Dreamscape – Toyah Willcox Fansite

Robert Fripp and Toyah Willcox on Their Viral Quarantine Videos: ‘We’re in This With You’

King Crimson’s guitarist and his pop-star wife on what inspired them to cover everything from “Enter Sandman” to “Girls, Girls, Girls,” and what everyone got wrong about their ‘Swan Lake’ tutu dance

“My wife is a force of nature and my wife leads the way,” Robert Fripp says of his partner and quarantine-video collaborator Toyah Willcox.

On April 5th, 2020, music fans stuck in their homes and cruising the web for diversions were greeted with one of the most unusual sights in a season filled with them: King Crimson auteur Robert Fripp and his wife, singer and actress Toyah Willcox, both elegantly dressed and dancing to Bill Haley and the Comets’ early rock anthem “Rock Around the Clock.”

Filmed on Willcox’s iPhone in the kitchen of the couple’s home near Birmingham, England, the head-scratching clip launched one of the year’s least likely and most talked-about viral series. Every Sunday since, “Toyah and Robert’s Sunday Lunch” (sometimes called a “Lockdown Lunch”) has presented a new clip of the couple having quick, good-natured fun at home. The ever-upbeat Willcox sings and vamps (while wearing a variety of costumes, from workout suit to cheerleader costume) while a deadpan Fripp accompanies her on electric guitar.

• Continue reading at Rolling Stone. (Photo © Toyah Willcox)

Cherry Red Records, who release Sheep Farming In Barnet as a deluxe CD set next month, recently interviewed Toyah.

The Toyah Willcox story is an in-depth interview which looks at who the real Toyah is, what motivates her and how she became so successful. She also shares many fascinating stories from her incredible career.

A new, Sheep Farming In Barnet/Early Years, interview with Toyah, from Cherry Red’s My Favourite Flavour magazine. A classic SFIB era photo of Toyah is also included on the cover!

According to the sleevenotes of the lavish re-issue of Toyah’s debut album ‘Sheep Farming In Barnet’ her progress to punk icon, then pop star, really began back in 1975…

“Back then I just wanted to get out of school, get out of Birmingham. I definitely wanted to act and sing, but there was no way I was equipped for that. I think I was lucky to have been born at the right time and been around for the punk movement, that allowed every shape, size, sound and form into the fold. If you had something to express or to say back then, punk accepted it. That was the saving grace for me.

“I’d left home and got a job at the National Theatre in London, school hadn’t really prepared me for life, I had to land on my feet and learn to adapt to the outside world and somehow mould myself into what I wanted to be.

“At the National, an actor called Ian Charleson introduced me to Derek Jarman who was about to start work on his film Jubilee and around the same time I got into a punk band and started writing with Joel Bogen. We started playing the pub circuit and I was embraced by that whole community, they were amazing times.”

• Continue reading here. (Thanks to Sharon Dickson for the scans)

A great new interview with Toyah, just published by Punktuation. Also includes a shorter interview with Steve James discussing the recording of Sheep Farming in Barnet.

Punktuation chats to the high priestess of punk, Toyah Willcox, about the reissue of her debut album, Sheep Farming In Barnet and her extraordinary career

Toyah is quite simply a force of nature. She is a musician and songwriter, she’s a very successful actress, and she’s a producer and storyteller. She’s had eight top 40 hit singles, released 23 albums, written two books and appeared in over 40 stage plays and ten feature films including Derek Jarman’s Jubilee and Franc Roddam’s Quadrophenia.

Now 62 years old there’s also no sign that Toyah plans to slow down anytime soon. However, the events of 2020 have forced her, like the rest of us, to readjust to the ‘new reality’.

“Yes, it’s been an extraordinary time, hasn’t it? I don’t think I’ve spent so much time at home as I have this year, ” Toyah says over the phone from her English countryside home that she shares with her husband of over 30 years, guitarist Robert Fripp.

