TOYAH ON
THE C86 PODCAST
WITH DAVID EASTAUGH
14.7.2019

DAVID: This is going be the first part of the interview with Toyah where I've been talking about surviving that wonderful world that is rock and roll, and she's been in the business for over 40 years. Toyah! How do you do it?

TOYAH: It's a good question, it’s impossible to answer. I think if you come into this business, you just need perseverance. I think some people work so hard that they do get burned up. But I've always been very careful that I only sing no more than four times a week.

I'm going to contradict myself on that next year because I have a huge tour next year, where I'm doing 15 dates in a row before I get a day off, but I'm very self-protective when I'm on the road. I don't speak. I don't drink alcohol. Never drink coffee. I keep away from anything that can damage the voice.

And I think some people are on the road and they live a certain lifestyle, certainly when they're young, which is a party lifestyle and to some extent, I attempted it but never could do it. And that might be why I’ve survived so long is that I actually am not a late night person. I can't party all night and function. So that might have been ironically my saving grace.

DAVID: Yes. But it's interesting because I've been interviewing a lot of bands over the years and one thing that I've noticed a lot it's to do with the the money and the accounts. I was talking to Fish and there was Nils Lofgren recently, and they both need to cram as many dates into three or four weeks as possible - especially touring Europe - because the economics is quite tight so they have to really work themselves. But they know, as they get to that age that it's getting really hard going and they definitely need to have a good bed because they can't sleep in some tatty old place anymore.

So, yes, it must be quite tough as you're getting older, and still keeping hopefully flexible, but maintaining that "we can't have too many days off because we're paying for the PA, we’re paying for the road crew, got the van hire" so it must sometimes be quite hard and punishing to go through that at the same time

TOYAH: I don't do those kinds of tours. I never have. I'm married to a musician, he does. I mean, even when you do arena tours, which my husband does, you have to group them together. When I did a tour like that I had management telling me "no, you can't have a day off, it's too costly". Well, what about when I've damaged my voice so much we have to cancel? That's just not taken into account. I manage myself, I only do groups of gigs together where I'm never away from home more than four nights because psychologically that has a price.

I know Fish very well and I know how hard he works, but those back to back gigs in the tour bus have never ever been right for me. Therefore I've never done them. I know that it would affect me emotionally. So I’ve managed myself since 1990, and I know what I can handle and what I can't handle, and I've been really really adamant about that and tenacious that if you want 150% from me these are the rules.

So I only really sing Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And what you've just talked about is artists that go right through for three weeks to three months. I would not survive that, and that is probably the difference between me and them.

DAVID: Yes, well quite. And it was quite interesting because I've never heard this before and the only person who’s ever said this was Nils Lofgren - he said he gets really homesick. So after three or four weeks he needs to go back to see his dog and home and family. So it was kind of like . . . yes, I’m the same

TOYAH: Basically I had a very homesick husband in Turin, who was ready to come home and pack it all in. I've heard this for 33 years of marriage, so I compile little films of our house and of sequences that I know will make him laugh. And I send them over to him and that grounds him. I've known so many unhappy musicians. And the thing is - we want to play, we want to be in front of an audience, we want to express ourselves through our music. It's quite a cruel sequence of events that we have to do it through a kind of strange travelling imprisonment. It's completely juxtaposed. It goes against itself.

So, it's nothing new. It's how do you survive that. And I said to my husband yesterday “look, if you're doing this arena tour and you're staying in Novotels, there's something wrong”. About 30 years ago I was with The Police on tour because I was doing press with Sting for a film called “Quadrophenia.” And I said “they were in castles! If you’re playing arenas, stay in a castle. Don't stay in a Novotel”. It's the management that does this to these people. The management cuts corners and the musicians suffer.

DAVID: Yes, this is very true. I did speak to a bass player who was working with Jesus and The Mary Chain and the backing band almost had to sort of … “you'll have to find your own way, you're not going to get paid on the days off” and the two key members of the band got nice treatment and the rest had to struggle along -

TOYAH: Oh, I don't do that. I manage this and if we have a day off they're in the same hotel as me. If I fly business I pay for them to fly business, because with my band I've not been able to give them a pay rise for about 10 years, but I've made sure they have a certain amount of money, clear of all expenses, money goes into their bank account the day of the gig. I cover everything. Their travel, their food, their hotels and they have the same as me.

