TOYAH TALKS
ANTHEM 2022

From the DVD of the Anthem Reissue 2022  

After the release of "The Blue Meaning" in 1980, Pete Bush, Charlie Francis and Steve Bray left the band …

TOYAH: When "The Blue Meaning" band line-up broke up it was absolutely devastating, but something was happening that in many ways was inevitable and I was becoming the main focus of the band. So at the time "The Blue Meaning" band broke up I was starring in a play at the Royal Court Theatre called “Sugar And Spice” and I had a documentary crew from ITV following me everywhere

This is way before reality TV and suddenly we're surrounded by a camera crew. And it just puts so much pressure on the other musicians and I think it gave them a loss of identity and they decided to just move on to other pastures

Joel (Bogen) and I have been together for a long time as a creative team, and it just would have been crazy for us not to have continued. There was a lot of goodwill in the industry and obviously success was a millimetre away from both of us. I carried on doing the play at the Royal Court, I felt utterly lost. I had absolutely no idea how to cope and what to do but Safari contacted a producer called Nick Tauber

They contacted Keith Hale of Blood Donor and we went into the studio around Christmas - before Christmas and Christmas week. And we did the first demo for “It’s A Mystery, by which time Nick Tauber put a new band together with Joel and that new band was Phil Spalding on bass (below on the rght), Nigel Glockler on drums, Adrian Lee on keyboards, Joel guitar (below on the left), me voice

I didn't get to meet these boys until about February because I was then shooting Tales Of The Unexpected called “Blue Marigold” for ITV. And I was based in Norwich, and every day of tape would arrive with new songs on and when I say songs, they were just the backing tracks, but they were so complete all I had to do was to write the top line, the top lyric, the top melody and go in the studio and record them. The big problem was the time to do that. I certainly couldn't do it while I was starring in a drama

But I got home after “Blue Marigold” finished and every morning for two weeks I got up at six in the morning, wrote the top line to every track, by two in the afternoon I was in the studio recording it, doing the backing vocals, everything by seven in the evening and right over this two week period we completed the album

The new line-up and Nick Tauber’s approach was that of super polished commerciality and what I mean by that- when you look back to "The Blue Meaning" line-up with Charlie Francis, Steve Ray on drums - you have this wild, unstoppable unharnessed energy and it's the same with the creative ideas. With “Anthem” the tracks that were coming to me in Norwich were just so beautifully arranged and beautifully played. It was the step-up within commercialism and that was evident immediately

Was I confident about it? No, because it took a step up in its commerciality but that was a step away from me. I still had to find that Toyah. I was still the Toyah of "Blue Meaning" and very much an avant-garde groundbreaking creative artist in theatre and in music. And suddenly I'm presented with these backing tracks, like the backing tracks for “I Want To Be Free”. No title, nothing. The backing track to “Marionette”. No title, nothing

So everything I did I created from my instinct and my emotional reaction to those tracks purely on their musical merit. And the arrangements were so complete. I think it helped me a lot because it was pretty obvious what was a bridge and what was a chorus and sometimes the old Toyah band would have to go into a rehearsal studio and work out what was the bridge and what was the chorus and where the catch was. I was presented all of that in its finished form

The only thing where I was working in the studio to hone was “It’s A Mystery” with Keith Hale, which came to me as a 12 minute vocal and a 12 minute instrumental and we needed to turn that into a four and half minute hit single. So that became verse, bridge, chorus, verse, bridge, chorus. I wrote the second verse but we did all this in the studio together. I did the vocal

And I must admit doing the demo for “It’s A Mystery” ... I was thinking what am I doing? This is the end. This is absolutely the end. I was completely in conflict within myself as to how to make this new commerciality work. And I did it the way I always do it and that's inverting imagery and bringing in really strange imagery

