Everclear Reflects on ‘Sparkle and Fade’ 30 Years Later

By Dave Gil de Rubio | Last Word Features

Art Alexakis discusses the enduring impact of “Santa Monica,” the making of Sparkle and Fade, and Everclear’s 30th anniversary celebration tour.

When Everclear released its 1995 sophomore bow and major label debut, “Sparkle and Fade,” the then-trio of guitarist/vocalist Art Alexakis, drummer/vocalist Greg Eklund, and bassist/vocalist Alex Montoya had no idea how drastically the album’s success would alter the trajectory of the band.

Riding the success of the wildly popular single “Santa Monica,” the album went platinum in the U.S., Canada, and Australia and also firmly positioned the Portland trio in the grunge/post-grunge zeitgeist. While both Eklund and Montoya departed the band in 2003, Alexakis and his current four-piece Everclear lineup are commemorating the album’s 30th anniversary with a tour.

When the 64-year-old singer-songwriter was reminded that the 2015 20th anniversary tour seemed like it happened yesterday, he agreed with a laugh before unpacking how much his determination fueled the second album into becoming such a game-changer.

“Hey man, you get older and it starts moving faster and faster,” he chuckled during a recent interview. “I felt like it was the best record I could make. I didn’t know how much success it would have. I know a lot of people felt ‘Santa Monica’ had a chance, but I was excited about all the songs on the record. I thought there were a lot of cool contextual songs on the record and a lot of punk rock. For a second record, when most people experience a sophomore slump, I felt like we brought it.”

Having recorded the bulk of the album at Sound Studios in Madison, WI, Alexakis and the rest of the band were confident about the quality of the material, especially “Santa Monica,” the record’s eventual second single. Perry Watts-Russell, the band’s A&R rep, agreed with that sentiment, despite the fact that he didn’t understand how the song title wasn’t mentioned once in the lyrics. And while he felt it was the best song Alexakis ever wrote, Watts-Russell felt it was still unfinished. Despite the disagreement, the songwriter agreed to lengthen it while also penning an additional nod to his A&R rep.

“Perry said he liked everything and wanted to know how many more songs I had,” Alexakis recalled. “I told him I had about three more, and I wanted to play him this song I wrote last week. He asked what I was calling it, and I said, ‘Santa Monica.’ I played him the song, and he said, ‘One thing. You don’t sing the words Santa Monica in that song at all.’ I said, ‘Nope, I don’t.’ I told him it was about comfort zones — places that make you feel both comfortable and uncomfortable, and that’s Santa Monica to me, which is why I’m naming it that. He said we could talk about changing the song title later and I told him, ‘No we can’t. But go ahead and try.’ He told me to play it again, and he said it might be one of my best songs ever, but it wasn’t finished.”

Alexakis added, “I told him it was finished, and we all said it was finished, and we thought it was pretty perfect. I told him we’d record it, he’d hear it, and it would make sense. We recorded it, and he listened to it and said he was even more convinced that this song was going to be one of the best songs on the record and almost definitely a single. But it wasn’t done yet. I told him to let me mix it, so I went to New York in the summer of ’94. I came out of it, and he said he was convinced it could be a career-building, hit song, but it wasn’t done yet. We got into one of our few fights over the phone. A lot of bad words were used to the point of me saying, ‘[Okay] Perry, we’ll do it. But you know what? I’m going to write a song just about you that we’re going to put on the album called ‘You Make Me Feel Like a Whore.’”

The album’s initial single, “Heroin Girl,” stalled.

“No one would play it on the radio because of the word ‘heroin,’” Alexakis said. But then came “Santa Monica.”

It picked up momentum after a slow start once MTV started playing the video in heavy rotation. Even then, Alexakis had doubters at parent label Capitol Records in the form of then-president Gary Gersh, best known for signing Nirvana, Sonic Youth, and Counting Crows as an A&R exec at Geffen Records.

“Gary Gersh thought it was an okay first record,” Alexakis said. “I remember he would go out that summer, when we were working that record after it came out, and he would go to distribution places, do talks, and take questions, and he’d be talking about these other cool bands he was signing or working with. He’d be asked about Everclear, and he’d say it was a developmental record. These people would tell him it wasn’t a developmental record and it was something they could sell right now because they couldn’t keep it in stock, and it wasn’t even being played on the radio. They told him to get it on the radio. People were yelling at the president of Capitol. Talk about grassroots, right?”

For the current tour, the focus will obviously be on “Sparkle and Fade,” but Alexakis promises to weave in other gems from his band’s canon.

“We’re going to play all the songs from “Sparkle and Fade,” but we’re going to break it up,” he said. “We’re going to do three songs, play a couple of songs from another record, do three more songs, and just do that all the way through to the end. We’ll probably keep ‘Santa Monica’ for the end. But other than that, there aren’t going to be a lot of surprises. We don’t have time for that.”

With 33 years on the odometer and counting for Everclear, Alexakis had been looking to slow things down a bit, particularly in light of the multiple sclerosis diagnosis he received back in 2019. But current events being what they are, he’s been inspired to the point of there being a potential new material on the horizon in 2026.

“After all the political stuff going on and the changes in our world, I’ve been writing a lot — a lot of poetry, a lot of words, a lot of music,” he said. “We’re planning on putting out a new album. We’ll see.”

Northern Colorado fans will have a chance to see Everclear live when the band performs at Island Grove Regional Park in Greeley on Oct. 26 at 5 p.m. as part of its Sparkle and Fade 30th Anniversary Tour. Additional regional stops include the Gothic Theatre in Englewood on Nov. 1 and The Lincoln in Cheyenne on Nov. 5. For longtime fans of ’90s alternative rock, the tour offers a rare opportunity to hear the landmark album performed alongside favorites spanning Everclear’s three-decade career.

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