I Was A Teenage Toyah Fan

by Chris Limb

  But I am getting ahead of myself. Back in early 1981 there was still no sign of Toyah in the mainstream. There was a false alarm when switching Top of the Pops on halfway through I saw a girl with a similar style, but it turned out only to be someone called Honey Bane with her hit Turn Me On Turn Me Off.

  Then out of the blue (and fortunately whilst I was alone in the room), Toyah unexpectedly appeared on Top of the Pops, stepping forward from a cloud of dry ice singing a new song I’d not heard before; something about “a big question mark”. I was delighted. I had no idea that she had a new record out and my infatuation reignited its booster for a trans-lunar injection burn that sent my fixation into orbit around the moon.

  And now she was everywhere.

  This bothered me a little. Her omnipresence meant that I might find it more difficult to hide my crush and furthermore it meant that I would have to share my passion with a million other boys. It meant that any fantasies I might have been entertaining about somehow getting to meet her were now far less likely to be fulfilled. But on the other hand it meant that I now had access to a wealth of Toyah material that I could only have dreamed of before. I was willing to accept this trade-off.

  A copy of The Hot Press with her on the cover joined my clandestine collection, followed by an article from another magazine and then a poster from another, then an interview from another… There may have been only three TV channels but there was a plethora of glossies aimed at the teenage consumers of the flourishing New Romantic pop scene; magazines full of song words, interviews and most importantly stunning colour photos that burned themselves into the back brain to such an extent that even seeing them again thirty years later stirs long forgotten adolescent emotions. Go into in any newsagent in the land back then and you came face to face with a whole shelf full of Steve Strange, Midge Ure, Adam Ant and Toyah staring at you with heavily made up eyes. Pop Hits, Disco 45 Songbook, Chart Hits, Smash Hits, New Sounds New Styles, Flexipop, the variations were endless.

  And now Toyah was in the top ten and started appearing on Saturday morning children’s TV - often the only place outside Top of the Pops that I got to see any bands (I had no idea at the time that The Old Grey Whistle Test had stopped being full of the beardy-weirdies who’d been on it when my parents had watched and was actually now quite good). The Toyah fever sweeping the land combined with the fever in my brain to form a fully-fledged obsession - I convinced myself that I was in love. When the news came that she was to appear on Ask Aspel I wrote in to the BBC asking for a signed photograph.

  A problem of which I had hitherto been unaware reared its ugly head. It appeared that some of the Fuckers liked Toyah too - I was certain that if they discovered my crush they’d persecute me mercilessly and tell me that I wasn’t good enough to like her.

  I’d show them. I wasn’t sure how, but I would.

  A delivery marked DO NOT BEND arrived in a large card-backed BBC envelope. A fluttering started up in my guts and my hands started shaking. Opening it, I discovered a large black and white photograph (a “Walkerprint” as I later discovered it to be) of Toyah with two words and one letter written on it in biro.

  love Toyah x

  I was holding in my hands something that had once been in her hands. The universe stood still for a second.

  Once I had remembered to start breathing again I put the precious object on my wall, although in keeping with the still secret nature of my adoration I put it behind my signed poster of Tom Baker and K9. It was enough to know that it was there and that when no one was around I could remove the blu-tac at the bottom right hand corner, peel back the corner of the Doctor Who picture and look at Toyah’s handwriting.

  The song about the question mark had been It’s a Mystery, track one of Four From Toyah, another Safari Records “AP”. The other three tracks were closer to the style of what I had heard before but still different; Toyah’s pop career was evolving before my ears and as the momentum gathered she appeared unstoppable. No sooner had Four From Toyah disappeared from the charts than another single rose from the horizon. This time I was quick off the mark buying it from Harum Records. Like Sheep Farming in Barnet the cover was stark, bright and bare-shouldered but different enough for my record sleeve synaesthesia to prepare me for the enthusiastic radio friendly pop of the A-side I Want To be Free as well as the more spiky science fiction weirdness of the B-sides Walkie-Talkie and Alien.

