One band that warmed the cockles of my heart last night at Glasto, as the kids say, was the performance of the popular beat combo outfit Sparks. While I have never loved them quite enough to buy any of their records, I have to admit that they were startlingly good. Mustachioed straight-faced Ron Mael plonked away merrily at the keyboard while baby-faced brother Russell still sang in the same key – something you will not hear Elton John do on the Pyramid stage tomorrow – and they transported me back to 1974 when I was still a spotty schoolboy. This Town Ain’t Big Enough For the Both Of Us sounded better than ever.
Given that Ron is approaching his 78th year and Russell his 75th the performance was astonishing. When I was young, old people were actually old, if you know what I mean. In his late 60s and early 70s, my grandad always wore slacks, a shirt, a cardigan and smart slippers just for watching television. Being a large gentleman, he wasn’t exactly energetic, certainly not as energetic of Russell Mael was last night. But then, no one of his age was.
Old people did old in those days. Mick Jagger, who is weeks away from his 80th birthday and was loathed – and I do mean loathed – by grandad because of his long-hair, his pouty face and “You call THAT music? You can’t even make out the words!” I put that down to his old fashioned fuddy-duddy ways until years later when the Rolling Stones released Tumbling Dice and I had to concede that although this was one of my favourite Stones song, I had no idea what Mick was singing about.
God alone knows what he would have made of Sparks, then. I don’t think he’d have enjoyed their set quite as much as I did and I am sure he wouldn’t have understood the words. But then, until I looked them up today, I must have been singing my own version. For the first time, I now know that Russell was singing this:
“Zoo time is she and you timeThe mammals are your favourite type, and you want her tonightHeartbeat, increasing heartbeatYou hear the thunder of stampeding rhinos, elephants and tacky tigersThis town ain’t big enough for the both of us!And it ain’t me who’s gonna leave!’
I think I must have done a John Redwood and tried to bluff my way out of it and, as with the Tory bampot, got away with it without anyone noticing. In fact, looking at the rest of the lyrics, I didn’t know any of them except the ‘This Town Ain’t Big Enough” etc.
But clearly old is the new young. Doubtless, my old grandad, had he been born a few years later, would have been bopping along with Russell and Ron, wearing a pair of faded Levis and a grubby T shirt, but as it was I can’t remember him liking any kind of music at all. He might even have liked The Beatles (“long haired louts”), but then the Fab Four represented the ultimate change in music and without them nothing we hear today, whether that would be Sparks, the Foo Fighters or anything else on the Glastonbury stages would even exist.
I’m still not given to buying any of Sparks music because I think it’s too late for me. If I saw their seminal long player Kimono My House retailing for a quid, I might just think about it, but I’m happy enough to hear them once in a while on the wireless, as grandad called the radio even though it seemed to be full of wires (I know really why it was called the wireless so don’t spoil the joke). And next time I hear This Town at least I won’t have to pretend to know the words.
