Boulevard, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Cat People, Sunrise, Detour) were all Oscar winners or commercial successes, but the Studio Chief's over-familiar and insincerely trite praise conceals a subtext of compromise: 'one could quibble which was best, their Old World work or/ work out west'.³²  This information is rattled off in the manner of a list song (which recalls the recitation of  scent brands in 'Perfume' on the Hello Young Lovers album (2006), for example), accompanied by a chorus of almost demonic laughter to a comic beat. The Chief's mask of conciliatory mateyness elides at the end of the episode into a thinly disguised threat as he urges Bergman to make the right choice. Like the epic heroes tempted by sirens, Bergman wrestles with his conscience, although acutely aware of  his own superiority and their crassness: 'My first instinct would be to tell them to go to hell', words which the real Bergman actually used in an interview in 1971 when asked about external interference in his work, as the Maels were delighted to discover.³³  But the fictional Bergman is also aware of the attractive prospect of American money bankrolling his work, hovering on the brink of capitulation as he wonders whether he could survive in Hollywood as he repeats: 'So I must not be hasty' (episode 11).

            In the episodes that follow this existential crisis, three ordeals involving monsters that in the tradition of the hero story, correspond to his fears trigger the next stage in his story. In the first, a confrontation with a Hollywood starlet (episode 13), presumably based on the temperamental 1930s star Simone Simon identified in the Commissary,  during an imagined and disastrous film shoot, contrasts with the real Bergman's close relationship with his own Swedish actors and exemplifies his fictional alter ago's anxieties about a star not understanding his temperament on set and his ability to communicate his aims in such an alien atmosphere. The arrogant and aggressive starlet personifies the perversion of art and the warping of human nature by the cult of celebrity in her brutal rejection of his artistic approach and efforts to make her share his vision. In her assumption of the superior power of the star over the director, manifested in the repeated refrain of 'Who do you think you are? Why do you take that tone with me', underlined by a crash of cymbals and drums at the end of each line, she is an embodiment of the uncontrolled female power of mythical or fairy tale witches or femmes fatales who threaten to eat or otherwise destroy the male protagonist. In the Hollywood starlet, Sparks fans will also recognise the predatory, capricious and emasculating female type who haunts their songs (in Please, baby please' or 'Something for the girl with everything', for example from In Outer Space (1983) and Propaganda (1974) respectively). Subsequently, in an unnerving but comic scene, Bergman is pursued by a Hollywood tour bus and finds that he has become another tourist attraction, pointed out to visitors as a curiosity and urged to perform the role of famous foreign director for the public. His existence and his work are trivialised in the ebullient tour guide's spiel intoned against staccato notes, excited shrieks and applause: 'We can only hope that the sun doesn't burn the trademark/Scandinavian gloom out of his outlook./ That's why we love him!', an insincere accolade that is a concisely humorous articulation of Bergman's dilemma. The perniciousness of celebrity (lamented in Sparks' song 'Funny Face' from the Whomp that Sucker album (1981)), is underlined as Bergman almost becomes a victim of fan violence, pursued and hounded by a pack of autograph hunters, his increasing panic evident in the drum beats accompanying his repeated need to get away from their demands and screams. (In the Los Angeles staged version, Bergman was the centre of a tug-of-war which stretched his (fake) arms to bizarre lengths.)The hotel concierge's laconically terrifying remark that he seems to be the object of some Hollywood hospitality is the catalyst for the next stage in his story, corresponding to the hero's 'Escape and Return Home', in which, typically, according to Vogler, the story's energy is revved up to a climax.³⁴.

