What a great and humble person Russel is, a lovely interview, the interviewer also very polite. I've always loved Sparks and what I love about them is the mystery and the hidden meaning in their songs.
Excellent interviewer who lets Russell speak-thank you. Russell and Ron-I can't think of any artists where their latest work is as good as anything they've ever done-that's simply amazing and a tribute to you both and your craft. I can't wait to see the film about Sparks. You certainly have earned the right to be dicks, but so glad you are self-effacing and shared your unique point of view with the world, done with style, humor and yes, depth. God bless the Mael brothers for bringing sparks into our lives-love you, Sparks!
He mentions having an Abba-themed Russian Doll. That is SO cool, even cooler since the year Russell said that, ABBA were preparing to release their first new album in almost 40 years!! And, bless ya Russ, "hell, we can't even sit through 3 hours of Sparks, and WE'RE Sparks!"
One of the best things the interviewer did was that he didn't ask so many precise questions, he rather said "tell me about...". That gives much more freedom to answer, which can lead to that more interesting stuff are revealed and someone like Russell, or Ron, who don't want the world to know so much about their personal lives, to leave out things, but give full and interesting replies anyway. Great interview! 😃
Great interview! Nice interviewer and Russell is very good at answering and very kind. We discover that Russell has a very cosy living-room with a fireplace on the mantel of which are displayed Russian dolls. We discover that age has no power on him! But unfortunately, we also discover that we will have to wait until July to receive the new album!!!!!! Aaaaahhhhhhh! Too hard!!!!!!!!! (Big sigh......)
Everything that guy farts out is labelled a 'masterpiece' just like with slagdonna, which just goes to show there's no balance in the music world, film world or anywhere. In fact, there's little truth too.
@davehimlin2374Ha! Good one. It just it seems he's one of those people who can't do anything musically 'wrong' according to most people, though according to you, then may not be true so much now. Either way: yay!
I can only repeat myself: Thank you very, very much Russell (and Ron, although he's not in this video) for bringing so much joy into my life! I really wish I could also bring at least a little joy into your lives in return. It's sad, that that isn't possible. And again, you surprised me! XD I didn't think that you use the word "Mischmasch" in English. XD Do you write "Mishmash" then? Oh, and by the way: I'd really love to see that 3 hour version of Edgar Write's documentary!! Too bad, that he has to make it shorter. :-(
@@rhiannondoole3991 Oh, das ist wahrscheinlich so schon kein einfaches Studium, und für jemand, der eine andere Muttersprache hat, muss das ja dann noch schwieriger sein. Wie bist Du auf dieses Studium gekommen?
@@girlfromgermany Tja, ich habe mich immer fuer Sprachen interessiert. Deutsch und Franzoesisch habe ich auf der Schule gelernt und wollte ich einfach weiter Studieren. Ich hoffe das erklaert ein Bisschen!
Beatles use humour to make art? I didn't know that, unless it's the same thing as some of their songs in riotously silly considering they're supposed to be such serious 'legends'. As for Talking Heads and B52s, they're silly as hell, I'm not sure the humour aspect can be counted. Laughing AT you as supposed to WITH you. Sparks are not anything like this.
@@wintershiny4888 Everyone says that, it's par for the course. All I can say, 60s music must be utterly rubbish if the Beatles are the only thing that can ever inspire anybody, yet for all this eruptive love, I often don't hear the Beatles in 80s music at all. I can guess they appear prescient alongside the 70s material 9along with Kinks & Beach Boys) but once 1979 & the electronica age is here-no!
