Dreamscape | The Toyah Willcox Fansite

With the 80s Invasion tour coming up next year, Toyah will be performing along with other luminaries including Paul Young, Martika and China Crisis in a UK wide tour. At the moment Toyah is playing a solo tour all around the UK and she was gracious enough to spare us some time to talk about what type of holidays she prefers.

The singer’s earliest memories of breaks are spending time on the family boat moored on the river Avon and also at their caravan that was based close to the boat. This meant that from an early age Toyah was accustomed to packing – a task that she has had to carry out throughout her working life.

Cities are important places to Toyah, “I have written four albums in Seattle. I absolutely love that city – it’s a very green forest orientated city and its quite a harmonised hub of high rises but they kind of peter out into wooden shacks quite quickly and there is water everywhere.”

• Continue reading at Holiday Hypermarket.

WISE WORDS: Toyah Willcox Shares Her Idea Of Perfect Happiness

Toyah is joining Paul Young, Martika and China Crisis on tour in 2017.

For the latest in our WISE WORDS interview series – where stars from a whole range of fields share the important life lessons they’ve learned along the way – we’re posing some of the big questions to TOYAH WILLCOX.

Next year finds her joining the roll call for the 80s Invasion Tour. As she prepares once again to take to the road, she talks to HuffPostUK about some of the harder lessons she’s learned along the way, and what brings her greatest happiness…

What do you do to switch off from the world?
I love walking and I love being in big, wide-open spaces like hill tops or relatively easy to climb mountains. I just get everything I need from silence and being outdoors. It allows me to think and clear my mind. I like being very active and I can walk up to around eight miles a day every day.

How do you deal with negativity?
I don’t! I don’t deal with negativity at all! I think we’re naturally more tuned to hearing negativity than positivity and I find that aspect endlessly fascinating, that I can pick up two pages of glittering reviews and just one bad sentence is what you’ll remember. I think that says a lot about the human psyche, so the way I try and deal with it is I remind myself that most negativity has been expressed in passing and it isn’t held permanently. Someone that is negative is flippant and has just released a sentence and moved on to something completely different. I just don’t allow it to have a solid existence, I don’t allow it tangibility.

• Continue reading at The Huffington Post.

Toyah guested on ITV’s Lorraine this morning. The full interview has been uploaded to the programme’s Official You Tube channel. View it here.

Toyah Willcox is in the studio talking about teaming up with some of her favourite music stars for The 80’s Invasion tour, and why she thinks 80s music will never die!

There’s also a, very short, Toyah post/feature at the Lorraine section on the ITV website: Toyah Willcox is going back to the eighties!: Toyah Willcox joins Lorraine to tell her all about taking part in The 80’s Invasion Tour alongside some of our favourite eighties music stars.

And finally, a great photo of Toyah, Olly Murs and Lorraine was also posted earlier today at the ITV/Lorraine Instagram. (Photo © ITV)

Iconic singer and actress Toyah Willcox is interviewed by Lynnette Peck about why she is selling her 80s wardrobe and why she chose Lovely’s Vintage Emporium to sell it through.

Talented singer and actor Toyah admits her pop stardom was literally a case of “life imitating art”, coming soon after she was cast in a BBC play as a wannabe pop star who breaks into the Top of the Pops recording studios.

Speaking at the Rewind 80s Festival in Henley-on-Thames, Toyah recalled her first acting break aged 18 in the BBC play Glitter, playing alongside Phil Daniels, who was later to act alongside her again in the cult mod film Quadrophenia.

Toyah said: “I was spotted on the streets of Birmingham around 1973/74 because I had green and yellow hair! A director asked me to come and audition with Phil Daniels, and to play his girlfriend in a BBC2 drama and I got the part.

“The biggest irony was that I was playing a girl who wrote a song and broke into the Top of the Pops studios to sing the song in the studios; so talk about life imitating art!

“I was pretty instantly well known as an actress from the age of 18 and I was very successful as an actress right up until 1981 when I started having hit singles. I was the hottest name in the acting industry after I started at the National Theatre.”

• Continue reading at Music-News.com.

An Interview with Toyah at Rewind Festival South 2016.

Getting The Scoop on London’s Free Open Air Theatre Season

Director Phil Willmott talks to Matthew Amer about bringing free theatre to City Hall.

Growing up, theatre director Phil Willmott was enthralled and inspired by pocket money-priced trips to the theatre. Now he hopes to inspire Londoners with shows that are entirely free.

