Smudge talks to Toby Jepson

Toby Jepson has been a bit quite of late. He had a well-earned break from the music biz and travelled to the far east with his lovely wife Ket for 6 months. He has returned with a whole new outlook and a bad back. He is set to release the first of three albums of brand-new tunes, the first instalment, ‘Look Out!’, will be released through Toby’s website only – tobyjepsonofficial.com – Be prepared for surprises, nice surprises. I got the chance to have a chat with Toby in what was supposed to a 30-minute chat turned into over two and half hours. Toby wanted to talk about his recent past, his ongoing issues with mental health and the reasons behind his mental health struggles, how he copes and what’s happening now. First, we compared our back injuries..

Oh god, it’s very boring, but I had a sort of bad back injury when I was about 25 years ago, and it’s just, you know, never got better. It’s just sort of been a progressive problem as I’ve got older, you know, and it’s just sort of come home to roost over the last year or two. Started sort of getting quite bad in the lockdown period, and sort of a few weeks ago I just had a really, really bad episode with it, so it sort of put me on my back, and it hasn’t really recovered, you know, so I’m sort of now under a specialist. I’ve got to go for MRIs and X-rays. It’s most likely a prolapsed disc, you know, but it’s just that we’ve had to move away with son’s dates, of course, and also, we can’t do the Rockstock show because of it, so it’s a bit, you know, a bit annoying. It is debilitating.

I mean, it’s a weird one, because I sort of, you know, I’ve had various bouts of it over my life, but it’s always recovered, you know, and I’ve sort of been in the doctors, and of course, you know, because it’s NHS and I can’t afford to go private, you know, you’re always just, well, you know, you’re sort of reliant on the GP being sort of open to, you know, doing whatever is possible. Unfortunately, I do have a good GP down, he’s only a young bloke, so he’s been very attentive, but of course, all they really do is just send you to see a physio, and they go, oh, well, you know, take these painkillers and rest, you know, which is what I’ve been doing, but this time, it wasn’t that at all.

I mean, it is extraordinary what your body does, isn’t it? I mean, yeah, I don’t know, I mean, you know, I’m sure mine will, you know, I’m hoping, I know yours does too, I hope it gets sorted out, but you do need, I’ve had to sort of really jump through a few hoops, but they got me on the emergency pain pathway through the NHS, because mine’s gone bilateral, it’s been down one leg for years, like down my right leg, I’ve had nothing, but I thought it was my hip, you know, I thought I must have a hip problem from, you know, leaping sort of stupidly from drum risers all my life, you know, but it turns out it isn’t, it’s actually probably a prolapsed disc that’s burst, and all that stuff, so it may well be in operation, you know, I don’t know.

First off, first I must ask, how was your Far East trip? I saw your posts; it looked absolutely fantastic.

Yeah, it really was, it was very needed, I mean, it kind of ties in really, actually, to all of the music I’ve just started to make, you know, and I’m releasing, because it was, it kind of came at a point when I’d been through a lot of psychotherapy for historical problems and issues that I’d had when I was a kid, and also when I was in Little Angels, frankly, and that had all come home to roost, and so we sort of, a few things happened in a kind of very short space of time.

Sadly, my wife’s mother, who I was close to as well, passed away through, and sort of died in the lockdown with dementia, Alzheimer’s, and when we came out of the lockdown, our kids were all sort of dispersing, really, so we suddenly found ourselves with an empty house, you know, and all that stuff. And also, you know, I’d been going through this process of psychoanalysis and help, which had resulted in some really dramatic episodes, you know, and kind of like, you know, it was a moment of revelation, there was lots of moments of revelation for about 18 months, and we kind of arrived at this point where I sort of hit a bit of an oasis, and we sort of both looked at each other, and when me and my wife had been together for 30 years, you know, and it’s like, we’ve got to do something significant, this is the time to do it, because who knows what’s going to happen, the kids are out the house, you know, we’ve got a bit of money, because Ket got some inheritance, and so, you know, we decided to spend that time, you know, and I’ve been touring all my life, going all over the world, never really seeing anything, but sort of, you know, visiting other countries, and Ket’s been, you know, the dutiful wife sat at home with the kids and all the rest of it, so it was very important for her, and also for me, to make sure that she felt she was doing something that sort of redressed the balance a little bit, and actually reconnected us, you know, that sort of thing, so it was an extraordinary trip, and one I, you know, I feel very privileged to have done, of course not everyone can do it, we felt very privileged to have had that opportunity, and it was, you know, we didn’t travel five star by any standards, but we had a fantastic trip around the globe, that took us six months, and we went to some astounding places, and what it did for us, really, and it certainly did for me, I mean, it was life-changing, really, it just made me realise how,