Around the time of “Anthem” “Dungeons And Dragons” was kind of big and it was an underground thing and it was a cult thing. But it was still a big thing. And this was the beginning of computer programming, where virtually everyone we were working with was disappearing moonlighting to do work through the night on programming computers. This was a world in complete fluidity, flux and change

And I thought if I bring in these images - like “Obsolete” is about flat earth, “I Want To Be Free” is just about the God given right of not having someone tell us who and what we should be when we should only listen up there. “We Are” is about the God given right of us having our own identity and “Marionette” was very much influenced by Thatcher's Britain

And “Demolition Men” was very much influenced about how America was starting to homogenise the UK. So I was just playing with all these very filmic images and that's how I coped with the super commercialism that was heading my way from the studio
 
To put “It’s A Mystery” into context, the band Blood Donor were the groundbreaking band that virtually every synth band from the late 70s to the 80s to the 90s, copied. This was a great band, this was Keith Hale's band. And Keith Hale had this song called “It's A Mystery”which Safari were determined I was going to sing, and they instinctively felt it was a hit single

I didn't get it. In the beginning I didn't get it. And when Keith and I worked on the arrangement with Nick Tauber, and we honed it and we presented it as a finished recording to the to the record label I think my words were “this is the end of my career as a singer”

When we started to put it into the touring band, which was late February 1981 I actually apologised to the audience. I remember being on stage in Sheffield, which by the way, was a one and a half hour show that also had a one and a half hour encore. It was breathtaking with the whole band practically naked on stage vomiting into buckets because of the heat and the exhaustion

We put “It’s A Mystery” into the set and I said “look, this is my next single, I don't think it's me, let's see what you think.” And we performed it. And it had a really interesting reaction. There was almost a bemused silence at the end and then they just erupted. And after that word spread around the whole of the tour and we were followed by about a caravan of 20 cars - every tour at that time, news spread fast and this became the go to song of the whole tour

The success of “It’s A Mystery” was absolutely extraordinary because I was expecting the bottom line and that was career death. And there's something very ironic that I can only say in hindsight, is that because the song was ultra feminine and because the first appearance on Top Of The Pops, my costume didn't arrive and I had to wear a dress I think it made me utterly palatable to the mass market

Because up until that point I was third gender, I didn't gender dress at all. I was a pretty odd person with strange hair, strange makeup, but there's something about the chain reaction that fell into place the moment we got the single out. It was unstoppable

And there were things going on, like the single was so successful in its sales even before we got Top Of The Pops that the factories ran out of vinyl, and there was an absolute panic on because I think the single went in in the Top 40 and we had to prove to get Top Of The Pops we could get it into the Top 30

We were about to lose that position because there was no vinyl in the factory and everything had sold out and the demand was beyond what we could deliver. I think Safari even hired men in white vans to go around record shops and collect broken vinyl. And they were driving 24 hours a day to get the vinyl into the factory and the product into the shops

And they managed to do it because I think we went in at 28 the following week. And even though Top Of The Pops was very unsure about me, they could not refuse me a place on that week’s show

And when the phone call came in, I was in my flat in Hendon. I was in the bath looking forward to a day off the next day and the phone call came and they said “you've got Top Of The Pops. You're in the studio for 10.30 in the morning”, and I can remember just sitting in that bath going “oh fuck! Fuck!!!” And I couldn't comprehend being accepted being on something that I'd watched all my life with my family. The one programme it would take for my family to realise I had talent and had a career

And suddenly it was there and it came out of the blue and it came in such a strange way. Boy, the following 24 hours my feet didn't touch the ground. It was like get the costume, get the makeup, get the hair done. We had to rerecord the song in those days before Top Of The Pops. Get to the studio, rerecord the song

When we arrived at Top Of The Pops, I had this thing in those days where I wouldn't eat until after I'd worked so absolutely no food and no water for about 18 hours. I don't know how I did it. I even used to go three days without food. How I did it I do not know but it just made me super active, super kind of animal and alert. So we get to the studio. And it's not easy and wasn't easy eating at a BBC studio back then. You just could never find anywhere. You were permanently lost

