TOYAH TALKS
SOLO 2020

From the DVD of Solo Box Set 2021

This box set kicks off in 1985 when you had officially gone solo. How did it feel at the time?

TOYAH: It's quite terrifying becoming a solo artist, even though up until 1985 for seven, eight years the band was called Toyah. But we were a band and we all composed together as a band, and eventually as what happens with everything where you've got a very dominant lead singer - happened with Debbie Harry and Blondie, it's the record labels only wanted me.

And it was kind of heartbreaking at the time because not only did I have writing bonds with my musicians, they were my friends as well and they were long friendships but I think there was an inevitability about me going solo.

I’d done five incredibly successful albums. I was the main top line writer and the lyricist. So I was creating melody lines as well as the lyrics. So it felt natural as well as quietly terrifying to go solo. And the first solo album was "MINX". I was signed to CBS Portrait label. I was working with Christopher Neil, the legendary record producer, and he allowed me to continue writing with people I knew and trusted. My long-term collaborator Simon Darlow was also involved on that album.

 

 

And it was the beginning for me of a very long creative period in my life where I managed to walk away from the predictable, from formulaic writing and go into more experimental areas as well. Christopher Neil was absolutely adamant that I was going to do two covers. He was in love with two songs – “Sympathy” and the other one was “America For Beginners” and “World In Action” - there were three. I'm not sure if they all made it onto the album, but they were fantastic songs. Absolutely brilliant, ahead of their time songs.

“Sympathy” allowed me to really express myself as a adult serious vocalist, who started in the punk movement, who started as an expressionist vocalist and it allowed me to be the musician vocalist. And what I mean by that is interpret the song note by note, stave by stave. There was not room for Toyah to be expressionistic in that performance. I had to be how I'd be in the West End, say, if I was starring in “Cabaret”, which I've done, is you are following someone else's notation.

"Sympathy" worked beautifully and is a magnificent piece. And we had an orchestra. It was relatively hard to sing emotionally because I get very emotionally effected by music and sometimes I just can't stop crying. It's caused numerous problems in the past, we just had to kind of approach the song daily until I could stop being over emotional and could just get on and do the job and sing it. "Sympathy" was one of those experiences.

"America For Beginners" - it was such a gift to do because I literally only was required to virtually whisper it. And it has this huge explosive chorus where we employed backing singers, which was new to me because in most of my solo work and with the Toyah band I did every voice. I did all the backing vocal layering as well as the main vocals but Christopher Neil likes to work with backing singers and on "America For Beginners" all I had to do was control my breath and literally whisper the song. 

It was a really satisfying thing to do, which kind of led to me taking that further with the albums "Prostitute" and the "Ophelia’s Shadow" and “World In Action” which is just a really great middle of the road, very eighties song but I'm glad I did them. They didn't feel like cover of versions to me because I was singing them.

My voice is very unique. It's obviously my voice and I was grateful for the experience. "School's Out" was one of my all time favorite songs. "School’s Out" kept me sane when I was at school. I was such a big Alice Cooper fan. "School's Out", "Billion Dollar Babies", "Second Coming". Those are the first albums I bought. I absolutely have always been in love with Alice Cooper and everything he represented. So "School's Out" was with my choice.

The visuals on this album were very striking. What was it like to create the videos and photos? 

TOYAH: I think it was Morris Oberstein who came up with the idea of pairing me with Terrence Donovan and I think Terence Donovan wanted to work with me. Now, Terence Donovan created the iconic supermodel. He, for me, was the one that created that term later on ... while I'm barely five foot tall and here he was stuck working with me when he was used to working with women over six foot. But my favorite designer was Issey Miyake.

Issey Miyake agreed to let me wear his structures. Now, there's this bamboo structure on the front cover of "MINX", which is basically a jacket, but it's made out of bamboo, there (on the cover) with the fiberglass breast plates which he made for Grace Jones. And the one I was wearing believe was modelled on Grace Jones. 