A, insignificant we all are, really, in the truth of it, and B, how amazing this globe of ours is, and how important it is that we try and protect it, and how similar everybody is, actually, the truth is, is that no matter where you go, everyone’s looking for the same stuff, you know, they’re looking for some peace, to live their lives, to have their children, you know, to be good, to do decent things, you know, by and large, that’s my feeling that I came back from that trip, was that I wanted to talk about that stuff, it changed my attitude towards my work, and how I wanted to pursue it, and so it was a very revelatory time, you know, and I know a lot of people liked following us, you know, we had a brilliant, it was a great community online, because we got, you know, hundreds of people sort of following us every day, and it was, it became a kind of real, a real sort of tonic for us, you know, to reconnect back to home, but also we could, we realised that people were getting a real buzz out of seeing these places, with the same kind of eyes we were, you know, type of thing, in a weird way, which was great, you know, and it was, it was a real, yeah, it was, it was a wonderful experience, you know, really something to celebrate, you know.

Good, good, it’s funny, you sounded, I hate to say it, you sounded just like my dad then, my dad had an opportunity, well, two opportunities to work in Iran, back in the 70s, this is while, while the Shah was still in power, and he did about six, eight weeks work out there at a time, and he came back with a different world view, he’d never left the country before, but sat in a tiny village called Ramsar, on the coast, and he people watched, and he saw that, exactly like you said, people are the same all the world over, they have the same problems, maybe not to the same degree, you know, there’s still the boy that’s falling in love, there’s the girl that wants to be accepted, you know, but it’s the same everywhere, it’s just on different levels. I was going to ask whether this was something you needed, because I’ve spoken to you before, and you’ve always said you like to fill up your well of creativity, and I can see that this was a perfect example, and also, your wife, you’ve been together for 30-odd years, and she’s been through everything with you.

Yes, absolutely, and, and if I’ve learned anything in this life, and I’ve led a, an interesting life, and, um, I hope it continues, you know, um, because being in the music business is, it’s equal parts, utter bollocks, and incredibly brilliant, you know, so, and it’s trying to walk that tightrope, and it depends what side you fall on, sometimes you fall on the side of utter brilliance, sometimes you fall, most of that, actually, most of the time, you fall on the side of utter bollocks, because it’s a hope economy, because it’s based in the, kind of, idea that you could achieve immortality, almost, well, I guess it’s a bit of that, but I think, but you see, I’ve never thought of it like that, I really haven’t, I’ve always thought of it as being an important, the bit that I think is important is the work, I’ve never been interested in the fame, it’s a by-product, or any level of notoriety is a by-product of what you create, that’s the way I look at it, and so, the task, once you get your head around it, which takes quite some time, and that’s where a lot of people fall, because it does take a lot of experience, you have to get through the first, almost like, in my, my experience, it took me 10 years, you know, from the age of about 19 to get to a point where I even begun to understand, a, understand myself, and understand what the business had to offer beyond the obvious things, you know, like, because you go into it, viewing it in an entirely different way as you, you do when you’re in it, and then when you get out of it, you view it again in a totally different way, you know, so there’s all kinds of draws and, and, and reasons why you get in, which are all very pure, there’s a lot of purity, every single artist that, every single musician that desires to be in a band, that, the purity of that thought process of wanting to be in that band, to make that music, to go and perform for people, to talk about things, to demonstrate yourself, to exhibit what you can do, to, you know, etc, all those things are really pure, they’re very, and they’re based on a lot of innocence, actually, like a naive concept that you can somehow pick up a guitar, and you can write something, and other people will enjoy it enough for you to be able to make some kind of living out of it, you know, but, but here’s the thing, you don’t actually, I certainly never, I didn’t think I was ever going to make any money out of it, the money was the last thing I ever thought about, but of course, you need that, and you need to be, like, get a level of success to be able to maintain that success, so it’s kind of a real, it’s a very, um, it’s a strange bedfellow, the idea of doing it, and the actual reality of doing it, the two things are very, very, very different.

