A biography for Ron Maelhasn’t been written yet.
“Some songs are sort of born in the studio but some songs are really half-written in the studio.”
“I wanted to be like Pete Townshend or something but there's no way as a keyboard player that you can be flashy, so I decided to go the other way.”
“If you don't like this, we don't care - I think that's the essence of what popular music should be.”
“When we first started in Los Angeles, we thought of ourselves in our own delusional way as being a British band, even though we'd never been to England at that point, so musically it's kind of sometimes hard to place where we're from.”
“You have to have an enemy to react against. We think it's important to have a sort of us-versus-them situation.”
“I don't know why, but I collect the hand sanitizers in every country that we visit.”
“When things are sequenced really hard, it has an effect similar to the one power chords had in the '70s.”
“We've kind of always felt a certain illegitimacy about what we've done.”
“Obviously, you want to be universally adored in what you're doing, and especially just because other incredible people are involved in the 'Annette' project, you hate to see there be any kind of negativity about it.”
“We sometimes feel a little world-weary where pop music is going.”
“We don't set out to be polarizing. But just by the nature of what we've always done, it seems to have a certain polarizing aspect, so it kind of seemed almost natural that a film that we would be involved in would have that same kind of reaction.”
“Having more people accepting what you're doing - that's the kind of limelight we really cherish.”
“To us, something can be uplifting even if the tone of it is not cheerful - it can be uplifting because it's just so well done.”
“When I think of Venice Beach, my father's painting is what comes to mind.”
“I can't think of a band that has made 19 albums, and hasn't either moved into what I call the manor class, or disappeared, or else is just doing things that are a very mellow version of what they've always done.”
“I'm basically a stoic person anyway, so I just decided to maybe emphasise that, and I was surprised as anybody that it was gaining as much attention as all the jumping about.”
“Our father bought us 'Hound Dog' by Elvis and 'Long Tall Sally' by Little Richard, so those were the first records we owned. I don't know what his inspiration was for doing that... They weren't the kind of records you usually bought as educational tools for your child.”
“We pretend that, in a way, people who know Sparks don't know Sparks.”
“Britain's always been our home from home.”
“I wouldn't be caught dead in a disco.”