One thing that never stales when it comes to running a music site is having the opportunity to speak with artists who, over the years, have inspired countless others to follow in their footsteps through their attitude, their enthusiasm, their innovation… their sheer bloody determination in some cases. Whatever it is that keeps them pushing the boulder of creativity up that hill, that essential spark is infectious, and this is certainly true of Lesley Woods of the Au Pairs.
A legendary figure in the post-punk firmament (although I suspect such a description would be met with an eye roll), Lesley’s influence travelled far beyond the band’s five-year stint to influence the likes of Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill, and Miki Berenyi of Lush in the years that followed.
Direct, honest, and vivacious, what really hits home over the course of the interview is the sheer, unalloyed enthusiasm that Lesley exhibits when talking about the band’s new line up and its new lease of life. It’s so clear, to hear Lesley describing the tour and her interactions with her fellow musicians, that this is something incredibly close to her heart, and it’s impossible to spend any time with her and not feel excited on her behalf.
It’s really nice to meet you and thank you so much for making time for me, I do appreciate it.
No problem, my pleasure.
To start with a little bit of history. I grew up listening to a lot of the alternative (for want of a better word) bands of the early 90s, and I remember Jarboe giving an interview about her initial reception in the punk scene – the misogyny and people just spitting on her on stage – and, as I understand it, the initial break-up of the Au Pairs was, at least in part, down to a similar thing…
Well, I think the misogyny, it gets to you after a while. It’s just very tough. You’re constantly fighting for your corner, and I think The Slits, well Viv Albertine at least, have spoken about this. Like one time they were walking down the street in Camden and someone stabbed Ari Up. It was just a complete and utter misogynistic attack. I think it gets to you, it wears you down.
Then, there’s the other things – the other factors – that are raining down on you, the lack of money; you’re staying in (usually) very uncomfortable, impoverished places while you’re playing gigs. You’re not looking after yourself or being healthy [laughs] being healthy wasn’t really very fashionable… And also, you probably didn’t have the money for things like medicine, hair conditioner, or whatever… toothpaste even.
So, yeah, with all the other factors raining down on you, this constant fight to keep your space, or to be heard, or to be seen. It just is another factor that you put in the basket that makes it harder to continue.
Yeah, so, it didn’t help.
Nowadays I find that the whole thing about going out and playing gigs is a much more pleasant experience. But obviously it really depends on how many resources are available to you.
But yeah, there’s still… we’ve been very lucky on this tour – we’ve been selling merch, staying in reasonably nice hotels, we’ve got a nice van and, although the money is reasonable, it’s fair.
But then, for example, we’re playing in Belfast on Saturday and the promoter just phoned me and said that they want to charge us to sell merch. I just think that sort of thing is disgusting and apparently, they were saying at the venue, first of all they wanted £250. And then, when that was pointed out as being completely ludicrous, they reduced it to £70.
But they shouldn’t be charging anything really. They’re just screwing you!
And I think it’s really hard even now being a musician. It’s hard to make a living. In fact, it’s virtually impossible. I mean, everyone in my band is still doing their day jobs. So, it’s really hard to make a living doing it and it just seems like there’s this tendency among some people – not everyone – but they just want a piece of you. You’re something there to be exploited, where you’re actually somebody in a group or a band, and you probably haven’t got any money to speak of. So, why does everybody think you’re this entity that somehow has all this money… it just makes me very angry.
[Pauses] Does that answer your question? [Laughs]
Yes! And pre-empts another one. It’s an interesting point that you make about the finances of the industry and percentages being taken out of merch sales – there is a risk that it takes the art out of it because you can end up pushing yourself down avenues where artistic concerns are secondary. And, perhaps somewhat naively, but I always believed to be quite pure in that regard.
Yeah, I know what you’re mean. You’re not supposed to care about money; it’s not on your list of priorities. I don’t know what your priorities are, but yeah, I get what you mean, you end up compromising too much and end up forgetting what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.
But I’m very lucky. I’ve not been in a band for a long time, so it’s still really novel to me. And, like I say, we’re getting decent money, we’re breaking even. No one’s making a vast profit out of it, but we’re being taken care of by really nice people. So, in that sense, the business seems to have changed, so we’re very lucky.
It’s still quite a novelty for me. And the gigs are going really well. And the whole thing has been a huge success which, for various reasons (well, obvious reasons), was quite important to me. After being away for forty years or something, not knowing how it was going to go and not really having much recent experience under my belt as to how it would be received. So, yeah, it’s been really great, I’ve really enjoyed it – I’m still enjoying it.
But yeah, I don’t know what will happen down the line. I don’t know if it will become increasingly difficult or more difficult, or if we might get put in a position where we have to compromise painfully – I don’t know if you know what I mean – but we’re lucky, we’ve not been put in that position.
