LIVE FOR TODAY NOT TOMORROW
A CONVERSATION WITH JAY ASTON OF GENE LOVES JEZEBEL
Gene Loves Jezebel formed in 1980, by twins Jay Aston and Michael Aston. Now in 2024, the band is officially Jay Aston’s Gene Loves Jezebel and in the almost 45 years since the band continues to make new music. The band now consists of Jay Aston, along with James Stevenson (guitars), Smiley (drums, percussion), Pete Rizzo (bass). In 2023 they released their 15th studio album, Love Death Sorrow, was released to critical acclaim and much success.
I recently caught up with Jay Aston, via Zoom, for a conversation about Jay Aston’s Gene Loves Jezebel, their most recent album, and their upcoming tour. Aston recalled the first time Gene Loves Jezebel performed in Toronto. “The first time we played Toronto, I can’t remember where it was, we did the gig and we thought we played well, and we came off the stage and the audience didn’t react much. So, we went downstairs to our dressing room, there was a pinball machine down there and we were hanging out. Ten minutes came by, and we heard all this noise, they were clapping for us to come back on. Which was unbelievable and we ended up doing three encores. It was amazing, really, because we thought we went down poorly. I guess it was just a strange reaction at the time. But it was awesome, and the reaction was great. It is a bit surprising we haven’t been back for so long.”
Gene Loves Jezebel have not been in Canada since they performed on a fantastic triple bill with Spear Of Destiny and The Chameleons. Aston is excited to return with The Alarm and Belouis Some. “Mike Peters is from North Wales, and I am from South Wales, so there is the Welsh connection,” remarked Aston. “James, my guitarist, plays with The Alarm a lot, so there’s the connection there. Mike and James mentioned there might be a chance they would like us to come on tour with them. So, I said, ‘yeah, that would be great.’ We are going to rehearse in North Wales, and we will be over soon.”
The Live Today Love Tomorrow tour is very lengthy for all three bands. It begins on May 1, 2024, in New Orleans and they are really crossing North America. Aston and the band have to prepare for a rather lengthy tour.
“There are actually two legs to it. We go all the way to July, we have two weeks off, then there is another massive tour. A lot of gigs. So, we rehearse. We have a large repertoire, and we have the new album and we only played a few songs on a recent U.K. tour, but we could do the whole album. We are really happy with it and people have responded really well. But we also know fans want to hear “Desire”, “Jealous” and “Motion Of Love” and all those things from our past. We try to amuse ourselves every night. We like to jam a little too, but we don’t have long to play, 45 mins or an hour, or whatever it is, so we have to own it. The band is great, for me it is easy, singing wise. You just learn how to rest your voice, take it easy. I don’t smoke or any of that stuff, so that helps. As you get older, you definitely have to be more careful, but so far it has been fantastic.”
Sometimes, for the older songs, the band has to become reacquainted with the material, especially if they have not performed it recently. “Pete, James, and Smiley on drums, who is The Alarm drummer too, which means he will be doing two shifts, they like to get it down and know how the song is going to end. Some of the songs we haven’t played for a long time, because we like to put fresh ones in for our own amusement and there’s always some weird chords we have forgotten. You go back to the recordings, and you are like ‘I didn’t know there was an F sharp, minor seventh, flat five in it or whatever,” laughed Aston. “The new songs, we need to rehearse it because we have only done a few of them live.”
PURCHASE LOVE DEATH SORROW VIA CLEOPATRA RECORDS
The most recent Jay Aston’s Gene Love Jezebel album, Love Death Sorrow is an interesting album containing new songs written by the band, but also some interesting covers.
“It all started by mutual friends, one of them a Canadian girl from Vancouver, who wanted me to get in touch with Cleopatra records because a lot of my peers are on that label. I was doing solo work and solo songs, because I like performing on my own too. It is scary but I love it and it is exhilarating. So I was in L.A., so I went to Cleopatra and they gave me some studio time for my solo stuff and if we both like it, we can put an album out. I just happened to mention we have the Gene Loves Jezebel back catalogue, which we own, and we thought it would be good to put it through Cleopatra. They suggested I do a new Gene Loves Jezebel album. So, I talked to the guys, and they were up for it. So, they said why not do some covers, and we have never done covers because we are very close as a band and we all have different tastes in music. So, we decided to do half the album as covers.”
Coming up with the covers became somewhat of a challenge for the band. “Pete and I always loved that song, “Another Girl, Another Planet” (originally by The Only Ones). The band played it really well, but it sounded like a cover band. So, I grabbed the acoustic, and made it more melancholy. It is a dangerous song to do because there have been other covers. The others we just picked out of the air and fortunately they all fit together as an album. It was very random, the songs that we picked. We were going to do one Cure song, which is James’s territory as you can imagine, and we were going to do “Boys Don’t Cry”. But when we played it, it sounded very similar to “Another Girl, Another Planet”, so we decided to do “In Between Days”. We worked really hard on the album, and I think all the songs just fit together really well. We tried to make the covers sound like us and hopefully we have added to them in some ways. That is always your dream. And we are proud of our new songs too.”
Covering other artists, especially a band like The Cure, whose fans are very protective of the songs can be, as Aston said, very dangerous. However, Gene Loves Jezebel fans can be the same way when others cover their songs. “I don’t mind when people cover our songs, I don’t get precious about it. I always thought Bowie wasn’t very nice when he slagged off Bauhaus for their cover. In fact, they were fans and by covering his tune were flattering him. When someone covers my song, I am flattered that they should consider one of our songs. I like to hear it, really.”
For the new album, the band was in the studio at the same time working with each other and producing the live in the studio sound. “We are an organic band, which means we all have to plug in. I will strum a few chords and an idea might come up. When you are in the same room, someone can hear a song or say it’s not working. If we did where someone was in L.A., and James was wherever he was, and I was in Wales, we would never arrive at where we arrived with the songs. It is very different; it has its own distinct sound. That’s the essence, having your own identity. We do have our moments when we don’t get on, especially if we are talking about politics,” laughed Aston. “But we are very close as a band, thrash things out. We breathe well together. That’s why we are still together. We are great friends. And we travel well together. It’s just as well as we will be traveling together soon. We have a lot in common and we share a lot of interests. We are all different in some respects, but we do get along. We are very easy going.”
Aston has the last word about the band and their current standing. This is not a band that rolls into town or lives the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle, in fact, quite the opposite. “If you like popping off to guitar shops or pawn shops. Or stopping at nice cafes or just kicking about a town you have never been to, hanging out, meeting people and having fun. Then we are the band you want to hang out with. There’s no hierarchy, we are commies really. We are all equal, no one is better than anyone, and that’s how we travel. There are no stars, well, obviously I am the best looking and the star,” laughed Aston.
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