But we rehearsed on camera I'd say about five times before we did the actual show. I remember on the stage over there was Adam Ant, who was number one at the time I believe, stage over there possibly Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, stage over there the guy (Joe Dolce) that sang "Shaddap Your Face". I mean ... it was just so surreal and so wonderful. It’s probably the most magical day of the whole of my life to be honest

Once we had the initial success with “It’s A Mystery” nothing was going stop me. It confirmed everything I wanted in life and everything I thought I could do in life. It absolutely confirmed for me that I have a place in a successful music career. Nothing's going to stop me. So no, the pressure wasn't on. But believe me the pressure was on because the lifestyle just turned on a half penny

I cannot tell you what it was like. It was get up at six in the morning. Go to a studio, record something. Get a prop plane over to Belgium, go to a studio, do a TV show. Get the prop plane back, do Top Of The Pops, get the prop plane to Germany. Do a show, come back, get in the studio, write the next song. It was just what the hell?! But it was the most exciting thing and it's everything I ever wanted. But what I didn't realise is that lifestyle starts to isolate you

So I went from the life when I was mixing with Iggy Pop, I was mixing with Derek Jarman, I was mixing with so many other people because we had some time on our hands. And all we had to do was go in a rehearsal room and write songs. Suddenly there was no time. No time. Journalists needed you, photographers needed, you needed to write new material. It was non-stop for the whole of that 12 month period. Non- stop

With “I Want To Be Free” when I first received the backing track for it, it was a very obvious anthemic rock number. And I very much wanted to write something that I identified with my new younger audience. And I knew that was risky because I had a great great audience from “Sheep Farming In Barnet”, “Blue Meaning”, even “Toyah! Toyah! Toyah!” but with this song I wanted to say something that we are a generation that's completely different from every other generation. We're born different. We have a right to be different and we have different values. That's what I was aiming at with this song

I had to write the lyric within two hours. So I was up at about six in the morning, in my office, wrote the lyric, car came, took me to the Marquee studios where Joel and Nick Tauber were waiting for me. And I sat down and I sang them what I've written. Nick instantly loved it because Nick likes direct, quite simple phrases. He doesn't like it when I do things that are complex. And he always says “go away! Take words away, go away, come back - less is more!”

Joel ... I could see he needed to really think about it because Joel comes from jazz, and he loves jazz so everything has to have a very deep meaning with Joel. And I think he was concerned about the musicality of it. He was concerned about what his friends might think, and what the critics might think

But he went with it. For some reason I just went straight into the studio and put it down and I put it down chorus first and then did the verses because I felt if I could get them to hear the chorus they knew how anthemic it was going to be. And as soon as I started the chorus, they started to be more positive towards it

In hindsight, this song has grown and grown and grown for a very different reason. When the song came out, yes, it was instantly a hit, it just hit the right buttons. It was the right time. But we started to hear from around the world from prison organisations that this song was being sung every morning by prisoners, even political prisoners were adopting it. But then we started to get messages coming from South Africa that people stuck within apartheid were singing it. People who wanted an end to apartheid. They wanted equality and recognition - they were singing it as well. It was a huge hit in South Africa

Three years ago when I was playing Queen Elizabeth the First in the stage version of Derek Jarman's “Jubilee” with a gender neutral cast - gender fluid, gender neutral - they chose this song to represent them. It was their anthem. They said they knew of this song because it was performed in clubs and in cabaret clubs in the gay community, and it was performed because everyone said it was about being gender neutral. And of course, that's what I was when I started out, I was gender neutral

The industry has not been kind to this song. Managers, who are always a bit tricky to deal with, especially other artists’ managers kind of say “oh, it's a novelty song. It means nothing. We don't want our artists following Toyah”. Well, they don't want their artists following Toyah because I’m fucking good at what I do. But also that this song to an audience just absolutely sends them into raptures. It's so big, it's such an event and the whole audience is singing it back. And that alone tells you that the song has huge credibility