So, yeah, I don’t know if that answers the question [Laughs]
It does. To go back to my earlier point about misogyny, the industry, and you’re place in it, were you aware – when the band split and after – of the influence you had on what came after? Specifically, bands like Bikini Kill and the Riot Grrrl movement?
[For a moment, Lesley seems slightly taken aback by the question, and there’s a brief pause before she answers] I mean, I just find that extremely… it’s amazing. I had no idea that I was in any way that kind of influential.
[Brightening] One of the nice things about being on the tour is that I tend to go out to the merch stand after we’ve played, just because I like to meet people, and I’ve been chatting to people out in the audience and I’ve had women come up to me and say “oh, that song you wrote about blah blah blah stopped my friend from becoming a heroin addict”.
Or, “that song you wrote about faking orgasms really made me be more assertive in bed” [laughs].
So, yeah, when I hear that the songs I’ve written and the way I presented them on stage in this uncompromising, quite angry way influenced other women and inspired them, you know, it’s a sort of chain reaction, isn’t it? It’s like “she can do it, I can do it”, you know what I mean. So, it’s great to have been a source of inspiration that has enabled other women to get up and do it on their own terms.
So, I think it’s great and I’m very proud of it, but I didn’t know that I would be perceived in that way. [Laughs]
It’s opening up avenues of having a voice I suppose – every section of society that has ever been marginalised at any point, when you give them a voice (even within a relatively niche realm), it opens ways of expressing yourself. And you see artists doing that now as well – bands like Idles or the Lambrini Girls or the Baby Seals are creating spaces for people who didn’t necessarily feel like they had a voice, so it is important.
Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, there’s that whole Loud women thing – it’s really interesting in that way, too because they’re providing a platform for young women – feminist rockers – to get up and do what they like, how they like. And they’re really great. They’re really great musicians, really great performers, they’re very entertaining, they’re very talented. And, yeah, it’s great that there is that space there for them. And that, yeah, I think it’s also really nice that there’s more of a tendence – I wouldn’t say a massive tendency – but there is some tendency on the part of male musicians, men in bands, guys in bands, to actually acknowledge their female counter parts and to pay homage to that.
Like Faris from The Horrors, he was on Radio 6 a few days ago and he really spoke up for artists like the Au Pairs, like The Raincoats, The Slits. He did a whole playlist of female artists from that post-punk era. Women who had challenged those nice-girly stereotypes and being sex objects, or whatever. These were all women who were involved in the punk / post-punk era who had been in bands. I thought that was really nice, but also very unusual How many guys in well-known bands go on the radio and do a playlist that basically consists of strident female artists – alternative artists?
How many?
Not many [laughs] is the answer to that!
In the intervening years, you went off to become a barrister, but you didn’t leave music completely behind because you did a very diverse EP called In the Fade which has some dub and ambient influences. So, you stayed connected to the music world where you could, right?
Yeah, I mean – as a barrister in the 1990s, it didn’t leave time for much else. I was doing a lot of assigned cases, and, at that point, asylum seekers could get public funding, so I was doing loads and loads of cases for asylum seekers from African countries such as Sierra Leone, the Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of Congo. Then, there was the whole thing that kicked off in Yugoslavia, the thing that kicked off in Rwanda. So, through the 90s, I got completely burned-out doing asylum cases.
I’d go to court, come home with a huge pile of papers, go through those; go to court; come home; and then another pile of papers! That was basically my life.
But then, there came a time when the government withdrew its funding from asylum seekers and a lot of firms that were instructing me stopped doing asylum cases. So, at that point, my livelihood went right down the pan, and it was a very stressful period because I didn’t know if I was going to lose my home or what.
So, I turned back to music because I found that, through playing music, it was a way of not worrying all the time. My friend took me to a guitar shop and made me buy a guitar. I had an acoustic guitar, and I actually bought an electro-acoustic – an Ovation – and I just started playing and writing songs. And then, gradually, stop-and-start fashion, I just started making my way back into it. I got a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW), Ableton, I did some courses and I started playing around with it, like recording and just messing about, really.
And, gradually, I got more and more into it.
Then, I thought… I wasn’t sure I was good enough to work with others or if I had anything to offer. So, I made some backing tracks and then went to see if I could get some solo performances with my backing tracks and play electric guitar – to see what would happen. So, I got an electric guitar, and I started hunting around to get gigs. I didn’t have any contacts but yeah, eventually I got offered some really good support slots with some big acts by some really good promotors and I got invited to play at some festivals – mainly because I was going out as Lesley Woods – Au Pairs, and they remembered me from my days in the band. So, that’s why they offered me these gigs and offered me these festivals.
