‘Time’s not on my side’: Au Pairs singer Leslie Woods on reforming ’80s punk pioneers – without her bandmates | punk

AAt the height of her music career in the early 1980s, Leslie Woods was accustomed to dealing with angry men. As the singer and guitarist of Au Pairs, a four-piece Birmingham post-punk band, she recalls that “men were only aggressive because you were a woman on stage”. At one show, the band was on the bill with UB40 and Angelic Upstarts, only the latter did not attend. “So the crowd, 95% of whom were skinheads, were mobbing us and throwing anything they could get their hands on – including the trash.” Was she afraid? “No, I was rubbish at the time. I went to the front of the stage and said, ‘You missed it.’

After the band split in 1983, Woods hoped her days of dealing with overt misogyny were over. But then she retrained and became a lawyer. “When I came to the bar [in the 1990s]Women couldn’t even wear pants. I used to have guys say to me: What color underwear are you wearing today, Leslie? “It’s better now, but at the time the law was much worse than music in how it treated women.”

Woods – now 67 – still works as a lawyer specializing in immigration law, although in the past 15 years she has returned to music, giving occasional solo concerts and releasing a self-titled EP, “In the Fade,” in early 2025. Next month, she returns to the stage to tour the UK under the name Au Pairs. Led by Woods, the band now includes new members: Estella Adiri of the black feminist punk band Big Joanie, and Jim Daulton and Alex Ward of the group Thurston Moore. “They’re all much younger than me, but so are most people,” she says with a dry laugh.

I met Woods over tea and biscuits at her east London home, where she lives with her little dog, Dusky. Woods seems almost comically unfiltered: pithy remarks about his former partners, both in law and in the music industry, always followed by the more guarded, “Maybe you should put that down, or I’ll get in trouble.” Woods is currently diving into Au Pairs training and loving every minute of it. “The band knows the old songs but we’re working on new things too. I hope we can produce an album.” But not everyone is so happy about the Au Pairs reboot. When they broke up, the band – which besides Woods consisted of guitarist Gene Monroe, bassist Paul Fouad, and drummer Pete Hammond – was not on good terms. Despite occasional email communication, Woods says they haven’t been in the same room in more than 40 years.

It was the promoter who originally approached Woods about a tour. He hoped to reunite the original band but when Woods objected, saying the others wouldn’t be keen, he suggested hiring new musicians. Woods says she contacted the former members as a courtesy. “I told them, ‘I’m fixing the Au Pairs system. Are you interested in that?’ They responded, as I imagined, and said, ‘No.'” Woods didn’t tell them a tour was on the table, because she wanted to “get to know them first. “It’s no good going on tour if you can’t do it.”

After they refused to participate, Woods trademarked the band’s name and began finding new musicians. When the tour was announced, the former members sent a press release outlining their displeasure. In a joint statement to The Guardian, Monroe, Fouad and Hammond said Woods asked them if they were interested in reforming, “but the offer was neither genuine nor amicable, and we responded individually, declining for various reasons. Days later we discovered that she had trademarked the band’s name behind our backs.” We asked her to clarify that this was her project and that it was different from Au Pairs – unfortunately the tour was advertised with the cover of our first album, which misled people into thinking it was the original group… The tour should not have come out under the name Au Pairs with only one original member. They challenged any suggestion that Woods was the driving force. “We were all the driving force and fought to keep the band’s music in the public domain.”

Woods admits the tour was initially advertised on a third-party website using a photo of the original lineup, but says she requested the photo be removed. For former members, it’s a case of “we don’t want to do this, but we don’t want you to do this,” she says. “It’s very disturbing that something that started with such great ideals and in such a happy state of mind has disintegrated to this point,” she adds.

The Au Pairs formed in 1978 after a chance meeting between Woods and Fouad at a bus stop in Birmingham. The couple began dating and began putting together a band, although the relationship ended before the release of Au Pairs’ first album. Woods was studying philosophy and French at the University of Birmingham at the time, but dropped out and moved to Keighley in Staffordshire, which “was a hotbed of left-wing and feminist politics”. Woods turned what she was learning about gender politics into angry, funny, and honest songs.