“It’s taken a bit of time to get used to. Here we are at the end of October and Robert and I are just finding our stride. We both believe if we can get through this we can get through anything. The reality for us is that we will have to be in quarantine for a while longer as Robert is now 74 – we have to be careful,” Toyah confides.

• Continue reading at Punktuation.

Befriending Toyah Willcox
The Mrs Barbara Nice & Friends Podcast

SUMMARY
Ahead of her remastered Album Launch “Sheep Farming in Barnet”, Toyah Willcox stops by to chat to Barbara about the importance of the audience, the differing priorities of a band and befriending people on stage.

SHOW NOTES
Mrs Barbara Nice chats to Toyah Willcox about the re-release of her album “Sheep Farming in Barnet” on Cherry Red Records

They become fast, firm friends as they discuss the coincidence in their locations, interacting with individual audience members amid big gigs. the importance of the audience to a performer and somehow, wild swimming in the Avon

• Continue reading/Listen to the interview here.

Toyah Willcox: ‘You can’t copy me, I’ve trademarked my name’

Toyah Willcox, a National Album Day 80s ambassador, has copywritten her name to stop copycat artists from emerging

“I gave girls the right to believe in themselves. I was getting 10,000 letters a week, most of them starting with ‘I’ve just been expelled from school for dyeing my hair pink,’” reflects Toyah Willcox, the singer and actress whose electric hair and rebellious anthems lit up the charts in the 1980s.

A Top of the Pops fixture with hits like It’s A Mystery, I Want To Be Free and Thunder In The Mountains, accompanied by a video of Toyah thundering across a barren landscape on a chariot, the empowered image portrayed by the Birmingham-born singer directly inspired Shirley Manson and other singers who adapted her punk style.

The only pop star to have acted opposite Laurence Olivier and appeared in two films directed by arthouse auteur Derek Jarman, before going on to narrate the BBC’s Teletubbies, Toyah, 62, has now trademarked herself as a one-word “brand.”

• Continue reading at inews.co.uk.

My Record Collection by Toyah Willcox
A National Album Day Special

In My Record Collection, we dig down to the bottom of musicians’ souls to find out what the most treasured parts of their record collection are. This week, we’re counting down to National Album Day.

This year, the organisers are taking us back to the 1980s, to a time when nu-romantics, big hair, arena rock and electronics ruled the chart. We’re celebrating all week on hmv.com with a selection of features from the day’s ambassadors, which this year include La Roux, Blossoms, Kim & Marty Wilde, Toyah Willcox and more! Each day this week, we’ll be showing off the record collections from an ambassador, as they count down their memories of the 1980s, as they lived it, or just as they wished they had.

We continue today with Toyah Willcox…

The record that made me want to make music was…
“For me, it’s David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars. It is almost impossible to pinpoint one Bowie album that made me want to write music because they all did, but the unique thing Bowie achieved above all other artists was to have a burst of creativity that lasted a whole decade from the early ’70s into the ’80s.”

“Bowie surfed the Zeitgeist effortlessly like a Pied Piper and lead a generation into the brilliant unknown with each album release. Ziggy was my first discovery of Bowie’s genius and thereafter he awed me with everything he ever did.”

The record I played throughout the 1980s was…
“It was Roxy Music’s Avalon. I have loved Roxy Music since their first album. Their sound is utterly unique, but tricks you into thinking that it is familiar, it isn’t, they are one of the cleverest bands of all time, creating a whole movement of stylish cool and smooth dance-inducing music. Avalon is a super commercial album but it hasn’t sold out in any way. It is the definition of lounge cool.”

The record that takes me back to the 1980s was…
“It’s Tears For Fears and their album Songs From The Big Chair. There are easily three albums that define the 80’s Kate Bush’s Hounds Of Love, Peter Gabriel’s So and Songs From The Big Chair.”