 

It was fabulous being able to use his creations and work with Terrence Donovan as with all iconic fashion photographers and I've worked with them all briefly or many times over. They're very irreverent to you. They swear at you, it's an experience - you got to be tough.

And Terrence Donovan liked me enough to want to shoot the video to “Love’s Unkind” (sic) (NB She means “Don’t Fall In Love”) and I discovered the rubber dress (above), which was a relatively new thing back then. I just said "I want to be wearing this" because I'd never been particularly feminine in my work up until then and I felt that this really feminised me for “Don't Fall In Love” and it was just an absolute dream come true to wear it.

The follow up album "Desire" had some really fresh sounds such as a stick guitar on "Revive The World". How did this come about?

TOYAH: When we made "Desire" I'd been married to Robert (Fripp) (below with Toyah) since May of that particular year. And the first thing I did when I met Robert was start to learn his tuning. Robert works on a guitar, but all the strings are a fifth higher than normal tuning. So I had to re-learn all that tuning to write and play guitar. And that really changes the whole emotional approach of the music. It makes it much tenser and it kind of heightens the emotion of the songs.

So most of the songs for "Desire" were written in that tuning and that was the way I wanted to go. If I've done something once, I then move on. So the albums prior to "Desire" they're done, they're done and dusted. They sit there in their moment in their time. I'm not interested in making a formula from the last album.

So the writing on "Desire", which was mainly me, with things like "Revive The World", "Sun Up", "Moonlight Dancing", they were all done with this specific kind of tuning that Robert invented. And then I would take the riffs to Robert and his team of Crafty Guitarists, which is a guitar orchestra and I'd say "let's take this somewhere". And we went into Abbey Road and had all these guitarists in a circle and put the backing tracks down.

Originally for "Desire" I wanted to go back to the producer Steve James (who produced "Sheep Farming In Barnet" and "The Blue Meaning") because we had a particular relationship that was very anarchic in the studio. It was very organic.

We would just take something and use it in a way I'd never been used before. And he understood how I like to build banks of vocals. But Steve James by this time was working in and living in Australia and was working in the dance movement. So it was just wildly inconvenient for him to get to England. 

And Mike Hedges, who has a fabulous pedigree of working with Sioxsie and The Banshees was available and agreed to come and produce the album, which was for me, you know, big pedigree stuff. That was fantastic. And Mike was very sympathetic towards what I wanted to do with "Desire". I wanted to move into a place that I had never worked in before, a complete audio spectrum I'd never placed my voice in thus all the guitars we were using, all the layering we were using.

It was to be not to take Toyah in a new direction, but for Toyah to experience a new direction. And we recorded many songs in this style and Mike Hedges and Haydn Bendall completely supported this and it may not have been super commercial, but it was representative of the artist. 

So we were working in Abbey Road and it was a very exciting place to be. I mean, Abbey Road is the centre of the universe when it comes to music. And we were in the Beatles studio, we had the Beatles four track machines, (they) were actually in the studio next to me as I sang. So the history there was just fantastic. But slowly A&R men started to sneak in and also the album and I think the label I was assigned to then got signed to Virgin and Virgin only wanted super commercial hits. And that wasn't the place I was mentally at.

I was too interested in taking writing in a new direction, but what we tried to do with the box set is introduce the songs or re-introduce the songs that the record label took off, which I think give continuity back to the album.

There is a track in this box set called "Mesmerised" that fans might not know about. Can you tell us about this track?

TOYAH: I wrote "Mesmerized" with Nicky Graham just after he was writing with Bros. And I I've always had a good relationship with Nicky and I love this track. I absolutely love it. And we could only find it on a cassette. The record label we think destroyed the tapes because I was just adamant that this was the single and we managed to find this rough mix and to re-treat it. And when I heard it for the first time, after 20 odd years ... it just broke my heart because it's so right, it is such a great song full of potential, which I was not allowed to complete.

