As one-quarter of Bucks Fizz, Jay Aston landed a run of hit records throughout the 1980s, launching with the Eurovision-winning anthem Making Your Mind Up and leading to chart-toppers The Land Of Make Believe and My Camera Never Lies, along with classics such as Piece Of The Action, When We Were Young and I Hear Talk.
Four albums in and with ever-growing tension and band politics, the then-24-year-old exited the line-up in 1985 following a coach crash that left her hospitalised, but her transition to post-Fizz life wasn’t easy.
“I had a lot of litigation and it was awful. I won all of my cases but lost everything I owned – literally, the shirt off my back,” Jay sighs. “It damaged me and that’s probably why I’ve been so reticent to put anything out, because I really had a love-hate relationship with music. It was my passion – and it had been since I was a kid – but then I had a really nasty experience and I was burnt from it.”
It didn’t hinder her creativity, however, and in the years that followed, through the tough times, she continued to work on material for solo albums that would never truly get off the ground. “I’d been writing since I left the band in 1985 and had all these songs around, so I just thought, ‘It’s time to put them out’,” adds the singer-songwriter of her latest releases, ‘Alive And Well’ and ‘I-Spy’, both of which finally made their digital debut earlier this month.
The former did materialise officially back in the early 2000s, but its release coincided with Jay’s pregnancy with her daughter Josie, so promo was minimal and, within five years, she was reunited with Cheryl Baker and Mike Nolan for the TV show, ‘Pop Goes The Band’, which led to her rejoining the group, with which she continues to this day.
But the recordings, which are worlds away from the shiny Bucks Fizz brand of pop and lean into various influences – from Kate Bush, David Bowie and Genesis, to opera and classical music that her dad would play around the family home – as the young musician attempted to reestablish her place in the world.
“I couldn’t quantify what this has cost me in terms of time and money – when I got my publishing deal in the ‘90s, I spent every penny of it on recording more songs,” she chuckles. “I literally was like a homeless person; sofa surfing on my girlfriend’s sofas for years and recording these songs. It was weird because I wanted to keep writing new songs but I was really scared to do anything with them, so these projects just stayed in my head.
“I can’t put a price on it, other than that I could probably have had a couple of other houses if I hadn’t spent my money making these albums,” Jay laughs – noting the irony that, in those wilderness years, she considered a career change as a financial advisor. She trained, but “realised it was the most boring job on the planet” and gave up soon thereafter.
Listening back to the material now, she calls the projects a testament to her “genuine passion and love for music”. “I do love the power of the English language to convey emotions and thoughts and feelings,” Jay smiles, “and some of them have got a bit of a political edge as well. Some of them are about my frustration with how things have been screwed up here, over the decades, through politics and mismanagement. But I come from a band that was known as being squeaky clean, so it was hard for the industry – even when I got my publishing deal – to get their heads around the girl from Bucks Fizz writing songs like the Pigs Are On The Cake or Sorrow’s Wedding.”
She found herself collaborating with another chart-topper who had been through the music industry ringer herself; Jay’s sister-in-law, Shakespears Sister’s Marcella Detroit, appears as a co-writer on a number of tracks, which originated in the period after she was ousted from the duo. “That was very difficult for her and I think we were both a bit damaged by what happened to us,” Jay reflects. “But hey, she’s still knocking out albums today!”
As is Jay, who released The Fizz’s latest album, ‘Everything Under The Sun’, back in 2022, and the trio will return to indigo at The O2 for another headline gig this summer. The solo releases, she says, are an added bonus for longtime fans.
“I had mouth cancer five years ago and I think I realised that pursuing gigging solo stuff isn’t going to happen,” Jay admits. “So for anybody that’s interested in my work as an artist, rather than being a member of Bucks Fizz, they might find these of interest. Because there’s always been a good fan base around the band and they’re always interested in what we’re doing – they know more about me than I do!”
