TOYAH ON
BBC RADIO WALES
WITH JANICE LONG
30.8.2021
BBC RADIO WALES
WITH JANICE LONG
30.8.2021
TOYAH: Hello Janice! How are you?
JANICE: I'm fine, how are you?
TOYAH: I'm really good. Do you ever visit Chiswick still?
JANICE: (laughs) Well, I was living there until I moved back to Liverpool.
TOYAH: Oh, wonderful! I think of you all the time
JANICE: Yeah, I always used to bump into you Chiswick High Road or thereabouts. Are you still there?
TOYAH: Yeah, I've still got the apartment there but obviously in lockdown I think I've been there once in 15 months . . .
JANICE: Oh, really? I used to like going to The Swan for lunch or dinner, great food
TOYAH: Oh yeah that place rocks! (they both laugh) Thank you Janice so much for playing the singles because that is just amazing for you to do that.
JANICE: No, it's great, it's great. So as I said, your energy, knows no bounds, does it? You never stop. Your head must be whizzing all of the time?
TOYAH: It's very strange because when lockdown happened all live performances obviously stopped but so did our industry. And we were sitting at home thinking, well, what's happened to the people that put the PA’s up, who put the lighting or put the stages up?
We looked at each other and we thought, we've got to do something. We can't just sit here. So I started doing these crazy little films, and we were getting the most amazing amount of hits. The first film I posted on a Sunday lunchtime, end of May - within five minutes got 100,000 replies. Most were from the Philippines, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Australia. And the message was always the same flavour. The message was "thank you, you've lifted our spirits" and after that how could we stop?
We just felt that we needed to kind of recognise that every single person on this planet was in the same condition. We were locked into rooms, and we either felt these rooms became our prison, or places of extreme expression. And for me . . . I just got so inspired that the thought that here we were unable to physically move yet we could contact so many people . . .
JANICE: It's interesting, isn't it, because I often hear “we can't hear what you do” - yes you can, we all know - if your internet savvy - it's global. Anything you do is global.
TOYAH: It’s global and it's there forever. Yeah, I find it incredibly exciting. I mean part of what I do verges on the outrageous because I just want to put two fingers up to people who think that a woman's career is over once she passes 30. I feel more rebellious now at the age of 63 than I ever have done, and I've got more guts now, at the age of 63.
JANICE: Yeah, that confidence certainly is inspirational and evident in what you're doing. How did "Sunday Lunch" come about? Was that just a chat between you and Robert?
TOYAH: No, it started with me teaching him how to dance because I wanted him to move (Janice cackles) And Robert is absolutely firm in his opinion, but he was having a great time during lockdown and didn't need any help. But what I saw was someone that just did not leave their room. His den, the door was permanently closed. He said he was meditating or writing a book and what I saw was a sedentary 74 year old. I started teaching (him) dances.
What I found remarkably beautiful, because we know my husband is an extraordinary human being - he’s a great player, great intelligence, great originality . . . He cannot tell his left foot from his right (Janice laughs) He just cannot dance, and I got addicted to trying to teach him to dance and eventually he got fed up of having to dance and agreed to do music with me. And that's when we started doing rock songs, and then it really took off.
JANICE: How brilliant! I always remember that slight movement, I think in "(All Star) Mr and Mrs” (TV show on ITV) wasn't it? It said “coming up on the next episode Toyah Willcox and Robert Fripp!” and he was there … I went I don’t believe that!
TOYAH: Well, he’s a pretty normal human being. He is very capable of doing Saturday night TV and I think he did that to support me. Because at that time I was doing tonnes of acting, I was on the road in theatre productions and he took part in it and I thought he was absolutely fabulous in it but whatever environment you put him in, he just comes out as cool as New York City.
He has such a cool presence about him. He never gets flustered, certainly not in public and I put him through quite a lot - I made 10 videos for “Posh Pop” in the house, and he is on all of the videos, and he's just magnificent in them.
JANICE: So when did he go over to the States touring?
TOYAH: Oh I don't know, you'd have to look online, probably a few months ago, I was so busy promoting the album. I hope he's home in about two weeks but you never know, schedules change.
JANICE: Yes, of course. We'll talk some more about “Posh Pop” in a moment but I wanted to talk to you because I think you're a terrific actress.
TOYAH: Yeah, well, thank you. I've just won an award - I only found out online. Did you know how about the award yesterday? I just won Best Supporting Actress on a film called “Swiperight”. No one old me, and it appeared online and I had to do a double take, it was like whoa! Why did no one send me a bottle of Cava something?! (Janice laughs)
JANICE: I love that. The two different things, how do you approach acting differently to pop?
