Born on 12 August: Ron Mael, the Sparks' inventive spark

After a career spanning more than half a century, little is actually known about the brothers Ron and Russell Mael. As they repeatedly say, their music speaks for them.

They have a discography of twenty-five studio albums whose titles, sometimes abstruse or dreamlike, nevertheless reveal a portion of their passions or fantasies. A few examples? "The Seduction Of Ingmar Bergman" in 2009 indicates their interest in auteur cinema. The Sparks have also composed the soundtrack for Leos Carax's 2021 film 'Annette', for which they won the César for best music in France. Another example, "Gratuitous Sax And Senseless Violins" in 1994, underlines their interest in slightly pompous orchestrations, often tinged with electro and innuendoes (would you choose "Now That I Own The BBC" as the title of a song?). Their latest opus, released in 2023, is called 'The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte' (yes, really) and once again their celluloid-era film obsessions come to the fore with a tribute to 'Veronica Lake', of René Clair's 'I Married A Witch' of 1942.

And Ron, you might ask? Impassive behind his keyboards with his eternal little moustache, born in Culver City (California) in 1945, he is undoubtedly the architect of the sound of the Sparks. Like his brother Russell, he protects his private life and is proud of it: "We think that the less you know about us, the better it preserves our image and even a certain myth. The reality is often disappointing", they declared in The Independent in 2017.

Photo: Ron Mael (left) and Russel Mael (right) with the Sparks for the television programme Generation 80 in Brussels (Belgium) in March 1981, when the album "Whomp That Sucker" was released (© Etienne Tordoir)