Letters from little Ronnie Mael and his mother

In 1982, during the short and partly cancelled tour Sparks did in Belgium, I met a guy named Mark Kahan, who claimed to be the cousin of Ron and Russell. He was supposed to be the son of a Joe Kahan, the brother of one of their parents (I suppose Miriam Rogenson's maiden's name is Kahan before she remarried to Oscar Rogenson).

Through him I got photocopies of two letters from a distant past, that were family possessions. One of them was a letter from a Ronnie Mael, thanking some Joe Kahan for some sweets that he and Russell received. Another one was a letter, of which only a fragment will be published here from a Miriam and Oscar, talking about their life in England and how different it is from their original American surroundings. The letter becomes interesting when a Russell, a Ronnie and a band called Half-Nelson (sic) is mentioned.

I've been questioning myself whether it is morally justified or ethical to put this sort of obvious private letters onto a public website. I have decided that it is, for a number of reasons.

First of all: nothing here is mentioned that might jeopardise the good reputation of any of the persons involved. The contents of the letters are quite innocent and in the case of Ronnie Mael, even slightly touching.

Secondly: the letter of Miriam does indeed confirm a couple of things. First of all that a Miriam is obviously related very closely to the Maels, that she was living in England during the early 70's and that Ron (or Ronnie, if you like) was indeed semi-professionally involved in photography. It also makes clear that when Sparks went over to tour Europe in 1972, at least Russell had been there before earlier. He might have made contacts (John Hewlett?) to arrange the tour that should later take place or might have been influenced in musical taste with music from the continent.

Thirdly: there has been a lot of rumours about the alleged "Day" surname instead of Mael. In the early 70's, Joseph Fleury once printed an interview in the Fan Club magazine, in which the Maels claimed they were the sons of Doris Day. For some reason, this rumour has never quite been refuted. With this letter from Ronnie Mael, we finally can take distance from that nonsense.

Which brings me to the fourth and last reason: this website has been created to inform the many Sparks admirers all over the world with as many respective news, facts and dates as possible. There is way that we would have wanted to keep this information to ourselves only. The Maels are very closed with regard to their private lives and bless them for it!

Acting like that however involves the risk of creating some rumours, misunderstandings and myths, all of which we feel we are allowed to find out about and publish on our website.

I would very much like to learn different opinions if you feel I'm wrong about this. Hell, I'll even accept Ron or Russell's personal reproof...

Getting to the letters. It might not be all the easy to read, as it's a scan from a photocopy. The letter written by Ronnie reads the following:

The postmark says Venice, Apr 7, 11:30 am 1956, Calif.

From Ronnie Mael
1121 Washington Blv
Venice, Calif.

Mr. Joseph Kahan
1406 Castle Hill Ave.
Bronx 62, New York

PS: Regards to your wonderful mother.

The second letter is written to a certain Russell and is dated December 26th. There's no year but it's probably 1969 or 1970 since Halfnelson was released in January 1971 and there's a possible record deal mentioned. It is signed by Miriam & Rogy and the contents related to the Maels is the following:

Russell is here for a month -
returning January 12. He's in France
now visiting a friend. He's here
with a young married couple, the fellow is in Russell's band -
HALF-NELSON is their name. Ronnie
stayed home as he had an
art exhibit of some of his photographic
artwork. Also a contract for a
record was pending.

The rest of the letter (three pages in total) is not related to the Mael's music.

Again, we welcome any reactions to this subject.

Ruud Swart