@davehimlin2374 Here we go, always in the end (and usually much sooner) up they jump, moaning about how Beatles not being appreciated is among the biggest wrongs in the world. Please, finding someone that doesn't wax lyrical about them is pretty special, and I don't see why I need to try when you diss the best decade of music the world has ever known with such a ridiculously pious and wrong sweeping statement that music sucked arse. Please that slagdonna bint had no right appearing in the 80s and has nothing to do with it, that was just a forerunner and a spearhead for where music would die when the 80s ended. Of course you don't hear Beatles influences in the 80s-thank God. That coincided with the rise of the synthesiser with all the cool new acts realising they could create new soundscapes and ascend musical and lyrical plateaus that had never been done before, unsurprising with the dated sounds of the 60s and 70s. You can hear far more of ABBA's influence in the 80s than the Beatles and that's cos their approach was more timely and relevant of the artists of the 80s.Sparks dumped their old 70s glam thing and utterly embraced the synth-sounds of the 80s and becoming one with it, while outdated fossils like Cliff Richards, Rod Stewart, Shakin' Stevens and such just sounded pathetic.. Granted your right about mainstream sucking, but many songs by acts weren't DONE for the mainstream. Then again, there's nothing wrong with being accessible as long as you've something worthwhile to give, and how anyone can diss an entire decade when brill songs as diverse as they are cool from all sorts of brill beings beggars belief and utterly undoes your standing as some sort of Beatles zealot. Any decade that knocks out amazing songs TRAGEDY AND MYSTERY (China Crisis), HOUSE OF SALOME (Kim Wilde), SECRET OKTOBER (Duran Duran), GENETIC ENGINEERING (Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark), MICRO KID (Level 42), THE VOW (Toyah), STAND BACK (Stevie Nicks), LOVE IS A BATTLEFIELD (Pat Benatar), DREAM TO SLEEP (H20), WAVES (Blancmange), SUGAR BRIDGE-IT WILL STAND (The Bluebells), CAN'T SHAKE LOOSE (Agnetha Faltskog) and more in just a number of months in one year (1983) is bloody amazing to say the least, when I'd struggle to find more than 5 I'd want to own throughout every year of the 70s that wasn't an ABBA song and don't even get me started on what happened since the 80s left us! Oh and madonna the vile should drop effing dead, sick of hearing and seeing that vile past-it (actually never had it) skank, all it does the plague every medium, no matter how outdated it was and it's no more a complete example of what the 80s stand for than the bloody Wombles are for the 70s!
@davehimlin2374 I still don't see how, as actually, 'looks' was all about the physicality of the body and square-jaw faces ever since that Jeans ad with Nick Kamen in 1986, then became ALL what the scene was about with all those disgusting talent-free bodily-plucked gym-honed bimbo boys and barbie tramps for the 90s to now. The New Romantics were kind of sickened by the dead cow jackets, unwashed Mohicans, spittle and bulging eyes and unwashed crap of the punk scene, the silly glam costumes of the mid-70s and figured a classier look was the way to go. Androgyny, full make-up for men, glitter, space-suits, pirate costumes, men's jackets on women, wavy hair and so on were then all in, but it only lasted for a few years, and the styles calmed and the acts mostly became more conventionally sensible and slicker, but so what. It never impaired the music. I feel you're feeding in to the old inaccurate moan that synth-driven music is cold, but I wonder how people can keep thinking the rather obvious and limited guitar-approach of the majority of the 70s actually ticks all the boxes for music. One of the things that make ABBA stand above all the 70s act is the lovely keyboards that shine on many songs, but technology never replaced voices, it only enhanced them and created new effects that added to the music being made, not took away from it. And as for vocals, many people of the 70s sang in rather stupid, shouty voices. Punk wanted to make dumb yelling acceptable, and if 'voice pitch correction' made vocals sound pleasanter than they did, whilst adding to the background musical textures that the majority of the 70s just couldn't produce as they lacked the technology, I don't see that as a bad thing. No, the only thing that destroyed was the twin horror of slagdonna and Pete Waterman being allowed to infect the mainstream with a music-wasting disease, which therefor infected the public, making them susceptible to accepting anything worthless, while often shrugging off many things that took art and intelligence to make, and the acceptance of c/rap as a musical form when it's just dumb street-speak for urban losers who think they're hard but can't sing. If you're not aware of 80s songs that blast apart some kind of imprisoning wall that those Beatles songs you love that are so memorable I can't even recall, than you must have heard NOTHING of the songs by many artists I've already