That got my confidence up. And then, early last year, I had one of these promoters ask if I’d reform the Au Pairs. And actually, I had thought I’d love to reform the band, but I suspected very strongly that the original members wouldn’t do it. And I was right.
Anyway, he said to do it with new members. So, I then had to find new members, which I did, and I’m really very privileged at my time in life to be offered the opportunity to go out there and do what I’m doing. Which is really fantastic. I’m very happy [laughs].
It’s really cool to hear. And obviously I’m aware of some of the issues around bringing the band back but one of the less discussed issues (and we’ve seen this with other bands too), where you’ve got a group of people and not all of them want to come back, is that you have this legacy to which you’re very emotionally attached. We saw this most recently with the Wildhearts and it’s a very similar thing where the songs and the identity is so much a part of you – it must have been difficult but also emotionally liberating to take the step to be able to say yeah, this is the Au Pairs, albeit with new members?
Yeah, it has been exactly like that. I mean, to begin with, I had to get my confidence back. There were times when, like supporting the Chameleons, where I went out there on stage on my own and I just looked at the audience and I thought “what the fuck am I doing?”
It was really quite nerve-wracking playing in front of 750 – 1,000 people when you’re standing there on your own and they’re all looking at you. It’s nerve-wracking and no one, I think really; or at least a lot of people; appreciates how hard that is.
But yeah, the thing is, it is hard to say that I was the driving force in the Au Pairs. I mean, I led the band, I wrote the songs, the hallmark of the Au Pairs was the feminist, non-compromising identity that it had. I gave that to the band. That identity. That came from me. But it’s hard to claim that, because I think partly as women, we’re taught that we’re not supposed to boast. We constantly have to put ourselves down. If we do stand up for ourselves – where men do that… You know, The Skids: one original member. Admittedly the original members of The Skids died, but you know, it’s not seen as being anything unusual for a guy to say, “this is my band”.
But, for a woman to say it: “this is my band” [Pauses] I mean, you do get women who say that. Probably Chrissie Hynde says it without any problem – people respect it.
But, I’ve found one of the issues that I’ve had to deal with is this constant “we were supposed to be equals” and that means not acknowledging the identity of the Au Pairs, which unfortunately did come from me… it was my songs and my lyrics, and the way I stood up, and stood in the line of fire and got gobbed on and things thrown at me.
That’s what gave the Au Pairs their identity. The feminist, gender politics that the songs were about. It put the focus on women.
I think that, at the end of the day, you have to acknowledge that, and you have to accept it.
It is fair to say that I did lead the band; I did front it; and it is very much a part of me. The opportunity to reform the Au Pairs and do it with new people has just been the opportunity of a lifetime.
[Brightens] Yeah, and I’ve taken encouragement from other artists in my age group who are out doing it. Like Gina Birch or Patti Smith – a lot of older artists are getting up there and doing it because they want to do it. I take a lot of courage from them. So, yeah, it is… I am very privileged and I’m really happy that it’s happened before it’s too late.
Because it was like, if I don’t do it now, I never will. Do you know what I mean? I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I passed up this opportunity. I’d just be riddled with regret.
And it’s great. The new members I’ve got are wonderful. They’re lovely. They’re really good musicians, a great work ethic, and they’re just really nice people to hang out with in the back of the van [laughs].
To an extent, part of the issue is that, over the years, this myth has developed around the idea of a band as a mutually creative endeavour and, for a lot of artists when you’re young or just starting out, you sign a bit of paper that splits everything equally – but someone is usually the focal point, bringing the majority of a song, but you’re locked into publishing and writing contracts that say everything is equal. And this can really come back to bite you down the line.
It really depends on what you’ve signed and what agreements there were.
I mean, without going into too much detail, in a lot of cases you’ll find those agreements didn’t exist because when those bands got together people were doing it for the hell of it – for a laugh. One of the things they did not do was read up about copyright, a publishing contract, or a record label contract, or the difference between recording rights and publishing rights.
So, for example, in the Au Pairs, there were no written agreements. There were no agreements at all and what happened with us was that all the income was put in a pot and shared out equally between the four band members and the manager.
And also, the money that was in that pot was used to help other bands to give them a leg up. So, there were various bands like Malaria, The Bloods, and other local bands in Birmingham – they were able to record their records, but the money that paid for that was generated by Au Pairs’ income. Which was constituted by gig fees, a publishing advance from EMI, which only covered Europe, it didn’t cover most of the world. And that contract expired thousands of years ago.
But, in fact, the one things these bands did not do was to have legally enforceable agreements.
So, when you look at it… I get what you’re saying about “don’t sign anything without being informed about what you’re signing”. But I think what you’ll find in a lot of cases is that bands didn’t sign anything. There was no partnership agreement drawn up, no agreement about what to do if the band dissolved. Because people were just too busy getting off their heads and having a good laugh [laughs].