It’s a total oil and water situation, and so the reality is, is as you move through the process, you either sink or swim, and you have to grow a thick skin, and you have to be able to, sort of, bear witness to what’s going on, and you have to take the trudgery, as well as the adulation, you have to take the boredom with, with the excitement, all of these things, and they get mixed up, and it becomes a very heady, difficult, um, bubble that you exist in, and it does, it is like a bubble, you are completely separated from the rest of the world, it, you’re not living the same kind of life that other people are, and it, it is, like I say, equal parts terrifying, and also exhilarating, so the people are then around you, that surround you, have got to somehow deal with that, and no matter what anybody says, there isn’t a single musician out there that hasn’t experienced the, the kind of, otherworldly heightened sense of reality that goes along with a level of success being in a rock and roll band, I mean when I was out there with Little Angels playing Hammersmith, you know, when we played Hammersmith for the first time, it felt so surreal, and so completely unexpected, I felt undeserved, from my own point of view, and that’s a lot of knock-on from things I’d gone through at school, which we can maybe talk about, which I’d like to talk about, it sort of has had a strange effect on me, some people might have felt of me at the time that I was maybe, I was very hyper, because that’s the only way I could kind of deal with it, really, was this sort of hyper sense of, you know, oh god, what’s going on, I don’t know how to deal with this, how do I handle it, but yeah, I’ve just been on stage in front of five and a half thousand people all singing the words I wrote in my bedroom in my mum and dad’s house two years before, it’s a very strange experience, and so it’s, a lot of the reason why people come apart in the music industry is because that stuff’s hard to handle, there aren’t many balanced musicians out there, we’re all a little bit unhinged, because of the very nature of what we have to do, and what we have to, we have to experience, then it becomes a kind of like, it becomes a survival technique then, really, in lots of ways, um, and I don’t mean this to sound, this to sound massively negative, because a lot of it’s so positive, but one of the key positive things for me is the people that you meet, and how you then develop those relationships within that environment, because it’s very tough for other people to see it happening when they’re left at home, you’re on a plane or in a tour bus, going somewhere supposedly exotic to do this extraordinary thing, this kind of rarefied atmosphere, you know, and the kind of like, the relationship that you build within that can be disastrous, or extremely supportive, and I had a disastrous first marriage, where it was all fell apart, and it was an absolute, it was a really difficult, horrible time, right at the beginning of the band’s career, then I met my wife Ket now, you know, she’s been my rock, she’s been my absolute support, and even when I’ve been a terrible bastard, you know, and obviously probably really unpleasant to live with, she’s still been here, and one of the big revelations for me was coming out of the psychotherapy, having examined all of that, and started to sort of look back on myself, and kind of acknowledge my mistakes, and acknowledge the good stuff, because half the problem is, I was badly bullied at school, and then really badly bullied psychologically and a big part of anyone’s ever experienced bullying, is you feel completely worthless, and it’s hidden, dramatic and hugely difficult thing to live with, the sense of utter futility with life, and that you are left isolated, feeling fear every day, to the point of, you know, you don’t want to be here anymore, and that affected me for years, 40 years, and sadly, somebody in my professional life, when I was at the height of my success, continued that bullying, and I never talked about it, I haven’t really, I wasn’t able to examine it at the time, but it’s only been since I’ve gone through the psychotherapy, that I’ve been able to, A, be able to admit it, and also give myself some self-love and to recognise that it wasn’t my fault, and as soon as I started recognising that stuff, everything else opened up, I mean, it was an incredible journey to go through, I’ve got to say, and very tough, really tough, because you’re having to sort of go back to things that you never wanted to think about ever again, you know but I got through it, but the big thing that was left with me, is that my partner, my life partner, my love of my life, you know, she’s been there all of the way, and has never put a foot wrong, you know, she’s, you know, been there to support this big man-child, as he tried to, navigate one of the craziest businesses in the world, so a big part of my, trip, with the new music is to define what those feelings are, to focus them, to write about them open-heartedly, and to try and bring some positivity to it, because I don’t feel like that anymore, I’ve now kind of come out the other end of it all, and I’ve sort of escaped it, and I feel like I’ve moved out, out of the maze, and I’m back, I’m sort of now on an entirely fresh path, and everything feels a lot more positive, and a lot more like I’m starting my life again, weirdly, and, you know, but there are those constants, and I realize that, you know, that every one of us have got those constants in our lives, hopefully, some people sadly don’t, some people suffer all of their lives, and never find that one or two people that are their constants, that will always be there to support you, and give you that support network, and, um, some people don’t ever get that, and I feel desperately sad that there are people that never feel that, you know, but if we’re lucky, we find that one or two people, or three people, or that group of friends, that will always be there, no matter what happens, no matter how many mistakes you make, and they’ll always be there to help you, sort of, pick through it, the modern context of all this is, is important to bring into this as well, because one thing I’ve found, being a grown man, you know, late 50s now, facing this stuff, it was really difficult for me to do it, and I found it really hard, and I find it quite hard to talk about, but I want to talk about it, because I think a lot of people go through it and never talk about it, never get understood, don’t ever get seen, you know, but one of the things I found quite crazy recently is that, you know, mental health, especially for men, it hasn’t been discussed, it’s been dismissed, it’s been, difficult for men to talk about themselves, we’re not very good at it, and I’m not saying that women are brilliant at it, but women are a lot more emotionally balanced, I think, and so they’re able to talk about things a lot better than we can, and I think the thing is, is that now, I keep hearing people saying, oh god, really, isn’t that just life, oh god, you know, oh god, pull yourself together, come on, it’s not really, well, I don’t want to talk about that, you know, and I still think there’s a stigma, I still think people think it’s woke or some bullshit like that, that you, that men are, are able to discuss this stuff, and I’m here to tell anyone that might be reading this or listening to it or whatever, that you have to, because it can be a matter of life and death to some people, and it certainly got very close to me, in that way. I totally agree, having been on that, the wrong side of it as well, long way to go, and like yourself, I found it fucking hard, difficult, but ultimately, like yourself, blamed myself, a lot of guilt, it’s just simple words, you know, forgive yourself, forgive yourself.