“I didn’t know anything about theatre or plays,” Willmott says of his early exposure to the excitement of live theatre at Bristol Old Vic. “I would sit in the dark and this extraordinary story would happen in front of me. It was just the most brilliant education in literature and humanity. The stories I saw taught me so much about the world and different cultures. I always want to capture that for other people, to give them theatre that is that exciting.”

That is exactly what the director has been doing since 2003 at The Scoop with London’s Free Open Air Theatre Season. Each year he stages a classic text and a children’s production, and the audience can watch without having to open their wallets.

“Because we’re free,” Willmott continues, “people from all walks of life will come along, take a chance and sit down. An hour and a half later they’ve watched our play and want to talk about it. The really exciting thing about The Scoop’s audience is most of them have never dreamed of going to the theatre.”

• Continue reading at Theatre.London.

Did you make it to the Rewind Festival last weekend? Muddy Stilettos was hanging out with the stars (*cough*), or at the very least, performing aerial rugby-tackles on any Eighties icons close enough to assault.

And look what we have here! Only the brilliant Toyah Willcox, with barely a bruise on her. Anyone who was old enough to take ‘O’ levels, chainsmoke multi-coloured ciggies or borrow their brother’s Chopper bike will remember Toyah – the dyed-to-a-cinder hair, the multi-coloured make up, and the impossibly catchy It’s a Mystery to I Want to Be Free.

She lives in Pershore (just south of Worcester, geography meisters) and these days aside from trilling and actiing for her living, the Eighties pocket rocket also loves to read, make her own jewellery (that masterpiece around her neck in the photo above, she created that) and, well, read on to find out more…

• Continue reading at Muddy Stilettos. Browse all of Dreamscape’s Rewind South 2016 news.

A rare interview with Jordan, punk’s enigmatic frontwoman

Working with Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McClaren, performing with the Sex Pistols and acting for Derek Jarman – Jordan Mooney reflects on a life of iconoclasm

With her legacy being celebrated in new tome Fashion + Music (out now, by Laurence King Publishing), punk legend Jordan discusses some of her most significant moments with the book’s author, Katie Baron.

Still one of punk’s most-fetishised poster women, Jordan Mooney’s pivotal role at the nexus of Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren’s riotous (Sex and Seditionaries-era) world was vital to the looks of bands like the Sex Pistols and Adam and the Ants. She’s often immortalised in grainy black-and-white photography, as a severe vision of bleach-blonde-beehived, Cleopatra-eyed, latex-sheathed, fuck-you defiance, yet, there is far more to her influence than straightforward anarchic provocation. Rebellion was actually something of a by-product. Art (“I often described myself as a living work of art”), personal expression and a militant desire to champion the outlier were all at the real crux of her infectious perspective. As punk celebrates turning 40 this year, Jordan revisits her iconoclastic life.

At 14 you changed your name – why?

Jordan Mooney: I truly felt like I’d been labelled the wrong thing, like a kind of name dysmorphia.

You were suspended from school for your haircut, and famously given your own spot in a first-class carriage on the train to avoid your outfits provoking outrage in fellow commuters – do you think dressing the way you did was an act of bravery?

Jordan Mooney: People often refer to the name and the things that I wore as demonstrating bravery and shaking things up, but while I showed off to the best of my ability it wasn’t about bravery because I didn’t care what people thought. I’ve always been extremely comfortable in my own skin. It’s like being in an art movement – someone has to start it.

• Continue reading at Dazed.

Toyah talks returning to Wickham Festival 2016, playing with The SAS Band, performing a David Bowie song, the new musical Crime and Punishment, and much more in an interview at the festival… Toyah Willcox returned to Wickham Festival in 2016 to perform with SAS Band.

Toyah Willcox is never less than effusive about her involvement in projects.

On this particular day, her voice is typically bouncy at the end of the telephone – a retro way to interview nowadays, but then again it’s time to talk about the landline-tastic 1980s.

The 58-year-old is almost evangelical about Rewind, the 80s Festival, that will bathe Scone Castle and its grounds in a sea of Day-Glo clothing and lace accessories from July 22 to 24. She is performing at Rewind Scotland and the event in Henley-on-Thames. It’s not a first appearance at either for her – last year her presentation skills were also called on to MC the Scone event.

“That was a great opportunity to see everyone that performed , and I was impressed,” she says. “I don’t know why I was so surprised. All the acts come from the era when you had to be able to perform live before a record company would even look at you.”

The concept of Rewind works – as many acts as possible across two days and sets that can only include chart hits. So even if you liked the second track on the B-side of ABC’s Beauty Stab, this isn’t the place to hear it. Every track is a hit, keeping the energy as charged as the end of the night at a secondary school disco.

