‘Metal Queen’ has resonance beyond 1980s shlock rock
A true survivor, Lee Aaron has embraced jazz and blues
“She comes like thunder risin’ from the ground/ She takes you under she moves without a sound.” — Lee Aaron, “Metal Queen”
Thirty four years later, I have clear memories of the day the new Lee Aaron album, “Metal Queen,” arrived on the arts desk at The Gazette, the student newspaper at Western University.
Courtesy of Attic Records, a Canadian indie label that targeted the student population with machinelike precision, it was latest in a slew of lo-fi rock releases that seemed to propagate like weeds.
Anvil. Triumph. Haywire. Killer Dwarfs. Their 1980s specialty was thudding Canadian crotch rock, and chief among their musical acquisitions was a hardrocking band whose female singer had aspirations of hair metal infamy.
Enter Lee Aaron, Metal Queen.
Depicted on the album’s cover in furs and a loincloth, holding a sword the size of a hockey stick, the Belleville born belter looked like a cross between Farrah Fawcett and Conan the Barbarian, an image amplified in an iconic video that saw her consorting with snakes and tarantulas while being set on fire.
Spiked with the kind of thundering-fromMount-Olympus shlock rock that would be gleefully satirized in the mock doc “This is Spinal Tap” that same year, I remember the snorting derision with which my hipster colleagues dispatched it to the delete bin.
A couple of generations later, it turns out Aaron, now 56, herself had mixed feelings about the marketing pitch, and more talent than anyone in 1984 could have imagined.
“You have to remember in the early 1980s the music industry was very sexist,” she intones over the phone from her Vancouver home, where she’s mom to a 14-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son.
“If you were a woman doing music at that time, there was a capitalization on your looks. Believe it or not, “Metal Queen” was written as pushback against that.”
The “cheesy marketing” was a problem, she admits, and the topless photo that appeared in Oui magazine with encouragement from her handlers seriously undermined her credibility.
Sure, she could have said no. But that’s in hindsight.
“I was in therapy in my 30s discussing how it impacted my life,” she confides, hesitant to blame others even now. “Maybe that’s too much info? I had to work through it. I think I’ll always have some anger and resentment.”
Give her a break. As a young women in an industry dominated by men, she wasn’t calling the shots and “there was definitely some exploitation going on.’’
“I was 19-years-old,” she says of the infamous nude shot. “The magazine came out and it changed my life — not for the better.”
“But I’m very mindful of not wanting to come off as a victim or hurt people’s feelings. They (her managers) probably thought they were doing the right thing.’’
She pauses, a tinge of emotion in her voice. “There is a reason young girls kill themselves because of one mistake — it’s the emotional impact.
“I would never recommend that my own child do that.”
Musically, also, it was a different time, with few female role models other than Heart’s Ann and Nancy Wilson, The Runaways and, arguably, Pat Benatar.
“It was shocking for a woman to be playing hard rock or aggressive music,” notes Aaron, adding context.
“I was treated as a novelty act. Thirty five years later, thankfully, I still have a career.”
I feel comfortable talking to this precise, literate woman, who appears to have not aged a day since 1984.
Not only is she smart and a survivor, she’s expanded her range since the Mulroney era to embrace jazz and blues, more dignified music genres that suit her gruff, sultry vocals and make her a welcome addition to the Kitchener Blues Festival.
“When you play jazz and blues, it’s a living, breathing thing with your musicians,” she notes.
She also added that while her Kitchener performance will meld both rock and blues influences, fans can still expect to hear her hits, including her 1989 smash, “Watcha Do to My Body.”
“People think ‘Wow, jazz and blues are so diametrically opposed to hard rock’, but they’re not.”
Even if they are, don’t knock the rock.
“Metal Queen,” cheesy as it was, made Aaron a star in Canada and, three decades later, has become a signpost with dual meaning.
“It’s beyond comprehension that people look at something I did as a kid in 1984 and still identify with it 25 years later,” she laughs, genuinely amazed. “For some people it just sticks in their psyche.
“In 2018, I play that song and people come up and say ‘that song got me through some tough times!’ They recognize it was supposed to be about finding your inner fire and strength.”
I’m not sure the cynical student journalists of 1984 appreciated the nuances, but from a distance of 34 years, I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.