Phil Marriott spoke with Saxon drummer Nigel Glockler about his time with Toyah in 1981, a hugely successful time for Toyah and her band, during which they released the No.2 album Anthem and hits such as ‘It’s A Mystery’ and ‘Thunder In The Mountains’.
Coming this Friday! Toyah’s new digital single Sensational (Posh Redux) featuring Robert Fripp.
Produced by Simon Darlow, the single is a follow-up to Slave To The Rhythm and previews the forthcoming Rhythm Deluxe Edition of In The Court Of The Crimson Queen.
Following Toyah! Toyah! Toyah! (May 2022, #72) and Anthem (September 2022, #33), Toyah secures a third Top 100 album in 2022 on The Official Charts today, with Live At The Rainbow entering at #100. Not only that, though, Live At The Rainbow places very well in various other Official Chart album countdowns today.
Album Chart #100
Independent Chart #7
Sales Chart #24
Physical Chart #22
Scottish Chart #34
Live At The Rainbow also charted at #36 in the Official Chart Album Update (aka Midweeks) earlier this week.
• Chart Stats: Toyah has now had seven albums on the Official Charts in the past four consecutive years: In The Court Of The Crimson Queen (2019) #74, Sheep Farming In Barnet (2020) #99, The Blue Meaning (2021) #59, Posh Pop (2021) #22, Toyah! Toyah! Toyah! (2022) #72, Anthem (2022) #33, Live At The Rainbow (2022) #100.
NB. As well as those album stats, the two box sets, Toyah Solo (March 2020), and The Humans: Noise In Your Head (July 2020), both entered a number of the Official Charts, including Sales and Independent.
• More Toyah Chart News: Browse Dreamscape’s Official Charts archive… Download/Stream or buy the vinyl or CD/DVD of Live At The Rainbow.
Four More From Toyah is reissued on Special Neon Violet Vinyl by Cherry Red Records on Friday 9th December 2022.
Limited quantity of limited edition postcard available from Cherry Red Records whilst stocks last. (NB. These sold out almost immediately)
The release expands the 1981 EP ‘Four More From Toyah’ into an eight- track mini-LP, compiled by Craig Astley and newly remastered from the original master tapes.
Originally released in late November 1981 and lead by the track ‘Good Morning Universe’, the EP was the fourth top 20 charting single for the band in that year, following the ‘Four From Toyah’ EP (lead by ‘It’s A Mystery’), ‘I Want To Be Free’ and ‘Thunder In The Mountains’.
The EP was the first material to be studio-recorded since the departure of drummer Nigel Glockler who was replaced by Simon Phillips. This EP contains eight tracks recorded by the line- up of Toyah Willcox (vocals), Joel Bogen (guitarist, co-writer and co-founder of the Toyah band), Adrian Lee (keyboards), Phil Spalding (bass) and the newly recruited Simon Phillips (drums).
Side A contains all four of the tracks from the original EP.
Side B opens with the previously unreleased, studio recorded tour intro track ‘Go Berserk’, including new vocals and snatches of lyrics from ‘Neon Womb’ and ‘Urban Tribesmen’ plus new dialogue that leads to a chilling crescendo. ‘Go Berserk’ was played before the band walked on stage on the European Tour of winter 1981. It is swiftly followed by the newly remastered ‘Stand Proud’ which often featured as the first song played live (directly after Go Berserk had finished). The track originally appeared on a flexi-disc with initial copies of the ‘Four More From Toyah’ EP.
The third track is ‘Clapham Junction’, an out-take that began in the session for the single ‘Thunder In The Mountains’, was finished with new drum parts from Simon Phillips and vocals/ lyrics from Toyah.
The final track is the last session recorded by this line-up and hails from February 1982. This previously unreleased re-recording of the hit single ‘I Want To Be Free’ was produced by Steve Lillywhite in the Roundhouse Studios and went on to be used as the basis of the band’s television performance on the British Rock & Pop Awards when Toyah was awarded Best Female Singer in early 1982. This track has not previously been released.
All eight tracks are remastered by Nick Watson at Fluid Mastering and approved by Joel Bogen. The sleeve contains an out-take of the EP photography from the Safari archives plus full lyrics on a newly designed inner bag. Initial quantities come with an exclusive postcard.
• Pre-Order Four More From Toyah on Neon Violet Vinyl at Cherry Red (The limited edition with postcard sold out almost immediately!). Read the press release – and see the full tracklist, which includes two previously unreleases tracks – at toyahwillcox.com.
