One week at number one - 5th December 1981
What a funny, slippery, tricky old business punk rock was in retrospect. If initially it could be categorised as a DIY, breath-of-fresh-air, give-music-back-to-the-kids movement - forgive the inevitable cliches - it morphed very quickly and collected a lot of disparate ideas under its umbrella. We started with The Ramones, The Damned and The Pistols, who all seemed easy enough to lump together, then within a year or two the movement shape-shifted as it was claimed by various weirdos whose musical ideas were a bit more than 1-2-3-4 - so much so that arguments continue about what is and isn’t “canon”.
Toyah is a case in point. While her childhood was troubled with serious physical health problems and dyslexia, and she became a textbook teenage outsider as a result, she initially trained at drama school rather than taking the route of forming an angry punk band. Her small stature and lisp made her the victim of some superficial critical feedback from the school she paid fees to, with report notes stating that she was “not attractive” and had “a lisp”. It’s either a testament to the changing times or her determination and talent (or more likely both) that her career nonetheless took off sharply with roles in the National Theatre, as well as parts in the films “Jubilee” and “The Tempest”.
The music came later with a band being formed in her own name, leading to questions about her authenticity. She had been an on-screen punk rocker in “Jubilee” and to some it seemed as if she had tucked the role under her arm and walked off with it, bringing her acting academy dressing up games into music. While these days around 40% of the charts seem to consist of ex-performing arts school graduates, punks were deeply suspicious of trained media figures moving in on their patch. Having a previous media or recording career didn’t prevent some punks from being credible (Poly Styrene had an interesting background, for example) but it helped if it was very uncommon public knowledge. There was nowhere to hide for an actress with an existing public profile. The proof was there on celluloid for all to see.
Despite this, or perhaps possibly because of her existing profile, the indie label Safari Records were quick to sign her. They began marketing her in some obvious ways, such as using the then-novel picture disc format as a frame for her striking image, plus some stranger ones, such as making her unusually titled debut mini-LP “Sheep Farming In Barnet” a budget seven inch record which played at 33rpm.
Further records trickled out in 1979 and 1980, each creeping closer to the mainstream than the last, before the “Four From Toyah EP” in February 1981 vaulted to number four in the national charts, helped no end by the lead track “It’s A Mystery”. It’s a track she had no hand in writing, but still regularly introduces at concerts as one “which has been very good to me”. Unexpected demand for the EP was such that Safari had to use melted down and recycled vinyl to keep up demand, which led to some copies sounding very rough indeed on people’s turntables; on occasion sudden success comes at a cost to the fans as well as the artist.
From “It’s A Mystery” onwards, Toyah was a huge presence in the media. Colourful and glamorous in an unorthodox way, she could sit on the front page of Smash Hits as easily as the middle of Sounds. Her backstory was a genuine and interesting one of a teenage misfit; such characters seemed two-a-penny in the late seventies and early eighties, but surprisingly few of them could also be trusted to appear on Swap Shop or be interviewed on early evening news magazine shows without causing a ruckus. Toyah, on the other hand, appeared smiling and genial, telling school-going teenagers that of course their Mums would be concerned if they chose to dye their hair exotic colours. She was a Pro at being herself without offending many people in Middle England, doing little apart from cause Mums and Dads to talk about “the state of that” while their children beamed on excitedly.