Sparks are touring – playing England in June – and with a new (and 28th) album, Mad!. Russell Mael looks back at the first shows he ever saw and played which entails …

… sitting on the floors of LA clubs watching Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, the Move, the Faces, the Who and Tyrannosaurus Rex.

… his Mum taking him to see the Beatles in the Hollywood Bowl among “10,000 screaming girls”.

… “there was a faux honesty about the Laurel Canyon bands – ‘it’s just me and my guitar’ – whereas the British acts had the clothes and put on a performance. Which is just as honest.”

… what Todd Rundgren saw in the early Sparks.

… Edgar Wright’s “love letter” movie ‘The Sparks Brothers’ and how it’s expanded their audience.

… rehearsing for four months to perform all 21 of their albums in their entirety in 2008 (in Islington) and the people who came every night.

… playing pizza parlours in the ‘60s – “we were paid in pizza”.

… and how the Mael brothers’ creative relationship has worked - indeed thrived – for over 60 years.

Sparks tour dates and tickets: https://allsparks.com/

Order Sparks’ new album Mad! here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/MAD-Sparks/dp/B0DY9JD1TX

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The runners and riders in the rock and roll steeplechase first past the post this week include …

… how Ed Sheeran protects himself against song theft claims.

… ‘lost’ Hendrix, Beach Boys, Amy Winehouse and Jeff Buckley records: is anything unfinished ever any good?

… “The Unauthorised Breakfast Item”: can YOU tell a Bob Newhart sketch title from a Caravan song?

… US Office versus the UK original and the genius of Steve Carrell.

… The West Wing, Frasier, the Good Life and how romance is the root of all great sitcoms.

… rock and roll lighting: “you can do whatever you want now but that doesn’t mean you should”.

… Judge claims busking is “noise pollution”!

. … Pink Floyd: “it’s not going to work without the gong!”

… and a giant poster of David Hepworth and Mark Ellen pinned to a tree outside Wareham.

Plus birthday guest Stephen Lambe on the downside of the age of spectacle.

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Ed Tudor Pole entered punk rock from stage school and always felt he was playing a part. After being hired to act in the Great Rock’N’Roll Swindle, he formed Tenpole Tudor and had a brief and dramatic moment in the sun, all recorded in his rollicking memoir ‘The Pen Is Mightier.’ He talks here about …

… his “quite posh” ancestry and a great-grandfather bankrupted by the Wall Street Crash.

… a “Damascene conversion” to the Rolling Stones and ten hours in the burning sun at their Hyde Park show, aged 14.

… being at RADA with Timothy Spall, Imelda Staunton and Juliet Stevenson.

… The Great Rock’N’Roll Swindle audition and the “really horrid” Nancy Spungen’s striptease.

… how everyone’s related to Edward 111.

… the secret of a One-Man Show – adopt the voice of Will Hay and “let the audience do the work!”

… why “most actors are awful people and all crippled in some way” and his time in theatre was “like being a cow in a field of sheep”.

… how Stiff’s Dave Robinson hated punk and wanted Tenpole Tudor to be a novelty act.

… three months with five acts in a coach on the Stiff Tour.

… how the success of Swords Of A Thousand Men didn’t affect their ticket sales - “it was bought by 350,000 12 year-old boys who weren’t old enough to go to gigs”.

… why the Tenpole Tudor split broke his heart.

… as Socrates said, “the unexamined life is not worth living.”

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… surprise paydays like the use of Who Killed Bambi? in the Zero Day soundtrack to accompany Robert De Niro’s nervous breakdown.

Order ‘The Pen Is Mightier’ here …

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pen-Mightier-Autobiography-Punk-Rocker/dp/0857306057

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