Following last year’s Brave New World bauble, here’s new Anthem and Thunder In The Mountains inspired baubles for Christmas 2022.
LIVE REVIEW: TOYAH + VANITY FAIRY AT THE FLEECE, BRISTOL
Here’s a review I’ve long dreamed of writing; namely my favourite live artist, in my favourite live music venue, in my favourite city. If that isn’t enough to make it an interesting night out, my wife is also joining me – her first live gig for forty years. Here, it has to be categorically stated that my wife has no musical passions for Toyah but, as I discovered the Birmingham singer/actress back in 1980 and my wife as recently as 1988, she’s always been (mostly) very patient and contented herself with eye-rolling while I relive my teenage years of enthusiastic pogo dancing. An added element here is that both my wife and I are disabled – this being a key issue for her not attending gigs for so long – so it would naturally be interesting to see how the venue catered for us less-mobile types. Here, knowing The Fleece well was a distinct advantage. To me, it’s the perfect music location, consisting of a single, long room with not a trace of evil staircases. However, we contacted The Fleece well in advance to ask about specific details concerning disabled patrons. The venue did not disappoint us, being courteous and helpful through every stage of the booking process. So, before we get to Toyah, a shout out to Holly Angus and the team in Bristol for their support.
• Continue reading at Joyzine.
SDEtv examines the three physical editions of Cherry Red’s reissue of Toyah’s Anthem, including the super deluxe edition box set. Click below to watch.
Read Toyah’s latest blog at toyahwillcox.com. Including Toyah on Anthem, the Anthem Tour, Weightless and more!
Toyah – Anthem
Deluxe Reissue (Cherry Red)
This is, of all the Toyah reissues this far, also recommended to the casual fan. It contains just as much challenging ‘meat’ as the previous albums, but with the familiar hooks which will help less seasoned travellers navigate the truly fascinating outposts. Unreservedly recommended.
With this 2CD/DVD set, the deluxe Toyah reissue campaign from Cherry Red reaches 1981 – with an amazing four releases having spanned the previous two years from 1979. Anthem, the third studio album, was both the mainstream breakthrough and simultaneously an album which almost didn’t get made. Following the previous year’s live album Toyah! Toyah! Toyah!, the band (which we must remind ourselves, was itself named ‘Toyah’, in much the same way as ‘Alice Cooper’ was originally the band name as well as the frontman) fell apart, leaving just Toyah herself and creative lynchpin guitarist Joel Bogen. A short-lived band was assembled but quickly fell apart again after not really working out, and it seemed as if Toyah, the band, might be done. Toyah herself almost became the full-time vocalist with the band Blood Donor, who had the original version of It’s A Mystery in their repertoire, but after a few demo recordings that didn’t come to fruition. Nick Tauber, recruited as producer again after his work on the live album, pulled together a new crew along with Bogen, comprising bassist Phil Spalding, keyboardist Adrian Lee and future Saxon drummer Nigel Glockler. The new line-up recorded and released the four-track EP Four From Toyah early in 1981, with It’s A Mystery as its lead track, and the record’s unexpected massive success ensured they would not look back from that point on.
• Continue reading at Velvet Thunder. See more reviews of Anthem and other releases here.
Toyah, on the Anthem Tour 2022, at Bristol Fleece on Thursday 29th September. The set list included the following songs from Anthem: We Are, Pop Star, Jungles Of Jupiter, Obsolete, It’s A Mystery, Demolition Men, Marionette, I Want To Be Free. Click on the photos below for larger versions. (Thanks to Ian | Photos © Ian Davis)
Toyah, on the Anthem Tour 2022, at Leeds Brudenell on Saturday 24th September. Thanks to Sharon for these great photos. Click on them for larger versions. (Photos © Sharon Dickson)
A montage from the Anthem Tour 2022 at Epic Studios Norwich (16th September). See/hear a full version of Pop Star from the same gig here. (Thanks to Julie and Tony)
Join Toyah for a deep dive into the music and stories and your questions answered in the third of three new specials dedicated to Anthem. As the classic Gold-certified selling album receives its long-awaited remastered, expanded and deluxe release, this special celebrates the songs, the images and history in style. Enjoy much-loved songs, rarely seen footage plus and an extended selection of your questions answered by Toyah as she goes behind the music.