It’s true!
And also, I’m not saying skullduggery went on. But, you know, in the music business – I’m reading a book at the moment about the corruption that was in the music business in the 80s. And yeah, a lot of people got ripped off.
People in the music business have always gotten ripped off – look at what happened to Nina Simone.
So, yeah, there was a lot of skullduggery going on with certain people who were corrupt. But, even if there was skullduggery going on, there were very bad business decisions taken.
But, then again, that’s all part and parcel of the fun of it. Like you were saying earlier, you didn’t worry… you didn’t care! You know what I mean? As long as you could get in the van, speeding your tits off in the back of the Transit van going up the M6 to God-knows-where. Staying in a shitty, run-down B’n’B, with the roadies who are farting and burping and snoring! You didn’t care. Probably because you were off your trolley, but you were young, and you didn’t mind, and you were having a laugh.
Making sensible business decisions was probably the last thing you wanted to do [laughs].
Moving back to the present, how did you come across your new band members – I know you’ve got a couple of members from Thurston Moore’s band (who’s an absolutely amazing artist) – how did you get the band together? Did you have connections or did you advertise?
Well, when the promoter offered me the chance to do it with new members, I had a friend, Giles Sibbald, who does a podcast and he knows everybody and everything. I asked him if he knew any female bass players and he suggested Estella who plays bass in Big Joanie, which is a band I forgot to mention earlier. They’re a brilliant all-girl punk band and they’re black women and they’re great and I love them. I’d seen them a few times and I loved them.
So, I emailed Estella and I said that it was Lesley Woods of the Au Pairs, we’d met at a gig, and I was reforming the band – would she be interested. And she said she would. She was familiar with the Au Pairs and the album, Playing with A Different Sex. So, that was a ‘yes’ from her.
And then, I don’t have a massive number of contacts – I’ve got more now and I’ve made a lot more over the last year or so – but one other person I thought might be able to help me out was Thurston. So, I emailed him on Instagram, and I asked him if he knew any great drummers and guitarists. He suggested Alex, who he works with, and Jem. Jem plays drums and Alex plays guitar. And Alex also works with Pere Ubu, he’s brilliant. He’s a brilliant musician. And he plays piano, clarinet. He’s just absolutely phenomenal. He’s really great. And Jem is a fantastic drummer. So, yeah, that’s how I got them.
And they all said yes! I was just really bowled over that they all said yes! I thought that why would say “no, sorry, I’m busy!” [Laughs]
So, I was really dead chuffed. I set up a rehearsal to run through three songs off the album. I picked one that I thought was the hardest one. I can’t remember which three we did, but we got together and I was just so amazed that they’d actually learnt their parts. They’d learnt them and they’d learnt them well. They knew their parts better than I did mine [laughs]. I hadn’t sung or played my parts on the album for a long, long time. So, I had to learn them as well.
But I think they’re much more experienced at learning, because that’s what they do. They’re musicians. They’re working musicians. They have day jobs- well, Alex does, he teaches music and Jem teaches drums. But they’re actually much more experienced musicians than me in the sense that they’re able to go and learn those tracks. You know, so they can fit in with any band situation they’ll just go away and learn what that person wants them to do. I don’t have that kind of experience at all. You know, if someone said to me to learn a specific guitar part, I’d be like “ummmmmmm” [Laughs]
So, yeah, the material came together really quickly. We did do a lot of rehearsals. The hours they’ve put in is no one’s business. I’ve put in a lot of hours too. We’ve all worked really, really hard. In fact, everyone’s worked really hard on this tour. I’ve worked really hard. I’m organising everything as well because we can’t afford a tour manager or a manager at the moment. They’ve all worked really hard putting in rehearsal time and everything. The guy who’s doing, if you like, the tour managing and the driving, he’s worked really hard. He does the driving and that’s hard [laughs]. Then, his son is doing the merch and he did the design. He’s worked really hard. Everyone has. It’s a greta team.
It is a team effort, and it is wonderful to be part of that kind of team, all so committed and dedicated to making it work. It’s really nice to be part of something like that, because I haven’t been part of something like that for a long time. And it’s really nice to connect with the audiences too. It’s just such a buzz, you know.
I mean like one gig we were doing, there were people in the audience singing the words, that really got me, you know. It’s great, yeah! It’s one of the best things I think anyone can do really. Get a band, get on the road, do a nice tour – a great tour – and be with such lovely people and play in front of such lovely audiences as well.
I don’t think it gets any better than that.
Au Pairs are playing their first shows in over 40 years – headlining with Gina Birch & The Unreasonables as support and additional shows with The Skids
Tickets available for all shows from agmp.co.uk