The tours on this particular year, 1981, were breathtakingly successful. There was even talk in 1982 of shifting me up into Wembley Arena but people just got cold feet about it. But the tours were so successful and so much fun I think the band were happy to be part of it. And also, it's pretty obvious that this was music written by a band. This wasn't contrived music written for a kind of contrived artist

We had history, Joel and I had history and a very good kind of provenance behind us. So I think the band were very happy. I adored Nigel Glockler’s drumming, he was so wonderful to work with but by the time we did “Thunder In The Mountains” Nigel had decided to go and join Saxon. That was about August 1981. And that broke my heart. Utterly broke my heart because he was such an ally for me

When the boys were being ... I'm not going to use the word bullying because I think that's unfair, but when the boys were kind of being boys and boys group, Nigel was there to support me and put his arm around me and to make me feel valued and that I was being listened to. There were a few occasions where because I was always on the promotional trail, I missed out on making friends and having friendship bonds and eating with the boys and travelling with the boys that separated me from them

The sheer demand of 14 interviews a day, having to travel sometimes to another country in the morning and then come back for a show meant I was not with these people to bond with them as friends

So I think all that made it harder and I think part of that helped Nigel Glockler make up his mind to go and join Saxon. And then, I think by January 1982, Adrian Lee decided he was going to have a solo career, where he eventually ended up with Mike and The Mechanics, but he realised that his potential was so huge on “Anthem” that he wanted a solo career

So it was a tough year. It was a tough year for everyone for many different reasons, but a glorious year. But when you asked me what was it like for the band to experience my ascending light ... I think they realised that what ever happened that year the tension was going to be on me, but they were supportive and they did their jobs brilliantly. But I think by the end of the year it was pretty inevitable that Joel and I had to rethink what we were going to do next

I remember the making of “Anthem” being as smooth as a calm millpond. It was an absolute joy. Going into the studio was the one time I could just go (lets out a big sigh) because all the other time there were fans, we were being followed. There was press, there was stalkers outside where we lived. It was just kind of frazzling. I remember getting to the studio having completed my lyrics just thinking “Oh, this is the fun bit.” I remember it just being an absolute joy. Real joy. I loved every minute

There wasn't one moment of writer's block. There wasn't one moment when we didn't know what to come up with. I was just brimming with ideas. Joel was as well. We loved putting the vocals down and the backing vocals down. Nick Tauber was an absolute master at producing a voice and he knew how to put effects on the voice and give the voice a presence that you don't have naturally. No singer has it naturally. So everything I was giving to him he was spinning into gold, and it just gave me so much confidence

In comparison, when I was doing “The Changeling a year later with Steve Lillywhite I was working to a dry sound, which I found really really hard because a dry sound is unforgiving. But with Nick, in my cans I got the produced sound as it would sound on the record and the effect it had on me was just building my confidence daily

I absolutely loved working at the Marquee studios. We did a lot of “Sheep Farming In Barnet” at the Marquee studios, but upstairs in a little vocal booth. And the same with “Tiger! Tiger!” on “Blue Meaning”, we did it upstairs in a little vocal booth. Here we were in the master studio, the biggest studio in London with the greatest desk in the greatest sound room. It was a joy to be there and it was quite hidden. It wasn't until we did “Love Is The Law” two years later that the fans found us there

I found every moment in that studio utterly magical. It was contained, we were a family, we were a unit, a tight friendly unit in that studio. And Nick Tauber was just absolutely stunning at keeping our energy up, keeping us laughing and coming up with brilliant production techniques. On the song “I Am” we wanted a waterfall. So we ended up putting the engineer in the toilet and just flushing the toilet all night long to get that waterfall and then reversing the tape