  More Top of the Pops appearances came next as the single followed its predecessor into the top ten. Furthermore Toyah started to appear on other TV shows - for example Swap Shop, Tiswas and even Animal Magic - with increasing regularity. Radio 1 broadcast a concert that I listened to through the ear bud of my green transistor radio. It was becoming difficult to keep up with events, especially as we still didn’t have a video.

  A new album was released called Anthem. The cover was a painting such as one might have found on the cover of a Science Fiction novel; the surface of a planet where a battle had just taken place between a race of insect-winged Toyahs and pyramid building vampires. It appeared that the Toyahs had won. It took me a couple of weeks to save up for the LP and in the meantime I studied this sleeve in Harum Records and in minute detail, impatient to get my ears and brain on the contents.

  Eventually it was in my possession. The sleeve seemed somehow brighter and bigger in the context of my bedroom, the glossy portrait of Toyah on the back illuminating the room with a enigmatic stare. Before listening to it I sat on my bed and read the lyric sheet. Without knowing what the music sounded like this was more akin to reading poetry and was a unique moment that has stuck with me.

  We move

  We dance

  We sing

  We burst into flames

  But it wasn’t long before I knew what all the songs sounded like.

  Mysterious. Angry. Lyrical. Exciting. Dream music for space people. A science fiction audiobook telling frightening tales of marionettes, demolition men and a lost city of Mars… An album with a pleasing symmetry about it; side one ended with I Am, side two with We Are. After a while when listening I tended to skip It’s a Mystery and I Want to be Free as I knew them too well - and furthermore the former interrupted what felt to me like the natural flow from I Am to Masai Boy. I listened to it whenever I could and the music entered my dreams – I still clearly remember one in which I stood in a flat white desert under a burning sun as Obsolete played in the background.

  I spent an afternoon tapping out a letter to Toyah on an old second hand typewriter like a siege engine (I was self-conscious about my messy handwriting even then); the same one I’d used the previous year to write my O level history project on the Space Race. I included a new Toyah logo I’d been designing, but for the most part the letter itself was over the top and embarrassing. I have blotted out the details now but I am sure I did something mortifying therein like pledging my undying love...

  However I still posted it, care of her record company. It would have been more mortifying not to.

  That was the thing you see. I was in the grip of an unhealthy obsession and had fixated on one person, someone completely unaware of me, but someone whose imagination and creativity resonated and provided me with much needed solace during an unpleasant time.

  Some time later a letter arrived with my name and address written in large, unusual handwriting. As I opened it, I had no idea who it was from.

  Dear Chris

  Thank you for your lovely letter which is one of the most flattering I have read for ages. Thanks also for the logo design, I have stuck it on the wall of my workroom, I always fill the walls with inspirational things.

  My (or should I say our) new single is out on 18th September. It’s called Thunder in the Mountains. I hope you like it.

  lots of love

  Toyah xxx

  PS I bet your writting isn’t as bad as MINE.

  It felt like the best day of my life.

  3: And it’s breaking through

  There was nothing for it r
eally. In the end I had to admit to my immediate family that I had become a Toyah fan. I imagine it was almost like coming out - in some ways it was coming out. In admitting I liked Toyah I was admitting I liked girls and therefore wasn’t the asexual child I had hitherto appeared to be.

  Still, without doing that it would have been difficult to get to the gigs, and attending gigs was the natural next step.

  The places in which I first saw Toyah play weren’t exactly the ideal introduction to me of the world of gigging. Hammersmith Odeon and Theatre Royal Drury Lane - great hulking cavernous buildings with nary a chance of an intimate show. At the time I didn’t know any better though and any gripes I might have had at the choice of venue were totally eclipsed by one simple fact - for ninety minutes or so I was going to be in the same room as her.

  As well as 3000 other teenage boys. Not to mention the little girls and their parents. And the teenage girls. And the posse of die-hard punks. And the band. And the road crew.

  Some punters were intent on taking loads of photographs but whilst I borrowed cameras on a couple of occasions I found it tended to reduce my enjoyment rather more than it provided me with a invaluable record of the event.

