Dreamscape – Toyah Willcox Fansite

Toyah made a guest appearance on Terry Hall At The BBC on BBC Four at the weekend, introducing The Specials from an episode of Look! Hear! from January 1980.

A couple of incredibly rare early 80s European Toyah magazine covers were posted at Facebook recently. Tip, a German magazine, featured Toyah on their cover in January 1980 and December 1981. (Thanks to whoever unearthed these rarities!)

A new Elle photo feature which includes Louise Brooks, Hedy Lamarr, Audrey Hepburn, Brigitte Bardot, Diana Ross, Debbie Harry, Farrah Fawcett, Siouxsie Sioux and Toyah.

The Best Vintage Hairstyles You Never Knew Existed

Haircuts from yesteryear reign supreme for their innovation, technique, and skill to make these larger than life styles stand the test of time. From blunt bobs to abundant afros, we’ve rounded up some of the best curls, cuts, and swirls from the 20th century in order to discover the best hairstyles from the past.

1985: Feathered Bangs – English musician Toyah Willcox’s feathered and uneven bangs became almost as much of a symbol of punk rock as her fiery orange hair colour. (NB. This is 1980 not 1985!)

• Continue reading at Yahoo News!/Elle.

Happy 40th Anniversary to one of the great landmarks of Toyah’s music career – The Blue Meaning. The second long-player (as they were once called) and first full studio album, was released exactly 40 years ago today, in June 1980.

An amazing album and Toyah era, The Blue Meaning is significant for a number of reasons: It was the first Toyah release to enter the Official UK Chart (though earlier singles and the first album had all scaled the peak of the Indie Chart).

It also boasted incredible imagery, artwork and high design standard which would become synonymous with Toyah’s music career and future releases. The album also includes Toyah’s most legendary song, the perennial fan-favourite, Ieya! No Toyah gig is complete without it.

Over the past four decades the album has increased in significance, becoming a crucial part of Toyah’s discography. Everyone loves Anthem (who couldn’t?), The Changeling is a favourite of many fans, Love Is The Law saw Toyah’s vocals soar, Minx still divides opinion, Prostitute mindboggled us all, Ophelia’s Shadow as beautiful, intricate and unique as any album by Kate Bush or Tori Amos, In The Court Of The Crimson Queen introduced Toyah to a new audience while also delighting longtime fans, and yet The Blue Meaning came before all of the aforementioned and 40 years later still intrigues and entertains with each and every listen. Click below for our feature.

Fast approaching the 40th – yes 40th – Anniversary of the release of The Blue Meaning.

The Look of Love: Photographer Brian Griffin on shooting Depeche Mode, the Bunnymen, Kim Wilde and the stars of 1980s Pop

There were so many nightmares,” Brian Griffin tells me. “People who cared about their hair too much. People who were totally uninterested in being photographed.

“There would have always been a member of the band who was a pain in the arse. There would have been a member of the band who looked awful, who was not very photogenic …” He thinks about that a moment and then adds, “It would generally be the drummer.”

Back in the day Griffin took pictures of pop stars. You will have seen them. You might even own some of them. His work appeared in music magazines (the Face, i-D, NME) and on single bags and album covers. If you were buying records at the end of the 1970s or at the start of the 80s it’s more than likely you will know Griffin’s images. Elvis Costello on a diving board (a picture that features in the inner sleeve of Armed Forces), Echo and the Bunnymen snowed in in Iceland (the cover of their album Porcupine) or on a beach in Porthcawl (Heaven Up Here), a topless Billy Idol (for the cover of his album Rebel Yell). All of them bear Griffin’s signature.

• Continue reading at Herald Scotland. ‘Pop’, by Brian Griffin and Terry Rawlings, is published on 31st October and is available to pre-order at Amazon – Click on the photo above. (Photo © Brian Griffin)

A newly updated and revised version of , Rock and Roll Photography, the book of photographer Gered Mankowitz’s rock photos has just been published. It includes a photo of Toyah on the cover (Thunder In The Mountains) and inside (The Blue Meaning/Ieya).

Gered Mankowitz was the man who created the enduring and defining image of not only Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones but of ‘the rock star.’ Now you can enjoy the best of his 50-year career in this defining tome of photography which chronicles music history, and tells you more about relevant popular culture than any text book could.

Mankowitz has been photographing rock stars for 50 years, helping to create the image of musical legends like Annie Lennox, the Rolling Stones, Marianne Faithfull, Paul McCartney, Duran Duran, Elton John, Oasis, Wham!, and more. Mankowitz’s favourites of his own portraits are included in a new release of his book  Rock and Roll Photography. Here are some of the best, from a flawless Kate Bush to a sun-bronzed George Michael, along with quotes from Mankowitz, both from his book and in conversation with BuzzFeed.