And I think it's a great story for women to know and for young artist’s to know about whether you stand your ground and have a record label refuse to release your album, or you go with the record label. I went with them record label and … that bitter taste never goes. But that said, there are for me magical things on the album "Desire", like the opening track "Desire" and "Revive The World" and "Mesmerized", which I think are astonishing songs that I will be proud of on my death bed.

But I was made to feel like a criminal for not liking "Love’s Unkind". I mean why pair someone like me with a song like "Love’s Unkind". I'm extreme feminist. I don't like gender specification and you've given me a song called "Love’s, Unkind". I mean, we were at war over that, war, but I went with it because I knew if I didn't release this album ... obscurity was waiting. It was tricky. It was very, very tricky.

And I agreed to go into the West End and play Sally Bowles. It was a phenomenal experience for me because even though I am a trained dancer, it doesn't mean I am a dancer and here I was starring alongside Wayne Sleep - world famous Wayne Sleep as his leading lady.

And it was the kind of control and confines that I needed to have a bit of solid ground to stand on after a very bad experience with the record label that had become a bit dictorial. And I think it also helped the industry focus on who I was as well, because I've always been a bit mercurial and a bit off the wall and I think that still remains, but I think by doing Sally Bowles it just helped the entertainment industry see me in one place for a while.

It worked on that level. And then I went onto the National Theatre to do “Three Men On A Horse, then went on to make a movie called "Midnight Breaks". And all of this while "Desire" was released to the world with "Echo Beach" as the main single off it. It was not commercially a bad time at all, but inside I was rebelling big time.

Is that what inspired the next album "Prostitute"?

TOYAH: On "Prostitute" I was raging. Absolutely raging and to put "Prostitute" into context it wasn’t just about what happened on "Desire". I mean, we are talking about 33 years ago. Robert and I kind of eloped and got married and we were both managed by the same management and we were both on the same label and both management and label utterly were outraged. So outraged that the only time they'd ever talk to me again was to ask am I going to have babies? And am I going to settle down and be a housewife? Thus "Prostitute" came about.

Now, the big irony about "Prostitute" is it's my biggest seller as a solo artist. And it was my biggest critically acclaimed album of my whole career. So let's put that in context first. Biggest earner as well. So I just thought I need to work with a small budget, I had £10 000, I didn't want anyone telling me what to do. I had worked with Steve Sidelnyc on a project. He a drummer programmer who went on to do all Madonna's programming.

I talked to him. This was after a meeting with Alex Patterson of The Orb, where Alex was helping me move house. It's a bizarre world when you're not in front of the camera. And we came up with the conclusion of doing this experimental sound. He went on to do "Pink Fluffy Clouds" (sic) (NB She means "Little Fluffy Clouds") and I went on to do "Prostitute". So I'd been working with Steve Sidelnyc.

I said "would you come and do this album with me? It's not gonna be like anything you've done before - we are literally going to program sequences and drums for a set amount of bars, I will set the precedent of what those bars are, and then I'm just going to build vocals on top of it."

 

 

So we went away to a small studio in Dorset for two weeks, and we just heads down program, program program. I wrote on the spot. I wrote as we recorded and did all the layering and did the additional instruments and came up with "Prostitute".

And it was a really angry album about the fact that just because I got married I was supposed to give up this really illustrious and brilliant career. Supposed to put my talent on a shelf along with all the awards, having made people a lot of money and forget who I was. I was raging. "Prostitute" is my is creative machine gun. It's a metaphor for the absolute fucking anger I was experiencing.

Why didn't you feature on the cover or do any videos?

TOYAH: I did the artwork for the album. I drew it myself. I set it up, sent it to the record label. And it was a Victorian representation of a naked woman being dissected in the lab. It was very heavy. So you had the basic kind of outline of the woman. She was opened up, completely dissected and each organ had a different name. And that's what I wanted it to be.

I wanted it to be a woman that had been taken apart metaphorically by men and by the industry. When this album was presented to the sellers and the bookers, there were mass protests. People got up and walked out and they refused to touch it, but ironically as soon as it was presented around the world … I mean, America went
bonkers for it. 

