| Two years ago Toyah
Willcox upset a lot of men with the release of an
album called Prostitute. Many, it seemed, were
affronted by the very word (people walked out of
sales meetings refusing to handle the record)
rather than the album's exploration of the roles
women play and men expect them to play. It was a
sobering but valuable experience for the singer,
especially since one of the crucial aspects of
the work was about the way she had felt exploited
as a singer and an artist. Prostitute was her
stand against the business.
"In
the past the biggest problem was that I felt I
and the music were just product. I began to feel
I wasn't developing as a singer or a person, that
I'd become a fashion victim. People were putting
product out in my name and I was having to take
the criticism for it. I decided I'd had enough,
that if anything was released then I had to be
totally responsible for what was on it and that
it was my own voice. Prostitute was an attempt to
be honest, to turn my rage into something
creative."
An act embodied
in the image of Ophelia's Shadow.
"Your
shadow always follows you and you can never be
shadowless. It represents the worst part of us,
the part that reacts with anger, the demon. In
Hamlet Ophelia falls in love, is tormented, goes
mad and drowns herself. My Ophelia doesn't drown
herself. She uses the water in which she's
surrounded to sail away. Water is a cleansing
metaphor and the shadow is about recognising the
darkside and using it creatively to survive."
Like
Prostitute, the new album is essentially self-analytical.
"But I try
and use it in a way that other people can
identify. Women understand it instantly. Men see
it from the point of view of their relationships
with women and feel alienated and angered. I have
no aggression towards men. The majority of my
work is self-observation and if a man takes it as
criticism then he's seeing it the wrong way.
Women understand instantly. I've always felt
women are irrational but that's what's so
wonderful about them. It's a fact that we change
chemically, that we have a new skeleton every
three months. Change is inevitable and only
through death can you have rebirth. Decay always
nourishes something else. But in the West we like
to stay rooted in the ideas of house and family.
I want to challenge that, to make women realise
we have to motivate our own future and that they
have to learn not to react aggressively to men
when they are honest with us. "
The album is
also very much about identity and the masks we
offer to others and ourselves. It may be about
femininity but there's more than one aspect.
"It's like
saying you can only write one book. There's
sexual femininity, and creative and maternal
femininity too. They are specific roles and
there's many faces. You choose the one you want
to wear."
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"One face Toyah has
chosen not to wear is that of motherhood. "Work will always be my priority
and I married a man (Robert Fripp) who feels the
same way. I think that was a responsible thing to.
I'm not going to have children. I have enough
around me and I love them, but I couldn't handle
one being there all the time. Also I don't like
babies. they repulse me. There may come a time
when I adopt, but I don't think I'm mentally
stable enough to have a child. I'd resent it
because I resent anything that keeps me in one
place too long."
It's an honest
statement many may find hard to accept, but it's
an honesty that infuses everything Toyah now does.
"I think
you should be perceived for what you are, what
you do and how. Looking back I was a bitch, but I
learned that makes you cruel. The only truth you
can find is being honourable in your
relationships with other people. I want to be
accepted for what I am not judged on face value.
I can't stand being idolised. Fame was great,
that one year was tremendous fun but I can't tell
you how much I cried because of the way people
acted like animals around me because I was famous.
It upset me dreadfully and I could never allow it
to happen again.
"I can't
live a life of obscurity. I'm gregarious, I have
to have people round me. It's why I work on stage.
I have true artist syndrome. I need an audience,
I love working in front of people. It's the most
rewarding part of my life. It's the heart of me.
I won't ever be an utterly serious artist,
there'll always be a sense of mischief. But that
doesn't mean I'm immature. People have described
me as being like Puck and I do identify with him.
He irritates people and so do I. But as long as
it's done with humour that's all right.
Positivity is the key."
Ophelia's
Shadow is on EG Records.
Brum Beat -
1991
Thanks to Mike
Davies, who interviewed Toyah, for providing this.
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