listed in my answering post to your last one. I don't see what Beatles have broken down as I grew up on ABBA via my parents, then realised the music as I became a teen sucked, then got even worse (this, the 90s), so when I caught some retro show on the 80s, as basic and unimaginative and rigorously controlled in the worst way, I caught enough good stuff to realise, oh my God, THIS is what the music scene should surely be, at least out of these 50 songs played over this 4 hour stretch, I can immediately like and listen to at least half. I compared that to the decade I was then in (the 90s) and knew what came up craps. Come 1999 I prayed all the shit would disappear and we'd get a kind of 2nd coming of the 80s in even a tiny way, but did it happen? NO! In fact, not only did ALL the 90s shit NOT fade and die, it actually picked up new bloody allies in the 'new' lot that were simply carbon copies of them. And slagdonna STILL remained, as well might it, when these were clearly the decades the talentless, desperate sex-mad embarrassing old trogg was made for. Beatles did nothing for me, there were people like the Kinks, Moody Blues a few others in the 60s, and when the 70s arrived, though it had nothing on the 80s, once ABBA appeared, even songs on their debut smashed Beatles out of the water. Then you had Sparks with 'This Town Ain't..', plus Bowie was already there, and Roxy music appeared, and then there's Donna Summer's marriage to Moroder, Gary Numan's appearance, OMD preparing to start, and there was Lene Lovich and Kate Bush ready to start and Olivia Newton-John's late but welcome debut to the pop over the country scene, and of course Fleetwood Mac in their best form (from 1975 onwards), so no, I really don't see why everyone's so obsessed with Beatles when I live without them daily, as there's thousands of 80s songs I would play over them, and I'm not the only one. You don't hear Beatles influecnes in the 80s as they've no more relevance to those artists than they do to me!
What a great and humble person Russel is, a lovely interview, the interviewer also very polite. I've always loved Sparks and what I love about them is the mystery and the hidden meaning in their songs.
Excellent interviewer who lets Russell speak-thank you. Russell and Ron-I can't think of any artists where their latest work is as good as anything they've ever done-that's simply amazing and a tribute to you both and your craft. I can't wait to see the film about Sparks. You certainly have earned the right to be dicks, but so glad you are self-effacing and shared your unique point of view with the world, done with style, humor and yes, depth. God bless the Mael brothers for bringing sparks into our lives-love you, Sparks!
👏👏👏👏!
Very well spoken! I agree to every word 😃
💖 💖 💖 💖 💖
Хорошо сказано. Спасибо! )
He mentions having an Abba-themed Russian Doll. That is SO cool, even cooler since the year Russell said that, ABBA were preparing to release their first new album in almost 40 years!! And, bless ya Russ, "hell, we can't even sit through 3 hours of Sparks, and WE'RE Sparks!"
Great interview, Russell is always great value but these were great questions too.
One of the best things the interviewer did was that he didn't ask so many precise questions, he rather said "tell me about...". That gives much more freedom to answer, which can lead to that more interesting stuff are revealed and someone like Russell, or Ron, who don't want the world to know so much about their personal lives, to leave out things, but give full and interesting replies anyway.
Great interview! 😃
Great interview! Nice interviewer and Russell is very good at answering and very kind. We discover that Russell has a very cosy living-room with a fireplace on the mantel of which are displayed Russian dolls. We discover that age has no power on him! But unfortunately, we also discover that we will have to wait until July to receive the new album!!!!!! Aaaaahhhhhhh! Too hard!!!!!!!!! (Big sigh......)
But you can listen to the new songs on TH-cam until then. :-)
Lovely interview! (I missed Ron, though :-p )
I think "A Steady Drip Drip Drip" Is a FANTASTIC album!
ASDDD is brilliant. It's amazing to me how they just get better and better.
Yay! Russell name checks Love, an excellent band!
If McCartney released Drip Drip in 2020....it would be labelled a masterpiece
Everything that guy farts out is labelled a 'masterpiece' just like with slagdonna, which just goes to show there's no balance in the music world, film world or anywhere. In fact, there's little truth too.
@davehimlin2374Ha! Good one. It just it seems he's one of those people who can't do anything musically 'wrong' according to most people, though according to you, then may not be true so much now. Either way: yay!
tyrannosaurus rex is my favourite band, it makes me so happy they know them!!!! omg
I can only repeat myself: Thank you very, very much Russell (and Ron, although he's not in this video) for bringing so much joy into my life! I really wish I could also bring at least a little joy into your lives in return. It's sad, that that isn't possible.