• Toyah At Home – The Anthem Specials: Part 3 premieres on Saturday 24th September, 11am at Toyah’s Official You Tube channel & Facebook. (Image © Toyah Willcox)
Toyah’s ‘Anthem’ gets the super deluxe treatment, and never sounded so good!
It’s a mystery why Toyah was never eternally enormous. But the thunder in the mountains has never sounded so good.
Toyah / Anthem
Cherry Red (3-CD, 1 DVD, 2-LPs, 1-45rpm Box Set)
This is it – the big one, both in commercial terms and, compared to previous releases in Toyah’s reissue series, packaging, too.
Anthem was Ms Willcox’s fourth album, but it was home, too, to her greatest single hits yet – and if you only need one super deluxe early ’80s album, this might well be it.
Disc one here is the original album; disc three is a DVD stuffed with promos and TV appearances; discs two and four add in the outtakes, demos, remixes, backing tracks and live cuts. Including the nine bonus tracks appended to the album itself, and four more on tucked away elsewhere, there’s some 40 largely unreleased performances to get your teeth into. Plus the album on picture disc, a 12-inch mini album and a four track 7-inch EP. Which can, if you wish, be slimmed down to a simple 2CD + DVD package, or reduced even further to a gold colored LP of Anthem alone. In every guise, Anthem shines brightly.
The most confident sounding of Toyah’s early albums, if not the most unexpected (that remains her debut), Anthem was the sound of Toyah finally finding her direction. The songs are generally stronger than before, the band is definitely tighter, and her voice feels more controlled, without losing an iota of its original idiosyncrasy.
• Continue reading at Goldmine. Browse more reviews; of Anthem, Toyah! Toyah! Toyah!, Posh Pop, The Blue Meaning, Sheep Farming In Barnet, Posh Pop Tour, Give Them Wings, and much more, in Dreamscape’s Reviews News Archive.
This new article, published by The Reprobate Press, is more of an opinion piece on Toyah rather than just a review of Anthem, but an interesting read.
WITH CHARM AND CHANCE: TOYAH’S ANTHEM REVISITED
Looking back at Toyah’s magnificent 1981 breakthrough album and its dystopian, rebellious sci-fi concepts.
Back in the 1980s, when teenage musical tribalism was at its height, stepping out of your lane was simply not the done thing. Yet for many of us, the strict divisions that split punk from metal from pop and all points in between seemed increasingly ludicrous and arbitrary, as much based on what a band or performer looked like as on their musical output. I rather threw all that aside very early into my teenage musical fixation. After all, bands themselves – especially what we now call classic rock but what at the time was often dismissed as old farts* – were sneered at for chasing trends, sometimes with good reason but often unfairly in retrospect. There was nothing wrong with developing and experimenting with your sound, and those artists who managed to escape the sneering by remaining defiantly art rock – Peter Gabriel, say – were just as likely to be making albums that were nothing like their past work and, in retrospect, very much of their time.
This preamble leads us to your author’s curious fascination with Toyah, who was – depending on which period of her career in the 1980s you were talking about – seen as a punk or a pop star. I’ve already made the case that she was neither, at least musically at the start of her career – the ‘pop star’ dismissal by former punk admirers has a bit more credibility as her career shifted towards kid’s TV appearances, increasingly less arty record covers and more radio-friendly singles, but we could make that particular accusation against many performers. Once Toyah had a couple of hits – which we’ll come to shortly – then she was unavoidable, and as a teenager with a fascination for the terminally uncool worlds of prog, art rock and industrial music, there was something that drew me to her.
• Continue reading at The Reprobate Press.
Congratulations to Toyah. Anthem returns to the Official UK Album Chart, exactly 40 years after it left – in 1982, after spending a year on the chart.
Anthem placed at #33 today, following the reissue of the album on Deluxe and Super Deluxe formats, giving Toyah her sixth charting album in the past four years.
Anthem is also high up in numerous other charts, including #1 on the official Independent chart, #6 on the official Physical chart, #6 on the official Sales chart, #6 on the official Vinyl chart, #61 on the official Download chart and #6 on the official Scottish chart. Anthem also places at #29 on the official Record Store chart. Great stats! As with Posh Pop last year, if the Album Chart was, as it used to be, a sales chart, Toyah would certainly have another Top 10 album!
