I Was A Teenage Toyah Fan

by Chris Limb

  My New Adventures of Toyah comic was published in two instalments in the official fan club newsletter but Toyah herself seemed to be keeping a low profile in early 1986. Furthermore the Angels and Demons’ fragmentation was continuing apace; it was true that we still did see a lot of each other, but it was almost always in smaller groups. A lot of the time I used to hang out with Bob and Lunar and to a lesser extent Eddie and his girlfriend Lynn (who had been welcomed into the group during 1984 despite not having been around during Tanzi).

  One of the last times I remember a larger number of us getting together was at Eddie and Lynn’s wedding up in Kirkcaldy in early spring. It was the first time I’d been to Scotland. We made our way up there in little groups and stayed a couple of nights in a B&B before sharing a hideously crowded train back to London the next day during which I had to stand for the whole journey. Ever since then I have always made sure I reserved a seat when travelling between Edinburgh and London.

  Eddie and Lynn weren’t the only people to get married in the spring. News came out of a quiet, private ceremony in the West Country in May at which Toyah and Robert had tied the knot.

  In the meantime my life was changing shape again. I came down with glandular fever, which put paid to my final exams at the end of university, but which didn’t stop me having a great time once I’d recovered. For a start I suddenly seemed to have no trouble getting girlfriends, which made a nice change. I went to see loads of bands, DJed a lot, went out to nightclubs regularly and inexplicably seemed to be able to smoke and drink anyone under the table with no ill effects the next day.

  Perhaps not fulfilling in the long run, but good fun at the time, although given that I was probably at my physical peak then, it’s a shame I frittered it away enjoying myself.

  I left university and moved into my first adult home, a flat in Leytonstone that I shared with fellow Angel and Demon Bob. Eddie and Lynn lived five minutes walk down the road. In honour of the warehouse in which Toyah had lived when she’d moved down to London, Bob and I christened our flat New Mayhem.

  Even though the Angels and Demons were thinner on the ground now than at any point in the previous three years, it didn’t mean Toyah’s fans were disappearing – if anything they seemed to be multiplying as a whole new generation appeared to spring from ground fully formed. The Urban Tribesmen were still going strong and a fan called Gayna Evans (who’d written a Toyah book in the early eighties) had started to organise Toyah parties, which I started attending.

  The Toyah Barmy Army was another group of fans that seemed to be attracting a lot of attention and membership despite sporting a distinctly ill-advised red, white and black logo displayed prominently on armbands and flags (not a million miles away from a look popular in certain right wing circles in the 1930s). It was not a fashion I was keen on and not one I liked being associated with Toyah one little bit. At one of Gayna’s parties in I explained the background to the look and managed to talk several recruits into removing their armbands and luckily at the same time a request in the fan club newsletter meant that the flags were also considered res non grata.

  The parties were a lot of fun though. In the absence of gigs it was the only place you could hear Toyah’s music in a large venue and it was interesting to meet other fans from around the country all with stories to tell; some similar to mine, some wildly different. Some of the major characters in this new iteration of fandom became apparent at these gatherings including pink-haired Michelle and green-haired Emma.

  On one memorable occasion in late August the highlight of the evening was the playing of a tape Toyah had specially recorded and sent with a message for us all. In it she told us she was now writing and recording her new solo album which was going to be “...100% heavier than Minx...” and also said that she “...would send you all a toe, but I’ve only got nine left!” This last bizarre message was a reference to yet another erroneous tabloid story published that year which had claimed she’d had a toe amputated and subsequently sent it to an ex-boyfriend.

  Despite this message, Toyah herself was still elusive, although she did release an audiobook album entitled The Lady or the Tiger on Editions E’G, which featured her reading the famous short story by Frank R Stockton to a backing of her husband’s soundscapes. Lunar and I took a trip to the BBC Studios at Maida Vale (where at the time my Dad worked in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop) as we’d heard Toyah would be recording a radio show there, but there was no sign of her.