TOYAH: Oh it’s hugely different. It's to do with speech rhythms. So when you get a script, and you're looking at that script and the character – if it’s written well - the character has a completely separate rhythm from anything you've ever experienced. And you just pick up that rhythm and it informs you how the person thinks. I've just always loved interpreting speech, and some people say that all they have to do is change their shoes to find the character. For me it's in the rhythm of the speech.
I've got a film coming out on Halloween called the “The Ghosts of Borley Rectory” (above) and I'm playing a real life character from 1930, Estelle Roberts, and I have to say . . . I was completely possessed by her character. It’s me and Rupert Sands (NB It's Julian Sands), and I just fell in love with this character. She's completely bonkers. She's a medium who gets possessed at Borley Rectory -
JANICE: Like "Blithe Spirit" (a movie, 2020) or . . . ?
TOYAH: It’s a bit more sinister, it's a horror film. Occasionally magical things happen on set, and this was made exactly a year ago, in lockdown. We all had to Covid tests. We were in a deserted house in Exeter. And because Pinewood (Studios) wasn't open, we had the "Star Wars" technical crew and they were very young, They all looked about 25 to me and my goodness they were magnificent! So whatever I did, they'd work on me with light and lens.
So we managed to shoot 10 pages in three hours. I've never experienced that in my life. Because we had four cameras, they were completely in tune with the script and in tune with me. Things like that can happen in movies, and you never forget that moment. And there's other movies where you spend three weeks doing half a page, and you think, why can't we move forward on this!? I might end up directing one day, you never know . . .
JANICE: I bet you will. But you look so different in this movie and (in) the snippet I’ve seen. They've really made you look much older.
TOYAH: Well, I'm 63. I think I look my age in it. I think if you take away the silver hair, which I have in the daytime, and put me in a wig and powder my face . . . I look 63. But I'm very very flexible with makeup when I'm filming. I know how to reflect light from the face so I'm just very well practised in how to film myself. I don't have a problem, looking older it's very easy to. Just don’t go to bed the night before.
JANICE: It looks like an amazing place, this Borley Rectory.
TOYAH: Yes, it's burnt down now. Very very haunted and considered very dangerous. It had what was called physical poltergeists that attacked you. And that's what happens to my character, she she's driven mad by this poltergeist that attacks her. So, I mean right up my street, I love it.
JANICE: I was going to say, do you believe in that? Because we were talking yesterday, Paul (Janice's husband) and I - we were travelling along the road and I said, "there's buildings, they were hospitals, I always have a feeling that they're haunted and I know there's another place that way, that's haunted". Do you buy into all of that?
TOYAH: Yeah I mean, they say the same about very old Victorian asylums, don't they, these places -
JANICE: These were asylums -
TOYAH: Heightened emotion - so I think wherever you have a place that has had historically heightened emotion, there is kind of a residue there that we can pick up on. I do very much believe in it, yes.
JANICE: Tortured souls I think, people who obviously . . . inside they know that they're not happy and that they're in these places and . . . interesting, interesting.
TOYAH: Sorry, but it makes me ask that why don't we go into a stadium and feel the happiness of the past? There must be buildings where you experience the complete opposite. So rather than intense emotional pain, you experience joy. There must be places!
JANICE: Yes, I'm sure there are. And I'm sure we've all experienced them, and we just don't make as big a thing of those places probably, but I know there are certain places I can go to and feel incredibly content and (it) lift(s) your spirits -
TOYAH: Yes. That’s fantastic!
JANICE: Yeah, whether it be a stadium, a venue or whether it be somewhere like Avery (a perfume gallery in London).
TOYAH: Goodness, or a really good restaurant!
JANICE: Oooooh yes! (laughs)
TOYAH: Heston Blumenthal had a service station on the 303 that he took over in the 90’s. Oh gosh that was brilliant! And that was my happy place.
JANICE: (laughs) But it's great when you discover - I'm all for independents, don’t like going to chains, and I love it when you discover somewhere. I took my dad to a Nordic restaurant on Saturday and he absolutely loved it! It was a joyous experience for him and for me as well. Right, let's play a track from the album “Posh Pop”
TOYAH: OK!
JANICE: What would you like just tell us about “Levitate”?
TOYAH: Well, “Levitate” was the first song Simon Darlow and I wrote for the album and we wanted a song where people could relate back to lockdown but relate to the freedom of today. And when Simon and I wrote this album together we very much wanted to connect with the worldwide community that I created and had come to me on Toyah YouTube in that I felt this was the great leveller. We weren't rock stars, that there was nothing about Robert and I sitting by a pool in the bright sunshine while the world was struggling to get food and money.
