By DJ Monk
Until recently, it had been a while since we checked in at the Dead-End Drive-In… so long, in fact, that the popcorn had gone stale and the beer is flatter than the road leading up to it (not that it ever was the liveliest tipple in the first place). But, what better way to reacquaint ourselves with the flicker of the golden screen than with this, the first ever live offering from Canadian songstress Lee Aaron?
In the mid- to late-eighties, Lee Aaron was one of a small band of women, alongside the likes of Lita Ford and Doro Pesch, who proved that they could both look beautiful and be extremely talented. And, for a while, the Canadian vied with her Californian and German counterparts for the title of the “Queen Of Metal” – with Aaron arguably just beating her rivals to the punch, thanks to calling her breakthrough 1984 album ‘Metal Queen’. But then, as things inevitably do in the music business, a lot changed. In the 1990s, while Pesch trod water, both Aaron and Ford saw their heavy metal careers go into freefall. The latter quit the music business almost completely, retreating to the Caribbean to raise her family, before re-emerging into the spotlight earlier this decade with the stunning comeback ‘Living Like A Runaway’ album. Aaron, on the other hand, pursued a totally different route, transforming herself into a jazz/torch singer of some repute; but, the smell of leather and the roar of a guitar are hard to resist, and, following what was supposed to be a one-off appearance at the Sweden Rocks festival in 2011, she returned to her rock roots with her ‘Fire And Gasoline’ album, released in 2016. Later that year, she made her long overdue live return to the shores of this here Über Kingdom, with a triumphant opening night special guest slot performance at the now sadly defunct Rockingham festival.
‘Power, Soul, Rock N’ Roll’ was recorded, as its title suggests, over two nights in Germany, on the second leg of the same tour, and shortly before the release of her bluesier follow-up, ‘Diamond Baby Blues’, tracks from which understandably feature heavily on this pair of spliced together performances, recorded in Nuremberg and in front of 20,000 fans at the famed Bang Your Head festival, starting with her cover of Deep Purple’s ‘Mistreated’. Just as on the album, the song takes on a totally different feel when sung from the female perspective, and Aaron does it more than justice with her own powerful delivery.
However, as on most of the indoor footage captured on the DVD version, the visual aspect of the performance is ruined by the washed-out blue and red lighting and some very strange uses of needless split screens, which are distracting to say the least. The fact that the songs are also out of sequence – set opener ‘Tom Boy’ is bumped to second on the list – and with MTV style intro screens between each one also ruins any sense of spontaneity you would expect from a “live” release. In addition, continuity geeks will have a field day: on one song, Aaron is wearing a snazzy purple leather jacket, the next she’s in a black T-shirt and then the jacket is back on again for the next tune! Why not just record the full set from beginning to end and release it the way it was performed?
These quibbles aside, ‘Power, Soul, Rock N’ Roll’ proves that Aaron has plenty of the first two qualities – she can still gulder with the best of ‘em – and knows how to do the latter, helped by a killer backing band, not least in the shape of guitarist Sean Kelly. With a healthy smattering of old school anthems such as the inevitable ‘Metal Queen’ and the always hair-raising ‘Barely Holding On’, as well as a few choice rarities in the shape of ‘Rock Candy’ and ‘Whatcha Do To My Body’ (even though the latter is either obviously overdubbed or atrociously edited to make it look like a vintage TOTP performance), there is still plenty to warm the cockles of long term fans’ hearts and ensure that those ‘80s wet dream fantasies are still fulfilled.
- ‘Power, Soul, Rock N’ Roll – Live In Germany’ is released on Friday (20 September).
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