  August became September, which then started threatening to turn into October. For once I had absolutely no idea where I was headed, there was no new university term starting. The future was black and blank – a vast ignorance. I applied for numerous jobs in broadcasting having decided after my experiences in student radio and a stint at this year’s Glastonbury festival where as a Radio Avalon DJ I’d conducted interviews with Fuzzbox and The Housemartins that this was the career path I wanted to take (although I also wanted to carry on writing and drawing comics as well, not to mention join a band). I received an impressive number of rejection letters from radio stations across the country. Apparently (according to the post-it note that they accidentally left attached when they returned it) my demo videotape application to become a VJ on the newly launched MTV Europe was shortlisted and re-watched but ultimately failed to make the grade. I remained unemployed.

  And then Bob and I spotted in one of the music papers - probably the Melody Maker, which I used to buy religiously - that Robert Fripp and The League Of Crafty Guitarists would be staging a daytime performance in the Virgin Megastore in Oxford Street on 30 September.

  We decided to go along. Part of the reason was that I hoped that Toyah might be there. But I was also interested in checking out her new man. What sort of person was he? What did he look like? What kind of atmosphere did he carry around with him?

  A dozen or more guitarists sat on chairs in a circle around Robert Fripp who explained some of the ideas behind Guitar Craft, who the Crafty Guitarists were as well as what and how they were going to perform. I hadn’t known what he was going to be like, perhaps imagining some Bowie-ish Seventies rock star. I most certainly hadn’t been expecting this faintly distracted professor-like figure, a musical intellectual whose obvious brainpower and euphonious talent far outstripped his slight stature. The sound of the Crafty Guitarists themselves was like nothing I’d heard before - that many acoustic guitars playing in unison gave the impression of a much larger yet invisible instrument; the sound of a twelve dimensional harp.

  After the performance a minor horde of Fripp fans and curious passers by crowded around the maestro and asked questions which he answered patiently. My eyes were elsewhere; Bob and I had spotted a familiar diminutive figure off to one side and we made our way over to say hello.

  Toyah was pleased to see us and seemed much more relaxed and happy than I ever recalled having seen her before. We chatted for around ten minutes, and she once more fed my ego by telling me I was looking good. The situation felt very different from any past meetings. She wasn’t the centre of attention and we weren’t making any demands of her. We were just... chatting. Was this what being grown up felt like, I wondered?

  It had been good to see her, but I had no idea whether I’d be seeing her again at any point over the next few months. In those days the future was formless and unknowable, filled with untapped potential. Some days it felt as if anything could happen.

  And some days anything did happen.

  Just over three weeks after meeting her at the Virgin megastore I received a letter addressed in a now familiar large unusual hand. I had continued to write to Toyah on a semi-regular basis, but this was the first time she’d written back for a little while. Mindful of the fan club I’d run for the short-lived Indians in Moscow, she asked if I (and Bob) would like to take over the running of her own fan club as current president Lynda was becoming too busy to continue.

  I seem to recall running around the flat shouting “fucking-A!” and “whoopie-fucking
-do!” (having recently watched James Cameron’s Aliens in the cinema multiple times I was channelling Bill Paxton’s Private Hudson character). I was still unemployed, none of the radio or TV stations having responded in a positive manner to my job applications, but Bob was at work so I made my way into Walthamstow to tell him the news.

  It was a different time back then. Landlines and letters were the only way we could keep in touch with each other and we didn’t have a phone in our flat. Nevertheless, somehow I managed to make an arrangement with Toyah to meet her outside the E’G offices in King’s Road at 7.45am on 30 October (a mere week later) where she’d drive me to Lynda’s to pick up the fan club paraphernalia before Lynda had to go to work and then back to E’G where we’d have a meeting with some of the E’G bigwigs about the club itself.

  It was a cold and silent morning, King’s Road uncharacteristically quiet. Rather ridiculously I’d gothed myself up to the nines in PVC, leather and studs. Having arrived by tube, I stood shivering in E’G’s doorway.

  It wasn’t just the cold that was making me shiver.

  A small car pulled up at the kerb and I could see Toyah at the wheel. She waved. I walked across the pavement and the car door clunked open for me.

  Which came out of the opened door - the lady or the tiger?

  I climbed into the passenger seat and shut the door behind me.

  Epilogue: 25 years later

  “Within the next ten years we will communicate with each other across the world with one single brainsource of a computer link”

  Toyah, Tellurian, 1992

  It is of course at this rather misleading point that the story ends. Whilst it may not be the only story I have in me, it’s true to say that from this moment forward I was no longer a teenage Toyah fan.

