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Los Angeles Times
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Sparks Fly: Ron and Russell Mael, beach boys of lotusland, get ‘MAD!' on their latest album
Ron and Russell Mael are that rarest of all breeds, the Los Angeles native. The brothers came of age in the 1960s on L.A.'s Westside — decades before it was '310' or west of the 405 Freeway — because the north/south artery hadn't yet been built. A sporty upbringing of beach volleyball, AM radio tuned to 93 KHJ, and Palisades High School football (for Russell) belie the intellectual cool-cult status the band has held for decades. A status, that in the last few years, after making eclectic, uncompromising and witty albums since 1971, is morphing into something approaching mainstream recognition. The Maels credit the newfound momentum to cinema, specifically the 2021 Edgar Wright documentary 'The Sparks Brothers' and 'Annette,' a film that opened Cannes in 2021 which found the creator-brothers joyful on the red carpet with director Leos Carax and stars Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard. Up next? A 'half-musical' with John Woo ('Face/Off'). If the musicians' visibility and viability has shifted, Sparks' music remains inventive, brainy and flamboyant pop, often born of sunshiny moments and wistful memories that wend their way into lyrics. But it's hardly nostalgia. 'Perhaps in the themes,' says Ron, 'but in a musical sense, we really try to avoid nostalgia completely.' 'JanSport Backpack,' is a yearning tune with harmonies and a hazily poignant emotional tone akin to the Beach Boys —another band of Westside brothers and musical observers of youth culture. If the narrator laments the JanSport Backpack girl walking away, the love interest in 'My Devotion' has '[her] name written on my shoe,' as Russell sings. 'Maybe it isn't so much nostalgic,' Ron said. 'In some ways, we matured, in some we haven't, so we're still kind of living in an era of writing somebody's name on their shoes.' One tune is a surprising almost-love-letter to a fixture that's the bane of many Golden State warriors' existence — and satirized aptly on the 'Saturday Night Live' sketch 'The Californians': The 405 Freeway. 'I-405' is a frenetic, driving, cinematic journey that perfectly captures the drama and beauty roiling underneath bumper-to-bumper frustration. 'You kind of think of the I-405 in a negative way, because you think of being stuck on it. Everybody has their horror stories about it,' says Ron, perched next to his brother in the lounge area of Russell's bright recording studio, surrounded by the coolest pop culture tchotchkes and collectibles imaginable. 'One time when I was up at the Getty Center, and it was starting to be dusk, with the cars moving it seemed, in its own weird, L.A. kind of way, romantic. Almost like our equivalent, if you really stretch it, to the beautiful rivers in Europe and Japan,' Ron says. 'That was kind of the starting point for the song. If you look at it from a distance, there is kind of a beauty, and I think that's one of the keys to Los Angeles. You have to see things that you kind of think of as mundane in a slightly different way. Like, you go to Europe and things are obviously Art. Period. But here, a car wash or something…' '…We're big fans of supermarkets,' Russell chimes in. 'When they go away, it's kind of sad. Even department stores now are almost becoming a relic of the past. It's like a ghost town in the Beverly Center. All that's going to be gone at some point soon.' If not by gentrification and L.A.'s habit of eating its own, then natural disasters. The Jan. 7 Palisades fire burned part of Ron's high school, and the entirety of the home they lived in with their mother after their father's passing, on Galloway Street in the Palisades. Nearly every house in the entire neighborhood — the Alphabet Streets, a working-class enclave when the Maels lived there — was reduced to a pile of rubble. 