IT’S A MYSTERY
Why HAVE Toyah and her guitar genius husband taken 37 years to appear together?
Toyah Willcox and Robert Fripp make a magnificently odd couple. She’s a youthful 65, a half-forgotten pop star from the 1980s now making a modest comeback. He’s an ageless 77, the prog-rock god who played the unforgettable guitar solo on David Bowie’s Heroes.
They have been married for 37 years but never worked together until lockdown, when they filmed themselves in their Worcestershire home delivering camped-up covers of classic rock songs. Fripp showed a sense of humour that had seldom been detected in King Crimson, and Toyah turned into a kitchen goddess – Sophie EllisBextor with extra sauce.
Toyah and Robert’s Sunday Lunch became a phenomenon. ‘Wherever we go,’ Toyah tells the crowd at Cropredy, ‘people say thank you for Sunday Lunch. We’ve had 120 million page views.’
Now they’re on their first tour together, and you wonder what took them so long. It would be worth seeing them just for the chemistry. As she stomps around the stage, he sits stock-still on a stool, never taking his eyes off her.
They also gel as a musical team, managing to take an old song and make it better. Fripp’s guitar is cool and concise, Toyah’s voice warm and welcoming. Backed by a crisp six-piece band, they play three of her old singles, nothing by King Crimson, and some of heavy metal’s greatest hits: Black Sabbath’s Paranoid, Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir, Metallica’s Enter Sandman, Guns N’ Roses’ Sweet Child O’ Mine.
This is hard rock without the off-putting bits – the dreary denim, the mindless machismo, the overblown screeching.
Billy Idol’s Rebel Yell is rabblerousing, ZZ Top’s Sharp Dressed Man sensational.
Finally Toyah introduces something from Fripp’s back catalogue – Heroes. ‘When I was 19,’ she says, ‘this song came along and made me believe I could hack it in the music business. So proud of my husband for recording it.’ Bowie’s part in the process is rather played down, but when the music starts he is there in spirit. Toyah channels his sense of drama, Fripp his stillness.
According to Brian Eno, Fripp’s woozy solo came about because he had just stumbled into Berlin off the overnight flight from New York. To see him recreate it is very moving.
Heritage Live is the series of gigs at historic houses that is about to feature Robbie Williams, Van Morrison and The Who at Sandringham. Something tells me the King will be away that weekend.
Tonight at Audley End, where the last King Charles used to stay, a sell-out crowd has come to see the stately synth-pop bands of England – Heaven 17, OMD and Soft Cell. As a triple bill, they could come in any order.
Heaven 17 bring the best jokes. They open with (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang, a song that is more topical than it should be. ‘Don’t just sit there on your ass,’ Glenn Gregory sings, as he gazes out at thousands of people on fold-away chairs.
Heaven 17’s stentorian synth-pop still hits the spot, from the period drama of Come Live With Me to the pile-driving dance-pop of Temptation, and they throw in forceful covers of Let’s Dance (Bowie again) and You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’. Seeing them outdoors makes you want to see them indoors. The chance will come in November when they celebrate 40 years of The Luxury Gap, an album that now shares its name with a highend spa in Haslemere.
OMD, aka Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, come on in broad daylight, which doesn’t seem right. But they have more hits than you may remember and their lightfooted electro-pop has aged well. Enola Gay is fabulous: it turns out that you haven’t lived until you’ve joined 10,000 other people for a singalong about the atom bomb in the grounds of a Jacobean mansion.
As the headliners, Soft Cell are hit and miss. They start strongly, with Marc Almond oozing charisma, Dave Ball soldiering on, and old favourites rubbing shoulders with tracks from a likeable new album, Happiness Not Included. You feel the sharpness of the lyrics and the darkness of the music.
The set sags in the middle, as Soft Cell turn out to be that rare band that has fewer hits than you think. But the finale is so good that all is forgiven. Tainted Love is just sublime. Almond and Ball added so much electricity to Gloria Jones’s Northern Soul stomper that they made it their own.
It’s followed by its B-side, Where Did Our Love Go, which remains the property of The Supremes but still dispenses delight. A memorable night ends with Say Hello, Wave Goodbye, still lovably sinister after all these years.