  Once at the gig you’d have to point and shoot whilst looking through a tiny viewfinder and with cheap plastic analogue cameras there was no guarantee that your shots wouldn’t come out blurred anyway. It was often too dark and unless you were right at the front all you’d get would be a photograph of the magnesium flash lit heads of the people immediately in front of you with an orange or pink topped shape lurking in the darkness beyond which you’d have to tell everyone was Toyah.

  Even if you managed to be right at the front there was no guarantee you’d get any better shots. You’d be pressed up against the stage or barrier so hard that often it was all you could do to keep breathing, let alone fiddle around in your jacket pocket for a camera, take hold of it in both hands, frame the shot, shoot and then put it back in your pocket only to have to repeat the process five minutes later.

  Plus, depending upon the layout of the venue, if you were right at the front you ran the risk of having your camera confiscated by the bouncers as many venues operated a “no photos” policy back then.

  Most of the time it was simpler and better just to enjoy the gig. Let it wash over you and sink into your memory. Let your emotions be bludgeoned by hearing these songs in the flesh and knowing that the vocal chords producing those notes were actually doing so right now and just over there.

  Crowded up the front, a lot of people seemed obsessed with actually getting Toyah to touch them. I never understood that. For me it was all in the eyes. The best thing that could possibly happen to you in this kind of situation would be for her to look at you. To catch your eye. To offer you a split second of that beautiful mad punky grin. Or if you were really lucky, for her to sing a word or two directly into your face. It was no wonder that getting “down the front” was the holy grail for gig goers.

  In non-seated venues it was all a matter of getting there early and queuing up before the doors opened. The moment they did there was a mad sprint down to the stage or barrier to claim your eighteen inches of real estate. And you’d stick to it like glue. If you were lucky, you had friends who’d keep your place for you as you went to the loo. You’d do the same for them in return. There was not so much going to buy rounds in those days. We were all high on the music and in any case did most of our drinking from cans outside the venue before going in. It was cheaper for a start and meant you could concentrate on getting “down the front” without the distractions of the bar.

  Some of the older fans did try making their own way to the front having been in the bar whilst the impatient bunch of kids down by the stage were tolerating the support group. If they were big enough - burly rugbypunks with arms like oak trees, leather jackets studded with what looked like Shuriken and body odour that would fell a rhinoceros at thirty paces - they managed it by sheer brute force, somehow turning up right on the barrier and gazing up at their idol with adoration that looked totally out of place on such huge scary faces.

  Even in seated venues getting “down the front” was an obsession, but this required even more forward planning. You’d have to watch the music papers like a hawk and then race to the venue on the day the tickets went on sale to make sure you got seats in Row A. Most of the time you didn’t manage it, and had to make do with Row H. This wasn’t necessarily a disaster; depending on the venue you could always clamber over the seats or run down the aisle to reclaim some stage front for yourself if enough other people were doing it.

  Unless it was the Hammersmith Odeon.

  That was where a whole tribe of bouncers were employed who considered it their life’s work to ensure that no-one ever left their seat. Seemore Security was the only outfit in London that appeared to have a minimum weight requirement of 16 stone and maximum IQ requirement of 75. And, according to whispered tales, some of whose bouncers carried knives.

  They were famous for their brutality. You can understand the desire to keep everyone in their seats at a performance of say Barry Manilow’s Copacabana on Ice but in a room where everyone wanted to stand up and run down the front, insisting that people stay in their seats out of a bloody-minded devotion to duty seemed kind of anal.

  But even the Hammersmith Odeon bouncers couldn’t spoil the excitement and enjoyment of Toyah live. There she was, just over there and these were the songs; bigger, louder and faster than I’d ever heard them before. Some of them brought tears to my eyes, goose bumps to the back of my neck and a huge flood of endorphins into my bloodstream.