How did this manifest, I mean, because you’ve been living with it since you were a kid, you’ve gone through what people would assume was a successful career, early, you know, so you’ve got everything that you could ever want, you know, but so how did, how did this manifest, why, why, why do you think it happened now, or recently?

What you mean in terms of having to, in terms of facing it?

It’s very easy to hide, and I didn’t tell my parents about being badly bullied at school, and it was formative years, it was from the age of 13 till I left school, and it was constant, it was every day, um, and you learn very quickly how to hide it, and how to hide the terror, and the, and the sort of nature of it all, and for me, it was, I didn’t live a life then, I didn’t live a life until recently, actually, I, I suffered a life, really, I survived a life, it felt like survival for me every day, because it was, even though, you know, there wasn’t a massive amount of physical violence, there was some, but by and large, it was more constant drip, drip, drip of psychological violence, which is even worse, because you can get away from physical violence, there is a result of physical violence, often, if you, because I had two fights, both of which were at school, for these exact reasons, trying, just trapped in the corner, you know, and what am I going to do, I’m either going to fight back, or I’m not, and reluctantly, and to my eternal shame, I did, and I, I badly hurt two lads, you know, and, and I’ve never, I’ve never gotten over it, actually, because I’m not a violent person, but I got driven to that, because of their brutal behaviour of me, you know, so, these things impact upon you deeply, and scar in ways you can’t anticipate, and so, I think, the sad, the thing for me, is that when I was a young lad, before I went to secondary school, and weirdly, even through the secondary school experience, I think, if you spoke to most people that knew me, at that time, they would say, yeah, but Tobe was the life and soul of the party, he was the happy-go-lucky, smiley, seemed to bounce off everybody, and sort of, everyone was really into, and had loads of friends, and all that, and all of that is true, but I felt completely, internally isolated, and felt scared all the time, and it, it was a really dreadful, dreadful thing to go through, but you do bury it deep, and you, you put it away, so, when the band came along, I mean, the reason why I got into rock and roll, was a ‘fuck you’ to all these fuckers that had a go at me, and it literally was, I mean, I’ve examined it, and been back through it, and that’s exactly the reason it was, okay, it was a fuck you, I’m going to do something with my life, when you fuckers are going to be left, probably sat in the same pub in 25 years’ time, or whatever, and it was, that was my driving force, my driving force was, I’m going to do something, and so, it compelled me to pick up the guitar, it compelled me to want to seek out an audience, it compelled me to, to basically demonstrate myself, and prove myself, because I’d felt so unproven, and so isolated, and so, it’s a kind of weird mixture of emotional things there, that, that, fortunately, what happened then, is I met some great people, I met Bruce Dickinson, Mark Plunkett, and, well, I’ve known Mark for years, but, you know, I met Bruce and Jim Dickinson, and we met Mike Lee, and all these amazing people who weren’t like that, they were happy, tolerant, buoyant people, who gave me everything I could possibly need to, to bring myself out as best I could, but it was all driven by a desire of, from a negative place, and so, what, what it, the way it kind of manifests itself, which is kind of strange, but is totally explainable, is I started writing songs like, ‘Kicking Up Dust’, ‘Don’t Pray For Me’, ‘No Solution’. ‘No Solution’ is a song about teenage suicide, ‘Don’t Pray For Me’ is about leaving a small town and getting the fuck out, ‘Kicking Up Dust’ is exactly the same, it was the, the ammunition I needed to write those songs, and to dig deep into myself. One of the things I’ve always prided myself on, and I think one of the reasons why Little Angels succeeded so, in the way that we did, is because, lyrically, I was singing about things other people weren’t, and in a way that other people weren’t, you know, there was definitely a kind of, a narrative voice going on there, which was completely uncontrolled, I didn’t know what I was doing, it was like, I just had to pour it out, and so that was the result of it, and so, weirdly, it gave us this success, based on this kind of negative position, sort of thing, so that kind of, very, it was very hard to kind of understand, I didn’t understand it until years later, and until I started realizing that Johnny in ‘Kicking Up Dust’ was actually me, you know, the character in ‘Don’t Pray For Me’ was actually me, you know, the people I was singing about in ‘No Solution’ was actually me, you know, and all of a sudden it kind of came home to me, I was like, oh my God, you know, this is me talking, this is my own self coming out here, so, so that, so when you get on that trail, and we got on that trail, and we started to get reactions about this stuff, and it was really positive, it kind of did two things, it gave me this shot in the arm to carry on doing it, but it also strangely reinforced this sense of, that I was, yeah, I think guilt’s a really good word, like I was guilty of something, I wasn’t allowed to feel the success of it, I wasn’t worthy of the success, and I was a total charlatan, and so the way that I dealt with that was to carry on even harder, to fight even harder, and within that, because I kind of hadn’t had a social, my socialisation at school had been stunted by this need to survive rather than just live, I kind of was quite a blunt instrument in lots of ways, I think a lot of the relationships I made were kind of quite blunt, and I used to trust a lot of very unpleasant people, and stuff like that, and I’ve realised a lot of the sort of associations I made through the music industry were unpleasant associations, which I’ve now realised what that was, you know, because part of the whole thing about being badly bullied, and I’m sure you might, you may be recognisers, I don’t know, but is that you gravitate towards those kinds of people, because it feels like something at least you recognise, and you even fear losing them, because you feel that you’ve lost a lot of other things, and so it’s a sort of sense, strange sense of capitulation, giving up in the face of your own success, you know, I mean I would wilt if someone said to me, you know, well that song’s not very good, for instance, you know, like one of the hits or something, it would make me completely, just destroy me, you know, not because I was an egotistical thing about it, but it reaffirmed my very deepest fears, but that was used against me by various people.