Toyah, 1980: “Toyah is a real performer, she developed these extraordinary visual identities that sort of related to her music was saying at that time. This look of flaming hair, punk-priestess, was a portrait intended to present her confrontational power.”

Guaranteed to put a smile on your face! What a great photo, a fantastic, and rare, band shot from 1980. This was originally a Safari Records promo photo, possibly mailed out to radio stations etc. Please click below to view a larger version. (Thanks to Andi)

Two more rare-ish photos of Toyah from history! Both have been previously available but in far poorer quality. The first is from Toyah’s very first ‘Spotlight’ (the film, theatre and TV casting agency) profile in 1977. It was originally b&w rather than this colourised version. The second picture is from a Blue Meaning era photoshoot, photos from which were used in ‘Fab 208’ and ‘Jackie’ magazines in 1980. Please click on each to zoom. (Thanks to Craig Watkins (photo 1), Andi (photo 2) & Andrew York for colouring photo 1)

Return to Dreamscape soon for more rare-ish photos of Toyah from 1979 and ’80, including publicity shots for Quadrophenia and The Tempest. (Thanks to Andi)

In the meantime do take a look at some of our recent Rare Toyah Photos updates.

Low quality mini-gallery of the full (of what’s available) photo session from 1980. These were published in ‘Fab 208’ magazine that year and have only been available in cropped versions until very recently. Click below to browse all our Classic Toyah posts. (Thanks to Andi)

Gered Mankowitz took some iconic, and memorable, photos of Toyah at the height of her, and the band’s, pop career in the early 1980s. A brief clip of him talking about working with Kate Bush and Toyah has recently been uploaded to You Tube. (Thanks to Stephen Bennett Troake)

British Gered Mankowitz, one of the world’s most prominent photographers in the music and artistic world. Here he talks about what it was like to work with Kate Bush & Toyah Willcox. His iconic images of The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Eurythmics, Marianne Faithfull and Kate Bush have become historic pieces of history that graced hundreds of magazine & album covers.

Three very rare photos of Toyah from three well-known 1980 photo sessions. (Thanks to Andi)

• A rare photo of the Toyah band, circa late 1979, has recently appeared on eBay. It looks like it was taken in a pub while the band were on tour. The listing says: “The shot is date stamped 29 Oct 1979 by the UK pop music newspaper that received it”. Great photo!

• All Toyah: Continues to grow!

• Pause, Rewind, Obsess: Quadrophenia: …has a cult following but, despite some terrific scenes and some memorable characters (like the gnomish, lovesick, little pre-punk girl played by Toyah Willcox), it feels even more narratively half-baked than Pete Townshend’s musical scenarios tend to be.

• Critical Mass: Improvisation and carving: This article includes a photo of the cast of The Ebony Tower.

• Canterbury People: Canterbury girls chance to be in Marlowe Theatre’s Sleeping Beauty: Budding young actresses have the chance to star in the Marlowe Theatre’s pantomime. Sleeping Beauty will be at the Marlowe Theatre from November 30 to January 20 and star singers Gareth Gates and Toyah Willcox.

Possibly Toyah’s most iconic song? ‘Ieya’ was, of course, originally released as a single on Safari Records in 1980 and included on the album ‘The Blue Meaning’. It was also re-recorded and released again, as ‘Ieya ’82’, in the Summer of 1982, with Toyah performing it on various TV shows, including Hold Tight and the 6.55 Special. The single even charted. Here’s to the 30th (and 32nd!) anniversary of an absolute classic… Ieeeeeeeeeeyyaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Rare, and amazing, photos of Toyah from 1980!! Photos from this session were used in a TV Times interview that year but these are all unpublished as far as I’m aware. (Thanks to Andi)

Two more rare-ish photos of Toyah. These are from 1980 and were taken during the filming of, and as publicity for, the ATV documentary TOYAH. Please click on each to view a larger version. (Thanks again to the incredibly generous Andi)

Apologies for my previous post. This is probably not the best place to let off that sort of steam. I’ve removed it.

A few rare-ish Toyah photos. Three lesser seen variations from well-known 1980 (‘The Face’) and 1981 photo sessions, plus great live shots from The Changeling Tour’ and the ‘Warrior Rock Mini Tour’ from July & December ’82. Click on each to view larger. (Thanks to Andi)