May 1974. In a cul-de-sac in Coventry I was turning 12 years-old in two weeks’ time. The month before my father had left home and gone to work in South Africa. He wasn’t coming back.
This was something of a relief, to be honest, as the warring factions within our household had been reduced by one significant combatant. Now just my brother and mother were left, locked into their endless campaign of skirmishes and battles. I can’t even remember what about now. Soon my brother, six years older than me, would leave home too.
So, perhaps – amateur psychology alert - I was on the lookout for a replacement father figure in my life. I was also interviewing for the vacancy of empathetic older brother.
Thursday night, after fish fingers and peas – a sign of greater austerity measures to come as my father and his chequebook went missing somewhere in Pretoria – it was time for washing up and the last ten minutes of Tomorrow’s World. Wild speculation about mobile phones. Then, a highlight of the week: it’s 7.20 and time for Top of the Pops.
A rubbish episode.
If Italian songstress Gigliola Cinquetti triggered any of my burgeoning eleven-year-old hormones, I don’t recall. I think I was in a pre-burgeoned state. Fellow Coventrian Vince Hill (“Among My Souvenirs”) raised a comment from my mother, as she remembered him from Youth Club parties. He seemed a bit aloof, she recalled.
Paper Lace, The Wombles, The Bay City Rollers and The Rubettes alerted every disaffected 16 year-old in the country that a revolution couldn’t come soon enough. We had to wait another two years for them to take up arms and invent punk, but you can see why it was necessary. However, there was one act that made even compere Noel Edmonds raise an eyebrow. And it changed my view of what music could be, more or less permanently.
This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both Of Us. The band, Sparks. The record, incredible. Packed with the sort of thing I didn’t know was possible. A song which sneered at machismo and dense with brilliant lyricism. I saw a fun-loving older brother I’d been seeking: Russell, owning the stage.
And there too, even more happily, was my missing father. Like the young boy in Jojo Rabbit who adopts a sympathetic fantasy Hitler, hello to Ron Mael. (I later discovered the weird parallels of them being brothers and losing their own father at the same age as Ron.) Toothbrush moustache, unflinching amidst the gunshots, dressed like a dad should be, straight from the Eisenhower era. Stern, but in my living room, and watching over me, like a father should.
Next day at school, there was only one question on all our lips. Did you see that guy who looked like Hitler? But in a classroom where I was the only single-parent family, the answer in my head was – that wasn’t Hitler, that was my dad.
Tracklist:
Amateur hour, Sparks
Love buzz, Nirvana
I wish you were fun, Sparks
Istanbul (not Constantinople), They Might Be Giants
Bon voyage, Sparks
Animal nitrate, Suede
The number one song in heaven, Sparks
Temptation, New Order
Equator, Sparks
Air, Talking Heads
This town ain’t big enough for both of us, Sparks
All my friends, LCD Soundsystem
Police encounters, FFS