 

            In Episode 17 'Bergman ponders escape', which is introduced by eerie, dreamy music,

Bergman finds himself face to face with the preoccupations of many of his own films: solitude,   fear, hopelessness and loss of identity, but of a nightmarish sort that directly affects himself. The essential wrongness of his situation dawns on him: 'This Hollywood is not a place. It's a sensibility at/ complete odds with my sensibility' together with the problem of escape from somewhere that is more an idea than a physical location. This further supports the allegorical interpretation of his adventure as a dream or an imagining of a possible future self from which his instinct is to flee. His flight is preceded by a scene in which the Studio Chief's mask of facile bonhomie slips to reveal his true nature, his disbelief at Bergman's rejection morphing into something like a curse, grounded in the unshakeable assumption that Hollywood is the centre of the film universe : 'He'll see that he is lost without us/ He'll never be that great without us' (episode 18). Vogler writes that the 'Escape episode of the archetypical hero story  has produced many of the most exciting chase scenes in movie history.³⁵  The two episodes that follow (19 and 20) are both an appropriation of and ironic homage to the conventions of the Hollywood chase scene, a witty device to symbolise the ruthless abuse of power by the studios as Bergman himself becomes an actor in a big budget Hollywood action film, exactly like the one he was watching earlier, pursued by police cars and helicopters who are prepared to shoot him down if necessary. Bergman's repeated spoken refrain of 'They're after me, they're after me' , with slightly differing emphases (reminiscent of the song 'My baby's taking me home' from the Lil' Beethoven album (2002)), humorously preceded by a short burst of a heavenly choir, is placed against the chanted and sung commands of the megaphone-bearing police officer and a cacophony of jangly notes, running footsteps, car horns, sirens and the whirring of helicopters to produce a frightening auditory experience that still manages to retain a comic side.  According to Campbell, the pursuit of the hero in myth may indeed be comical and lively if it is resented by the enemy gods or demons, as it manifestly is here.³⁶ Ironically, the real Bergman claimed that the only fun he had in making the film This Can't Happen Here' (1950) was a delightful experience when he had forty police cars under his control and enjoyed ordering retakes of a scene in which they had to screech at speed up to a quayside.³⁷  The chase scenes in The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman also offered the opportunity to introduce some bombastic big Hollywood-style music as a contrast to the more intimate music of earlier scenes.³⁸  They evoke the soundtrack of a typical action movie as the pace of the chase intensifies, the order is given to fire rockets and let dogs loose: 'he won't know what hit him, I'm sure/ Before he reaches the shore/ A little afternoon gore'. Like many mythical heroes before him, the increasingly fearful and desperate Bergman recognises that in every sense, 'this place is death to me', a conclusion confirmed by the declaration of  the Studio Chief, that if they can't take him alive, they may have no choice but to kill him rather than let him return home.

 

