With the support of a new label and the imminent release of VII, his band's first studio album in seven years, Gene Loves Jezebel's Jay Aston should be a happy man. But instead, there's a weariness tugging at his voice that exposes a man entrenched in a bitter lawsuit with a former band member who has lately been touring under the Jezebel banner despite having departed the group nearly a decade ago. To make matters worse, the ex-Jezebel in question is Jay's twin brother, Michael.

"The first time we heard about him touring as Gene Loves Jezebel was on the Internet," explains Aston in a phone call from his L.A. home. "Pete Rizzo, our bass player, called me up and said, 'Hey, Gene Loves Jezebel is playing at a state fair in Arizona.' And that's where the whole thing started. He left us for ten years, slagged off all our music, and now he's out there doing songs like (1990's) 'Kiss of Life,' and he wasn't in the band then. He's singing all my words, all our songs, all our music, and he doesn't seem to think that's strange. At the minute, it could cost us about $20 grand to win a lawsuit against him, which is a lot of money, but we are actually having to do that. It's got my family involved ..."

He sighs, eager to move on to other subjects even as he returns repeatedly to the matter of his twin like a sore tooth. Between a series of snide, droll comments at his brother's expense ("He got a huge deal from Virgin when he left the band because they thought they were getting the guy who sang and wrote 'Desire;' Actually, they hadn't ..."), Aston briefly recounts the early days of Gene Loves Jezebel. The brothers were "popular kids" growing up, but it wasn't long before they came to odds with the tough, working-class Catholic aesthetic of Porthcawl, South Wales. "We used to hang out with art painters in gay clubs, where we wouldn't get beat up for looking the way we did at the time. When we first started playing gigs, we used to get turned off, and people would react very violently to us."

They found a better reception in the London goth scene of the early Eighties, where they established a loyal audience that would make hits of such dark, sensuous dance/metal anthems as "Desire" and "Jealous." Looking for an edge to distinguish themselves from contemporaries like the Southern Death Cult and Bauhaus, the twins wrapped themselves in scarves and androgyny. In time Michael drifted away from the band and Jay, the lead singer and songwriter, grew confident enough with the band's material to put substance above style, eventually discovering that "I didn't have to wear a wedding dress on stage to get applause."

After 1992's Heavenly Bodies, Gene Loves Jezebel was left in limbo when their label Savage folded. Aston began to test his wings as a solo artist, and even agreed to join Michael on a joint solo tour. He flew back home in disgust when he found his brother had booked them as Gene Loves Jezebel without rounding up the other band members. Aston expresses similar disgust for Desire, a recent 'greatest hits' packages assembled by Cleopatra Records featuring techno remixes of GLJ songs by acts like Love & Rockets, the Mission U.K., and Astralasia. "Those techno guys, they just don't understand depth; it's all top end and bottom end -- they don't understand the stuff that goes in between," he says. "These things do get played in clubs, but it doesn't really capture what we're about."

One person who did understand the essence of Gene Loves Jezebel was Taylor Robison, a fan who formed Robison Records with his own brother and managed to coax a new album out of his favorite band. Aston humored his new patron enough to experiment with Michael in the band again, but it didn't stick. Instead, VII finds Aston teamed with Jezebel stalwarts James Stevenson, Peter Rizzo and Chris Bell, and features many of the band's most melodically assured compositions to date. Highlights include "Uptown," an atypically buoyant pop gem, and the darkly romantic ballad "Who Wants to Go to Heaven," which Aston says was originally slated for the film Interview With a Vampire before Geffen opted to use Guns n' Roses at the last minute.

Aston can take comfort that the Jezebels aren't likely to receive such short shrift from Robison Records. "The plus side is, they literally will die for you," Aston laughs when asked about the perks of being on a fan-run label. "The down side is, they can be a little bit overzealous, and push other people too hard and expect them to have the same enthusiasm for us. I guess they're learning that not everybody is going to jump in the air because Gene Loves Jezebel has a new album coming out. You can't force things down people's throats. I think music has its own power, and if its good, then ultimately it snakes its way around to get through in the end."

RICHARD SKANSE
(April 5, 1999)