Hello there!
I hope you all have the most wonderful February. It’s one of my favourite months. What I love is the light coming back and the days extending.
This month I will be travelling far and wide.
Firstly, to Hull to rehearse NOW THATS WHAT I CALL A MUSICAL. Then on to Cheshire to give a keynote speech to teachers about living with dyslexia. I’m calling my speech the SUPER POWERS OF DYSLEXIA because I firmly believe in this new tech era it’s a world made for dyslexics to flourish. There is an interesting fact online claiming one in two members of NASA are dyslexic……YES!
Then I am in Dubai to perform at Rewind on the beach…..THEN….back to Edinburgh to open in NOW The Musical for a week.
While I am writing this, Nigel Glockler is texting, he’s had a few days catching up with his UK friends and is now heading to Germany for a five week tour with Saxon. I am determined to work with Nigel again at some point….when he is not so busy.
I’ve had some very interesting times in the past month.
Bill Rieflin has come back into my consciousness, not that he’s ever out of it because I’m surrounded by so many mementos of him.
Currently I’m in potential talks to purchase one of his wife’s paintings that she created for Bill on his 40th birthday. This is going to be incredibly special if I can get it .
Unawares Mariana, one of our wonderful social media managers, created an insta film of Toyah at The Old Mill when the UK was in a big freeze, using a track off The Humans’ debut album called THIS BELONGS TO YOU. Mariana didn’t know the meaning behind it, she just likes the track.
The idea for this hymn goes right back to 2006 when I had a premonition that Bill was going to become very ill. At the time I was in a field in the middle of Norwich listening to Antony And the Johnsons song HOPE THERE’S SOMEONE and this horrible premonition came up and I was just shaking from head to toe and tears just flowed. Following that experience I wrote this poem THIS BELONGS TO YOU.
Then in 2007 when the Estonian ambassador asked THE HUMANS if they would go to Estonia and play for the President’s birthday I had a chance to set this poem to MUSIC. The vocal was very shaky. It’s a highly emotional sketch. I did it at Simon Darlow’s studio so we could send my songs on to Bill Rieflin to work on the backing tracks in Seattle before we headed out to Estonia.
Bill kind of fell in love with this original voice on the demo. He insisted that we kept it because he said it moved him to tears every time he heard it and itsvulnerability. Well for me hearing it again last month was a bit of a shock because I thought I don’t sing like that anymore. My timing, my phrasing is so much better. I’m just not sure if I like it, but to honour Bill we kept it as it was.
It’s been a lovely month of celebrating Strictly and that’s all down to the generosity of the Radio Times throwing a party at Clarridges that allowed all the team to get together, Robert even attended. It’s now 7 weeks since I did my last performance for Strictly and I’m still processing what happened on the series. I’m very glad I did it, it helped me realise that I am a 66-year-old woman, that this is how the world sees me and it’s kind of important on many levels to realise this.
Firstly, I want to remain fit, active and show that any woman can have a wonderfully active connected life doing the work they love. Also eating properly, exercising and looking after one’s mental health is a lifelong commitment. Believe me I have my battles…. with myself!
I’ve also come back for an astonishing lunch with Trevor Horn, who is one of my favourite people in the world. Listening to him, Robert and Lol Creme of 10CC (who directed the Videos for I WANT TO BE FREE and THUNDER IN THE MOUNTAINS) all three remarkable musicians, talking to each other about their beginnings where they worked hard in Hotel bands or they worked in bands that played very obscure and sometimes questionable venues towards the end of the 60s, it was an eye opener and a shared history. I wish I’d recorded these wonderful conversations because they are insightful about what musicians go through to become people who are influential. All three were absolutely revolutionary in bringing the music of the 70s to the forefront.
It’s interesting that I started my career in the late 70s with the punk movement, a good 12 years after all three men started touring. Punk is a genre that all three knew little about due to being more compositional in their work, but all agree a vibe is a vibe no matter how many chords are involved. I just sat there listening thinking well yeah I’ve played some of those clubs too. I’ve definitely felt I should’ve been in better venues at times in the late 70s. We all shared the opinion that the venues should have had a backstage loo. Although certain things have changed, even today I find myself in a man’s world being a woman.
Every now and then I was able to say “yeah I did that too, I played there too. Yeah well when I worked with Sir Laurence OLIVIER, oh, and when I worked with Norman Wisdom” who they were talking about……..They were impressed.
I’m still learning to be an artist and I’m definitely still learning to be me. I think since May of last year I’ve been on one of the biggest journeys of my life. We, that’s Fripp and I often say that planet Earth is probably run by aliens and it’s a planet where they send their prisoners, where we have to work out who and what we are, what we like and don’t like about ourselves.
You can tell I am writing a lot of short stories lately!
We’ve got new T-shirts coming. We’ve got picture discs coming…. We’ve got new releases coming….. so stay tuned.
I will be performing live before you can blink and I can’t wait. There’s an updated GIG lit on the GIGS page with more summer festivals & shows added.
It’s an exciting year and a very different year.
BE PROUD, BE LOUD, BE HEARD
LOVE TOYAH
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