Did you feel that you feel that you were going to be found out?

Yeah, it’s classic imposter syndrome, but at a million miles an hour. I think every artist feels imposter syndrome, I think it’s an absolutely necessary valve that you have in your psyche, to sort of, to protect the very important need of balance, because if you don’t somehow you know, question your abilities, you never get better, you never improve, you know, because if you just go, oh I’m fucking great, and obviously I’m a genius, then things, you know, and there are people that behave like that, I’m sure there are people that, you know, drift through life and do brilliant things and never feel like that, but I think it’s probably a rarity, and they’re probably psychopathic, frankly, but yeah, so it’s a kind of, it was a really strange, very strange thing, so when, you know, when I had to sort of re-examine all these things and go back on it, I mean, it really started in the lockdown, I was kind of like, because we were all, you know, everyone’s got a story about the lockdown, everyone suffered, I think, in one way or another, emotionally, you know, financially, mentally, however, you know, there’s, I think everyone had that sort of experience of being trapped in four walls and wondering what the fuck’s going to happen, you know, I had a strange relationship with the lockdown, in as much as that it was half positive and very hard, well, actually, I would say probably more negative than positive in lots of ways, but you know, I did manage to build a life online, you know, and I started playing through my, down my phone and, you know, and doing these free concerts and I did them all the way through the lockdown and it was brilliant, because it was, kept me in contact with my, with an audience and helped other people, I felt there was definitely a kind of good, a relationship between me and the audience that were tuning in every week, but the thing that I didn’t anticipate was it, because I had to, I started to re-examine all the music, you see, I started doing these, like, I did like the ‘Don’t Pray For Me’ night, then I did the, you know, the ‘Young Gods’ night and ‘Jam’ night and then all the B-sides and all, so I had to go back and re-examine all of those bits of music, because some of those records I hadn’t listened to for 20 years, so putting them back on again, put me right back in those moments where I was writing them, where we recorded them, where we performed them, some of the terrible things I kind of had to experience with a couple of people through those processes and in those times and it kind of brought home a mixed bag of emotions that churned up a lot of stuff and so by the time I got to the end of the lockdown or towards the end of lockdown, I was in an absolute mess, I mean, I really was, it wasn’t a proper mess, it was like a breakdown, I think I probably had a proper nervous breakdown and it just, I had, something had to be done and I realised I’d reached a point of no going back, you know, it was like I was either going to have to examine this or I probably wasn’t long for this world type of thing, it was literally.

So, what did you do?

Well, I mean, I was not forced, but severely persuaded to get help because of exactly that, I had a breakdown at work and my GP, when I explained what I was going through, these feelings and what have you, you know, getting difficult, I was just dismissing it and she turned around and said I had PTSD but I wouldn’t accept it, I said no, no, no, that’s for firemen and guys who did the Grenfell Tower and Afghanistan bit and I’m not being, she was a little Asian lady and she stood up to four foot eleven and slapped me around the head and said stop being such a bloke. That started four years of various counselling of which some was shady crap, but the sessions I had with a group called Rock to Recovery, which are two former special forces guys who could understand and put themselves in my position, was worth its weight in gold and I still use those techniques and tools to help me today and I’ve said this to you before, the first Wayward Sons record was like a fucking relief, some of those songs hit home to me especially ‘Be Still’ with the line ‘When I got to sleep, I dream a better me’. That’s what I did.

That’s wonderful to hear, I mean, you know, that’s, I don’t think there’s anything a songwriter would want, any songwriter worth their salt, what we’re all looking for is ballad, the things that we’re talking about do mean something, so that’s an enormous, that’s the best compliment I could ever be played.

That’s all I wanted, I wanted to be better, the first thing the counsellor said to me is you’ll never be cured but I can get you better, that’s all I wanted, I wanted to get better. What was the catalyst, it’s a big step to go to get the help.