'They had some of those aerial shots where they made the grid of the names of the streets, and it was gone. It's hard to comprehend, it was real suburbia there,' says Russell, 'and flat, so you think, 'well, surely that can't burn down.'' Slightly east of the 405, the Maels attended UCLA when culture was at a tipping point. Ron saw some of Jim Morrison's 'kind of impressive' student films at the school, and the brothers recall that, 'UCLA, at the time, had this amazing booking policy; you had Jimi Hendrix and Alice Cooper and Mothers of Invention, Canned Heat. It wasn't considered such a big deal. Just, 'Let's go see that person.' Now you have to go online and mortgage your house to go to see anybody,' says Ron. 'We always loved that kind of music,' adds Russell, 'but we never thought that we would ever be, you know, professional musicians. It's just that was the music that we really loved.' That said, by the age of 5, Ron was taking piano lessons and giving a recital at the Women's Club of Venice, near where the Mael family then resided. At Paul Revere Junior High, Russell won first place at a Shakespeare Festival for his sonnet recitation. Post those halcyon days, the brothers began delving into music together. Russell's powerful, at times operatic, vocals and energetic stage presence proved the perfect foil for Ron's distinctly quirky mien and adroit facility with words and keys. 'I don't know if you go as far as to call it a band,' clarifies Ron. 'It was an attempt at being a band. We played at some dorm thing at UCLA once.' 'We also played a pizza place in Westwood,' Ron remembers. 'Shakey's Pizza,' Russell adds with a laugh. 'We were top-billed that night. Yeah, free pizza. We did the local Westwood circuit and then when we got somewhat better we started playing the Whisky a Go Go a bunch. We were officially Sparks then.' The Sunset Strip, past its Doors days and with hair metal far on the horizon, wasn't especially welcoming to Sparks, though [Whisky founder] Elmer Valentine 'irrationally loved our band,' says Ron. 'The audiences, when they showed up, they really didn't like us and we were really way too loud. But he kept booking us. We would support people like Little Feat.' The L.A. Times reviewed that 1973 show, with critic Richard Cromelin noting that Sparks' 'highly stylized attitude is not complemented by the necessary abandon.' That observation may ring true for some, but for Sparks, ultimately that 'abandon' wasn't and isn't necessary. The energy of beguiling songs like 'Angst in My Pants' and 'This Town Ain't Big Enough For the Both of Us,' belted out with Russell's ebullient, pitch-perfect vocals, carry the always dynamic live show. Over the last four years, the Maels are glad to shake the long-held best-kept-secret tag, grateful to 'Annette' and 'The Sparks Brothers' for the boost. 'They kind of attracted people who were coming to us from the film area; they didn't know about the band. It's a new, younger audience, really diverse,' Russell says. The lineup's last few albums are the most meaningful to that sector. 'Going back to say, [1974's] 'Kimono My House,' for them, it's not meaningful in the same kind of way as somebody who was there at that time,' the singer says. 'It's really healthy that their focal point isn't like the 'golden era of whenever' that might have been the '70s in London or the '80s in L.A. or any point in between.' New eyes on the band have elicited a seemingly increased enthusiasm and energy that's perhaps unexpected from seasoned septuagenarians. Unlike the Gallaghers, the Davieses, and many other brotherly duos in rock, the Maels present a united front. If the brothers are coy and circumspect about their personal lives, their working relationship is slightly less obtuse. Slightly. We're in the room where their latest, 'MAD!,' (released Friday) was created, and while the album credits both with lyrics and production, Ron is the main wordsmith. There's seemingly not much back-and-forth on the lyrical themes or specifics. 'I hear about it on the day it's time to start singing,' says Russell. 'There's a 'here's your lyrics, sir.'' That said, Sparks' seeming manifesto, 'Do Things My Own Way' which starts the album, is clearly a statement of the duo's longtime purpose, Russell singing, 'Unaligned / Simply fine / Gonna do things my own way.' So would it ever be 'our own way'? The Maels laugh. 'Not as long as I'm writing the songs,' quips Ron. 'Good question, though,' says Russell with a smile. ''We witnessed the breakup of Sparks,'' Ron says with a laugh. 'On the 'Greatest Hits' album, we can do a version that's 'ours.''