 

I could have had a career in America being an angry woman. But I always feel an album sits alone in its space at its time. And I just didn't want to continue with that amount of anger in me and after "Prostitute" I just moved on. Also the record label did not tell me how well it sold and how well it was received. I mean, Billboard Magazine gave it five stars and they said this is the most innovative album any artist has ever released.

They said it was an antidote to Madonna, which for me is a pile of bollocks because I'm a big Madonna fan and it's nothing like Madonna but it sold in its tens and tens of thousands. And I had sack loads of fan mail mainly from professors in universities saying that this is one of the most cohesive and precise things they've ever heard a woman do.

I mean, it was just astonishing, but people didn't ever tell me about my successes. "MINX" apparently was hugely successful. No one told me and "Prostitute" was hugely successful and no one ever bothered to pick the phone up and tell me

"Ophelia's Shadow" marked yet another shift in direction. How did that come about?    

TOYAH: Well, "Ophelia’s Shadow" – after "Prostitute" I felt I didn't want to be so angry. I felt I wanted to be more poetic and descriptive. And I was again working with musicians who trained with Robert. So we were again working in … we weren't working in open chord keys.

We weren't in standard E tuning and we were using cello tuning, which again, changes the tension of the songwriting. And I was left alone to write this album. I was working with Trey Gunn, who went on to being in King Crimson, Tony Geballe, who went on to run a theater in New York as a musical director, Paul Beavis, who I believe was in The Lemon Trees at one point.

And that was the team. And we again would get together in the studio. We would write in an afternoon, I'd go away and that evening I would construct the song. I would piece it together. I would then do the lyrics and the next day we'd record it. Very organic.

I believed in and I still do using that first voice that comes into your head. So rather than sit down and write a piece and go away and just meditate over it for months on end, which is slightly what Simon Darlow and I did with the (In The Court Of The) "Crimson Queen" … 

 

With these solo albums in particular I would listen to that first instinctive voice as the truth of what that song should be, which why some of them are quite off the wall and go in quite strange directions because that's the internal voice and that's very much how "Ophelia’s Shadow" came about. I really do feel that "Ophelia’s Shadow" truly represents me because I was completely at the helm. The writers I worked with were very respectful of me and my ideas and they broadened the ideas rather than negated them.

So they said, "well, we could take this in that direction". And I would sing the guitar lines or the baselines to them and they would pick that up and go with it. So they were very respectful of what I was trying to do and what I wanted to build. So I do think this is a very true Toyah album.

"Kiss Of Reality", they asked me to guest - they all lived in Berlin and I just got a letter saying, would I come and sing on two or three of songs of an album they were making? They didn't have a band name at the time and I was up for an adventure. I felt a bit nomadic at this time. We're talking about around 1991-92. I just finished touring a play called "Amadeus", which was a huge critical success for me.

I'd been working with Peter Shaffer, the playwright and in the daytimes I was performing in prisons around the UK, doing a one woman show about Janis Joplin. And then in the evenings I was starring with an actor called Richard McCabe in "Amadeus" and I was playing Constanze, his wife, and I got this letter saying, would I go to Berlin and just record a few songs? And I said, well, I'm going to pack my suitcase and let's see what happens and I stayed a year. 

 

We wrote a whole album, and I became one of the shared writers on the album and the very interesting thing about living in Berlin was the night culture, because we slept from seven in the morning till about four in the afternoon. Then we'd drive to a nuclear bunker, go underground and work all night, which I found really oppressive and very hard - I'm not night person - and then record.

And we did a few gigs, which were very unusual for me because people listened in a way I wasn't used to. So we played a few gigs on the outskirts of Berlin and then we went to Warsaw where Chick Corea was hosting a jazz festival.

