5. The WhoThe Who Sell Out
Before we even formed Sparks, we were huge fans of bands like The Who and The Kinks and The Move. And particularly with The Who and The Kinks, before they became more stadium focused. They were more charming to me in what they were writing when they were writing more situational songs. They didn’t necessarily concern world shattering issues, but instead really beautiful, miniature statements. And they have them on this album The Who Sell Out. There’s ‘Tattoo’ where the lyrics go: “Me and my brother were talking to each other about what makes a man a man”. That isn’t saying ‘fight for world peace’ or anything; it’s talking about just what it is that makes a man, and just that a tattoo becomes the issue. And there’s also another song, ‘Mary Anne With The Shaky Hand’, and so you can kind of start imagining what that song is really about.
It’s really strong musically. It’s still The Who, but the songs are the type of little vignettes that they moved away from after a while, obviously feeling the need to address bigger ideas. But I liked the smaller statements, and also the fact that they were really specific, lyrically. And I think that that’s something that really influenced me. These tracks are bridged by jingles between the songs, so it was almost a self-deprecating kind of statement for them, saying that they had somehow sold out even if they didn’t really believe that. I love the artwork with the Heinz Baked Beans and I think Pete Townshend’s songwriting is really strong.
You wanted to be Pete Townsend but with a piano didn’t you?
Yeah, I was frustrated that I couldn’t be on stage and be slashing around with a guitar and slamming it against an amp. I was stuck with being the keyboard player. And so to find your standing within a band as a keyboard player, there weren’t a lot of people that I wanted to emulate. The whole Rick Wakeman approach never really appealed to me. There were people like Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis who were cool, but that wasn’t for me either. And so I had to find a way to stand out; so just being my stoic self had an effect which set us apart from a lot of other bands.