And so when we wrote “Levitate” we very much wanted this image of just lifting out of the situation and dancing, and the whole point of “Posh Pop” is we want people to dance but also to reflect and acknowledge what they've been through at the same time. So I think this track is very Toyah. I came up on guitar with the chorus sequence, and I absolutely adore thrashing away on my guitar.
Simon Darlow reminded me the other day - I actually videoed myself one Sunday morning in my pyjamas playing the chorus chords and sending them to him via a video link and he said, “do you remember that?” and I said no, I don't remember it at all. It would not have been a pretty sight (Janice laughs) but it's about all of us just lifting out of this situation . . .
JANICE: Fantastic! Here’s Toyah from the album “Posh Pop”. This is “Levitate” (the song plays) Isn't that amazing! I get my Sound Clouds and what have you come in during the week and then I spend one day of the weekend going through stuff and I listened to that and I was like wow! I played it again, Paul came in the room (and he said) “That's amazing! Who is it?” “Toyah” Can music educate people do you think?
TOYAH: Oh! That's a huge question! I think it can connect people to themselves in that I think the music we find ourselves instinctively liking helps us develop who we want to be. I remember music when I was a teenager, even at the age of 11 starting to hear T Rex and hearing “Bridge Over Troubled Water” even.
These songs really changed me and helped me develop my future dreaming in that I just so loved harmony and rhythm and beat and to dance. That educated me that I wanted that in my life rather than living a life without it. So I think it can help us develop as people.
JANICE: Yeah, I think so. I think it can break down barriers and some people can lose inhibitions, which is absolutely great. And of course it's inspirational. You're talking about T Rex and Simon and Garfunkel, love all of that that was going on. I mean, great times and also when you started making music and bringing it to the attention of the people - they took to you straight away, didn’t they?
TOYAH: Yeah, they did. I started my career at the age of 18 at the National Theatre as an actress. I went there with the intention of being a musician and I met my long term writing partner Joel Bogen (on the right, below) who I ended up doing five albums with including “Anthem”, which was a platinum album. So I always intended to sing. And when we started to do gigs we found ourselves in very strange situations as punk rockers.
Our first gig was a synagogue in Golders Green and I can remember the writer Will Self was in the audience. The most amazing people in the audience, who were about to become great writers, great political political commentators, and here we were doing this very drunken punk concert. So we had a big audience, virtually immediately and it might be down to the fact that I did Derek Jarman's “Jubilee” - the movie.
JANICE: Yes. That's something that so many people still talk about, it's something that's so memorable and etched in people's minds. You don't have to talk about this, if you don't want to. I'm thinking about your grandad . . .
TOYAH: Yeah? (intrigued)
JANICE: I tell you what I read – it could be incredibly wrong . . . What did you find out about your grandad recently?
TOYAH: Yes, my maternal grandfather murdered my maternal grandmother and I was only informed by this when ancestry.com uncovered the paper cuttings about the court proceedings. They asked to see me and they had an advisor there because they were worried about how it would affect me. And what happened he murdered my grandmother. They were in Newport, and my grandmother is buried there. My mother, we feel, was present when this happened and wasn't allowed to testify. My mother was disowned from her father after that and always had.
She always had a chaperone and when my father met her - he saw her performing - she was a dancer who opened for the comedian Max Wall in the theatre tours. My father could never get anywhere near her because the chaperone was just so strict, and even on the wedding night, the chaperone had to be persuaded to leave my mother alone. So a very complex kind of upbringing and the song on “Posh Pop” called “Barefoot On Mars” is about my relationship with my mother.
JANICE: But for you to open up about it - it's been quite amazing, I think
TOYAH: Well, I had a very, very difficult relationship with my mother (above with Toyah as a baby) because she couldn't talk about history. She blocked it out and we knew nothing. Even when she passed, we knew nothing. Her life didn't exist before she was married. So to learn this on ancestry.com just made everything fall into place. So I had a very bad relationship with my mother regrettably because she was so negative and I'm completely the opposite. I'm a very positive person.
And I just feel if I'd known that while she was alive, we could have done something to help her deal with these incredibly bad memories that haunted her and they absolutely haunted her. She would fall asleep and scream in her sleep. None of us knew what was the matter with her so she could have had a better life.
JANICE: Aww. Very brave of you as I say, and thanks for talking about (it). Guess where I’m going at the weekend?
TOYAH: Where? No idea!
JANICE: Kings Heath!