The Independent
18-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Radiohead appear to confirm first tour in years after ticket donation sparks rumors
Rumors of the first Radiohead tour in seven years are heating up after it was revealed several tickets to a 'Radiohead concert of your choice' were recently donated to a charity auction by the band's management. The acclaimed British rock band last toured in 2018, and last released new music with their ninth album A Moon Shaped Pool in 2016. Resident Advisor reports that four Radiohead tickets to an upcoming tour were donated to a Los Angeles fire relief auction run by Palisades High School, apparently by the band's management. The auction listing noted that the highest bidder can select their preferred city and date 'based on the band's tour schedule.' The publication went on to claim that a source close to the group has confirmed the band have placed holds at venues in a number of European cities for a run of residency gigs this autumn. Earlier this week, Pitchfork reported that the band's five members — singer Thom Yorke, guitarist Jonny Greenwood, bassist Colin Greenwood, guitarist Ed O'Brien and drummer Philip Selway — have recently formed a new business as a limited liability partnership, RHEUK25 LLP. Similar business partnerships have been formed by the band in the past, as they operate outside of the record label system. In 2016, they formed Dawn Chorus LLP shortly before announcing the release of A Moon Shaped Pool. In the time since the band last toured, many of the members have been busy with solo projects. In October last year, Yorke walked offstage after being heckled by a pro-Palestine protester during a solo show in Melbourne. Footage filmed by a member of the audience showed a man in the crowd yelling at Yorke about the ' Israeli genocide of Gaza ' and the death toll, half of whom he said, 'were children'. Yorke could be seen standing and listening before he told the heckler to 'hop up on stage' to make his remarks. Yorke and his Radiohead bandmates have come under scrutiny in the past over their decision to continue performing in Israel. Last September, Colin Greenwood revealed that Radiohead had recently reunited in the studio to rehearse some of their old songs. During an appearance at the Hay Festival Querétaro in Mexico via video call, the bassist said: 'We did some rehearsals about two months ago in London, just to play the old songs. And it was really fun, had a really good time.'
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Priceless': Palisades HS Student Choir Performed at Grammys After School Burned
Burned in the LA wildfires, the Palisades Charter High School campus is still closed to students. But that hasn't stopped the school's student choir from making music. In fact, they just sang at the 67th Annual Grammy Awards show last month, sharing the stage with Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hancock. Classes are still virtual for students of Palisades Charter High School after wildfires scorched the school's campus in January. The student choir meets virtually for rehearsals, and occasionally in person. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter Recovery from the fires that burned the school and destroyed the homes and buildings in the surrounding community is difficult, said choir director Allison Cheng. Students and staff are still reeling from the loss of the fires, she said, but singing helps transform the trauma of the disaster into a healing experience. 'It was something that the whole community could look forward to that was positive,' said Cheng of the Grammy appearance. See the Palisades High School choir at the one minute mark: Palisades Charter High School is one of the schools that burned in the historic wildfires that spread across Los Angeles over a three-week period this winter, killing at least 29 people. Pali High, as the school is called by students and staff, is known for famous alumni such as and J.J. Abrams, as well as for being the filming location for movies such as Freaky Friday and Teen Wolf. Cheng said the choir's journey to the Grammy Awards began on January 17, when she got a text out of the blue from the event's organizers, asking if she would be interested in working on a performance at the televised award show. The choir's performance, which was kept under wraps until the award show took place, aimed to highlight students from schools affected by the recent LA wildfires, such as Pali High. Working with the show's organizers, Cheng reached out to a friend at the Pasadena Waldorf School, and asked that school's choir to join for the show. 'I don't even know how many emails I sent back and forth with production to make sure we had everything,' said Cheng. 