            It is common for the hero to need help in his return home from a saviour figure, a benign power who knows the 'power of the zone', and Bergman is no exception.³⁹ As he reaches the shore at Santa Monica, he finds himself an actor in a film more like one of his own as he undergoes a moment of exhausted existential angst and calls on God to prove that He exists and save him from this man-made Hell: 'Send an angel down to lead/ Lead me from this barren land/ How the hell can I believe/ If you withhold your guiding hand' (episode  21). In an interview with the L A. Record in 2011, the Maels insisted that Bergman's plea was intended to be sincere, evoking many such crises in his films, and that the fact that it is the only moment in the work where he sings, underlines its importance for him.⁴⁰  Unlike the Knight in The Seventh Seal, however, he encounters not Death and a chess board, but, in the spirit of the mythical hero's providential meeting with a goddess or fairy godmother, a statuesque woman  approaching him on the beach. This is no supernatural being,  but a different sort of legendary beauty, a screen goddess, Greta Garbo. The choice of Garbo was driven, according to Ron Mael, by the need to find a saviour, preferably a woman and Swedish, who would be known to an audience beyond Sweden, and the scene between these two icons of cinema on the beach at Santa Monica, was not intended to be funny, but to be emotionally touching.⁴¹  It is also, of course, an anacronism, as Garbo retired from the screen in 1941, but this is consistent with the deliberate inconsistencies of time in this work which, as Ron Mael asserts in the same interview, reveals their liking for 'things that are out of place', and indicates that this story is not just about the past. In his autobiographical work, The Magic Lantern (1967), Ingmar Bergman describes his meeting with Garbo in terms that throw an interesting light on the creation of modern myths and fits well with her role here: 'It is hard to say whether great myths are unremittingly magical because they are myths or whether the magic is an illusion, created by us consumers; but at that moment, there was no doubt..... her beauty was imperishable'.⁴²   The fictional Bergman's uncertainty about the reality of either Garbo or Hollywood reiterates the question of the nature of reality and dream that often finds expression in his films. Garbo, who, ironically, became a big star in Hollywood and, of course, never appeared in any of Bergman's films, while not an angel from God, is an angel of redemption nonetheless who will help him to get back 'to somewhere monochrome', where he will be 'a certain kind of free' (episode 22). This allusion to both the medium of many of Bergman films, contrasted with Hollywood technicolour, and the fact that Garbo herself never appeared on screen in colour, further emphasises the appropriateness of her role here.  Her song echoes that of  the Studio Chief earlier ('You know that you'd be lost without me') but holds promise rather than a threat as she leads him to a nearby movie theatre to watch a film she made in Sweden as a rising Swedish star. This film, The Story of Gösta Berling (1924) itself a story of redemption, is, she points out, the agent of a double transformation: of herself to Hollywood star, and now of Bergman's release and return home. Russell Mael described Garbo as a 'kind of bookend device' in that since Bergman got himself into trouble by going to see the American movie, so a Swedish icon shows him the way back and confirms that he made the right decision to get away from Hollywood.⁴³  The story comes full circle as they enter the theatre and he resumes his retrospective narrative, accompanied by the same music as his exposition in episode 2, describing his new-found sense of calm and expectation as they watch this 'glorious Swedish film'. This, ironically, conforms to Vogler's assertion that Hollywood movie makers prefer the circular form of ending common in myth which leads to closure, completion and a catharsis for the hero, often signalled by a repeated image or situation, to open or ambiguous endings.⁴⁴ The fictional Bergman' s statement that his story has 'almost a Hollywood ending' unequivocally links  it to both movie conventions and the happy endings of fairy tale and myth. When the lights go up, Garbo has disappeared and Bergman leaves the theatre alone though a new portal that returns him to a Swedish street.  

 

            The last scene (episode 24) is not imbued with the stereotypical Scandinavian gloom that the Hollywood characters associate with Bergman's films, but provides a joyous finale.Once again, Bergman's arrival is expected, a crowd of happy Swedish people giving the returning hero a rapturous reception to a rousing and cheerful tune. While the hero of myth characteristically brings back a boon or elixir, actual or metaphorical, that will serve humanity and restore life in the ordinary world, so Bergman is welcomed as part of the Swedish psyche necessary to their culture, without whom they are lost.⁴⁵  The crowd sings that only in Sweden can his identity be stable and authentic, a truth articulated in a comic fashion: the declaration that he has come back with no sign of a tan confirms that he has not been contaminated by the values of a Hollywood that could not even pronounce his name correctly. This reaffirming of personal and cultural identity, the hero's hard won sense of wholeness, is endorsed by the repetition of each line of their song and in the Los Angeles  performance was underlined by the waving on stage of a large Swedish flag. Indeed, the Swedish people's praise of his work suggests that they alone understand and need his artistic vision rather than the shallow sensationalism of Hollywood blockbusters ('without the depth that Bergman brought/ Our lives were just an afterthought'). The story finishes on a philosophical reflection: a quotation attributed to Socrates in Plato's Apology that sums up Bergman's contribution to world cinema and acts as a challenge to the audience: 'The unexamined live they say/ is not worth living, well, O.K./ Ah, but Bergman well, he examines all/ and most of all himself' which is juxtaposed with an abrupt but decisive 'Good night, that's all', a tongue in cheek echo of a familiar sign-off from Warner Brothers cartoons.