And again, you surprised me! XD I didn't think that you use the word "Mischmasch" in English. XD Do you write "Mishmash" then?
Oh, and by the way: I'd really love to see that 3 hour version of Edgar Write's documentary!! Too bad, that he has to make it shorter. :-(
Richtig! Auf Englisch sagen (und schreiben) wir ,Mishmash'!
@@rhiannondoole3991
Danke! :-) Darf ich fragen, woher Du so gut Deutsch kannst?
@@girlfromgermany Vor einigen Jahren habe ich Germanistik studiert. Ich versuche immer noch ab und zu mein Deutsch zu ueben!
@@rhiannondoole3991
Oh, das ist wahrscheinlich so schon kein einfaches Studium, und für jemand, der eine andere Muttersprache hat, muss das ja dann noch schwieriger sein. Wie bist Du auf dieses Studium gekommen?
@@girlfromgermany Tja, ich habe mich immer fuer Sprachen interessiert. Deutsch und Franzoesisch habe ich auf der Schule gelernt und wollte ich einfach weiter Studieren. Ich hoffe das erklaert ein Bisschen!
Anna
Beatles use humour to make art? I didn't know that, unless it's the same thing as some of their songs in riotously silly considering they're supposed to be such serious 'legends'. As for Talking Heads and B52s, they're silly as hell, I'm not sure the humour aspect can be counted. Laughing AT you as supposed to WITH you. Sparks are not anything like this.
You say despite Ron and Russell having stated The Beatles are one of their biggest influences.
@@wintershiny4888 Everyone says that, it's par for the course. All I can say, 60s music must be utterly rubbish if the Beatles are the only thing that can ever inspire anybody, yet for all this eruptive love, I often don't hear the Beatles in 80s music at all. I can guess they appear prescient alongside the 70s material 9along with Kinks & Beach Boys) but once 1979 & the electronica age is here-no!
@davehimlin2374 Here we go, always in the end (and usually much sooner) up they jump, moaning about how Beatles not being appreciated is among the biggest wrongs in the world. Please, finding someone that doesn't wax lyrical about them is pretty special, and I don't see why I need to try when you diss the best decade of music the world has ever known with such a ridiculously pious and wrong sweeping statement that music sucked arse. Please that slagdonna bint had no right appearing in the 80s and has nothing to do with it, that was just a forerunner and a spearhead for where music would die when the 80s ended. Of course you don't hear Beatles influences in the 80s-thank God. That coincided with the rise of the synthesiser with all the cool new acts realising they could create new soundscapes and ascend musical and lyrical plateaus that had never been done before, unsurprising with the dated sounds of the 60s and 70s. You can hear far more of ABBA's influence in the 80s than the Beatles and that's cos their approach was more timely and relevant of the artists of the 80s.Sparks dumped their old 70s glam thing and utterly embraced the synth-sounds of the 80s and becoming one with it, while outdated fossils like Cliff Richards, Rod Stewart, Shakin' Stevens and such just sounded pathetic..
Granted your right about mainstream sucking, but many songs by acts weren't DONE for the mainstream. Then again, there's nothing wrong with being accessible as long as you've something worthwhile to give, and how anyone can diss an entire decade when brill songs as diverse as they are cool from all sorts of brill beings beggars belief and utterly undoes your standing as some sort of Beatles zealot. Any decade that knocks out amazing songs TRAGEDY AND MYSTERY (China Crisis), HOUSE OF SALOME (Kim Wilde), SECRET OKTOBER (Duran Duran), GENETIC ENGINEERING (Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark), MICRO KID (Level 42), THE VOW (Toyah), STAND BACK (Stevie Nicks), LOVE IS A BATTLEFIELD (Pat Benatar), DREAM TO SLEEP (H20), WAVES (Blancmange), SUGAR BRIDGE-IT WILL STAND (The Bluebells), CAN'T SHAKE LOOSE (Agnetha Faltskog) and more in just a number of months in one year (1983) is bloody amazing to say the least, when I'd struggle to find more than 5 I'd want to own throughout every year of the 70s that wasn't an ABBA song and don't even get me started on what happened since the 80s left us! Oh and madonna the vile should drop effing dead, sick of hearing and seeing that vile past-it (actually never had it) skank, all it does the plague every medium, no matter how outdated it was and it's no more a complete example of what the 80s stand for than the bloody Wombles are for the 70s!