'It was a lot of work, but I think it was worth it.' The two schools' choirs finally met for an in-person rehearsal on Saturday, Feb. 1 with country singer Lamont Van Hook to record a backing track for the performance. Their shining moment came the next day during the Grammys when both of the student choirs joined Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hancock at the star-studded award show for a rendition of 'We are the World' as part of the ceremony's tribute to Quincy Jones. Joining the musical legends onstage, the students wore shirts that read 'I Love LA' as they sang backup accompanied by a jazz ensemble. Another high point for the students came when they got to meet some of their idols backstage at the event, including Beyonce and Sabrina Carpenter, Cheng said The experience lifted kids' spirits at a tough time for them at school, Cheng said. Online learning is tough, she explained, especially in music programs like hers. 'Because I'm not in the room, we can't physically hand them something to show me 'For other things like guitar and choir, it's really difficult,' said Cheng. Many Pali High students use music as a safe outlet for expression, Cheng said, and the trauma of the fires has only heightened the importance of artistic education in their lives. That's why singing at the Grammys was so sweet for the students, she said. 'These are kids that not only sing in choir, but they dance, they produce music, that's what they want to do,' said Cheng. 'So this experience was priceless for them.' This article is part of a collaboration between The 74 and the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
Yahoo
04-02-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Tragedy and Resilience: Fires Transform Pacific Palisades and Altadena
Local Meteorologists were breathless in repeating the warnings for 'life-threatening winds' over and over in the days before Jan. 7.'Life-threatening?' I thought somewhat incredulously as I left my beachside studio in Venice around 7:30 a.m. that morning. But, at the boardwalk, the brute force of what marked unimaginable, imminent wind-fueled destruction hit like a bat to the chest. Palm tree branches lashed in a violent dance overhead. Sand particles whipped into furious tornadoes and darted the skin. A sandwich board guiding tourists to breakfast burritos flew into the air and fell with a thud like a heavyweight fighter taking a TKO punch. All around, an ominous energy. Unsettling. Many Angelenos believe the Santa Ana winds rattle the psyche. Some writers, like L.A.'s Raymond Chandler, argue the gales can turn mild people murderous.'There was a desert wind blowing that night,' he wrote in 1946's Red Wind, a short story. 'It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen.'Anything can happen … on this day, it hours later, at 10:30 a.m., the Palisades Fire began. From the Venice Beach Boardwalk, spectators watched in horror as its ravenous flames built into a spreading wall of fire. An ugly, inky smoke began to stain the sky over the ocean. In the distance, crackling embers created a macabre fireworks show over the Palisades as a hellscape grew. In a matter of hours, famously picturesque swaths of Los Angeles would change forever. I spoke with my literary manager that morning, a Pacific Palisades resident, about what now seems like utterly mundane nonsense. Neither of us knew that this would be the day that his house — and, as of this writing, 6,380 other homes and businesses in the tightknit seaside community and neighboring Malibu — would be reduced to ash. He is a collector of literary artifacts. All gone. His neighborhood, also enormous losses are what Jamie Lee Curtis came home to. The fervently proud born-and-bred Angelena had just boarded a flight to New York City when the texts started flying in about the fire in her neighborhood. She tells Los Angeles she felt fairly safe — even as her husband, fellow actor Christopher Guest, packed up their beloved rescue named Runi and a few belongings to hustle out of their home in a canyon on the outskirts of Pacific recalls, 'I never thought it would reach my house. To do that, it would have to burn across the entire area…' It did. She did not lose her home, but her community was church where she got sober in Alcoholics Anonymous was wrecked by flames, along with the women's community center where she attended meetings. The grocery store where she did her shopping, ravaged. Palisades High School, where Curtis shot a scene for 2003's Freaky Friday, was heavily damaged. Curtis rerouted back to her beloved City of Angels within a day. Gutted by the apocalyptic scene she returned to, she immediately pledged $1 million to help her neighbors. 'This is an act of nature reminding us that nature will always win,' she says. 'We now have to live with that grim reality, make changes and use our creative community, our will and spirit to rebuild.'That sentiment is shared by art collector and West Hollywood gallery owner Ron Rivlin. His three-story home was filled with art — works by Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Damien Hirst and John Baldessari — and rare oddities, like a gumball machine from the Playboy Mansion, now dust. Desperate to find 'something, anything,' he says, he climbed into the twisted rebar and hunks of debris with a ladder to look through the remains. In a ravine behind what had been a swimming pool, he spotted a glimmer. In the scorched brush, a stainless steel 15-foot sculpture: Michael Benisty's 'Broken but Together,' an aptly named artwork found among the hundreds lost. 