  Inspired by these experiences, I wrote more letters to Toyah on my prehistoric typewriter; she even wrote back again, proving that the first time had been no fluke. I joined the intriguingly named “Intergalactic Ranch House” which was her fan club - a friendly, rough and ready organisation with photocopied newsletters sent out six times a year along with black and white Walkerprints of Toyah and of course a membership badge. The badge joined others I’d been able to acquire from the vendors on Oxford Street on the reverse of the lapel of my school blazer. This was partly to avoid being told to remove them by the teachers but mostly as a secret act of defiance against the Fuckers. I was sure none of them had received letters from her. Writing to her wouldn’t have occurred to them.

  She continued to appear everywhere; it felt almost impossible to keep up with her appearances on TV and in magazines. One such magazine contained an unexpected bonus – a green “flexi disk” containing two unheard Toyah tracks - Sphinx and For You. I felt almost spoilt.

  This continued when the energetic new single Thunder in the Mountains was released and went top ten provoking a flood of further TV guest slots, Top of the Pops appearances and a post-apocalyptic video in which amongst other things a chariot riding Toyah came under attack from a shower of ball bearings summoned up by a scary old monk with a beard. And despite the exuberance of the main song the two b-sides, Voodoo Doll and Street Addict, showed that she hadn’t forgotten about the darker side that had first drawn me in.

  Once again the record sleeve reflected the feeling of the time for me. It was September and Toyah’s look now incorporated a dark orange, her costume rich with leathery browns and earth tones of the vernal equinox, her and the band posing on the back of the sleeve under an autumnal sky.

  Autumn also meant I was returning to school. I wasn’t looking forward to that, the inevitable return to the tall gloom-shrouded torture chambers, dungeons with narrow windows too high to reach looking out onto the grey autumn sky. Ancient radiators clogged with thick white paint emitted a dull intense heat and odd-smelling fumes which mixed with the smell of chalk dust and furniture polish to produce a unique odour that if bottled and sold would no doubt go under the name Essence of Despair.

  Still, at least this was to be my final year. And now I had a new purpose in life, someone spectacular to think about, expend my energies listening to and dreaming about. Toyah
haunted my dreams, but at a distance. It was as if my subconscious had yet to connect the figure on stage, the voice on vinyl and the face on TV with the mind behind the hands that had written those letters to me. I’d have to meet her to do that, I decided.

  1981 accelerated into a neon-lit tunnel of winter. It was a thrilling time to be a music fan. Soft Cell and The Human League joined the cast of exciting new groups appearing on Top of the Pops and it wasn’t long before Toyah joined them again with yet another release.

  This was exciting – Four More From Toyah another AP (or “EP” as they now seemed to be called) meant that I was going to get to listen to even more music than expected – not only did it have the four tracks promised in the title on it but there was another free single-track flexi disk with “initial quantities” of the EP. What with these new five songs and the two-track Flexipop offering as well as Thunder in the Mountains and its two b-sides that was nearly a whole album’s worth of material since Anthem.

  Four More From Toyah was a diverse mix. The “play track” was Good Morning Universe, optimistic spacepop, mirrored in feel by the slower and more introspective In the Fairground. The track Urban Tribesmen was harder and more rhythmic – a continuation of the clannish tale that had started with 1980 single Tribal Look and had continued through 1981’s War Boys and Masai Boy. The flexi track Stand Proud continued this percussive story yet further; bringing Ieya into the continuity with its opening chant. The Furious Futures completed the set. This was darker and more grim but also seemed to continue a different story Toyah had been telling, a dystopian tale that also took in Blue Meanings and Street Addict.

  The winter solstice approached and in my mind the night-time sleeve of Four From Toyah reflected the intensity of this dark season, Toyah’s increasingly elaborate and surreal look emerging from an icy mist into the depths of space.

  Childhood tradition meant that I was still going to the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in Albemarle Street although this year’s From Magna Carta to Microchip failed to hold my attention. Such luminaries as David Attenborough and Carl Sagan had delivered past lectures I’d attended but this year’s guest didn’t have a tenth of their charisma. So when I discovered that one of them was to clash with Toyah’s early evening gig at Theatre Royal Drury Lane on 23 December there was no contest. I even turned up to the stage door early in the hope of actually getting to meet her, but alas she was already inside.