 

            The seduction has failed, and Bergman has not been sucked into a world where greed and self-interest are endemic and artistic endeavour is only valued for the profits it brings. Rather, the real Bergman recalled that the success at Cannes enabled him to achieve his desire to get his best-known film The Seventh Seal made in Sweden.⁴⁶  The imagined conflict here is validated by the fact that he spoke repeatedly of his resolution to remain true to himself and his artistic vision, one of the main reasons, he claimed, that he did not want to work outside Sweden.⁴⁷  Such a determination can of course also be applied, as a number of reviewers have noted, to Sparks themselves, who have always taken pride in pursuing their own goals sometimes at the expense of instant celebrity and huge financial reward in the music world. The BBC review of the album made the comparison explicitly, describing the story as 'one of cultural European intelligence, resisting the bland homogenising influence of corporate America to carve its own idiosyncratic path – does that remind you of anyone?' ⁴⁸ In the 2011 interview, Ron and Russell Mael concede that the imperative of always upholding one's ideals does indeed have parallels with their own aesthetic.Their decision to stage an English version of The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman for an American audience of film fans and professionals in Los Angeles itself was a courageous one that was vindicated by the rave reviews it received.  There is a certain piquancy in the whole enterprise of a musical by Americans that privileges European culture over that of America, but then the Maels have long been self-confessed Euro- and Anglophiles. The theme of the cultural divide, described by a review in The Independent as one of 'the great artistic issues of the last century' was thus effectively encapsulated and enacted in the two productions in Sweden and America.⁴⁹  To try to interpret the impact on the different audiences in Sweden, the rest of Europe and the United States is like entering a hall of mirrors, but The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman does offer a universal kind of  catharsis, an emotional release through relief and laughter as well as the enjoyment of the masterly wit and invention of the lyrics and music. This is by no means a conventional musical, which Ron and Russell Mael claim to dislike as much as they detest the label 'rock musical', but an attempt  at a new genre involving many different influences, although still embued with a rock sensibility.⁵⁰  It is to be hoped that Sparks' goal of transforming this ingenious and  moving musical drama into a feature film will eventually become a reality, as it illuminates both ongoing debates about the commercialization of art and the enduring relevance of an ancient narrative to issues pertinent to contemporary culture.        

 

 

References

 

1.     Joseph Campbell (1949), (1968) The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Princeton: Princeton University Press), p.35. See, for example, discussion in Marjory Hourihan, Deconstructing the Hero: Literary Theory and Children's Literature (London and New York: Routledge, 1997); John Stephens, and Robyn McCallum, Retelling Stories, Framing Culture. Traditional Story and Metanarratives in Children's Fiction (New York: Garland, 1998).

2.     For example, Morissey, Björk, Queen, Nirvana, Depeche Mode, The Ramones and Faith No More amongst many others.

3.     See  Simon Price, The Independent on Sunday, 15 November 2009, www.ww.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/reviews/album-sparks-the-seduction-of-ingmar-bergman-lil-beethoven-records-1820763.html; Gregory Weinkauf, The Huffington Post, 1 July 2011, www.huffpost.cm/us/entry/885530; Dave Simpson, The Guardian , 27 November, 2009; www.theguardian.com/music/2009/nov/27/sparks-the-seduction-of-ingmar-bergman. Accessed 12 August 2016.

4.     See the official site http://theseductionofingmarbergman.com for lyrics, music, images and a short extract from the performance at the Los Angeles Film Festival.

5.     www.huffpost.com/us/entry/885530.

6.     Christopher Vogler, The Writer's Journey. Mythic Structure for Writers (Los Angeles:  Michael Weise, 1998).

7.     Sparks' plans in the 1990s for a film version of the manga comic Mai the Psychic Girl did not come to fruition at that time and the experience may have informed their views on the film industry in this work.

8.     See, for example, John Payne, L.A. Weekly, 17 June, 2011,  www.laweekly.com/musiclive-review-sparks-the-seduction-of-ingmar-bergman-2399900 , accessed 12 August 2016.

9.     Interview with IngmarBerman and Dick Cavett (2 August,1971) may be viewed on www.youtube.com/watch?v=85NzBOjVe6c, accessed 12 August 2016; Ronald Mael, personal communication, 11 May 2016.

10.  Interview with Ron and Russell Mael (25 June, 2011) can be viewed at www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC2ofcf8RRg. Accessed 12 August 2016.

