Dreamscape – Toyah Willcox Fansite

Here are the new dates and venues for next year’s Let’s Rock festivals

Having postponed its summer series due to the current pandemic the year, Let’s Rock have confirmed the rescheduled dates for summer 2021. The line-ups remain the same, with headliners including Adam Ant, OMD, Wet Wet Wet and UB40. Other performers including Tony Hadley, The Boomtown Rats, Kim Wilde, Marc Almond, Sister Sledge, The Undertones, Midge Ure’s Electronica, Toyah, T’Pau, Go West, Nik Kershaw, Chesney Hawkes, Betty Boo, and Heaven 17. LockdownFest, organised by Let’s Rock in aid of its official charity partner Child Bereavement UK, raised more than £130,000 for the charity.

• Continue reading at The Scotsman. Visit the Let’s Rock – The Retro Festival website.

Mods, rockers and teenage dreams – The making of Quadrophenia

Forty years after Quadrophenia, the cast have reunited for a documentary

“I don’t think any of us have changed, we are still very much the same people, but obviously time has affected us, and to watch the documentaries and the work we have done in the last 12 months, I find it profoundly moving,” confides Toyah Willcox, 61, who plays Monkey.

Did they have a sense at the time that the relationships they formed on set would last four decades?

“We were all very passionate, and protective,” recalls the Birmingham born actress, who’s also a Brit Award-nominated musician, famous for songs such as I Want To Be Free.

She then explains her co-stars Wingett and Shail were like her “bodyguards” when they’d go and watch her gigs. “I was a punk rocker. I was the subject of quite a lot of physical aggression… Punks always got beaten up by teddy boys or whatever. Even as a woman on my own… a gang tried to throw me through a chemist window on King’s Road, when I was 20.

“It was quite interesting back then because fights did break out, but no-one pulled a knife on you, no-one pulled a gun on you. I think there was a pride back then in using your physical strength, using your fists or being able to run quick enough to get away.”

• Browse our Quadrophenia 40th Anniversary archive.

Some years there’s so much good festive telly on offer, it makes your head spin like a Christmas tree bauble crashing to the floor. In 2016, not so much – Still, there are a few gems across the schedules. Here are a few…

Pop Quiz: The Comeback (28 December, BBC4, 9:30pm)
DJ Mike Read (‘Mike Read, 275 and 285, Mike Read, Mike Read, National Radio 1’) revives the Eighties teen show in which pop stars answered questions on pop. How will the likes of Toyah, a Thompson Twin and one of ‘the Spands’ fare in this two-part treat?

• Continue reading at The Scotsman.

• 50 Years Of Rock And Roll Photography: The Work Of Gered Mankowitz: A new career spanning hardback book on Gered’s photography is to be published in September. He photographed Toyah a number of times in the early 80s, capturing some iconic images, so it will be interesting to see if any Toyah photos are included in the book. (Thanks to Mark Evans)

• Nottingham Playhouse: 50 Years at Wellington Circus: The Nineties: 1990 Pip Broughton becomes the Playhouse’s first female Artistic Director and directs Toyah Willcox as Thérèse Raquin; Ruth Mackenzie takes the new post of Executive Director.

• The Scotsman: Liam Rudden: Ticking off bucket list of songs: It got me thinking of the other songs I’ve been lucky enough to tick off my list; Ultravox’s The Voice, Andy Williams’ Music To Watch Girls By, Toyah’s Ieya and Blondie’s Fade Away And Radiate – all at the Playhouse.

• Toyah Live 2013: Toyah played her first full-band gig of 2013 the Saturday before last in Selsey, East Sussex. View ‘Echo Beach’ from the gig at You Tube.

• Just Relax: Review of Speak Deluxe by Marla Mase: Track 1 (and 14) ‘Scream’ is an interesting opening track lyrically and musically and reminds me in style of Toyah Willcox.

• Make Up & Hair I Love: Pinterest gallery that includes some classic Toyah images.

• Sea Spray: Toyah – Love is The Law & More Tour Brighton 2013: …Some of the Sea Spray Team will be attending this event.