'I take it as a hopeful sign,' he decrees. 'One that represents the spirit of Pacific Palisades.'Fourth-generation Altadena homeowner Johnny Agnew — a teamster on the Ryan Murphy series Monsters — is also a collector of artifacts, vintage trailers, rare cars and Americana curiosities, items he kept at his home, a 1920s-era log cabin dubbed Funky Junk Farms. His art may not have caught an appraiser's eye, but it was priceless to the people lucky enough to visit his makeshift museum. As firefighters battled a hurricane of flames on the Westside on Jan. 7, the Eaton Fire began to blaze at 6:18 p.m. Agnew and his girlfriend Yipsy watched the horizon as the flames roared through mansions in the canyon on the opposite side of town and then pushed down into the historic enclave of west Altadena, home to generations of Black families like his. By midnight, it was chaos, he notes. The sky was pitch-dark with smoke, an orange glow enveloping their cabin. 'My heart sank. It was a mountain of fire, moving toward us,' Agnew says. The hurricane-force winds blew so ferociously that entire blocks — including theirs — were wiped out in minutes, at least 7,000 homes incinerated by fire like a book of lit matches, one after another. Mom-and-pop shops leveled; history wiped out. The delightfully eclectic Bunny Museum. Countless houses of worship. Fox's famous restaurant. Now, all part of the war zone left behind. 'It's very emotional,' the 63-year-old says. 'At my age, it's supposed to be cruise control. Now we have to start over. We have 25 close friends who lost everything.' Still, Agnew is quick to talk about the outpouring of love from friends and strangers: 'We are the lucky ones. We are alive. And we will rebuild.' In his neighborhood, at least 17 people lost their lives. Those tragedies include Anthony Mitchell, a 67-year-old amputee, and his son, Justin, who had cerebral palsy; the two died side-by-side in a bed waiting for an ambulance that tried desperately to move through the blinding fog of black smoke and flames but wouldn't arrive on time. On another street, Victor Shaw, 66, defended his family home with a garden hose before he was overcome by smoke inhalation, dying on the lawn where he had played as a boy. Two other elderly Altadena lifers — 82-year-old Rodney Nickerson, whose father is honored at L.A.'s largest housing development in Watts, and Erliene Kelley, 83 — believed the Eaton Fire, like others before it, would spare them. This time, the wildfires would not be so forgiving. Another 11 people perished in the Palisades Fire, where fast-moving flames rapaciously devoured celebrity compounds, demolished entire beachfront communities, destroyed the Tahitian Terrace Mobile Home Park and decimated famous businesses like the Reel Inn and Moonshadows Malibu. Among the lost include surfer Randy 'Crawdaddy' Miod, a prolific contributor to the arts scene, who was found clutching his kitten to his chest in his Malibu bungalow. He died attempting to escape the wind-fueled flames that bobbed and weaved like a linebacker, leveling everything in their path. His mother said Miod's last words to her were: 'Pray for the Palisades. Pray for Malibu. I love you.' At a cottage nearby, one-time Australian child actor Rory Sykes, 32, who was born blind with cerebral palsy, was unable to escape his home despite a desperate attempt by his mom Shelley to douse the white-hot embers that landed on her son's roof. 'The water was shut off,' she wrote in a social media post, adding that even the 'brave firefighters had no water all day.' That lack of water, LAFD firefighters and union officials said, coupled with the unrelenting, unprecedented Santa Ana winds, crippled their efforts to control the hurricane of fire exploding all around them. 'When you tap a hydrant and nothing comes out,' says International Association of Firefighters President Edward A. Kelly, 'it's like sending soldiers into war with tanks and guns and no ammunition.' Among the sites Kelly visited with his LAFD brethren was the devastated site of Corpus Christi Catholic Church and School in Pacific Palisades, where he paused to say a prayer at its intact granite altar. Firefighters began to buzz about what one called 'a miracle' after recovering the Holy Tabernacle in the detritus and returning it to its Monsignor; all 14 stained glass Stations of the Cross were immaculate, which defied fire logic. 'To me,' Kelly, a Boston native and lifelong firefighter says, 'it's a sign that this city is L.A. Strong.' There were similar signs of hope across the city. Some seemed spiritual. Others resulted from brave actions by first responders and everyday Angelenos like actor Harvey Guillén, who is a series regular on FX's What We Do in the Shadows. Guillén, the son of Mexican immigrants, was the first member of his family to buy a home and he'd fallen in love with Altadena. He was at home with family when the Eaton Fire began its monstrous lurch toward his neighborhood. 