TOYAH: Why?! How?!
JANICE: Moseley Folk ( and Arts) Festival
TOYAH: That's beautiful. Yes, well of course I was conceived and born on Grove Road in Kings Heath -
JANICE: I know Grove Road, we lived in (?) Lane for 20 years.
TOYAH: Oh my God! I didn't know that! I thought you were always Liverpool.
JANICE: No, no. I've moved everywhere. When you add up it's about 30 different places. I have lived! Where was (your) main home?
TOYAH: Main home was always Birmingham, Kings Heath (Toyah with her dad Beric, below) until I was 18, and then I moved to London and lived in London until I got married and Robert won't live in London. We lived in Dorset, we moved to Salisbury but our main home now is Worcestershire and Robert absolutely adores it.
JANICE: Yeah that's fantastic place. And the home of Brian Travers of UB40, who sadly died last week. He was forever in the Hare and Hounds (pub) there, playing music, DJ’ing. He was such a great man and he's going to be incredibly missed. But I've always felt with that part of the world, with Birmingham that there are other cities who are doing stuff like Liverpool or like Manchester … Birmingham does it as well and it's good but it doesn't brag or boast about it.
TOYAH: I think Birmingham is having a renaissance. Steven Spielberg uses Birmingham and the streets of Birmingham (to film) before they go into full production. And Tom Cruise is shooting “Mission Impossible” at the moment in Birmingham. So it's a city that I think is deservedly coming up and up and up and getting much more of a presence, especially in the arts. And I know that it's doing huge amounts of things to grow its film industry, because the streets of Birmingham are roughly unique and so brilliantly right for movies and TV series. So I think we're going to see a massive presence from Birmingham.
JANICE: I hope so. It's such a great friendly city. I'd absolutely adore it.
TOYAH: So friendly
JANICE: Yeah, it's lovely. “Take Me Home” - that's a second track that we’re going to play. Are you cool with that?
TOYAH: Yeah. “Take Me Home” was one of the last songs Simon and I wrote for the album. We very much wanted to put into perspective that if we don't look after this planet, and if we don't stop beating each other up - we are in fact all refugees. And if we are all refugees we must look after those who become refugees, we must be their guardians. So “Take Me Home” is about the power of home.
JANICE: Brilliant stuff. This is Toyah and “Take Me Home” (the song plays) We've all seen - I mean telly’s been awful since lockdown. There was a point we went “I can't take any more of this” (Toyah laughs) And then we’re gradually watching and then we're seeing these horrific bits of footage of people -
TOYAH: Oh, you mean the news? You don't mean just general programming? (laughs)
JANICE: No (laughs) The news and we're all going -
TOYAH: Oh my God! Yeah! Absolutely! It just shouldn't be happening. We are so advanced in technology and in understanding of cultures it just shouldn't be happening. And I'm not a politician, I don't know what to do. I don't know the answers but all I do know is that life is sacred, and every child must have a future. And every person must have a home and everyone must have food. So why are we not getting this right yet?
JANICE: I don't know. I think people sit down and talk and educate, but I've been buying up loads and loads and loads of stuff for the refugees and my dad said he was watching the news, he said it just made him say “I don't need all of this!”. So he's been washing and ironing shirts, dozens of these shirts and he's going to take those (to charity) . . . because these people have nothing. They land with nothing! And they must be terrified of not knowing where they are going to go. Must be awful . . .
TOYAH: Yeah, I totally agree. And what would be lovely is if their homeland could be made safe as well. Because where I live, I know I belong, and my soul belongs where I live (Toyah in her kitchen in 2011, above). If I was ever displaced from here, my heart would ache for where I live. And these people, they need protection, they need homes and they need to be welcomed.
But there must be a point when they wish their homeland was available to them. And I just look at what's going on and you look at the people causing the trouble and you think, how have they managed that? They look a bunch of hopeless, incapable people. How have they managed this destruction?! It's breathtaking.
JANICE: How were you at school? I know you were a bit of a rebel. Were you bullied at all?
TOYAH: If I was bullied I would kind of fire back twice as hard. I'm very small in stature, I'm barely five foot tall so there was an element of people bullying me. Where I could really be bullied was psychologically because I had a lisp and I didn't have a great grasp on language because of dyslexia. And people just really kind of teased me a lot about that but I started to stand up for myself. I realised that if the only person in the world is going to protect me is me then I'll do it. So I was quite tough.