Oh it is, because I had absolutely no choice, it came crashing down over a period of about 48 hours through one particular incident, I ended up in a studio between the lockdowns working with a band, because I was skint and like we all were and I got asked to go work on a record and I had something happen to me which I don’t really want to go into but basically something was rekindled from the past which sent me into a tailspin through an email I received and it was like I’d gone into a vortex of fear, I’ve never felt fear like it, it was an extraordinary sense of utter terror, utter terror and like I had no control over the fear, the sense of fear, it was a cold dripping abyss-like sense, it was the darkest thing I’ve ever experienced and it was triggered by that because what it did really was it, the instance itself wasn’t necessarily the thing, it was what it triggered and it was part of it and it brought the whole thing home and I felt very extremely vulnerable and so it, I got home, you know, I came back from the studio, I’d actually, I was at the end of the session and it happened at the end of the session and by a strange quirk I was actually producing an artist who was going through dreadful mental health problems and so I’d spent the first half of this two weeks of being in the studio or however long it was, it might have only been a week actually but I’d spent the first half of this period trying to talk down this young person from their own mental health struggles that I recognised, it was like some weird sort of perfect storm, you know, I’d had to be the adult for this young person who was experiencing these terrible things, telling me these dreadful stories that I was recognising and then out of the blue, a day or two before I was supposed to leave, I got this email which triggered the whole bloody thing so the whole thing just, it just was just too much to take and it was overwhelming, you know, so I kind of got home and realised because I was then being terrorised by this person who was emailing me, they’d found out all my email addresses and various contact points and were hammering me and so I had to then go through this whole process of trying to figure out how that had happened and what I was going to do about it, I got close to ringing the police, you know, but dealt with it differently, I just blocked, found out, blocked, you know, talked to a few folk, managed to sort of feel better about that but by that point the damage was done and I was at a point of no return so it was literally, I had a 48 hour period where it felt insurmountable.

Why were they targeting you then?

I don’t really want to go into it, it was more, all you need to know was that there’s, essentially, somebody very narcissistic, a coercive control expert that had a lot to do with me in my professional life and had taunted me and through various methods, very clever methods, had broken me really and got hold of me and controlled me and it wasn’t until I left that situation, a situation, that I realised that was what happened and of course a massive part of withdrawal from those situations is that you blame yourself constantly and you’re constantly thinking to yourself, well it was my fault, I’m the one who was obviously to blame because why would they behave like that in the first place, I must be at fault and so it takes a long time to start to sort of get away from that and then you have to talk to other people and over a very long period of time, 15, 10, 15 years, I started meeting other people who’d had connections with this character as well and had similar experiences and then it all, the house of cards fell apart and then I realised I was then incredibly angry about it, I hadn’t been able to deal with it and I hadn’t been able to sort of somehow find a better way, do you know what I mean, and sort of like support myself but then of course then it’s all mixed up with school and so it was a whole mess of fucking problems you know, so you know it kind of, but essentially what it did, it just forced me to have to get some help and I went into it very willing, I’ve got to say, a massive amount of support from Ket and my family and they, you know they sort of, Ket specifically said look you’ve got to do something about it, you’ve got to do it now and so I found a fantastic, fortunately for me, I found an amazing psychoanalyst who, I’m still in touch with them, I’m still, it’s like you’ve just said, it’s a work in progress, you never get properly healed, it just reduces in its effects and it’s, you live with it day to day and it’s, but all I can say to you is going from waking up, this used to be my routine when I was say five years ago, just before the lockdown, my routine which had got to a point where it was like I just didn’t know what to do, was I would wake up in fear, I’d go to bed feeling afraid and I’d wake up feeling afraid, I thought, I just used to think someone’s out to get me, you know it was that massive paranoia all driven by this sense that essentially because I’d gone through those experiences and to the point where you know if I was walking down a street and a bunch of young men or men were on that side of the road walking towards me, I would immediately think they were going to beat the out of me and I’d have to cross the road and I’d go on a detour and you know and I’m talking about when I was in my 50s, you know when I was a grown man with three children and in a rock band and blah blah blah you know, but it’s all hidden away and so that’s kind of had to be dealt with and so yeah I just got into the therapy thing, that’s one thing I’ve always been is I will throw my hog in, you know what I mean, if I’m going to do something you get me 100% because I don’t believe in the concept of I’ll suck it and see, let’s just maybe you know you’ve got to throw yourself in, you’ve got to try, you’ve got if you don’t commit to something you’re never really going to know whether it’s got the sort of substance you expect from it or whatever you know, so I did the same thing with the psychoanalysis, I just went into it and I just said look to this therapist, look I need real help here and I’m quite willing to do whatever is necessary you know and it’s been, I mean I’ve been with this therapist now for over it’s got to be getting on for I’d say three years and it’s been revelatory, I mean absolutely revelatory, it’s changed my life completely, I don’t wake up in fear anymore, for the first time in my life and genuinely about three months, four months ago I woke up one morning and actually felt like joy, I felt joyful and I can genuinely say to you and anyone that’s reading this it might sound ridiculous but it’s true, it’s the first time in 40 years I actually felt content and joyful, apart from you know there’s always moments of it you know of course my children being born and what you know going on stage and doing a great gig, those things are the moments, the fleeting moments, what I’m talking about is a balanced sense of peace and reconciliation with myself and the world around me and a want and a desire to move forward in a positive manner because I’d got, I’d reached a point where everything was negative in my head, it was just like I don’t want to do that, that’s crap, I don’t like all the things I used to like, I’d lost interest in all the things I loved and it was just crazy you know so that’s all returned, you know all those things have kind of in varying ways, you know but essentially it was, it’s been a huge road to recovery which still carries on, you know I mean I’ve been in touch with my therapist recently to discuss all sorts of things that come up you know but what’s great is rather than it being this terrifying experience now it’s a maintenance experience.