'I couldn't believe what I was seeing,' he says. 'It was raining fire.' He remembers saying a quick prayer — 'please save my house' — before snatching a photo of his father and running out. When he returned the next day, he sobbed with 'survivors' guilt' that his sweet house was still standing — before noticing his neighbor's home was smoking. Guillén and his siblings grabbed a hose and soaked his neighbor's house, saving it. It was an act that unwittingly put the family among the ranks of countless civilians who did what they could to aid exhausted, frustrated first responders from CalFire, the LAFD and nearby companies, plus 1,100 California inmates — among them juvenile detention center volunteers — who by then, had been engaged in a Sisyphean struggle to contain wildfires igniting all around them for days. They kept coming: the Hurst fire in Sylmar; the Kenneth near Woodland Hills, the Lidia in the Angeles National Forest, the Woodley in the Sepulveda Basin, then the Sunset in the Hollywood Hills. Flying embers made it as far as Ventura County, igniting the Auto Fire. Soon, help began to arrive on the line — and it was needed, as week two saw the Hughes Fire ignite in Castaic and the Laguna Fire in Ventura County. The Navajo Nation Fire Department sent its best. So did Mexico; Canada. Then Texas and Vegas and Oregon and Utah and Tennessee. Civilian fire brigades began to fan out across the miles upon miles of ruined neighborhoods to mitigate further damage to the structures that were left as the National Guard posted up to prevent looting. Dozens of bad actors were arrested, including some dressed as firefighters who were using a lifesaving, nonprofit app most Angelenos had never heard of until the fires broke out: Watch Duty. Across L.A. County, Watch Duty's unifying tone began to ding with real-time evacuation orders that corresponded with maps of the fast-moving fires so people knew where to go. 'When this fire lit, we knew this was going to be catastrophic,' the service's creator John Mills says. 'We started sleeping in shifts,' he recalls of his staff of 15. 'What is happening, it's on an untouchable scale we could not have foreseen.' For all the destruction, there were endless stories of unfettered heroism. LAFD Captain Frank Lima was driving toward the Station 69 firehouse in Pacific Palisades when he spotted embers flying into the window of a house on Marquez Avenue, right next to another home fully engulfed in flames. Lima leapt from his car, grabbed his axe — along with a tiny fire extinguisher — smashed through a garden gate at the house, and forced his way inside with white-hot fire all around him. He emptied the little hydrant as Engine 19 showed up on the scene to help, and that house is one of the only ones on the once-picturesque block in the Palisades Highlands neighborhood unscathed. Lima still visits the house to make sure it's standing. Overhead, fire pilots dazzled us with action movie-worthy shots of staggeringly accurate water drops from helicopters, planes, and super scoopers — precision dumps that erased gigantic swaths of fire, captured in videos every bit as exciting as scenes out of a Marvel superhero film. In today's world, the 'superheroes' are the countless Angelenos who immediately jumped in to help. Social media influencers took over the Pasadena Rose Bowl to create a spontaneous evacuation center. An Altadena locksmith on Lake Avenue that survived the fires offered free house and car keys to his neighbors who weren't so lucky. Venice surf shops began collecting donated essentials. Strangers offered up rooms and guest houses to the more than 150,000 Angelenos left homeless or displaced, while hotels gave away free rooms. Countless restaurants dedicated their kitchens to those in need, delivering food (and comfort) to weary survivors and frontline workers. The Pasadena Humane Society rescued 700 terrified animals; dogs, cats, turtles, a small dragon, motherless kittens and even, at least for one night, a pony. Rescued horses were rushed to nearby equestrian centers. Veterinarians across the city turned their hospitals into makeshift shelters. Volunteering and acts of community service have replaced red-carpet events and awards shows. Spontaneous murals by artists across the city remind us that the real superstars in Tinseltown these days are its first responders. Graffiti artists from the Santee Public Gallery took over a wall near the Venice Beach skate park that reads on one side, framed by the Pacific Ocean: 'Thank You Firefighters.' On the other, it reads: 'Heroes in Red,' backdropped by the boardwalk where spectators watched in horror the growing red threat on that windy Jan. 7 morning. For Curtis, the outpouring of love and support amid continuing mayhem comes as no surprise. After all, as she says: 'We are the City of Angels.'