“Songs From The Big Chair has a wealth of classics that have inspired so many who followed. ‘Shout’ is an all-time anthemic great and ‘Everybody Wants To Rule The World’ must be one of the cleverest songs of the ’80s, a decade often associated with greed.”

• Continue reading at hmv.com. Browse our National Album Day 2020 news archive.

Toyah is interviewed in the latest issue of Music Week magazine, in their regular feature, The Aftershow.

The new issue of Music Week is out now as we welcome the Kanneh-Masons to our cover.

Elsewhere, we speak to Blue Raincoat Music’s Jeremy Lascelles and Robin Millar about their bold relaunch of Chrysalis Records as a frontline label. With a little help from Laura Marling, the duo take us inside their big plans for the future…

Plus, we speak to Senbla CEO Ollie Rosenblatt about some big festival news and National Album Day organiser Megan Page reveals the exclusive releases heading our way for the annual celebration of the LP.

Elite songwriter Sarah Hudson recalls the making of Dua Lipa’s smash single Physical in Hitmakers, while National Album Day ambassador Toyah Willcox reflects on her life and times in the music business in The Aftershow…

• Visit Music Week’s website for ordering info.

Grant Stott’s Vinyl Collective: BBC Radio Scotland:
Friday 9th October: 6pm
National Album Day. Featuring tracks from some of your favourite 80s albums. Now in its third year, National Album Day 2020 takes place on Saturday 10th October.

Toyah Willcox is one of this year’s ambassadors and chooses her favourite vinyl record, Grant counts down the best-selling albums of the whole decade and also plays some of John Lennon’s biggest hits of the 1980s on what would have been his 80th birthday.

The Big Vinyl Show: BBC Radio Kent:
Sunday 4th October: 8pm
Mark Punter plays the greatest hits from the 1960s, 70s and 80s, ALL on vinyl. Starting tonight the big vinyl show on BBC Essex can also be heard on BBC Radio Kent. Welcome all! Looking ahead to National Album Day UK on Saturday with one of its ambassadors, the great Toyah. See you at 8pm.

Toyah guested on BBC Radio London’s David & Carrie Grant show yesterday morning. The show was guest hosted by Jumoke Fashola.

Singer Toyah Willcox looks ahead to an 80s drive-in music experience which aims to help raise money for Help Musicians and celebrating the re-opening of Alexandra Palace with Chief Executive Louise Stewart.

• Listen online to the show, for the next four weeks, at BBC Sounds.

Toyah is interviewed in the print edition of today’s Daily Express. Here is some of the interview.

I suffered ageism in my 30s but at 62 I’m treated like a Goddess

“I’ve never had any maternal instinct and it’s always baffled me why I was expected to have children,” she confesses. “I believe you’re born knowing if you want to have kids and I knew that would not be happening.

“The only time I’ve ever experienced ageism was in my 30s, which was a very, very difficult decade. Back then if you were 30 and a woman, you were expected to have babies. But I had a successful career and never intended to have children and I couldn’t get anyone to hear that. People would say to me ‘Well, why are you married?’ and I would say, ‘er, because I love my husband!’

“I was too much of a bohemian to have children and anything that ties me down into one place is a challenge for me. But now I’m treated like a 62-year old goddess. I can say to women, ‘it does get better’ because people see you as having a wisdom they can tap into”.

Toyah is interviewed, about creativity in lockdown, in the third digital issue of Burnt Frowner – The Chris Wade and Dodson & Fogg magazine. Read it here.

Toyah is someone I’ve always admired. She’s a proper artist in the truest sense, a wild creative spirit who has always stuck two fingers up to the face of convention. She’s a singer, artist, actress, producer, writer, TV personality – but just using those words doesn’t really do her justice. Yes she fits these descriptions, but she’s unique. She’s a pop icon, has been so for almost forty years, and she’s still selling tons of albums and playing sold out venues all over the world… well, when they’re open that is.