I could not travel with my band knowing that they were not experiencing the same benefits as me. When I have to go abroad with house bands which aren't my band - they're a big band put together for a multiple artists lineup - then it might be different, but none of us as artists would allow a musician to suffer. That I hope is something that's gone out of the window a long time ago because we are all working the same hours, we're all doing the same journey. We all need nutrition and sleep. I just wouldn't allow that. And the story you just told I hope was something that happened a while ago and not today.

DAVID: It wasn’t that long ago I don’t think. It's like when a band gets offers to reform and they put their differences to one side and then they do a tour and think "this is great but let's keep the costs as low down as possible" because they obviously realise - I think when a band hasn't been around for about a year and they reform a lot of people are curious and they can see them and they think "oh, let's do that again in 18 months" and actually there aren't so many people and then the management get a bit more tight with the pennies, I guess.

But look! That's just rock and roll because the show that I do the C86 Show - most of these are the indie bands from the 80’s and there’s a kind of a five year narrative I’ve found, which is they get together, they make a bit of a sound, they get that play with John Peel, they do the session, then the album, then they have the tricky second album and a bit of a tour around the country and possibly Europe, and then things fall apart but your career . . . you really don't have that same narrative because from the late 70’s right through to the 80’s you did literally an album a year. It was like David Bowie during the 70’s. So, how did you manage to keep that creative process going so relentlessly because that's quite extraordinary. I've not met many artists who've managed to do that almost for a decade.

TOYAH: Well, I think the thing is what you've just mentioned in comparison is management measuring success by audience numbers. Add two and two - get four. That does make sense. But for me it's always been about development, creative development. I have a band, an American band called The Humans, which I'm not going to confuse you with because it's all being re-released next year and it's becoming Toyah And The Humans because the word Toyah gets more people's attention. There is no compromise with that band.

The Toyah band is a name that has 42 years of catalogue music, and the audience want to hear the hits, but ironically what the audience won't know is that I was number two in the Rock Charts in April, with an album called “In The Court Of The Crimson Queen”. People don't follow the charts anymore, but that album’s had three charting hits off it. So I’ve got to fit 42 years of music into one show. Why am I so creative? Because it's about being creative, it's not about audience numbers.

DAVID: Yes!

TOYAH: I don't want to live a life of banality where we are all increasingly being sucked robotically into the internet to lose our individuality. And I've been keenly aware of that for 30 years. So for me it's not about selling something. It's actually about a need to express, and a need to develop my expressive voice. That tiny part of the brain that makes us creative. I can't leave that alone. I can't ignore it because I believe as a spiritual soul that's why we're here and why we're so unique and trying to explain to people that life shouldn't be simple. It shouldn't be formulaic.

They don't get it, some people say, “why do you make your life so hard?” and I say, well, we're here for a journey. We're not here to just do something in our 20’s and then sit on our laurels for 80 years. We're actually here to develop. I think that has always been my philosophy that the creative process is my relationship with whatever put me on this planet and that's what that's about

("Dance In The Hurricane" plays) 

DAVID: That’s taken from the new album “In The Court Of The Crimson Queen” which originally came out in 2008 but it's been jazzed up a bit, and has four added tracks. In this next part of the interview she explains more what the process has been. Toyah, tell us more about this new album.

TOYAH: What happened was the entire album was used in a musical called “Crime and Punishment”, Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” (above, Toyah with the play's lead Alec Porter in 2016) in London. And then on my 60th birthday last year the fans put a track to number one across the board in the charts. And then we were an unsigned band, they did that via downloads. So a record company came to me and they said “this album is obviously going to be successful, it keeps having repeated success in downloads. So we want to re-release it, but we want to have five new tracks”.

And over the past 10 years I've been writing for movies with my songwriting partner Simon Darlow. So the last track on “In The Court Of The Crimson Queen” was finished in January of this year. And that's released on the 15th of July as a single. It's called “Dance In The Hurricane”. So there is an element of a re-release about this album. But what we did we added live bass and live drums to what was a programmed album at that point.

