LEE AARON
The Province - October 25, 1991


More than a tease:

interview with Lee Aaron

Lee Aaron, WHERE 86 Street Music Hall, WHEN Today and tomorrow, starting at 9:30 p.m., TICKETS Ticketmaster, 280-4444

Not every song on Lee Aaron's Some Girls Do album is designed to tease. Not every track is intended to complete the picture of a leatherbunny ambivalently postured between feckless independence and coy abandonment.

While there is the title track, Crazy in Love, Wild at Heart, Sex With Love, Wanna Be Bad, Dangerous and others that suggest much more than they actually say or commit - songs that expand upon similar themes from the previous Bodyrock album - there is the one song that deals, if gingerly, with violence against women, Love Crimes.

Based on Lee's own experience, Love Crimes reflects on the singer's first serious romance, at the age of 19, with an older man who physically abused her.

While most of her recent two albums want to communicate a sense of fun and create a portrait of a woman in control, this track would seem out of place if it didn't suggest what Lee Aaron has gone through in her life and career to gain that control.

"My mother asked me, 'Why would you want to write a song like this?"' Lee recalls the first time her mother heard Love Crimes. "Because she knew exactly who I was writing about. But I said, 'Mom, it's only now that I've been able to write about it.'

"I only now understand how women can be caught up in that kind of relationship and allow it to happen.

"The message is there but you have to read between the lines," she continues. "I don't like to be preachy. I think Some Girls Do is a positive statement. It does not mean some girls do 'it;' it means they do what they want.

"I do try to be playful about my lyrics, but I like to inject them with positive images. I'm trying to project - especially with this album - this girl who is in control of her life, a free spirit. In that sense I am that person.

"I don't even like the word 'image.' It suggests something that is preconceived. The Lee Aaron people see onstage is definitely an extension of my personality. But sometimes, when people see you, they can't possibly picture you in a real-life situation.

"Once in a while I get spotted in a grocery store and someone will come up to me and say, 'My God, Lee Aaron, what are you doing in a grocery store?'

"Well, I need to eat."

Lee Aaron is back at 86 Street this weekend with Vancouver's Darby Mills and Edmonton's Big House opening. Big House kicks the evenings off at 9:30 p.m..

Tom Harrison
The Province ©