JANICE: I was talking to, in fact, somebody who actually wrote an open letter about you . . . talking to Shirley Manson (of Garbage) last week on the show -
TOYAH: Oh OK -
JANICE: She had this girl that always had it in for her, and she actually decided one day - she said (does a Scottish accent) “I took the shoes off! I was ready! I was ready for her!” And she did a runner! As soon as she was confronted she cleared off! (laughs)
TOYAH: I like that! I love that! (Janice laughs) I didn't run, I just used to get into quite huge fisticuffs.
JANICE: (laughs) The size of you … fighting somebody (laughs) isn't really -
TOYAH: When you see the red mist nothing stops you (laughs) I think running is a very honourable thing to do.
JANICE: (laughs) That was the bully that ran -
TOYAH: Oh OK . . .
JANICE: So we were talking about the relationship you had with your mum. What about your siblings?
TOYAH: I have a brother (Kim, above with Toyah in 2015) who's five years older than me and he lives in Bristol. And I have a sister, who's eight years older than me and she is running A & E at Haywards Heath at the moment so she's been frontline (staff) -
JANICE: Wow!
TOYAH: - For really 17 months. She had Covid at the very end of 2019 . . .
JANICE: Did she?
TOYAH: Yeah, Christmas 2019 -
JANICE: She is remarkable, just working so hard, isn't she?
TOYAH: I know. The thing is, they pumped her full of steroids, she said, literally as soon as they put the steroids in her she was able to get up and work again. And it just makes you think, why aren't we giving everyone steroids in that case?
But she she's very tough. She retired from the NHS, she was part of the response team for terrorist response at the 2012 Olympics in Stratford East and then she sailed around the world for a year, came back and went into . . . they call her a spy where she works because she now is involved with the NHS, where she's changing how they educate the nurses.
So she's kind of head of an educational unit, even though she worked in A & E, and they keep saying to her “you're spying on us, aren't you?” and she said “of course I’m spying on you”. She's got to build the future of the NHS. Very very tough woman.
JANICE: And a very tough job to do.
TOYAH: Yeah. I admire her a lot.
JANICE: I mean it's one of those things that none of us want to see go. The NHS is just a fabulous institution and we have been blessed with such a great institution.
TOYAH: I can't even put it in present tense. It must never go. It’s part of this country -
JANICE: Yeah, not at all. So this wonderful album “Posh Pop” . . . Can you tour? I know you had some dates and obviously they weren't going to happen. What’s happening now?
TOYAH: I've been touring since the end of May.
JANICE: Oh brilliant!
TOYAH: Yeah. I've been on about five shows a week because we're having to bring all last year's shows into the rest of this year, so it's been nonstop. I was managing to do gigs, covered gigs even before the 21st of June, because everyone was testing, and only people who had could be in the venue.
Then once we opened up the festivals - I started doing festivals a month ago - and it's just been nonstop and it will remain that way until the end of 2022. We’re all playing catch up. I don't know if you ever talk to comedians, but comedians are working virtually every night now because we just want to honour tickets we sold 17 months ago. We're honouring all of that
JANICE: And "Sunday Lunch" will continue?
TOYAH: Yeah, well, at the moment it's "Sunday Love Letters" where I do a very outrageous song interpretation and send it to Robert and he responds. But Robert is back in the UK on the 13th of September. I'll give him a week off, and then we start "Sunday Lunch" again (laughs)
JANICE: Aww. Brilliant. Well, congratulations on this album “Posh Pop” and good luck in everything that you do, Toyah. An absolute pleasure to talk to you. “Summer Of Star” – what do you want to say?
TOYAH: “Summer Of Love”
JANICE: Sorry! “Summer Of Love”. I’m going mad! (laughs)
TOYAH: Simon Darlow was obsessed that we need a new Summer of Love and I'm obsessed that we must always address the fact that while we're having a great time having a Summer of Love someone is holding a gun or having a gun held (at them) somewhere so I'm the dark person in the writing relationship. “Summer of Love” is very much a celebration of a remarkable time in history. I grew up through which was the 1960's Summer of Love, San Francisco. Where everyone put down the guns and held flowers.
I very much wanted to kind of reflect back to that and reflect to the present, and how we all need now - like the roaring 1920’s - we need to just celebrate and dance, and love each other and see how utterly remarkable we have been in this past year. And celebrate everyone around us and be allowed to dance and hug and kiss. Now that might be a little bit too far to go just yet, but we still have a right to think like that, and “Summer of Love” is a celebration of that.
JANICE: Brilliant. Toyah, once again - thank you so much. And yes, this is “Summer Of Love”. Look after yourself. Bye bye! Lots of love!
TOYAH: Thank you! (the song plays)
You can listen to the interview HERE
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