We were able to do these wonderful things and back then this was before digital recording came in. So we were cutting the tape with razor blades, taking bars out, stitching it together, reversing the tape to reverse the sound. We were reversing cymbals. It was utterly wonderful. Probably the most wonderful experience of my entire recording life

Psychologically being asked to write a B-side you're not being told to write a hit single, which meant we could go back to our origins and our origins were being incredibly in the moment with writing. So “Walkie Talkie”, “Alien” and “Sphinx”, all those songs - which became huge hits with the fans - they just happened like that (snaps her fingers) because we weren't worrying about the sequence of the song, we weren't worrying that it had to have radio play. And I believe that all of these were done for promotion. Safari were really brilliant at promotion at that particular time. And you had so many music magazines that wanted exclusives

So flexi discs – when you actually got the honour of doing a flexi disc, because every artist wanted to do one, we just came up with songs like that. Were we super productive that year? We had to be, but I think we were super happy, super confident and very, very relieved of our success, which meant that we could just flourish. We were in the best place we could be and we were flourishing

I've always been interested in world cultures. So for me in this present day I didn't believe I was stealing or borrowing. I was just hugely respectful and hugely influenced by these cultures that were a lot more interesting than my education. So to discover the kind of philosophies of Egypt, the past life philosophies, the future life philosophies, the passing into the world of the dead, the "Book Of The Dead", all of their hieroglyphics and the fact that the three pyramids match up with three exact spots on Mars. You just think there is more to this planet. There's more to our little tiny universe than we've been told. And I was interested in that

And again, I love "Lord Of The Rings". I love fairies versus elves versus goblins. I loved all of that. So the imagery on the front cover was the war, the fairy war. Now fairies in folklore are actually utterly ferocious, and they're very, very predatory and they're very possessive of their land. So I wanted a painting that was both like a Marge Piercy interpretation of “Woman On The Edge Of Time” and Marge Piercy, a great American feminist writer, whose characters always travelled through insanity into a crystal clear utopia

And what I wanted with that cover was the utopian fairy holding the head of masculinity. I slightly regret it today because the way the wars have gone today and the way that religious sects have gone today. I think it's a very unfortunate image, but it's all come from the world of fantasy - not from a world of politics. "Dungeons And Dragons", "Lord Of The Rings", "The Hobbit", all of those. And there was a magnificent book written called “The Fairies”, which is a horror book, which I just absolutely adore and it's about these aggressive fairies that just fight every battle to keep their land

My relationship with Melissa Caplan was all about her originality, and I could go to Melissa with books. I’ve still got the books all around this house of tribal art and I'd say “Melissa, I just adore this tribal art. Can we fit it into a costume?” The colour schemes, the patterns, the body patterns. We reinterpreted it, but we were definitely inspired by Masai, Kabuki theatre, Japan. We were inspired by the hieroglyphics of Egypt. So it was all - for me - just gloriously beautiful, creative experience, and I happened to love these world cultures

Melissa was very understanding of that and very exclusive about that. She realised that was my pocket. But as the year moved on with “I Want To Be Free” I wanted to move on with different designers, and I wanted to experiment with movements and I think the designer for the video of “I Want To Be Free” and the Anthem Tour in May 1981 was Helen Scott, who worked mainly in white cotton. So we all were on stage in white cotton, with these kind of tassels that moved around us. And then for “Thunder In The Mountains” I wanted something that's probably the most feminine I'd ever been until that point, which were very tribal and very Boadicea. So I had this wonderful suede dress made which was just skin tight

We were on the road with the Anthem Tour when Adrian Lee gave me a tape of just a piece of music, and I loved it. It was full of bravado, it was full of joy, it lifted my heart listening to it and I said “I really want to put a lyric to this”. So I submitted “Thunder In The Mountains”. It had to be written very quickly purely because of the constraints on us with all the touring and being in Europe and going into Europe and doing so many shows and a few festivals. So on the day that Princess Diana was marrying Prince Charles, I think that was the last day in July 1981, I was in my apartment alone

