LEE AARON
The Windsor Star - September 24, 1987


Canada's Lee Aaron appears Saturday at Harpo's Music Theater in Detroit, 14238 Harper (at Chalmers, off I-94). Tickets $5 available at the box offic, TicketMaster outlets (including Windsor Arena) or by calling 313-823-6400.

IT HAS taken two years, but Lee Aaron, the whipping girl of censors for her image as the pixie queen of heavy metal, thinks she has turned the corner on changing that image.

"It was never something to be taken seriously," said the diminuitive Toronto-based rock singer whose sexy performance in a video for her song, Metal Queen, got her banned on Australian TV a few years ago.

"I was never really the person that was being marketed in that way. I think the last album (released on Attic Records last spring and titled simply Lee Aaron) is more who I really am.

"But if censors had taken the time to figure out what was being said on Metal Queen, they might not have had such a negative reaction."

According to Aaron, Metal Queen's images of a wild-haired nymph in leathers and studs being chained up and thrown into a cage, only to escape and overcome her captors, was just a story in which "good triumphs over evil, no worse than a Saturday morning cartoon of Wonderwoman."

But that's behind her, now.

A couple of years ago, she changed managers and, since the release of Call Of The Wild in 1985 and this year's Lee Aaron, the singer is concentrating on the mellower side of rock. But she still calls her music "power rock."

Why, she even has a song on the recent album co-written by Canada's schlock-maker, Dan Hill.

"Rock music is the scapegoat," said Aaron, "for much more deep-rooted problems in society. I don't think you can blame a song by Ozzy Osbourne for a teenage boy committing suicide. The real cause is deeper than that."

She also condemned the rock music press for "taking the lifestyle and image of a rock singer and blowing it right out of proportion."

The reality, for Aaron, is plenty of sleep and a good diet when she's on the road: "I couldn't survive two weeks on the road if I was partying after every show.

"It's as early to bed and early to rise as possible and take your vitamins and eat decent meals. Otherwise, I'd be hopeless."

She also avoids alcohol, like white wine, that tends to dry out her vocal chords.

Most important, however, and usually the hardest to achieve when she's touring, is getting at least six hours of sleep a night.

"We often travel six or seven hours a day when we're in Europe, then there's press interviews, sound checks and trying to get some rest before a show. But after the show, it's like coming home after a long day at work - it takes me a couple of hours to wind down before I can get to sleep.

"So I gargle some warm salt water to soothe my throat, take a bath and settle in with a Stephen King novel to relax."

Currently in the midst of a 25-date tour that began on the Canadian east coast, Aaron is hoping to develop a following in the United States that matches her success in Europe, where she has topped magazine reader polls in Britain and Germany as the favorite female rock singer.

Aaron is coming off a successful appearance at England's Reading Festival where she appeared on a bill with Georgia Satellites and the venerable British rock group, Status Quo.

Her current tour will end in mid-October when she plans to return to Toronto to begin recording her fifth album.



© The Windsor Star