Toyah Willcox began her career as an actor in Quadrophenia and Quatermass, and as a post-punk in the 80s declared she wanted to be free. In the 21st century she teamed up with the late Bill Rieflin, Markus Reuter and her husband Robert Fripp, and was even In The Court Of The Crimson Queen. In 2020 – just as Toyyah And Robert’s Sunday Lunch presented the pair in a new, light-hearted light – we asked the question: how prog is she?
Most people think they know Toyah Willcox. She’s rooted in popular perception as the rebel queen of 80s new wave, responsible for mega-hits like It’s A Mystery, I Want To Be Free and Thunder In The Mountains. But there’s a whole other, less-celebrated side to her – the edgy adventurer, surveying the worlds of improv, art rock and experimental music.
“I’ve always needed to walk away from the predictable,” she tells Prog. “I love doing the 80s festivals and the touring shows, and my audience turns up in their thousands, which I’m so grateful for. But there’s also a part of me that is very off-the-wall. And I need to feed that.”
In recent years, that creative nourishment has taken the form of The Humans, the trio that she co-founded in 2007 with multi-instrumentalists Chris Wong and Bill Rieflin (former drummer with King Crimson). The band’s studio endeavours – now collected in a handsome five-disc box set, Noise In Your Head – are centred around Toyah’s voice and two bass guitars, making for a fascinating aural experience. You’ll find ambient music, gnarly avant-rock, elastic funk and deconstructed pop. And yes, even prog.
Toyah is acutely aware of the connotations of the latter genre. She is, after all, married to Robert Fripp. And even though they’ve deliberately kept their artistic lives separate, her husband pops in and out of her story like a recurring King Crimson riff. The birth of The Humans is a prime example.
“I made a feature film in Estonia [Tied Up In Tallinn] during the country’s first year of independence,” she begins, “and I fell in love with the place. Then Robert and I became great friends with the Estonian ambassador for the UK, Dr Margus Laidre. In 2007, the president [Toomas Hendrik Ilves] asked if Robert would come and play on his birthday, to which he said, ‘No.’ I’ve heard Robert say ‘no’ to everybody – David Bowie, Peter Gabriel, you name it. He’s always got an excuse not to play.
“So I contacted Dr Margus and said, ‘Look, there’s a project really dear to my heart and I want it to be a spontaneous thing with three musicians.’ He was intrigued. I told him, ‘We’ll do this, for your president, on his birthday.’ I didn’t expect to hear anything back, but, within 24 hours the invitation was accepted.”
She immediately called Rieflin, who she’d bonded with through his involvement with Fripp. Wong, her musical director, was in too. Using Toyah’s demos as base material, the threesome flew out and played for the then Estonian president. “It was challenging,” she recalls, “but we really made it work.”
I said to Bill, ‘The moment you put Robert on this project, we no longer exist.‘ I had to let Bill see that
Their set formed the core of the band’s 2009 debut, We Are The Humans. “It’s a completely stripped-down, sonically naked album,” says Toyah. “My ears have always been very sensitive. I said to Bill, ‘I can’t have drums on this – they’re limiting my vocal ability. I just want that middle spectrum for me.’ So We Are The Humans was very much a work in progress. But, as a standalone piece, I think it’s magical.”
Later that summer she and Wong returned to Estonia, where they teamed up with German producer and touch guitarist Markus Reuter, plus local duo Robert Jürjendal (guitar) and Arvo Urb (drums). They christened themselves This Fragile Moment for a self-titled studio effort. “I think that album is one of the best in-the-moment pieces of writing I’ve ever done,” Toyah declares. “We all met in Tallinn, sat down in a circle, put headphones on and improvised for a week.”
Putting her solo career on hold (2008’s In The Court Of The Crimson Queen had been a neatly titled acknowledgement of her other half), Toyah threw herself into The Humans. The recording of 2011’s Sugar Rush, however, proved particularly difficult, both on a professional and personal level. “My father died the day after I’d gone over to Seattle to map Sugar Rush,” she explains. “So a lot of that album was grief-ridden and angry, because my father wasn’t treated well in his last days.”
The deeply atmospheric Snow At 10:23 marks the time of his death back home, while Fragment Pool and Small Town Psychopath concern Toyah’s relationship with her father and what happened to him. “I lost my mother around that time too and I also had a cancer scare,” she adds. “It was just the most ridiculous time. I had three years of intensive surgery – one of them kept me in a coma for 24 hours.”
When I first met Robert I was three days away from suicide. He took me out of the country and unravelled the knots
From an artistic standpoint, the intensity of the sessions was heightened by Fripp’s presence in the studio. Rieflin had wanted to expand the sound of The Humans on Sugar Rush, adding more harmonic structure, with Fripp on board. Toyah acceded, but only out of respect for Rieflin, whose invaluable musical know-how had been sharpened by his involvement with the likes of Ministry, Revolting Cocks, Swans, Nine Inch Nails and REM.