My wife calls it life laundry.

Precisely, perfect, perfect yeah. I’ve got to say I wouldn’t be where I am now without her, she is so fucking true and switched on especially regarding mental health, she really is and if it wasn’t for her giving me a kick up the arse, like yourself, like Ket, I mean I wouldn’t, I don’t think I’d be here, I really don’t.

No and I feel exactly the same and I think you know we don’t, I think a lot of people don’t recognise how important that is and how incredibly grateful I am to have found somebody like that and because I’m, you know, I still go through moments of real blackness and darkness and things don’t go right, you know, this whole back episode, you know, I’ve never been in, you know, throughout all of my experiences in my life I’ve never been an inactive person, I’ve always been very vital, I like, you know, no matter what I’m doing I do it to the full extent of my powers as best I can and it’s, that’s important to me whether it’s DIY which I do a lot of at home or you know when we were young with the kids etc.

I’ve always managed to maintain that level of energy and it’s so debilitating having a, you know, like a this problem and I mean you obviously know exactly what I’m talking about, I can’t stand lying around and so that’s kind of impacted a bit on my mental health, you know, so but I’m using that, like you said so rightly early on, I thought it really triggered, that really sort of triggered something in me there, it’s like, you know, the tools that you learn through the process are really important, I use them every day, absolutely I do, I do them almost instinctively now because, you know, this therapist, this lady that’s been with me, she’s taught me a lot of great stuff and you realise how connected the mind is to the body, don’t you? I didn’t realise how physical, I mean I had massive physical reactions to my therapy, I mean proper, you know, I’ve never cried so much in all my life, you know, physical reactions of physical tremors, shaking, everything, it’s unbelievable stuff.

Did your family notice a change in your personality as a result of this manifestation or were they just like, it’s just Dad.

Well I mean that’s a tough question to answer, all I can say to you is that I know when I look back on how I must have behaved at my worst moments, at times when things were getting on top of me, which happened a lot, I think I must have been a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde figure, you know, dad’s, you know, the happiest guy in the room and then moody, you know, and I think I really regret that and it’s, that’s something it shouldn’t, shouldn’t have happened and I shouldn’t have put my kids and my family through that, you know, but it’s something I can’t get back and it’s something I’m aware of and so there’s now, I think it’s a different thing now, I’m a different animal, I think if I was to talk to them, I think they probably would still say I’m still moody but I think I’m a lot more level, I’d like to think that I’m a lot more level, you know, and I think there has been decidedly a big shift in the way that I know that I am behaving in my domestic life and also around other people, I mean, in a weird way, part of the problem that I’ve come up against, I said this to my therapist a few weeks ago, is that one of the biggest fallouts from all of this is that the very energy that I used to use to make the stuff that I wanted to make, the music and write the songs, because that was driven by a kind of very negative position, I don’t feel like that anymore and I was terrified that the creative pulse would disappear, it kind of did, because I couldn’t draw upon the same well of inspiration in the same way, I wasn’t as angry anymore, so I couldn’t go back to the anger.

Right, well, I’ve got a question for you later, okay, so, right, good, a good segue, right, but so, you had to channel in a different way for positivity, that comes across in these six songs, doesn’t it?