Despite years of fame, she still comes across as a creative spirit on the edge, an experimenter, a fearless individual defying expectations. She’s been in classic films like Jubilee and Quadrophenia, acted alongside the likes of Laurence Olivier on TV (in The Ebony Tower), scored hit singles across the world, achieved legendary status in the music business, influenced multiple generations of men and women alike, packed out venues all over the world, has maintained a high profile on TV for decades and been a mentor and role model for countless people.

• Continue reading at Burnt Frowner.

Conversations With… Mark Curry, featuring Toyah, is now available to watch at Acting For Others‘ You Tube channel. Mark speaks to a mix of guests including performers, presenters, and directors. Each conversation, taking place via zoom, is an in-depth look into the guests lives and careers, as well as finding out their thoughts and tips on getting through lockdown.

Hayley Palmer interviews Toyah on Memory Lane 80s. The programme first aired on Spotlight TV on Saturday night. Please note some music videos removed due to YouTube restrictions.

Memory Lane 80s: Spotlight TV: Saturday 25th July: 9pm
Hayley Palmer interviews Toyah on Memory Lane 80s this weekend. The show broadcasts Saturday 25th July on the Spotlight TV channel (Sky 376, Freeset 516, Freeview Play 264). Click below to see a preview trailer for the interview.

Toyah chats to Helen of Loving 80s Music about lockdown, Rewind drive-ins, next year’s tour… and much more!

An archive Toyah interview has been re-published today by The Guardian.

Toyah Willcox, the thinking man’s punkette – archive, 1980

3 July 1980: “No one can rip me off. I’m too much of a bitch,” the self-confessed megalomaniac tells Robin Denselow

Four years ago, Toyah Willcox left a “very boring all-girls public school” in Birmingham with only one O level, in music, and a whole heap of bad reports. At 14 she’d been banned from art, her favourite subject because her paintings were too erotic. She got into fights, confused the teachers by making her own clothes and “by wearing a Dr Spock haircut with the back of my head shaved. I was a very paranoid kid and I hated every minute of it.”

Today, at 22, Toyah is being hailed as a sort of Thinking Man’s Punk, and is certainly the most impressive female all-rounder to have emerged in the latter days of the new wave. Earlier this year she won considerable acclaim for her part as Miranda in Derek Jarman’s exquisite film version of The Tempest. Her acting career had already included everything from Jarman’s punk celebration Jubilee, to Quatermass, and Quadrophenia.

• Continue reading at The Guardian.

New Guests Added To Conversations With… Mark Curry In Aid Of Acting For Others

Further guests are today announced for Mark Curry’s Conversations With… series in aid of Acting For Others. Each conversation, taking place via zoom, is an in-depth look into the guests lives and careers, as well as finding out their thoughts and tips on getting through lockdown, Mark speaks to a mix of interviewee’s including performers, presenters, and directors. Joining the previously announced guests are Vicki Michelle, Millicent Martin, Sally Hughes, Robin Herford, Toyah Willcox and Annabel Croft.

… Interviews will be released via Acting for Others’ YouTube weekly. They are free and available to all, with the opportunity for viewers to donate in support of the charity: justgiving.com/campaign/actingforothers

• Continue reading at Broadway World. NB: Airdate to be confirmed for In conversation with Toyah Willcox about being an ’80’s singing legend, her acting career and how she’s kept the success going through the years.

Pete Prodge has tweeted that his new interview with Toyah airs this Saturday at Tiswas Online.

Been chatting with Toyah about The Goodies, Kenny Everett, Laurel And Hardy, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and some Saturday morning show called Tiswas. The interview airs this Saturday.

• Watch online at Tiswas Online this Saturday morning at 10.30am (yes, the same time that the show used to air in the 1980s on ITV every Saturday! – Not sure if the Phantom Flan Flinger will make an appearance, but you never know!)

Andrew Eborn is joined by Toyah with special insight into her amazing life and career. Also including an exclusive announcement! Watch below.