• Chart Stats: Toyah has now had six albums on the Official Charts in the past four consecutive years: In The Court Of The Crimson Queen (2019) #74, Sheep Farming In Barnet (2020) #99, The Blue Meaning (2021) #59, Posh Pop (2021) #22, Toyah! Toyah! Toyah! (2022) #72, Anthem (2022) #33.
• Official Charts: See this week’s full Top 100 Album Chart – Continue reading…
• Official Charts: And finally, a remastered reissue sees Toyah’s Anthem re-enter the Top 40 (33). The record originally peaked at Number 2 upon its release in 1981 – Continue reading…
• Official Charts @ Twitter: British icon Toyah’s 1981 record Anthem re-enters the Top 40 this week – Continue reading…
• Cherry Red Records @ Twitter: Congratulations Toyah on her Top 40 charting place for the deluxe Anthem reissue! – Continue reading…
• Anthem: Click to buy the album on 2CD+DVD, Colour Vinyl or Super Deluxe. (Update: The Anthem Super Deluxe box set is currently out of stock)
• Official Charts: See Toyah’s full charts stats on the Official Chart – Continue reading…
• Dreamscape: Browse our “Toyah On The Official Charts” news archive…
Join Toyah for a deep dive into the music and stories and your questions answered in the second of three new specials dedicated to Anthem. As the classic Gold-certified selling album receives its long-awaited remastered, expanded and deluxe release on Friday 9th September, this special celebrates the songs, the images and history in style. Enjoy much-loved songs, rarely seen footage plus and an extended selection of your questions answered by Toyah as she goes behind the music.
• Toyah At Home – The Anthem Specials: Part 2 premieres on Saturday 17th September, 11am at Toyah’s Official You Tube channel & Facebook. (Image © Cherry Red)
** Toyah Willcox and the Toyah team wish to extend condolences to the Royal Family, and respect the dedication HRH Elizabeth II showed her country during her unprecedented reign. This special was filmed before the news of the sad death of Her Majesty the Queen.**
The celebrations for Anthem‘s 40th (+1) Anniversary continue with the opening gig of the Anthem Tour, taking place this evening at Epic Studios, Norwich. The album has just been released on 2CD+DVD, Gold Vinyl and Super Deluxe Box Set, with great reviews and hopes for a good chart placing later today (Official Charts, 6pm). Click below to browse all the tour dates and ticket links.
Toyah and, Anthem – and many other Toyah releases during the Safari Records years – producer, Nick Tauber are interviewed in The Guardian today, discussing It’s A Mystery, from the Four From Toyah EP and the, just reissued in deluxe formats, iconic/legendary/magnificent 1981 album, Anthem.
Toyah on It’s a Mystery: ‘I told Princess Margaret I was a punk rocker. She said “How ridiculous”’
‘There was a vinyl shortage when it was released. Old records had to be sent to the factory to be melted down and pressed. But soon it was selling 75,000 copies a day’
I was a cult punk singer playing sweaty little clubs and getting covered in so much gob that dry cleaners would go: “Yeuch! We’re not touching that!” Then a brilliant PR woman called Judy Totton turned everything around. She put me in every parish magazine in the country that would talk to me. I soon had all these fans who said they discovered me because their parents or grandparents had told them about this punk rocker.
I was making singles that were eight minutes long with reams of lyrics and had never had a hit. When Safari Records played my 1980 single Ieya on rotation in their office, a man apparently appeared at their door with a knife and said: “If you play that song again, I’ll kill you!” I started working with a new producer, Nick Tauber, who said I needed to simplify the message. He was completely right.
• Continue reading at The Guardian.
Almost mirroring Posh Pop last year, Anthem is high in the Official Charts Album Chart Update (aka midweeks) today, placing at number 8. Posh Pop was at number 9 in the midweeks and eventually achieved number 22 in the confirmed/final chart later in the week, so things are looking very good for Anthem this Friday!
Join Toyah for a deep dive into the music and stories and your questions answered in the first of three new specials dedicated to Anthem. As the classic Gold-certified selling album receives its long-awaited remastered, expanded and deluxe release on Friday 9th September, this special celebrates the songs, the images and history in style. Enjoy much-loved songs, rarely seen footage plus and an extended selection of your questions answered by Toyah as she goes behind the music. There’ll be surprises too and Toyah will also announce the winners of the Anthem Cherry Red pre-order competition!
• Toyah At Home – The Anthem Specials: Part 1 premieres on Saturday 10th September, 11am at Toyah’s Official You Tube channel & Facebook. (Image © Toyah Willcox)