We finished it in January, and it was released in April, and across the board it went into the Top 20 of all the charts. In some charts it went as high as number two. So it's had success, and it's still having success to the point that we're still releasing singles off it right through the summer. That's the background to it.

DAVID: Yes. Interesting. I remember - was it last year when David Bowie's 80’ stuff got slightly remixed and had the 80’s vibe taken out or that kind of Trevor Horn-esque production and then actually listening to those albums again they suddenly sounded fresh and new.

On this album that's just come out there are two fantastic songs. One is “Sensational”, which absolutely rocks and the other one is “Heal Ourselves” which is reminding me slightly of Guns’n’Roses and “November Rain” actually but fantastic material and considering you've been making music since the late 70’s you must be really chuffed to see this coming out as a deluxe edition?

TOYAH: Yeah. It's been a gorgeous year. It’s nice to be talked to as if I’m artist. And what I mean by that is some people see you only as an 80’s artist. And some people just don't see you as a writer at all. And what this album has done is kind of firmly put me in the new artists category, which as a constantly touring singer is a fantastic thing to experience after 42 years in the business. It takes a long time -

DAVID: But it's interesting because I come back to “Sensational”. It did remind me of a famous quote from Mr Fripp who was talking about working with David Bowie. He said it’s sort of “hairy rock and roll”, and it gives you - he mentioned the word erection - which I might have to edit out - but it does rock that particular song, doesn't it? And you must still enjoy getting out there and still give everything you’ve got?

TOYAH: There's certain connections you have with the audience and the connection is always through the music. And there's certain songs you do where you feel that connection from every single member of the audience, and “Sensational” was one of those songs.

DAVID: Yes, and I also think that “Dance In The Hurricane” is another great opener because it does hit you in the face and it gives you that uplifting feeling. Because bizarrely, I'm of that age group, not going too far back in the past, but I used to watch “Eddie Shoestring” and that was the first time that you suddenly became on my radar. You had that brilliant song called “Danced” in that particular episode, which was a long time ago . . .

TOYAH: They used all my music in that episode. I think it was a very progressive thing for them to do. It was just massively successful. It was such an exciting episode. They captured the nature of punk And I remember it just turned everything around for me. TV is by far the biggest medium or was back then to get your music across. 

 

DAVID: Yes, and it's quite interesting because the two people that I've always admired a lot and especially with age and how many people fall to the wayside - David Bowie on one side and Lemmy the other side. They were both the same age and they didn't have a plan B to a degree but they were people who stuck with it.

And with Bowie - he did a lot of acting and obviously your acting career is phenomenal as well. And so to do the acting, and the music and the creative industries is quite stunning. In the last couple of days I watched this documentary of Kate Nash and this artist had massive success and then suddenly, within a couple of years, she's got no money and has to try and start again.

So you've managed navigating those tricky waters because that's the one thing that catches people out so much. Looking back on your career do you see some moments where you thought “that was brilliant” and “that was tricky period”?

TOYAH: I think, from standing where I am today, where it's just the best year of my life . ..  I don't look back with negativity. I think when things are going well, you can look back and see sense and everything. For me, what would be tricky is being invisible. And in my 30’s as a woman I definitely suffered with that there's so many preconceptions about that decade for a woman that "when are you going to have children? When you're going to settle down? When you're going to stop doing what you do?"

I can look back and see that period is really one of the most insulting periods of my life, but it's made me who and what I am today. And when you deal with preconception, and preconceived ideas, then you’re really running blind in a dark room. It's not easy but I see all these experiences of making me who and what I am. They’re the building blocks of who we are at the end of our life when we go to meet our maker.

So I very rarely look back and think “God, that was bleak” and I’ve spent 33 years with my husband telling him that a period in his life was not bleak. It made him who he is today. I think that is what makes an artist an artist. An artist is that you see these episodes as giving you a depth. So you asked me do I look back and see a bleak period? Perhaps I look back and see a period that made me stronger.

DAVID: Yes, this is true. On that subject - it's often a lesson, you get given the same lesson until you learn, and then that situation doesn't appear anymore because actually I tackled that. Next time that came to me, I chose a different attitude or a different thought or a different approach, and then suddenly those little issues or niggles can go away but you think . . .  actually that was great. I'm pleased that I've had another chance to do it again but this time I'll do it a little bit differently and take it from a different angle, and then it works.