And we played in Warsaw where people were absolutely fascinated by me and I was doing lots of TV and explaining about the Janice Joplin show, that I'd been into Northern Ireland and performed in the Maze (a prison) in front of all the political prisoners. And the extraordinary situation I was in there where I was only allowed to be face to face with the male prisoners. Yet the female prisoners in the Maze were kept separate from me and I could only communicate with them by camera.

Oh yeah. We're talking about a different time and a different world. And the intellects who were interviewing me in Warsaw on TV picked up on this, they saw this immediately and the inequalities of it and they were fascinated that I was playing Janis Joplin, that I was married to Robert Fripp, but I was in this band from Berlin. 

 

 

And when I was introduced on stage that night, having done this wonderful interview where they really saw me, I was introduced as "Roberta Fripper" and I grabbed the mic and I said "I'm Toyah Willcox". You know, it's just something I have fought for so long - the identity of the person. I just found all my career is … just see the bloody person - I've won enough awards. I mean, this is going to put the interview in the context of this week, but Lily Allen txting, you know, "misogyny is still in the world". It's been there for a long,
long time.

Sunday All Over The World happened around the same time as "Ophelia’s Shadow". In fact it crossed over and because Robert and I were managed by the same people and we're on the same label at this particular time they were only interested in - how can I put this ... investing and touring anything with them ... Robert, but not me. They were determined I was going to become a housewife and have babies. They just didn't ... I was invisible, completely invisible.

And even though "Prostitute" had sold so well and made them hundreds of thousands of pounds … they said, okay, "well, Robert come form a new band called Sunday All Over The World - Toyah happens to be in in" … Happens to be the key writer. That's what it was and it's just very interesting having married an internationally renowned musician but I instantly put myself in the corner with the dunce hat on it's as simple as that

"Take The Leap!" saw you embrace your early punk roots at a time when grunge and Nirvana were big. How did this come about?  

TOYAH: In the 1990’s I was approached by what was known at the time as an "über agent", a wonderful man called John Roseman who was the director for the video "Bohemian Rhapsody", did all of the Eurythmics videos as well. He approached me and he said "you you've got a future in television. I want to be your agent".

And I was living in Berlin doing "Kiss Of Reality". And he said, "come on over, I have to see you" and within a year I was presenting BBC "Holiday". I was going on "Songs Of Praise". I was doing BBC2 documentaries about art, stuff like that. He absolutely lifted me into the A-list stratosphere of TV presenting. And I stayed up there for 10 years.

And it was just, I mean, you could not second guess that would happen. And that was all thanks to him. So even though I was working every single day, traveling the world, I realized I'm still a singer and a writer. And around 1993 - 94 as well as doing all that presenting, I was actually starting at the Chichester Theatre and getting awards for that. I thought I've got to sing. I have to sing, you know, and in the nineties artists like me were told to re-record the hits. And if we did re-record the hits then we could put new material on that.

So I had been making a documentary about a young band called Friday Forever (above with Toyah) in Salisbury, which is where I was living and they were phenomenal. They were so good. And I said to this band "could I borrow you? And could we record an album, a double album of new material and old material". And I love their sound. It was really thrashy, really nineties. Their playing was astonishing considering they were teenagers.

And we hired a farmhouse. The drums went in one room. I did all the vocals in a barn and we put each musician in a different room in the farmhouse, and then we mixed and recorded live. And I think it has a beautiful sound this album, it's just the instrumentation, their arrangements, everything is gorgeous. And I did some writing with Nick Beggs (of Kajagoogoo fame), Cris Bonacci (from) Girlschool and we did these new songs.

We did the hits, I got signed to a label in Japan and that's the story of that and that allowed me to get back on the road. I mainly toured theatres and that kept me going kind of through the nineties. But the big change came for me in 2002 when I got an email off of promoter saying would I consider doing an arena tour? 

 

 

And at this point I thought, you know, everything was over. I was just being an actress. And I've not looked back since it's just grown and grown and grown since then. And the last 17 years have just been blissful, absolutely blissful because my audience are really young now. Now they're kind of students and 25 year olds. And obviously there's those that are my age group in their sixties who know who I am, but I could not second guess the pathway that my career has taken me on.