Yahoo
26-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Katey Sagal calls LA fires ‘overwhelming time' as she joins Hollywood to raise over $1.6M in relief efforts
As the California fires have devastated more than hundreds of thousands of residents, Hollywood actors have come together to raise millions for relief efforts. "Married with Children" actress Katey Sagal, "Indiana Jones" star Ke Huy Quan and several other A-listers spoke with Fox News Digital about how they've been deeply impacted by the Los Angeles fires, as they raised more than $1.6 million through various charities. Los Angeles native Sagal, 71, shared that the fires were "particularly personal" to her since she also attended Palisades High School growing up. California Fires: Essential Phone Numbers For Los Angeles-area Residents And How You Can Help Them "To see those neighborhoods come down was just unbelievably heartbreaking to me," she said during the LA Wildfire Relief LIVE event. "A devastating time right now in our city… it's just an overwhelming time… all of us coming together to help… and to raise money… It's human spirit. It's what we do… it's the better part of humanity." Read On The Fox News App Sagal's comments come after the Palisades Charter High School was previously engulfed in flames due to the wildfires raging in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los burned property, a popular location for Hollywood productions, was severely damaged by the wildfires around Jan. 7, the day the inferno broke out in the impacted areas. The "8 Simple Rules" star continued to share how her home was affected by the fires. "We live in Hollywood, and the fire was in my backyard when it started in the Hollywood area. They got it out pretty quick, but we were evacuated and house completely filled with smoke."Although she fortunately didn't lose her home, she explained how her family had to evacuate for approximately ten days. WATCH: KATEY SAGAL CALLS LA FIRES 'OVERWHELMING TIME' "We didn't lose our house and we didn't lose our family, our pets or nothing of real value. But we were scared, and we were terrified, as we were watching the news and seeing how quickly it was spreading." She added it was difficult to compare her situation to others who experienced the inferno first hand in the Altadena and Palisades area, but she expressed the utmost gratitude. The devastation from the California fires is a major part of why she wanted to help during the charity event, hosted at the Rosewood Residences in Beverly Hills. Millions were donated through the Tiltify Impact Fund for LAFD Wildfire Emergency Fund, California Fire Foundation, World Central Kitchen, Baby2Baby, CORE (Community Organized Relief Effort). The broadcast was created and produced by Impact Agency WCPG, Tiltify, Real Good Touring and fundraising kicked off with a $500,000 match donation from Josh Brolin via the Brolin Family Foundation. Click Here To Sign Up For The Entertainment Newsletter WATCH: 'GOONIES' ACTOR COMPARES LA FIRES TO ICONIC MOVIE Meanwhile, "Goonies" actor Quan, 53, called Los Angeles his "safe haven," as he resided in the area for more than 45 years. The Oscar-winning actor admitted he and his wife "frantically packed" as they were forced to evacuate. "It was at that moment that I realized how fragile everything can be. You can just lose your livelihood, your home, everything you own… just like that," Quan told Fox News Digital. Tv Host Calls La Fires 'A Disaster,' Says Not Enough Was Done By Elected Officials "Luckily, thank God to the first responders and the firefighters. They are the true heroes of our city. They put out that fire very quickly. So, we were very fortunate. But I also know a lot of people who weren't as fortunate. And it's horrible. It's really heartbreaking to see." Performances from celebrities including Jason Segel were featured during the charity event, as he said it's going to be a "long road" ahead until Los Angeles recovers from the tragic fires. WATCH: JASON SEGEL SAYS 'LONG ROAD' FOR LOS ANGELES TO RECOVER FROM FIRES The "How I Met Your Mother" actor additionally shared that he worked closely with CORE, Community Organized Relief Effort, for years. CORE is a nonprofit organization that brings immediate aid and recovery to communities. It was founded by actor Sean Penn and Ann Lee. Like What You're Reading? Click Here For More Entertainment News "We are doing distributions of materials. We are running the child-friendly space in the Pasadena shelter for those that are displaced," CORE co-founder Lee shared with Fox News Digital. "We're also doing cash programming. We just supported 450 families with cash… all of this and today from our amazing supporters is helping us continue to support those families in need." Meanwhile, Gov. Gavin Newsom thanked President Donald Trump on Friday for visiting Southern California to tour the devastation left by the fires this month. Trump traveled to Southern California yesterday to see damage from the recent wildfires that destroyed thousands of acres and more than 10,000 buildings in the Los Angeles area and claimed the lives of nearly 30 people. Fox News Digital's Brie Stimson and Aubrie Spady contributed to this article source: Katey Sagal calls LA fires 'overwhelming time' as she joins Hollywood to raise over $1.6M in relief efforts
