“July 9, 1982”: Adam Ant and Toyah are the subject of a little more exploitation by Polydor Records. A song that the pair did together four years ago for the “Jubilee” soundtrack has been dusted off and released as a single. After Adam’s lawyers caught wind of this impending single, they insisted that it not be packaged as “Adam Ant & Toyah” as they had intended, but instead as “The Maneaters,” the name that the song appeared originally under.
• Continue reading at Songs Smiths.
Toyah Willcox recalls trying to scrap with Adam Ant
Toyah Willcox has weighed in on the time-honored rumours about her once trying to beat up New Romantic figurehead Adam Ant.
Toyah recently sat down with NME to discuss her debut appearance on Top Of The Pops way back in 1981. The episode saw Toyah tear through her track ‘It’s A Mystery’, alongside performances from Adam Ant and Australia’s sweetheart Joe Dolce… ahhhhh…. shaddap you face!
“Even though I knew Adam Ant and had done Jubilee with him, I was still star-struck by the whole event,” Toyah recalled of the performance.
When asked whether or not the rumours about her trying to beat Adam Ant up were true, she revealed: “Yes! He formed a band for Jubilee that was needed in a scene called the Maneaters – I was the singer for it, and Adam’s wife, Eve, was the bassist. The problem was, I was too individualistic and I already had the Toyah Band.
• Continue reading at Tone Deaf.
Toyah Willcox remembers trying to beat up Adam Ant: “I was a terrible scrapper”
Toyah Willcox has recalled an altercation with Adam Ant on the set of Derek Jarman’s iconic punk film Jubilee.
Discussing her debut appearance on Top Of The Pops in 1981 for NME‘s ‘Does Rock ‘n’ Roll Kill Braincells?!’ feature, Willcox recalled being on the same bill as Ant. “Even though I knew Adam Ant and had done Jubilee with him, I was still star-struck by the whole event,” she said.
Asked about whether rumours about her once trying to beat Ant up were true, she added: “Yes! He formed a band for Jubilee that was needed in a scene called the Maneaters – I was the singer for it, and Adam’s wife, Eve, was the bassist. The problem was, I was too individualistic and I already had the Toyah Band.
• Continue reading at the NME.
The poster/advert for the release of Nine to Five by Adam & Toyah (aka Maneaters) in 1982. Both objected to this “cash-in” release at the time but it’s an interesting item of memorabilia all the same, bringing together two of the 80s most interesting and colourful icons. (Thanks to Andy)
• Burst Radio: Win Toyah Tickets!: We have 2 free tickets to give away for Toyah at the Concorde2 in Brighton on Saturday night (worth £40). To enter, simply answer this question: Was Toyah’s first album called…?
• One Week // One Band: Adam And The Ants/Jubilee: Do people talk about Jordan much these days? Once—for a year or three—she mattered quite a lot.
• The Lee Mack Show: Toyah guests on Lee’s radio sketch show in 2005, and performs ‘Sweet Child O Mine’. Available at BBC iPlayer until Sat 3rd November.
• The Wave: The Rebel Diva 80s Show: Taking place at The Arts Wing, Swansea Grand Theatre, our very own Helen Enser Morgan – star of Cappuccino Girls and Brenda’s Big Night Out presents her unique vocal and comic tribute to the pop Divas of the 1980’s. Expect glittering performances as Toyah, Annie Lennox, Cyndi Lauper, Debbie Harry, Hazel O’Connor and Chrissie Hynde.
• Countdown to Toyah’s Creepy Room @ Birmingham Ballroom: Three days to go!
• The 8 – 21 July 1982 issue of Smash Hits has been added to Like Punk Never Happened. No major Toyah content but there is a Bitz! news article on the release of the Maneaters’ ‘Nine to Five’ 7″ single (something Toyah or Adam Ant weren’t very happy about at the time).
• A couple of interesting tv related Toyah tweets this week: “Meeting head of Vintage TV 2 discuss poss series.” and “I’ve had the most bizarre tv offer of my life. If it happens it will make headlines!“.
• Lärwi, of ‘The Toyah Willcox Interview Archive’, has started a new You Tube channel dedicated to All Toyah, and following on from the recent ‘Radio Chorley’ addition to the Archive, Lärwi has also added the full transcript of the ‘BBC Radio Leicester’ Tony Wadsworth Show interview.
• The SAS Band (Spike’s All Star) have launched a re-designed website. Toyah has guested with the band in concert a number of times and is included on the “Artists” page.
• Return later today for some Toyah goodies: I’ll be adding the four-page Smirnoff feature from 1980, a couple more rare Toyah photos plus another very rare interview, this one from 1982!
Another new review of Jubilee, this one from Death Rattle. Includes some good screenshots: Toyah Willcox (Mad) went on to be somewhat of a New Wave icon. Please click below to read.
Jubilee will show at The ICA next week, in their “Artists’ Film Club”, coinciding with the Diamond Jubilee…
Derek Jarman’s 1978 feature-length classic Jubilee is the focus of the special Artists’ Film Club. A 35mm print of Jubilee will be screened alongside a new transfer of the 8mm Jordan’s Dance (1977), a short which would later be incorporated, in part, in Jubilee. Coinciding with the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the screening will also be accompanied by a panel discussion including actress Jenny Runacre (Jubilee’s Queen Elizabeth I and Bod), producer and long-time collaborator James Mackay and others.
Jubilee is a dystopian tale of time-travel and punk, set in 1970s London. Queen Elizabeth I (Jenny Runacre) travels forward in time to find Queen Elizabeth II dead and London in disarray; she encounters a cast of numerous characters including Amyl Nitrite (Jordan), Bod (Jenny Runacre), Chaos (Hermine Demoriane), Crabs (Nell Campbell), and Mad (Toyah Willcox).
Institute Of Contemporary Arts: Wed 6th June 2012, 8.30pm | £5/Free to ICA Members.
Adam Ant was interviewed by BBC News today…
Goddard also appeared alongside a then unknown Toyah Willcox in Derek Jarman’s 1978 punk film Jubilee – but said it had been “surreal” rather than an anti-royal statement. The apocalyptic fantasy focuses on the activities of a wild girl gang in 1977.
He added: “I think Jubilee was really a piece of film, a surreal kind of journey that just happened to land slap bang into the middle of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. I wasn’t doing it to make a statement about the Royal Family or anything like that. I left that to people like The Clash, certain bands that love to be political, which I’m not.”
• Continue reading at BBC News.
An interesting article on punk in ‘The Independent’ yesterday. It includes a gallery of great photos, featuring rare shots of Adam Ant, Jordan, Billy idol, Little Nell, Siouxsie etc, plus Derek Jarman at the premiere of Jubilee.
Anarchy in the UK: The Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977 was also the year that punk hit
Photographer Simon Barker was there to capture it. Michael Bracewell opens his archive.
Punk lasted in the UK for little more than 14 months, between 1976 and the Jubilee Summer of 1977. Thirty-five years later, in another Jubilee year, how might we regard the intense, chaotic, moody, surreal, futuristic-yet-Victorian aesthetics of the movement? In answer to this question, photographs taken at the time by Simon Barker, also known as Six, go a long way to articulating the ways in which a phase of youth culture attained the impact of a manifesto – while never quite losing the cool allure and faintly slapstick temperament of its confrontational amateurism.
• Continue reading, at ‘The Independent’, here.