I think that's always a good philosophy, because actually . . . I was a bit of an indie kid in the 80’s. I realised that you coming along made a huge difference to the next wave of all the other indie kids from that John Peal-esque world. You were hugely influential, seeing you on Top Of The Pops and doing that to say “this is what I can do”.

TOYAH: I have to answer at this point. John Peel hated me. John Peel halted my career in America. Because at that point in time America would only take acts that John Peel liked. That's how strong his influence was and John Peel felt that I was contrived. I believe he was very, very wrong. So I've had that tide of negativity to fight against for 42 years. And now people have seen me perform live and they go, “oh my God we missed the boat with this woman!”.

I'm selling out around Europe, around Asia, around the UK, and people are going, “oh my God, this woman is such a good singer and she writes great songs!”. So I don't have an idealistic view of John Peel, and yes, I did change the music landscape. I changed it for women. And I've changed it for attitude towards life, and I didn't do it with the help of John Peel. So that's a really interesting one. I agree with you, but I changed the landscapes on my own.

DAVID: Yes, I've interviewed quite a few people who he didn't pick up and he did dismiss a bit, which I realised looking back. Anyway, he's not here anymore but they were people that he got quite wrong. And obviously it wasn't good, but I was trying to make the point that it was the people that you influenced -

TOYAH: I have to voice my opinion here. I'm in the BBC virtually every other day and I walk past the John Peel building every day, and I am literally putting two fingers up to it because, yeah, he influenced music, and he means so much to so many people, but to me he left me drowning not waving. And I respect him, I respect his past, I respect his judgement, but he got it wrong with me.

And this is a prime example of why women are not using their voices as exclamation marks, they're using their voices as a scream because so many of us have had to swim an ocean alone. I'm one of them, and I've only brought that up because you brought up John Peel. I've never, ever have said anything like this before in the past 40 years, but I have fought to be where I am today, and I am really good at what I do. So there are a lot of artists out there who have had to struggle against the tide. 

 

(“Sensational” plays)

DAVID: This is the third part of my interview with Toyah. I've been talking about the creative process that people have. Mostly people have five years in the music industry, things happen, change and they drop out. One of those things that happens is the change in musical trends. I was wondering how you - when you’ve been in the business for over 40 years - have coped with those changing times, and those fickle fans and critics. Toyah - you how did you cope?

TOYAH: I think I answered that before in that you just don't follow trends, you don't follow what's expected of you. Yeah, there were certain elements of all of what you've just said. In 1985 I was signed by CBS to their new Portrait label. And at that time they wanted me to be the new Pat Benatar, and I came up with an album that's hopefully about to be re-released called “Minx” which was produced by Christopher Neil, and it's a great album.

It tried to mature me into a different direction. But I’ve learned over the years your audience stays with you. And my audience know me as Toyah, probably before they know me as the music. And I go all over the place playing in beautiful art centres and beautiful town halls and churches to sold out shows. And there are people that are coming because they want to see me. You've got a lot of mothers bringing their daughters to see me, and a lot of daughters bringing their mothers to see me. And part of that is they want to see Toyah.

I learned that about 15 years ago but that power of what I do is connected to me. So, if a trend comes in and you're against the trend I'd say stick by that because that longevity is in riding trend, and riding over the top of it. There was absolutely no point in the 90’s me doing anything dance orientated. I did an album called “Dreamchild” that has very dedicated followers. The Utah Saints remixed it, and it's a great album, but it's not me. So I think you have to, as an artist, keep hold of the essence of who and what you are, and forget the trends. And that's where the survivors stand.

DAVID: The interesting thing is that those people, David Bowie, Robert Plant, and there was probably a few others, Rod Stewart, who did fantastic work and then they got into the 80’s and obviously someone said “look, there's a new sound, there's a new producer, you've got to go for this and get a mullet hairstyle” and they did. So it must be tricky when there was somebody nudging you in a slightly subtle or unsubtle way to say “you’ve got to follow this” and then I guess it's when you look back and you think “oh God, I didn't follow my heart, what my soul was saying” . . .