I had to write the lyric and get to the studio and record it that afternoon. I had to finish and complete the lyric because I already had the line “tunder in the mountains”, but I had to create the top line and the melody. And I had two stalkers outside that had the phone number and they were just ringing the doorbell. I was completely alone not knowing how to deal with this and just trying to get it finished

And knowing that when my car came, they were going to be there waiting for me and I was alone. It was very, very intriguing and very stressful. But once I got into the studio environment back in the Marquee studio with Nick Tauber you could let all that go. And Nick created an atmosphere that made work possible

And I think in many ways with “Anthem”, the complete album, I think if we could have done that then we should have had four singles off the album. But you couldn't do that back then because part of the political beliefs of punk was you just didn't exploit the audience. But there were many songs on that album that would have been great singles

“We Are” would have been amazing single and if we had “Voodoo Doll” ready or even “Thunder In The Mountains” ready, that would have been a great single as well - which would have meant “I Want To Be Free”, “It's A Mystery”, “Thunder In The Mountains”, “Voodoo Doll” were all potential singles. But again, this was all part of the fact that we had to produce so much music in that year to satisfy every magazine, every radio station, as well as the fans

“Thunder In The Mountains” is the second video I made with the team of Godley & Creme of 10cc. Absolutely renowned legendary video directors. At our first creative meeting for “Thunder In The Mountains”. I said I wanted to be able to ride a Sherman tank down Oxford Street and down The Mall they said no, only the Queen has permission to do that. And I said I really want to kind of emulate Boadicea and everything to do with the Iceni and the tribes and what the Iceni went through and how they conquered the Romans and the invasion of Rome and all of that

And I left it with Godley & Creme and I've turned up at this airfield for the shoot with my makeup artist Prue Walters and with the band and there was this sawn in half car and a pony and I thought well ... that's a bit of a kind of anticlimax and then I realised I was going to have to get in it and use it and ride it like Boadicea

On the windscreen, which was acting as my shield against falling forward - they taken off the centre mirror, but they hadn't taken off what held the centre mirror so when I'm kind of in motion with the pony on the chariot, this spike that held the mirror is actually digging into my stomach. And I was on that chariot for three hours and by the next day my stomach was just black with bruising

I adored making the video. It was demanding. It was great fun, Godly & Creme are a scream to work with. They were great storytellers. They always had a storyboard that they wanted you to follow. They understood the imagery. They understood the importance of the imagery to me, and that I wanted this other world, this kind of Mad Max world and that it just had to be a strong woman and a dystopian landscape

When I was 12 I went to see Marc Bolan and T Rex at the Birmingham Odeon and the noise before he came on stage was incomprehensible. Why are these people making so much noise and how are they making it? And it was the same scene with Ziggy Stardust - David Bowie at the Coventry Theatre in ‘73. The noise was just deafening

Suddenly in May 1981 I was arriving at theatres and the noise was deafening. And it was wonderfully exciting and if I’d had an iPhone at that time, I would have been instagramming it endlessly. All you could hear was “Toyah! Toyah!” Toyah!” I mean for hours. I remember at the Ipswich Gaumont, which was always a remarkable concert - the noise backstage and you just couldn't speak because all you could hear was “Toyah!” and it never ever silenced. It never dropped. It was just the roar of the crowd

And it was very interesting going from the tour in the universities in February and March, where they were wild and they were expressive, but they weren't screaming my name name all the time and suddenly we were moving into these big theatre venues and all you could hear was screaming

It was breathtaking. They only fell quiet for the intro of “Danced” which was on “Sheep Farming In Barnet” or for “Jungles Of Jupiter”. That's the only time that we could actually hear what we were doing. And then of course there was the introduction of security. I mean frontline security - security in the wings, security outside the dressing room