11.  Campbell, The Hero, p.58.

12.  Campbell, The Hero, p. 256.

13.  See, for example, discussion in Roland Barthes, Le Plaisir du texte (Paris: Seuil, 1973); Gérard Genette, Palimpsestes: la littérature au second degré  (Paris: Seuil, 1982).

14.  Egil Törnqvist, Between Stage and Screen: Ingmar Bergman Directs (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1995), p.15.

15.  Törnqvist, Between Stage and Screen, p.13.

16.  Stig Björkman,  Torsten Manns and Jonas Sima,  Bergman on Bergman (London: Secker & Warburg, 1973), p.66.

17.  Interview with Ron and Russell Mael, 25 June 2011.

18.  Törnqvist, Between Stage and Screen, p.198.

19.  Projected images created by Galen Johnson and Evan Johnson. See http://theseductionof  ingmarbergman.com/images.php.

20.  Björkman, Manns and Sima, Bergman on Bergman, p.103. Music and lyrics can be found at http//theseductionofingmarbergman.com/music.php and http//theseductionofingmarbergman.com/lyrics.php.

21.  Björkman, Manns and Sima, Bergman on Bergman, p.62.

22.  Campbell, The Hero, p.37.

23.  Campbell, The Hero, p.58.

24.  Björkman, Manns and Sima, Bergman on Bergman, p.133.

25.  Campbell, The Hero, p.77.

26.  Vogler, The Writer's Journey,  p.87.

27.  Joel W. Finler, The Hollywood  Story (London:Pyramid Books, 1989), p.13; p.35.

28.  Björkman, Manns and Sima, Bergman on Bergman,  p.50; Törnqvist, Between Stage and Screen, p.51.

29.  Vogler, The Writer's Journey, p.169.

30.  Andy Gill, The Independent review, 30/10/09, www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/reviews/album-sparks-the-seduction-of-ingmar-bergman-ll-beethoven1811482.html, accessed 12 August 2016.

31.  Vogler, The Writer's Journey, p.145.

32.  Billy Wilder, Sunset Boulevard (1950, Paramount); Alfred Hitchcock, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934, Gaumont British Picture Corporation; 1956, Paramount, premiered at the 1956 Cannes Festival); Jacques Tourneur, Cat People (1942, RKO), F.W. Murnau, Sunrise, 1927, Fox); Edgar Ullmer, Detour (1945, PRC Pictures).

33.  Bergman 1971 interview with Dick Cavett; 2011 interview with Ron and Russel Mael.

34.  Vogler, The Writer's Journey, p.193.

35.  Vogler, The Writer's Journey, pp. 23-4.

36.  Campbell, The Hero, p.197.

37.  Björkman, Manns and Sima, Bergman on Bergman, p.48.

38.  Ron Mael, private communication,11 May 2016.

39.  Campbell, The Hero, p.214.

40.  See Lainna Fader, L. A. Record, 24 June 2011: larecord.com/interviews/2011/06/24/sparks-creating-its-own-universe-muscally, accessed 12 August 2016                    

41.  Ron Mael, private communication, 11 May 2016; L.A. Record 24 June 2011, see note 40.

42.  Ingmar Bergman, The Magic Lantern, New York and London, Penguin, 1998), p.240. He goes on to say that he then noticed flaws in her beauty.

43.  L.A Record, 24 June 2011, see note 40.

44.  Vogler, The Writer's Journey, pp. 223-225.

45.  Campbell, The Hero, p.193.

46.  Björkman, Manns and Sima, Bergman on Bergman, p.103.

47.  Philip Mosley, Ingmar Bergman: The Cinema as Mistress (London and Boston: Marion Boyars, 1981), p.19.

48.  Louis Pattison, BBC review 2009, see www.bbc.co.uk/musc/reviews/pgfd, retrieved 12 August 2016.

49.  Andy Gill, The Independent, 30 October 2009, see www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/reviews/album-sparks-the-seduction-of-ingmar-bergman-lil-beethoven-1811482 , retrieved 12 August 2016.

50.  25 June 2011 interview with Ron and Russell Mael.

 

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