TOYAH: Every artist you've mentioned are run by management and record companies, and you've got to remember that record companies and management are companies. They’re companies that have to have levels of success. I am independent on every level of my life. And I can survive not having commercial success because I present, I produce, I act in films and on stage, I have other sources of income.

And also I am a phenomenal investor. The people in the know know that I have a bedrock of investment underneath me. So every artist you've talked about is reliant on the manager and the record company. And now looking back in retrospect of the amount of decades I've been in business - in 1990 I took over my own management. I put every penny I had into investment. And that makes me stand strong in the bad times. So trying to explain that to an artist who needs alcohol and nicotine to create something . . . they look at me and think that's a horrible life! Well, I had to do it. I had no choice.

So my background as a writer is knowing I've actually got quite a few millions supporting me that I have made, and built, and secured. No one has ever done it that way. It's taken me 30 years to teach my husband how to do it that way, but it creates incredible independence. I recently went to my record company, who has been my record company for the past nine months, and I said “look, I will give you this money, to go 50/50 in buying my back catalogue”, and you could literally pick them up off the floor. We're attempting to get the whole of my catalogue under one umbrella. The only other person I've know who's done this is Kate Bush. Bowie went on the open market and did it. So very few artists have an accountant brain and I do (David chuckles)

DAVID: That’s very good, actually. It was William Burroughs who said you've got to build a good name and keep your name clean and protect your work and obviously you got that at an early age and you've avoided that horrendous pitfall that so many people have.

 

TOYAH: I did not avoid it. I went through it and I thought only I can get myself out of this, only I because I actually believe this comes from a pretty idealistic belief system. We are all potential. We’re potential through all our life. The potential never stops. So I realised that I am the potential. And when things were financially wrong it didn't mean my potential was turned off. I taught myself how to do things. I taught myself my own perseverance and tenacity and rebuilt that structure in my life. And in retrospect, I can see that what I did instinctively was realising that the potential never ended.

DAVID: Yes and obviously you're still absolutely firing on all gas and there's obviously some new, I suppose vague trends with “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Rocket Man”. Have you started looking at your own life and thinking this could make an amazing film?

TOYAH: No, because I don't think I'm a big enough name. I am a cult artist. I mean a lot to women and I respect that. And I think I mean a lot to women because of that survival instinct and the message of potential. But I'm not a big enough name. I've been approached to have my music used in musicals, and also I think if that kind of biopic was ever made, it would probably put me in the third person, and it would be about some strange child that had to fight adversity, but I don't think it would be done in my name.

“Bohemian Rhapsody”, who were actually the world's biggest band, and went on Live Aid, and the world agreed that they were the world's biggest band and Elton John, I mean, my God! “Rocket Man” is just, I think, a stunning movie. And if people don't know this it’s Dexter Fletcher (who) made them both. And Dexter is not allowed to be credited as directing on “Bohemian Rhapsody” because he came in and revamped it and probably what people don't know about “Rocket Man” is it had a reshoot. And that was Dexter Fletcher, who I'm linked with through Derek Jarman, the film director. So, those were not easy journeys. Both of those movies had a rethink, and I think they're magnificent films.

DAVID: Yes, this is true. I know there's been a few other smaller documentary films about slightly indie bands who were still going in some way so I just wondered if with all your material and footage and stuff that you think this would be a nice thing to - like a lot of people I speak to - they start thinking about archiving it. Not because they're slowing down, they say “actually, if we can do it now, it means that it’s not going to get thrown away or lost”. Music documentaries on BBC4 – just absolute heaven. I just wanted to know if you're also tempted to make one those rock documentaries?

TOYAH: I absolutely love BBC 4. I was watching a Carly Simon's documentary the other night in a hotel at midnight, and it brought me alive. It was so wonderful. Yes, I am approached about doing a documentary on my life very often. At the moment a really brilliant documentary maker called Toby Amos is making one about my husband. And he then wants to make one about me. Now, the problem I have with this kind of filming is they work on jeopardy. And I don't want to be seen as someone that has jeopardy in my life, because that's kind of an echo behind me, and even in present day if there's any jeopardy in my life, it's an echo.

I stand in a positive light. And those don't make great documentaries. So if I allow a documentary to be made about me I also have to allow it to probably catapult itself off a negative story, and that's not me. It's just not me. The flower blooms in a storm. The documentary maker will want to film the storm. So I'm not sure about that. And also I think I'm still developing.