I remember at Oxford Playhouse people started falling from the roof and they're all men and what they'd done they'd all got up onto the roof, removed the tiles off the roof, and were trying to come down the theatre curtains and they were just dropping like flies. So we were performing with ambulance people on stage. And eventually we had to stop the show and just go off and let these people be attended to. And then as soon as we started it, it just all started again. We just couldn't stop it. So we had quite a few experiences on that tour where there was something going on that was beyond the music. It was hysteria

When we made the album we weren't making it with our radar just on success. We were making music that we believed in and a musical journey we wanted to take and within the music there was so much colour, brightness, shade, potential. So when we were making the album I think our main interest was fulfilling the potential of everyone's contribution. Then suddenly this phenomenal success started and it was spreading around the world

And at that point you realise that an album has a life of its own. You're actually no longer part of it. Because you can't judge why it's successful. You can't judge why a completely different culture embraces it. You can't judge why someone in Australia goes out of their way to find their copy. It has a different meaning. And at that point in time you realise something you've written means something unique to the person who's heard it, who’s gone out of their way to buy it, and you just let that be

I don't listen back to my albums that often but obviously today 42 years on I'm still playing the songs and it's always so striking. The production values, the invention, the lengths we went to to get those sounds. I mean we're throwing avocados at glass. We were tearing cymbals, smashing them with hammers. We were breaking things. And even for something like “Elocution Lesson”, which is really out there and to use the word bitch in a commercial album back then coming from a woman was almost obscene

When we did the album we knew we had something commercial and well honed, but I still needed a lot of the original Toyah in there which is experimentation. And you get that with “Pop Star”, which for me is like a musical version of a Ray Bradbury book. And it's exactly how I wanted it and when I explained it to Nick Tauber, I think Adrian Lee came up with the main part of the song, the music, and I said to Nick Tauber “I want this to be about alienation. I want this to be about technology, commanding the humans. I want it to be about fame and brittleness and how fame puts you in a bubble”. He just got it. With “Elocution Lesson” - that's a completely autobiographical song. It's a song about the fact that I needed speech therapy from the age of six, had it til I was 11

And then when I signed with the National Theatre at the age of 18, they continued my speech therapy because I had very bad speech impediment. So “Elocution Lesson” was about the humiliation I felt always having to learn how to speak because I didn't understand that I couldn't speak due to a defect in the roof of my mouth. I was probably talking to someone (makes an incomprehensible noise) - it's coming out like that

I didn't know that I wasn't forming my words and suddenly I find myself in a situation where I'm being told I have to learn how to speak and it was shocking to me. Shocking that I wasn't actually sounding and communicating the way my brain was telling me I was. And that was quite a big thing for me and the opportunity to put the song “Elocution Lesson” on this album, for me was a massive, massive privilege

“Anthem” is an incredibly important album. It's just brilliantly produced, brilliantly written, brilliantly performed. It has such originality within it but it still stands alone. When you look at “Sheep Farming In Barnet” you've got this vibrant, beautiful energy of musicians in the studio for the first time ever in their careers. When you listen to “Blue Meaning” you've got a band who know they're onto something, who have audiences ramming into venues, and it's a dark angry album that I think sums up the end of our teenage lives

And then with “Anthem” you've got this album that is embracing new technology, new synthesiser sounds, new potential. And you've got experienced musicians for the first time - I mean musicians that have been doing sessions for quite a few years - suddenly in the studio with you and you realise you can do anything with them. And that raises you up a notch

But as an album I think “Anthem” is a stand-alone in my career because it's a storytelling album. And it's also a production telling album. By the time we moved on to “The Changeling” we were already moving into quite a gothic dark area, and it's a completely different sound

“Anthem” then for me just resonates the pathways created by OMD, Human League, Frank Tovey (of Fad Gadget). It just resonates the end of the 70s into the new era. And it's pre-dance

Listen to the interview ↓


See also the Anthem 2022 Special Feature