@davehimlin2374 I still don't see how, as actually, 'looks' was all about the physicality of the body and square-jaw faces ever since that Jeans ad with Nick Kamen in 1986, then became ALL what the scene was about with all those disgusting talent-free bodily-plucked gym-honed bimbo boys and barbie tramps for the 90s to now. The New Romantics were kind of sickened by the dead cow jackets, unwashed Mohicans, spittle and bulging eyes and unwashed crap of the punk scene, the silly glam costumes of the mid-70s and figured a classier look was the way to go. Androgyny, full make-up for men, glitter, space-suits, pirate costumes, men's jackets on women, wavy hair and so on were then all in, but it only lasted for a few years, and the styles calmed and the acts mostly became more conventionally sensible and slicker, but so what. It never impaired the music. I feel you're feeding in to the old inaccurate moan that synth-driven music is cold, but I wonder how people can keep thinking the rather obvious and limited guitar-approach of the majority of the 70s actually ticks all the boxes for music. One of the things that make ABBA stand above all the 70s act is the lovely keyboards that shine on many songs, but technology never replaced voices, it only enhanced them and created new effects that added to the music being made, not took away from it. And as for vocals, many people of the 70s sang in rather stupid, shouty voices. Punk wanted to make dumb yelling acceptable, and if 'voice pitch correction' made vocals sound pleasanter than they did, whilst adding to the background musical textures that the majority of the 70s just couldn't produce as they lacked the technology, I don't see that as a bad thing. No, the only thing that destroyed was the twin horror of slagdonna and Pete Waterman being allowed to infect the mainstream with a music-wasting disease, which therefor infected the public, making them susceptible to accepting anything worthless, while often shrugging off many things that took art and intelligence to make, and the acceptance of c/rap as a musical form when it's just dumb street-speak for urban losers who think they're hard but can't sing.
If you're not aware of 80s songs that blast apart some kind of imprisoning wall that those Beatles songs you love that are so memorable I can't even recall, than you must have heard NOTHING of the songs by many artists I've already listed in my answering post to your last one. I don't see what Beatles have broken down as I grew up on ABBA via my parents, then realised the music as I became a teen sucked, then got even worse (this, the 90s), so when I caught some retro show on the 80s, as basic and unimaginative and rigorously controlled in the worst way, I caught enough good stuff to realise, oh my God, THIS is what the music scene should surely be, at least out of these 50 songs played over this 4 hour stretch, I can immediately like and listen to at least half. I compared that to the decade I was then in (the 90s) and knew what came up craps. Come 1999 I prayed all the shit would disappear and we'd get a kind of 2nd coming of the 80s in even a tiny way, but did it happen? NO! In fact, not only did ALL the 90s shit NOT fade and die, it actually picked up new bloody allies in the 'new' lot that were simply carbon copies of them. And slagdonna STILL remained, as well might it, when these were clearly the decades the talentless, desperate sex-mad embarrassing old trogg was made for. Beatles did nothing for me, there were people like the Kinks, Moody Blues a few others in the 60s, and when the 70s arrived, though it had nothing on the 80s, once ABBA appeared, even songs on their debut smashed Beatles out of the water. Then you had Sparks with 'This Town Ain't..', plus Bowie was already there, and Roxy music appeared, and then there's Donna Summer's marriage to Moroder, Gary Numan's appearance, OMD preparing to start, and there was Lene Lovich and Kate Bush ready to start and Olivia Newton-John's late but welcome debut to the pop over the country scene, and of course Fleetwood Mac in their best form (from 1975 onwards), so no, I really don't see why everyone's so obsessed with Beatles when I live without them daily, as there's thousands of 80s songs I would play over them, and I'm not the only one. You don't hear Beatles influecnes in the 80s as they've no more relevance to those artists than they do to me!