“I told Bill it would be the death of The Humans,” she says. “And to a certain extent it was – certainly as a live act. I said to him, ‘The moment you put Robert on this project, we no longer exist.’ I had to let Bill see that.
“When I first met Robert I was three days away from suicide and he just took me out of the country and unravelled the knots and put me back on my feet. He’s a wonderful husband, but professionally it’s not done me any favours at all. We managed to do one more tour – and it was phenomenal – but that was it. At the same time, I think Sugar Rush is a work of genius on all our parts.”
The Humans went on to record a final studio album, 2014’s more vocal-led Strange Tales, but the sessions were hampered by Rieflin’s ongoing struggle with cancer. The results are nevertheless often spectacular, be it the post-grunge She’s Fast or the masterly art-funk of Get In Your Car and Bedhead. Rieflin pushes the band’s parameters by also taking on drums, keyboards and percussion, while violins and saxophones add further colour.
Noise In Your Head acts as a fitting tribute to Rieflin, who died in March this year. Toyah says he’d spent the last 12 months of his life taking care of loose ends, including the box set. “I’d deliberately stayed away from putting my name at the top of this project,” she explains. “Calling ourselves The Humans got rid of my past history in some ways. I have worked blisteringly hard to be where I am today and thought that if I put my name on this it wouldn’t help, because everyone would pick up on the fact that I’m married to Robert.
as soon as I got married the people who used to talk to me would ask for Robert instead. They would discuss me with him!
“But in the last year Bill told me, ‘Your name has to be on this. It’s got to be Toyah & The Humans.’ I think he realised that I had a greater audience, so it was all part of the journey.”
Toyah’s work with The Humans and This Fragile Moment isn’t some isolated left turn. She grew up listening to big-selling names with strong cult appeal – Roxy Music, Bolan, Bowie, Alice Cooper. As her love of theatrical art grew into an acting career (appearing in late-70s subculture classics like Jubilee and Quadrophenia), she began to absorb the audio-visual delights of Devo and The Tubes.
She spent her first £60 wage packet from the National Theatre on a bunch of vinyl: Velvet Underground, Pere Ubu and (No Pussyfooting). “So my first experience of Robert Fripp was through Brian Eno,” she says. “Later on I got King Crimson’s Discipline, which is an amazing album.”
Witnessing the Sex Pistols in her Birmingham hometown in October 1976 had been liberating for its vibe. But Toyah’s notions of live performance had started to take shape at a younger age. “I saw Black Sabbath when I was 11,” she remembers, “then I saw Hawkwind when I was 12. I spent the whole night running away from Stacia! I was just this child, surrounded by all these acid-heads and with a naked woman dancing on stage. She was wonderful though; quite something.”
Even at the peak of her fame in the early 80s, the playlist on Toyah’s tour bus reflected tastes that most post-punk artists wouldn’t admit to, from The Moody Blues’ Days Of Future Passed to the trippy Stones gem, Citadel. 1988’s Prostitute is a startling pre-echo of her Humans output. An abstract, confrontational album peppered with dialogue, samples and avant-pop grooves, it was an emphatic statement, issued after her commercial star had waned.
I just don’t believe in this cultural thing where if you get older you lose power and relevance. You don’t
“I’d signed to CBS on their new Portrait label [for 1985’s Minx], but everybody wanted me to emulate Pat Benatar,” she explains. “Then as soon as I got married [she and Fripp wed in 1986] the phone would ring and the people who used to talk to me would ask for Robert instead. And they would discuss me with him! I suddenly became completely invisible, culturally, as a woman.
“I’d gone from having an award-winning, groundbreaking career – one of the top-selling artists and the most-awarded female in Europe – to suddenly having to have meetings with my husband in the room. And people saying to me, ‘Why don’t you go away and have babies?’ Prostitute was really a response to all that.”
She followed up in 1991 with the more prog-oriented Ophelia’s Shadow, backed by the musicians she’d previously fronted as Sunday All Over The World, including Fripp and future King Crimson man Trey Gunn. They released their sole album, Kneeling At The Shrine, that year.
Encouraged by pre-sales of The Humans box set (“It’s already been a hundred times more successful than any of those albums were originally”), Toyah thrives on challenging herself. “There’s always room for improvement in all of us; even Robert would agree with that,” she states. “So what drives me is the desire to remain creative, to expand, to explore. It’s definitely not commerce.
“I just don’t believe in this cultural thing where if you get older you lose power and relevance. You don’t. All your experiences are generating inside you, like a battery, wanting to come out. So you continue to resonate.”
