"In a glorious surge of deserved success in 1974, the very comprehensive lyric sheets accompanying Sparks albums prove that Ron Mael is clearly driven to tell, yet he answers the media by skillfil Quietism and by impersonating various walls. Ron Mael is an undoubted genius, and where else would a true genius live but in the catacombs of hell? Ron asks his younger brother Russell to sing the words - in chilling falsetto. Russell sings in what appear to be French italics, and has less facial hair that Josephine Baker. It is a scream, because the songs are screams. (...) Who on earth would write a pop song in such a way? A song about an arts and crafts competition where 'lovely Claudine Jones/has to come to push her quilt', but where Tracy Wise gets a prize. There is no category for this madness - except the category of madness, and Sparks are only let down by their name. At 14, I want to live with these people, to be - at last! - in the company of creatures of my own species"

"There is certainly a rasp to my voice [LAUGHS]. It's not quite as bad as Bonnie Tyler's but it is raspy. Rod Stewart wasn't a big influence on me as a singer though. I don't really sound like anybody. In the same way that Ozzy doesn't sound like anybody or Alice Cooper doesn't sound like anybody. You get these boyband singers now that are all very similar. Even in the old days, you could swap round some of the Motown singers and you wouldn't really know the difference. Singer wise, I loved Mark Bolan; Noddy Holder; David Bowie; Alex Harvey; Russell Mael; Steve Harley; Brian Ferry; Sammy Hagar; Phil Lynott. All that lot go into a bucket but I still don't sound like any of them [LAUGHS]. Mutt Lange was a huge influence on my singing: he can play anything, do anything. He was pushing and pushing. I remember the first time I ever met Lou Gram from Foreigner. He said: 'tell me, did Mutt make you feel like you couldn't sing either?' and this was fucking Lou Gram, right? He'd make you do it again and again. He would push and push until you'd be right on the edge of losing it. Sometimes that worked and sometimes you felt like your spirit was being destroyed. Physically, you're going into spaces in your head and your chest cavity that you've never been. But he would've done it with anybody: look what he did with Brian Johnson, he put him through the bloody ringer with Back In Black but look what he got out of it. And that's why I don't complain. Rod Stewart was the first album I ever bought with my pocket money. The version of 'I'm Losing You' is just genius but my 'in' to that record, as it were, was 'Maggie May' because it was all over the radio at the time. It was rock but it was pop rock: it's not been influential in terms of how we sound but I absolutely love it."