“Rewind is about fun,” adds Toyah. “No-one is trying to sell anything here; it’s not about plugging records of breaking new acts. It’s like a big ensemble, all feeding into the same musical experience.”

• Continue reading at The Herald. Browse all of Dreamscape’s Rewind Scotland 2016 news here.

Singer-songwriter Toyah Willcox has been a quirky tour de force in British culture since she found herself in the heart of London’s music scene as punk imploded in 1977.

Her eclectic musical tastes and penchant for penning life affirming songs have ensured she’s never been far from the public eye during her 40 year career. With eight top 40 singles under her belt, several lauded albums, a new acoustic show plus a musical in the pipeline, she’s a versatile songsmith whose background in acting has helped raise her performance chips.

We caught up with her in the PRS for Music tent at Glastonbury 2016 to learn more about her enduring love affair with music…

Singer and actress Toyah has had many Top 20 hits and appeared in films with stars such as Katharine Hepburn. She has also written several books. She starred at The National Theatre with John Gielgud, and she acted alongside Laurence Olivier in TV’s The Ebony Tower.

Toyah will be singing at The Rewind Festival, Scone Palace, Perth, on Sunday, July 24.

Why do the Rewind Festival?
The audience there is from three to 83 and I seem to get rediscovered by every new generation. It’s very rewarding. It becomes a party for all of us and every song is a hit.

What do audiences say to you?
Usually they say their mothers hate me because I’m the reason they dyed their hair as a teenager, or because I got them expelled from school.

Are you still a rebel?
I prefer to think that I’m just not a conformist. If that makes me a rebel, then I guess that’s what I am.

Is image still important when performing?
Yes, but I’m 58 now and I don’t want to look stuck in the past, so when I dress for stage I try to be age appropriate and reinterpret the songs for today.

• Continue reading at The Sunday Post/in10 Magazine.

Exclusive interview with Simon Cox, director of Kaleidoscope Man

You’ve just returned from the cinema and what an experience: the music, the action, the story, the special effects and those edge-of-your-seat moments! If you’re an independent filmmaker or film fan you might dream one day of making such a film. So you’ve decided to make to make a feature film, not only that, but fund it independently, gather a wonderful team and five hundred supporters from around the world. Simon Cox, director of sci-fi feature film Kaleidoscope Man, has done just that. I was intrigued to find out more , so I caught up with him.

JT: What was the moment you decided to embark on making a sci-fi feature film ?

SC: I’ve wanted to make an epic sci-fi movie since I first saw the original Star Wars when I was 13. I came up with the initial idea for Kaleidoscope Man back in 1999 after I’d finished my first feature Written in Blood (1998). I had no idea it would take me nearly 20 years to make!

JT: How did you go about getting the team together to make K – Man?

SC: Having worked in TV and film over the years, a lot of the people I’ve brought in were people I’d met along the way. I also found a few local people who have since joined the team. Our cameraman, Gordon Hickie, shot my first feature film (Written in Blood) and he now shoots Holby City, Casualty and The Inspector Lyndley Mysteries.

I found the cast via acting agencies apart from Toyah Willcox who I met at a film meeting a few years ago.

• Continue reading the interview at D&C Film. Browse Dreamscape’s Kaleidoscope Man news archive. (Photo © kaleidoscopeman.com)

Creativity, longevity and relationship advice with Toyah Willcox

There aren’t many things that make me nervous these days, I’ve come to the conclusion that I can pretty much hold my own in most situations. I’m rarely intimidated and I refuse to treat anyone any differently because of their status. It would seem strange then, that as I’m sitting at my desk watching the clock ticking ever closer to 11am, my palms are sweating and my heart is beating so fast I have to take deep breaths to stop it from leaping out of my chest.

I have a fairly solid reason for the nerves mind you, at the aforementioned time I’m scheduled to do a telephone interview with Toyah Willcox. The prospect of dialing her number and asking to speak to her is doubly scary because I have loved her work since I first saw her perform on Top Of The Pops, and if the truth be told, I’ve never done anything like this before – I didn’t tell her that though and I hope she didn’t realise!

The purpose of the call was to talk to her about her sharing the stage with the fabulous Marc Almond for the Last Night Party at the Grassington Festival of Music and Arts that’s taking place June 17th to July 2nd. It sounds like it’s going to be a fantastic festival (and why wouldn’t it be, it is in Yorkshire after all). Toyah is supporting Marc Almond for the final night of the event July 2nd at the Festival in the Field Marquee.