In 2002 you met Tim Elsenburg. How did this help reignite your love of songwriting?     

TOYAH: My husband, Robert Fripp and I've always been very close to Brian Eno. And that kind of introduced us to Brian Eno’s circle. And I can remember I went to the Victoria and Albert Museum to see a show with a band headed by Tim Elsenburg who's just a phenomenal songwriter.

And I just loved his music and he agreed to meet up with me and do some writing. And I hadn't been writing for myself for quite a while. I've been writing for other people like Trey Gunn and I've been writing with Tony Banks of Genesis and I'd been writing for TV and movies. But Tim Elsenburg said, "well, let’s write for you".

 

We worked for a couple of weeks and I just absolutely love working with him. He was young and he was vibrant and his musical vocabulary was just infinite. Real, real star and beautiful kind of adult sensibility about what he did. And I love what we wrote together and I loved his voice.

So we took his band. We booked a studio in Moseley in Birmingham and we recorded four tracks and decided to release them. And they came out for my arena tour in 2002, which allowed me to kind of sell them directly to the audience. And when you're playing arenas you're doing lots of very big sales. So it became a fan base EP ("Little Tears Of Love")

This box set features quite a few of your other collaborations, such as Tony Banks. Can you explain how that happened?   

TOYAH: Tony Banks and myself were both working on a movie called "Lorca And The Outlaws", which I believe I had Johnny Hallyday starring in, but I only was shooting for a couple of days at Pinewood (Studios) because I was playing a hologram in it. And Tony Banks contacted me and said would I come over to his studios and write a song with him? And I just jumped at that. That was wow, fabulous! What an opportunity.

And I came up with a lyric called "Lion Of Symmetry" and it, I don't know why, because it was Tony Banks, I felt it just really allowed me to tap into my youthful inspirations. And I first saw bands like Hawkwind, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin when I was 11 years old, I used to break into venues in Birmingham and just go and see these bands. You know, people never stopped me. I'd get in through the fire exit. 

 

 

So to suddenly be working with Tony Banks and that kind of musical background, I realized that that kind of creativity was in my DNA. And came up with "Lion Of Symmetry" which allowed me to just create layers and layers of vocals over this slightly African themed song. And I had a fabulous time with Tony and in the studios. It ran so smoothly.

We got the vocal on the first take. He even had me singing in keys that were completely against the original key just to see if I could do it. And I could. And he said, "well, we can't use it, but I really loved doing it". It was a very, very good creative experience. I think Tony has said it's one of his favorites.

The last track of the whole box set is called "Step Into The New World". Tell us about that?   

TOYAH: Well, as an actress I'm in about five independent movies a year. I just go from movie to movie. I'm also a bit of a fixer on these movies. I help raise funding for small British movies. And I'm probably what's known as an "angel" because I'm never credited and that's fine. That's never agreed for credits anyway but I always help people out because I have really, really good contacts.

With this particular film that "Step Into The New World" is from, it was originally called "The Kaleidoscope Man". It's now called "Invasion Planet Earth" because that title puts it in a genre and it's just gone crazy.

Small, independent movie made for under £50 000 getting huge reviews. It looks absolutely astonishing. The computer generated effects are breathtaking. And I play a doctor in it and as always the directors come to me when they need some advice or they need kind of helper producers, and they said "we need to broaden this. We need you to sing on it".

And I said yeah, that's fine. I don't have time to write anything because I've just done so many movies this year, and I'm still in the middle of a movie now. I said "if you can present me with a song, I'll come and do it."

 

So Simon Cox and Alan Snelling came up with this wonderful song. That's like Vangelis meets Gloria Gaynor or something like that. It's just so wonderful. And I went into the studio in Chipping Norton and just put it down - first take. And then Alan Snelling added these wonderful Vangelis type keyboards. I think it's really lovely. It's so lovely. And they recorded me as I was singing it. And that's part of the video and stuff like that.

