"The leader of the band was a man called Glen Marks and his father ran Golders Green cemetery.
I was ... it meant so much to me that I was permanently nervous and I’d walk on stage and just become a jibbering wreck and hide behind a kind of ugly bravado, there was no craft there or anything.
Then they joined with a keyboard player called Pete Bush who had a music room in his house in Totteridge where three of them could rehearse.
Bogen auditioned several musicians and chose Pete Bush (keyboards), Dave Robin (drums), and Windy Miller (bass), quartet quickly taking their name from their unusual vocalist and figurehead.
Toyah debuted in Barnet's pub Duke of Lancaster on 27 June, and gave three more concerts in London.
Early demos recorded during 1978 included songs called "Mother", "Hunger Hill", "Eyes", "Computers", "Gaoler", "Waiting", "Danced", "Neon Womb", "Problem Child", "Little Boy" and "Israel", several of which would make it onto the band's early releases, and several others would emerge on the later rarities compilation Mayhem in 1985.
"[3]In July 1979, Safari released the band's debut single "Victims of the Riddle", described by the NME as "a remarkably listenable slice of paranoia and macabre".
Alongside Willcox, Bogen, and Bush, it featured Mark Henry (bass guitar) and Steve Bray (drums).
We were making a demo virtually once a month, we had to continually produce music, and that was great, because it gave the band focus, it made us feel really good, it put on a retainer 30 quid a week so we felt as if we were employed…", Willcox remembered.
The band followed this up with another non-album single, "Bird in Flight / Tribal Look", and their full-length album The Blue Meaning (1980) (No.
[8] Following Willcox's appearance as punk musician Toola in an episode of the UK TV series Shoestring, ATV[9] filmed the band during this period, both off-stage and on.
They were like a bunch of old women, continually having periods as far as I was concerned", she told Paul Morley, adding that the group resented the attention she was getting, her tendency to want to write the music, the time she was away pursuing a role that created her image and diminished theirs.
They were joined by Phil Spalding on bass, Nigel Glockler on drums and Adrian Lee on keyboards, and released the hit EP Four from Toyah, the lead-track from which is a cover called "It's a Mystery" – originally recorded by Sheep Farming in Barnet's producer Keith Hale and his band Blood Donor.
This introduced Simon Phillips on drums ( having previously played for Judas Priest and Brian Eno), who had replaced Nigel Glockler (who had left to join Saxon who were prominent on the New wave of British heavy metal circuit ) .
[11] Both Phillips and Spalding later were quoted to mention their time with the band Toyah as being a turning point for them as musicians.
With me I want a solid team where all the members are unique and I think this is why Phil and Simon enjoyed the experience", Willcox said.
[11] Now seeing Adrian Lee's keyboard duties taken over by newcomer Simon Darlow and Joel Bogen, the band recorded a much darker gothic album entitled The Changeling (1982).
The final Toyah album, Love Is the Law, followed in 1983, and again saw another line-up change, with only Willcox, Bogen and Darlow remaining.
Toyah herself had left Safari at this point, after being signed to CBS offshoot Portrait Records as a solo artist.
Safari released the rarities compilation Mayhem (1985) – featuring demos and unreleased songs – however, this was done without Toyah's consent or knowledge – she found out about the album by spotting it on import in a record store in America.
Her first album Minx was more a pop-oriented than her previous works; later she took a more experimental approach (Prostitute), collaborating on several records with her husband, Robert Fripp, and in 2000s returned to her late-1970s roots (Velvet Lined Shell, In the Court of the Crimson Queen).