The last four weeks have been one of my happiest in 40 years. It’s been a month that has seen me back with old friends in quite exceptional surroundings. Let’s say it hasn’t been glamorous at times and others it’s been hysterical.
At one point huddled in a garage, rain pouring down, no heating, all of us in skimpy costumes I facetimed my husband who was in San Paulo with an armed guard outside his hotel room door and let him witness the glamor of my life.
There has been lots of laughter, lots of catching up and lots of hard work in front of the camera.
I am not allowed to say any more about this experience for another two months, which is understandable, this is an event that mustn’t be taken out of context.
Social media, cameras and phones were banned on set.
Slowly news is slipping out, images leaked into the press last week when parts of Stevenage were brought to a standstill but miraculously most of the time we managed to be completely under the radar.
All I can say is “more later”. Friends reunited and became closer than ever.
It’s made me feel like my old self again.
In September I did two shows with the SAS BAND, which brought me back together with Justin Hawkins who is an adorable madman. Roger Taylor and his son Rufus where also playing and a new addition to our SAS family was TOMOYASU HOTEI who blew us all away with his incredible playing and calming presence.
When I arrived at Plymouth Guildhall Hotei requested a photo with me…..it turns out he is a huge Toyah fan! This is always a pleasant surprise to me and I was over the moon.
It was a joy to witness Hotei experiencing Justin’s manic stage presence, also to see Hotei experience the SAS BAND. The SAS FAMILY all have a habit of crowding into the same room, we eat in the same room, squeezing onto the same dinner table, fire jokes at each other…there are no airs and graces, no deferential treatment….we are all to some extent eccentric and there was Hotei quietly observing us bohemians doing what we do.
Once Mr. Fripp is home from Rio I am going to make sure these two immensely talented people get together in the same room. I feel in my bones there is chemistry there waiting to happen.
I can’t wait for the AUTUMN TOUR. We have some surprises for fans from way back in the late 70s! After all 2019 is the 40th anniversary of SHEEP FARMING IN BARNET.
This album continues to surprise me every time I revisit it. The synth sounds are a joy, the songs are highly original and fresh today. LAST GOODBYE is going into the set plus a few songs that haven’t been performed since 1980.
Pete Bush, one of the co-writers on Sheep Farming came to St. Alban Arena last week and we dedicated Neon Womb and Danced to him.
This was a brilliant show, the sound was stunning, the lighting perfect, the set list really rocked, the audience went bonkers from beginning to end but the venue wasn’t right for the band…this band is high energy and needs to be in rock clubs where people can rock out…..no problem there for the rest of the tour….. we will be in intimate settings and lifting the roof.
We will be performing songs from Sheep Farming to Crimson Queen, with a new set just to see this momentous year out.
The Quadrophenia team did CovCom last week and there was a fantastic turn out. It was a glorious day meeting Mods old and new.
I seemed to enticed some bizarre memories from the autograph collectors…here’s a few:
“I saw you before you were famous singing in a bar with a piano player and you were wearing “nipple tassles”
……….ER NO! I would, have been 16 and that bar was in Birmingham in 1975 and it was called THE JUG, its where drama students hung out and I was probably wearing about 4 layers of homemade clothes, as I did back then. I sang Led Zeppelin’s Stairway To Heaven, I was terrified, my stage nerves where far from under control back then.
“do you remember me? I was on the back row at the Birmingham Odeon and you looked across at me in the audience?”
…………ER UM! There were 4000 people that night, I remember you all fondly but cant quite recal the faces of every single person.
It was a fun day, a Brilliant Day with my oldest friends. We are such a happy bunch of people, if we ended up with our own drama series on Netflix I think there would be stories of events leaking out into the world not dissimilar to how stars of the 1960s era used to notoriously party around London.
There is chemistry between us that makes us a tightly knit bunch of extroverts who become fearless together.
I don’t think this will be the last time we are all together somehow.
My relationship with DEMON MUSIC is really good and we are trying to get going with putting the early TOYAH albums back in the marketplace… this won’t happen overnight, it’s a complicated process. In the meantime there are some very nice releases planned for early next year which there will be more news on soon!
As I said I can’t wait for the Oct/Nov/Dec gigs. Check the GIGS PAGE for the one nearest you or ones you can get to.
This may be a mad and strange time for Great Britain but you know what you will get under the same roof as me and the TOYAH band….. there will be A ROCKING GREAT TIME.
HELLO THERE!
HELLO THERE!
