“My introduction to Sparks came through an article on new bands in Circus magazine in 1972, the other new band was Roxy Music. This habit of writing songs about unusual subject matters would be one they’d never quit. The lyrics were also quite unusual, with songs about post-second world war dating paranoia and hero-worshipping. The burgeoning glam and prog rock scene had a clear influence on A Woofer In Tweeter Clothing, yet it had a much darker sound than other records of the time. While the brothers had been recording since 1967, it was not until 1973 they would record under the Sparks name. With the release of Edgar Wright’s ( Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead) long-awaited documentary about the brothers, we look back at the band’s defining moments and fan’s memories of them. Yet with all this influence, they are rarely heard of outside of their doted fanbase. Starting in the early 1970s, they have released 25 albums and various top 40 singles, attracting fans from Duran Duran, Franz Ferdinand, Morrissey & Nirvana, among other bands, their influence can still be heard in every genre of music. It’s got to feel as if you’re being spoken to as much as sung to in the natural cadences of conversation.Made up of brothers Ron and Russell Mael, Sparks has been one of the most influential yet least known bands of the last 40 years. Because that’s what’s got to be right, the delivery of the vocals has to be natural. So after we halved it, we sped it up a bit. So, we halved the tempo and then it sounded just a little bit too slow. Then I said look if we half the tempo, it’s going to sound better in the verse. We had this problem, whenever we tried to play it with the band we just couldn’t get it to seem to work. It was kind of like the verse and then I say don’t you know… But we couldn’t get the temp right. Originally, it had a more traditional structure. And that was when the chorus was at the right tempo. Nick was playing along on an old crappy Yamaha synthesizer sort of thing.īut when we wrote it, the temps were wrong. But at the same time, I wanted it to be dance music. Those answering lines is what I was trying to do there. There’s a real dark, sinister element to it.
The really sinister-sounding stuff like “ Smokestack Lighting,” that kind of stuff. And some of it kind of-eh-doesn’t really engage me so much. I’ve got a very mixed attitude to blues music.
I was trying to do that Hubert Sumlin and Howlin’ Wolf thing of like singing a line and then playing the guitar answer to it. And the guitar line I had, which became like the hook in the main part of the song, that came when I was singing the words, as the words were coming out of my head. And when your intentions are both apparent but neither of you wants to give away your position.Īnd the tension is almost unbearable and you want to the other person-you’re almost desperate to the point where you want the other person to literally take you out or figuratively take you out. I found that to be a good metaphor for romantic situations that you can sometimes find yourself in in life, kind of like a romantic stand-off you might stumble into if you were particularly of a shy nature and the other person was, as well.
One of them was a Soviet sniper and one of them was a German sniper. And the essence of the plot was that two snipers were in position waiting to literally take each other out. Nick and I were sharing a flat at the time. American Songwriter caught up with Kapranos to ask him about the origins of “Take Me Out.” Here’s what the songwriter, guitarist, and frontman had to say about its beginnings and fitting the sonic puzzle pieces together.Īmerican Songwriter: What was the genesis of “Take Me Out”?Īlex Kapranos: I love playing it, it’s a banger.
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