• Continue reading at Northern Life Magazine. (Photos © Toyah Willcox/Dean Stockings)

A new interview with Toyah – one of the best for quite a while – has been published by the Write Wyatt blog.

Getting up close and personal with Toyah

Regular readers of this blog won’t be surprised that this scribe is an avid viewer of BBC 4’s Top of the Pops re-runs, a point I soon confess to my latest interviewee, Toyah Willcox.

“Oh, God bless those!”

The more recently re-aired shows take me back to my early teens, at a time when this highly-recognisable West Midlands raised actress and singer was enjoying a string of hits, not least the distinctive It’s a Mystery, Thunder in the Mountains and I Want To Be Free.

Admittedly, you’ve always had to wade through a lot of rubbish on Top of the Pops, recent examples ranging from Captain Beaky and Joe Dolce to The Snowmen and Starsound. But it also makes me realise how many great characters there were in music at the time. ‘Old bloke with rose-tinted nostalgic specs’ alert, but the charts today just don’t seem to have that same level of OTT theatricality. This was after all an era when the disparate likes of Adam Ant, Buster Bloodvessel, Clare Grogan, Hazel O’Connor, John Lydon, Lee John, Siouxsie Sioux and Ms Willcox herself were beamed into our front rooms on Thursday nights. Just where are the characters now?

“It was phenomenal back then. There were big characters out there. We all had to perform live and came up performing live. There were very few contrived acts. A very different time. We also all wrote, and I think it’s really important to write your own material. It was almost a dirty word to do somebody else’s song.

“I had to be coerced into doing Echo Beach (1987). That was a hit for me, but I felt a sense of shame at the time. Now I absolutely love performing it. Back then it was really important that the songs were your voice.”

• Continue reading at Write Wyatt.

Toyah Willcox gives us the lowdown on Rewind Festival

We caught up with the punk princess to talk all things 80s music and Rewind

In 2014 she topped the iTunes Rock chart with her American band The Humans, and this year will see more music releases and touring – including a stop off at Rewind Festival South in Henley.

This year will see her fifth performance at the mega music weekender. But what is it that keeps bringing her back to Rewind?

Toyah said: “This is what I do, it simply is what I do. I do all sorts of festivals including Glastonbury and all of that, but the one thing about Rewind is that it’s just designed brilliantly.

“The audience love it and it’s just such good fun. There are a ridiculous amount of artists and the production standards are out of this world.

“I do still get nervous in the festival environment, but I have a job to do. I remember performing and turning around to give the band a wink and seeing us on this huge massive video wall – it’s such high quality.”

• Continue reading at Get Reading.

Toyah Willcox on Botox, plastic surgery and why she has one of the happiest marriages in showbiz

The punk icon has just celebrated her 30th wedding anniversary and is happier than ever

Punk icon Toyah Willcox has just as much attitude now as she did when she burst on to the music scene in the 1980s.

She may be just 5ft tall, but the singer and actress makes up for her lack of inches in decibels.

Toyah, 58, and husband, King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp, 70, have just celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary, and she roars laughing as she reveals why this showbiz marriage is one that works .

• Continue reading at the Mirror.

Quadrophenia star Toyah Willcox says her character has become a ‘sexual predator’

The 80s singer said: “The natural journey for my character, nearly 40 years on, has seen her become a sexual predator, working in the sex industry”

A sequel to the iconic British mod movie Quadrophenia is being made – 37 years after the original.

The new film will star many of the same cast members as the 1979 cult hit – singer Toyah Willcox, 58, Mark Wingett, 55, Phil Daniels, 57 and Trevor Laird, 58, and will start filming in London this summer.

80s popstar Toyah will revisit her role as Monkey – who has grown into a swinging cougar. She said: “Quadrophenia was really zeitgeist and it’s never really gone away, as every new generation connects with it.

“No-one expected that to happen – it grabbed teenage angst by the balls and never let go. None of us realised the impact it would have at the time – we were all just desperate to out do each other. The natural journey for my character, nearly 40 years on, has seen her become a sexual predator, working in the sex industry as a madam. She’s married to one of the other main characters and they’re swingers.”

• Continue reading at The Mirror. (Photos © TSIPhotography.co.uk)

A rare interview with Toyah, from Norwegian TV in 1981, has recently been uploaded to You Tube by Retro-Pop Norwegian Video Clips – Click on the screen caps to watch.

An interview with Toyah from early 1982, by Molly Meldrum, which aired on the Australian music programme Countdown on the ABC channel. Click below to watch.