Sparks will release a new album for 2017 and they have also announced that they will spend the year touring the world.
71-year-old Ron Mael and his 67-year-old brother Russell formed Sparks in Los Angeles in 1970. Although an American act US success has always alluded the brothers. Instead, they found fame in the UK with two top 10 albums in 1974 ‘Kimono My House’ and ‘Propaganda’ and a no 18 showing in 1975 with ‘Indiscreet’.
Sparks had a top 20 hit in Australia in 1980 with ‘When I’m With You’, a collaboration with Giorgio Moroder.
The 2017 album will be the first Sparks album since 2009 although the brothers Mael did release a joint album with Franz Ferdinand titled ‘FFS’ in 2015.
Ron Mael writes and produces most the of Sparks material. He has always been identified by Charlie Chaplin looks and pencil thin moustache. Ron and Russell grew up in Santa Monica, California. The Mael’s father Meyer Mael was a graphic designer and caricaturist for the Hollywood Citizen-News. Their mother was a librarian. The Mael brothers are graduates of at Palisades High School then both brothers enrolled at the UCLA.
Ron and Russell Mael once appeared as themselves in the 1977 disaster film Rollercoaster, performing live. They have had a part in episode twenty-two of season six of the Gilmore Girls. Sparks also once remixed the song “Give Me Something’ by Yoko Ono and ‘A Happy Place’ by Katie Melua, released as Sparks Vs Katie Melua
Despite 22 Sparks albums neither Ron nor Russell Mael have made a solo record.
The 2017 album will be released on Lil Beethoven Records, a label owned and run by the Mael Brothers.
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