  I was 21 years old for a start. My journey through time had brought me to the age Toyah was when I had begun it.

  Fast forward…

  Tellurian. Life is a cabaret old chum. Desire. BM Toy. Echo Beach. Three Men on a Horse. Prostitute. Nancy, I swear I can hear jazz singers in the trees. The Taming of the Shrew. What does irony mean. Therese Raquin. Amadeus. Ophelia’s Shadow. A cassette of fresh screams. Sunday All Over The World. The Choice. Salisbury. Memoirs of a Survivor. Photocopy, cut and paste, photocopy. Carrington. The Anchoress. Carrier bags full of envelopes to the post office.

  Images begin to distort as they flick past ever faster, moments caught out of the corner of my eye as I stare out of the window of the accelerating train of time and now the landscape itself begins to change as it passes by ever more swiftly.

  Strange Girls. The Borderline. Kiss of Reality. The Orange. River Treacle. Salisbury. Leap! Long sleeved-shirts. Laser-print, photocopy, cut-and-paste. Take me there, take me there. Staple-gun. Friday Forever. Touch Me I’m Sick. Having a shit time - NOT. Out of the Blue. It’s called obedien. Dreamchild. Tentacle woman. Has God Ceased to Dream You? The Pizza Police. The Live Bed Show. Butlins. toyahwillcox.com. Picasso’s Women. Killing Made Easy. Shagaround. Perdido Street Station. Life is just nature’s way of keeping meat fresh. Pickled mermaid. An Evening with Toyah Willcox. The Humans.

  White noise…

  And then it’s 2011, a new millennium. I find myself writing this, washed up on an alien shore in a futuristic world a quarter of a century from the end of the last chapter.

  Toyah is touring once more, From Sheep Farming to Anthem, a celebration of her first few years in the music business, set list designed to delight the aficionado of the mythical “old days”.

  When I go and see the shows I am astonished at the clout these songs still have and taken aback by how just much this power is amplified by Toyah wearing the original costumes, carefully preserved. The chord changes and progressions resonate with neural pathways laid down in my brain by these sights and sounds during the plasticity of youth, sights and sounds repeated over and over again during my formative years. I used these sensations to build my personality during adolescence and here they are being reflected back at me. It is no wonder that it brings tears to my eyes.

  Some might complain that it’s just not the same. Well of course it isn’t. Are they disappointed in the quality of the shows themselves or merely mourning their own lost youth? Part of me can sympathise; I would give anything to be back there in the days when I was skinny and had energy and enthusiasm. Then again those days are still there, in the past. The past is merely another location in space-time. Nothing is ever lost.

  Part of me now is defined by looking back on me then. But a larger part looks to the future, which is just as exciting. Perhaps I’m not as fast and foolish as I was in the nineteen eighties, but my brain will always have been wired by Toyah.

  Acknowledgements

  I’d like to thank Bob for raiding his diaries for some of the exact details I wouldn’t otherwise have been able to recall unaided. I’d like to thank Tes for encouragement, comments and suggestions.

  I’d also like to thank Craig at the Official Toyah Willcox Web Site and David at the Dreamscape fan site for their feedback and promotion of this work and also to the other Toyah fans and inhabitants of Twitter and Facebook for making appreciative noises throughout. Thanks to Dean for taking a couple of pictures especially for this book.

  Finally and most importantly I’d like to thank Toyah herself, without whom this would not only be impossible but also pretty pointless.

  The opinions expressed in this memoir are those of my younger, more naive self. They do not necessarily coincide with my current opinions and are in no way representative of the views of Toyah or any members of her entourage past, present, future or in a parallel universe.

  Picture credits

  Mick Mercer (chapter 2/3)

  www.mickmercer.com

  Barry Plummer (front cover)

  barryplummer.moonfruit.com

  Pete Riches (chapter 1)

  www.demotix.com/users/peteriches

  Dean Stockings (epilogue)

  www.deanstockings.co.uk

  All other photographs taken by fans – individual accreditation on a per photo basis is not possible, but photographers include me, Bob Grist, Hayley Middleton, Lee Nash and Kevin Tucker.