Making Your Mind Up and Make Believe: A Conversation with Bucks Fizz’s Jay Aston

Bucks Fizz became one of the UK’s biggest pop acts after winning the Eurovision Song Contest in 1981 with their famous skirt-ripping dance routine. Their song, Making Your Mind Up, went to number one in nine countries, and was followed by hit singles including My Camera Never Lies and Land of Make Believe.

More than 30 years on, the original members of Bucks Fizz – Cheryl Baker and Jay Aston, with founder member Mike Nolan are still ripping skirts off to cheers from thousands of fans old and new.

See more info at Formerly of Bucks Fizz

The Fan Carpet’s Marc Jason Ali had the pleasure of talking to Jay Aston as they embark on their Autumn tour, she tells us about winning Eurovision, what fans can expect from the tour and being a group for ALL generations…

I’ll start with, how does it feel to be embarking on a brand new tour this autumn, getting the band back together?

Super-fun, we actually did a tour last year with our fourth new member, a guy Bobby McVay who we’ve known for years, so that was great warm-up and this is obviously our anniversary year, and it’s going incredibly well, we’ve already done a few little shows in Spring and for the main part of the tour is September to November.

Looking forward to it.

The music of Bucks Fizz has been incredibly popular since the 80s, what do you think the secret is to that popularity and success is?

Well now, I think somehow we connected with fans, we had a lot of very young fans who have grown up with us and I think it was timely obviously with winning Eurovision which obviously helped hugely, but also we were just kind of happy and light and fun thing. When we kind of came out of the punk era together and being a little bit more… I guess it was a different thing, we where also one of the first manufactured bands, two boys, two girls so we were quite unique I suppose.

Cool, absolutely. You touched on Eurovision but other than the Eurovision winning song Making Your Mind Up what other Bucks Fizz songs has changed things for you?

Definitely Land of Make-Believe because it was the first track that was another biggest selling hit; it was number one in the UK for three weeks and it charted all over Europe and Australia, it really made sure that we weren’t another one hit wonder, it gave us a career basically.

Over the years you’ve had some amazing experiences, what stands out for you?

Well winning Eurovision really was a huge high, but also we went to Europe, Australia, Thailand, South America, Chile, just being able to see the world at a young age in style I suppose and it’s just quite an amazing thing.

Is that sort of magic still going, with obviously touring last year and you’ve got your upcoming tour this autumn?

Yes, I mean we’re not flying in and out of Heathrow every week and it’s just obviously UK based and then we were doing an awful lot of UK/European promotion, that’s kind of the main difference.

We always toured then, but now with the benefit of having done this and all having done different things as well, we can put together a show of fan favourites and our favourites, we’re far more in control of how we do the shows, whereas before we were only usually promoting the new album and therefore just doing those tracks essentially.

Right, so this time is more of a greatest hit?

Kind of yeah, seeing as we know them because they’re tried and tested that we know they work, plus they show us off individually as well as collectively.

Brilliant, that sounds wonderful. Other than your works with Bucks Fizz, what do you have coming up?

I’ve got two things, I’ve got a solo album coming out, which will be my third solo album which will be coming out at the beginning of the tour and also I set up my own YouTube channel and so there’ll be all sorts of stories going up there over the next few years, so I’m quite excited about that because it gives me a chance to present things that I’m interested in, I just did one about fans and I’m going to put up some really diverse stuff up there because obviously I’m interested in other things, other than just what we do, I can be me on it.

Yeah and it’s a great platform, we use it ourselves, yeah it’s a great platform to use.

Are there any artists today that you would like to collaborate with?

Interesting, well the thing is when we do the festivals we’re on the bill with a lot of old 80’s acts anyways, so you kind of end up working with them.

In terms of song writing, I’d like to write for some acts like Katy Perry maybe even Beyoncé, I mean that would be fantastic, I love writing songs that’s my passion and I can write to order so to be given that opportunity would be fantastic, not that it’ll ever happen (laughs).

(laughs) Never say never

I think they write most of their stuff and it’s a really closed shop, but no mind (laughs)

Maybe, but never say never, you never know (laughs)

Going back to the tour, what can fans expect this time around?

Well all the hits as I said, lots of costumes, all the production, we do individual stuff, we also do an 80s medley so a party atmosphere really and interestingly about 50% of our audience have never seen us before so it’s quite interesting that we’re still gaining new fans, that people still want to come and check us out.

Yeah Bucks Fizz for all generations.

Yeah we literally have three generations come, with grandparents and parents who now have got their kids with them, so quite a wide demographic, we always was actually, we’ve got a wide demographic of fan but no it’s the next generation (laughs).

Absolutely. What advice would you give to someone trying to break into the industry?

Get very good at being unique because there’s so much out there, try and stand out because you do something different to other people. It’s like you’ve got to really hone your skills and stand out or got to be the whole package, you can’t just write songs, you’ve got to do the production, photograph the videos, you’ve got be creative as well beyond just your song writing.

Absolutely and that kind of goes with anything I suppose…

Yeah you’ve got to do your own everything to get noticed and then if you start getting loads of hits then other people will try and muscle in on your work, but that’s the way it’s done.

Absolutely. Will we be seeing you or any of the band on TV at any point or anything like that, films or anything?

Yeah we’ve all got things that we’ve pre-recorded; I think I’ve got shows and Cheryl just did a solo thing. I’ve got a couple of things, Darren and I are doing one next week but those sort of things get announced on all our Formerly of Bucks Fizz website and there’s a few things recorded that will be shown over the next few months.

All building up the tour?

Yeah.