DAVID: Yes. You obviously feel like your life has been a spiritual journey. Was that something that developed past your teens and 20’s or was it something that you felt from a very young age?

TOYAH: Very young. It was very young. My mother gave birth to me at home. She went into labour on a Sunday. She was making the Sunday lunch, called the midwife. She gave birth to me upstairs in the family home and then told the midwife "this isn't my daughter". So I've always been brought up as an outsider. And I've always had exceptionally strange dreams. My mother was terrified of me.

So I've always been made to feel that I'm not normal. And I think that when you're brought up like that it makes you explore things. I've never felt I've arrived. It's blatantly obvious to me that these lives we all have here in the now, is part of a greater picture. It's never, ever been anything else to me. We’re born, we die, blackout. It's just so obviously not that. It's part of a greater picture.

DAVID: When did you start to find a balance and harmony because obviously that childhood must have been really traumatic while living with parents or a mother like that. And then you entered the one career that is probably not very good for anybody's calm and tranquillity in life . . . .

TOYAH: I think I found it the moment I met Robert Fripp, my husband (below with Toyah). I was living in a world where everyone was telling me I was wrong up until that point. And my mother was not a kind woman. When I phoned her in 1983 and told her I'd won Best Female Singer at the Rock And Pop Awards - which were the Brits - she said “well, it's not going to last forever. Enjoy it. Oh, and be careful - don't fall on it - it will kill you”, meaning don't fall on the award, it will kill me.

Absolutely every success I had was thrown back at me as a negative and when I met my husband, he slowly pointed all this out. He said that your mother has created a reality for you that is not real, it's a substance. She's created a toxic substance, and slowly he was able to point all this out - that my alienation had been created by someone else. And it's taken a long time. A long time to be able to step out of that substance and see it as another. And he was able to give me a language that I was not able to use in my family life, and that is quite something extraordinary.

DAVID: Yes, absolutely. It's incredible. And as they got older did you manage make any peace with that part of your life or did you just have to let that go and let it drift?

TOYAH: Ironically Robert became like the counsellor between me and my mother. Me and my mother were never going to meet. And the most remarkable moment I had with my mother was the day my father had a stroke. It was fatal. And the ambulance had just taken my father away and mum phoned me and she said “your father can't move. An ambulance is here” so I went straight over and mum was cleaning the house and the paramedics had told me my father was going to die any minute. And I said, “Mum, Dad is going to go. Stop cleaning the house. We need to get to A&E”, and I just saw her. In that moment I saw her soul wake up and I had two years with her before she died. And they were remarkable.

DAVID: So there was peace and closure in that period of time?

TOYAH: She became the most happy, funny, clever, witty human being I ever knew in those two years. Something released her and she became who she should have been. And that two years was her life. If that makes sense?

DAVID: Wow. Yes, that makes sense. It's almost like the father somehow . . .

TOYAH: That wasn’t a factor. It was convention. She was born just before the war. She was 12 years old during the war. She was never taught to write. She was trapped by convention. She married at 19 and immediately started having children, and she wasn't allowed to be her . . .

DAVID: That is extraordinary. What a story. You must have been able to breathe even better than you'd ever breathed before?

TOYAH: It was astonishing and my father's death was heartbreaking, but the death of my mother was absolutely life wrenching. And it was because we went through 50 years not being able to have a conversation. And even at the end we didn't know who she was. But I knew that she’d made the journey we're supposed to make to go to the next stage. But she died and we were still strangers.

DAVID: Yes. We live amazing lives. Don’t we? It’s an amazing journey

TOYAH: Everything around everyone - this is why I think that sometimes I wish I ruled the world because I think that we are all potential. Every individual born. Yet we live in structures that don't allow us to be us, and I see it everywhere. Everyone has an amazing life.

DAVID: Yes, and obviously when you have that moment of going on stage for two hours that must be a moment where you feel elevated into a different realm of consciousness?

TOYAH: I think it's my normality. I walk on stage and that is it. That is my life.

DAVID: And that is sadly the end of the show. A big thank you to Toyah for giving me the time for that interview

You can listen to the interview HERE