The Au Pairs’ debut LP, 1981’s Playing With a Different Sex, proved to be a thrilling display of meandering, guitar-driven rock and discursive songwriting. Tracks included “We’re So Cool,” which examined open relationships — “I don’t mind if you want to bring someone home” — and “Come Back,” which depicted a woman making a sarcastic comment as a man tries to bring her to orgasm: “Does your finger hurt? I can feel you’re hesitant.”

For Woods, the words were “the antithesis of the things a boy and a girl fall in love with.” Was she worried about people’s reaction? “Not at all. Although I remember Paul’s mother saying: ‘You shouldn’t sing about it, it’s private.’ But I guess you’re brave when you’re young. Elsewhere, the song ‘Obviously’ is about a time when gender roles no longer mattered, while ‘Michelle’s Headache’, about being a drug addict to protest the ills of society, was inspired by Woods’ first girlfriend who ‘was a bit of a drug addict’. Woods says her drug of choice was speed, ‘partly because I had a terrible complex “On obesity, the only thing speeding did was stop me from eating.”

Kathleen Hanna has cited the Au Pairs as an influence on her band Bikini Kill and the wider riot grrrl movement, and Kurt Cobain is said to have been a fan. Critics were also full of praise. Lester Bangs, praising them alongside Raincoats and Slits, wrote that “the best rock and roll anywhere today is played by women: last night I saw God in the form of Au Pairs,” while the revered Greil Marcus wrote a paean to them in his book In the Fascist Bathroom. Along with the provocative lyrical content, Woods’ sexuality has become a point of discussion in interviews. Although she identifies as bisexual, at the time it was easier to tell reporters that she was gay, even though she knew it could hurt her career. “There were any number of male artists in the closet at the time, for good reason. But I think being in a band, and being around people who support you, your values ​​and your politics, puts you in a kind of bubble.”

Despite the current strained relationship between Woods and her former bandmates, the singer still looks back with pride and affection on the early days, when they were a group of friends touring the country and having a good time. “If you look at the early photos, we all look so happy. When you start out, it’s great. It’s like you’re at the beginning of a relationship. You’re so happy and in love with each other and everyone else. Your passion for the music and the chemistry, it’s all there. But unfortunately, it doesn’t always last.”

Things started to go downhill with their second album, 1982’s Sense and Sensuality, which saw the Au Pairs embrace a more eclectic and rhythmic sound. Woods says the band “lost our sense of musical direction and the new material wasn’t being worked on enough. But we ran into it financially, and we had to get into the studio.” At the same time, she was losing her voice because she was “butchering” it during live performances trying to make her voice heard over choppy PA systems. Woods was also in a volatile relationship, which she preferred not to go into detail about, but which was “very painful. I don’t think I was open with anyone about it because I probably felt ashamed or embarrassed.”

After giving more than 200 shows in the space of one year, the Au Pairs were exhausted and stopped communicating with each other. Then their record company went bankrupt. Monroe was the first to leave the band. Woods says Au Pairs was later offered a new contract with another label and the opportunity to record with producer Steve Lillywhite, but she met with Fouad and Hammond to discuss it and they said they had had enough. “And that was it. And that was the end.”

With the band ending, Woods left Birmingham and returned to live with her parents in Stevenage. Her desire for a fresh start led her to enroll for a law degree. “I thought: ‘What can I do that is really difficult that will help me pull myself together?’” The training continued for five years. “I never thought I would pass the exams. When I got the results, I had gone to Paris and my mother phoned and said: “I passed.” I told her, “Oh no. I have to get on with work now.”

Woods has now been an attorney for 35 years. At the time, she always intended to return to making and performing music. “Now seems like the right time to reboot Au Pairs,” she says. “At my age, it’s not like there’s a future ahead of you. Time’s not on my side, and I think I can make a good album. I don’t want to leave this world without trying. I don’t think I’ve done my best yet.”

Au Pairs Tour from Januaryfirst with Skids and later with Gina Birch and Unbelievable.