But I think what I love about "Invasion Planet Earth" it's part of who and what I am, and I'm in no way an underdog, but I'm someone that isn't mainstream. And I just connect with those people that are tenacious, who never let go, who keep true to their voice. And they just remain creative without relying on the bedrock of the super commercial. We just keep going. And this particular film and me were made for each other.

Tell us about "This Fragile Moment"?

TOYAH: Oh boy, I loved doing "This Fragile Moment"! I absolutely loved it. I've had a long relationship with Estonia. In 1992 when Estonia became independent I was a leading actress in the first ever movie to be made there in the year of its independence. Everyone involved on that movie was treated like royalty. People were so grateful for us being there.

And then I managed to get Robert to work again after his long retirement by going over there and doing soundscapes. I contacted the embassy and I said, look, if you approach Robert this way, I can get him to Estonia.

Then Robert wasn't available to play at the President's birthday. I then contacted the embassy again and said "I’ll put a band together to play at the birthday of the President" and they said yes. So myself, Bill Rieflin, the drummer of REM, and my MD, Chris Wong (below with Toyah performing as The Humans in 2011) went over to Estonia. We wrote 50 minutes of music in Estonia, recorded it, and then performed it live to the President. While I was working quite a lot in Estonia Robert Jürjendal got in contact with me and said would I come and do an improvised album with him?

This was such an easy thing for me to do because my source of inspiration internally comes from Estonian literature, which is like no other literature in the world. They have short story writers that have such poetry and such depth of colour in the composition of the stories that I always refer back to Estonian writers for my inspiration.

So I went over to Estonia with my MD Chris Wong and I had a bible of words, which is usually how I start an album. I just listened to that instinctive voice and I write and write and write, and I never stop myself and I come up with a bible and that is always a point of reference to leap frog into the actual song. So I arrived in Estonia with some of the best words I have ever written and we went into the studio and we improvise for a week.

And unbeknownst to me, the headphone mix I was working to only had me and Chris Wong, my guitarist, and they deliberately didn't put the other instruments in. And I thought, you know, this is pretty bare stuff, but I just kept going. And then I realized that they were all kind of tuning and they were all working in a set key. And I was moving keys because I would suddenly get to a natural point to progress into a chorus.

 

 

So Chris Wong, who has kind of ESP (extrasensory perception) with me was moving into new chord structures for choruses. And I was too, and the others were remaining in the same key, but what was absolutely wonderful is it worked. It's bizarre, but it works. And that for me was possibly the most natural progression from "Prostitute" in that it's purely instinctive. And we just allowed it to happen in the moment.

And how does it feel to finally release your first ever box set? 

TOYAH: I am so grateful for this box set and I'm so grateful to Demon Music for seeing me as an artist, because Demon have been for me what the majors (record labels) should have been for me. They've never questioned me. They've always talked to me with such respect as an artist and believe me, that's rare. It's rare. I'm grateful. Eternal gratitude. And I think what is lovely about these solo albums is they are very much Toyah genre. They don't work ... Can't put "Prostitute" next to an ABC album or a Tony Hadley album. You just can't do it.

This is Toyah Wilcox, the punk rocker, growing into a woman maturing into an adult artist and Demon have allowed it by putting this box set together. And I think the audience for this box set are the true Toyah fans who really liked the fact that I'm off the wall and anarchic in my creative process. And that's who it's for. These are the ones that turn up to my punk gigs and it's purely experimental, but it is who and what I am. 

 

 

Listen to the songs & albums

MINX (1985)
Lion Of Symmetry (1985)
Desire (1987)
Prostitute (1988)
Ophelia's Shadow (1991)
Sunday All Over The World (1991) A selection on Youtube
Kiss Of Reality (1993)
Take The Leap! (1993)
Velvet Lined Shell (2003)
This Fragile Moment (2009)
Step Into The New World (2019)
Solo A Selection Of Songs by Official Toyah (2020)