Without a doubt, and that’s one of the things that’s been, I think, a little bit confounding to people, because it was my decision to put that little introduction on the front, because here’s the thing, Smudge, I’ve always wore, I have always, for right or wrong, for all the reasons I’ve tried to explain in this interview, is I’ve always tried to wear my heart on my sleeve and be as honest as I possibly can, even though I might not have been aware of where that honesty was coming from, it was always something that I couldn’t, it was an impulse, I couldn’t stop it, like, you know, I didn’t stop writing ‘Don’t Pray For Me’ because I thought I was worried that people might think it was me, I just wrote the song, because it needed to be done and it felt like a cathartic experience, I had to do it, it felt important to me, and even though I might not have examined it, it was there and that was that, and so I’ve always felt like that, I’ve always felt that that’s one of my strengths, is that I’ve never been afraid to say what I wanted to say, even though I might not have understood it myself, so that’s exactly the same now, and so the kind of the propulsive nature of this recovery process, because what’s been extraordinary for me is it’s accelerated, you know, as I started to overcome and get over the top of the brow of the hill of the darkness and started going down the other side, it sort of accelerated to a climax, if you like, the way I knew that I was kind of finding some answers that I needed, and the effects of it were enormous, and so it kind of, even though I was swaying and, you know, struggling a little bit and coming off the path occasionally, but I did have this, for the first time ever probably, have a view on the horizon that looked brighter, and so I kept my eyes on that horizon, and weirdly, just before we went away on our world trip, I said to Dave, you know, Kemp, who’s my sort of wingman really now, we’ve written a lot of songs together, and we’ve done lots of projects together, I said, look, when I get back, I want to make some music, and he said, okay, great, well, you know, let me know what you want to do, and, you know, we’ll source it when you get back, so when we got back and I started thinking about it, I went back to my phone, and it’s important this, because, and I’m sure most songwriters do the same thing, because it’s all quite straightforward, I don’t, I stopped making demos years ago, with Little Angels, we used to make demos, we used to get a demo budget from Polydor, and they used to give us, say, 500 quid, which, you know, it’s quite a lot of money back in the, in the mid-80s, to go into a studio and sort of, like, basically do, make some demos, because they wanted to, they’re the record labels, they want to hear the sort of songs you’re coming up with, so we used to go and do those, but it benefited, it never benefited us really, we used to get sort of people scratching their heads, no, it doesn’t sound like we expected it, and they go, well, we’re not making masses, you know, it was, it was really frustrating, so we kind of stopped doing demos, we just did very quick ones, mainly for ourselves, but really, we sort of got out of the habit, and I, and I carried that on when I started doing my own music, I said, I said to everyone, I’m not doing demos, I’m just going to do, I’m just going to make recordings, so what carried on from that was, as I’ve got older, and I’ve started, especially from Wayward Sons point onwards, and even before then, even the James Tozeland records, I mean, I wrote all the songs for both James Tozeland records, of course, and I did loads of other co-writes, so I started getting into this habit of just recording the simple idea onto my phone, it started off as one of those dictaphones, and then it went onto my phone, so over the years, I’ve accrued five, six hundred ideas that have never left my phone, and when I’ve got a new phone, I’ve transferred that information onto my new phone, because that’s my wellspring, I go back to that time and time and time again, I’ll go back. I’ve even written, you know, four or five songs off the same idea, because when you listen to it a different time, at a different point, when you’re in a different mood, you get something different from it, so it can trigger another idea, so it becomes a kind of, it became a bit of a sort of umbilical, not an umbilical, but a bit of like a wishing well, that group of ideas, you know, and I could always find something, and so that’s where I went, I went back to my phone, and I spent a week or two trawling back through all these ideas, and getting stuff up, and running, and all that, and I went to Dave, and I said I’ve got, I must have 30 ideas, oh fantastic, so he came down, and we spent maybe, I don’t know, seven, eight days, sifting through these ideas, making very, very, very basic recordings, just sort of melody ideas, core progressions on Pro Tools, and first kind of any, first of any real demos I’ve done for a long time, for my own stuff, and anyway, so he went home, and I was really restless, I couldn’t fucking put a finger on it, and I was like, so I’m looking around, I felt really uncomfortable, and I went back one night, I got up, I got out of bed, I couldn’t sleep, and I went downstairs. I’ve been having these conversations with Dave about how great the ideas were, and all the rest of it, and I listened to it all, and I just thought it was all shit, I just thought, this is just empty, it’s old me, it bears no relationship to what I want anymore, it is retreads of old paths, it’s places, these cupboards that I know are already empty, it is places in my imagination I’ve been before, and I don’t want to go again, you know, it’s, it was all of those things, and it was like a revelation, it was just like, I’m not fucking recording any of this, this is absolute crap, I just don’t want to do, I don’t know, and it felt such a strong emotion, to the point where I’ve abandoned all of those ideas on my phone now, I will never go back to them, I’ve deleted them all, it was just a moment, and I rang Dave up and said, you know all those ideas we had, I’m not recording any of them, you know, what are you going to do then, I said, I don’t know, and I actually, at that point, I sort of thought to myself, I’m not going to make a solo record, I don’t think I’m ever going to make a record ever again, I just don’t, that thing I was talking about earlier on, I felt completely empty, I felt like I’d gone past it all, it, that, that position, all those positions I was fighting from, are now null and void, what do I do next, so it felt like, for the first time in my life, I was completely devoid of any ideas, and it was actually fucking a massive relief, honestly, it was like the weight had lifted off my shoulders, all the years of being angry about that thing, getting anxiety about that other thing over there, that that idea represented, or those things represented, it just didn’t make any sense to me anymore, and I took it as a massive positive sign, what I did was, I just completely stopped thinking about it, because part of what I’ve been doing in the last few years, I’ve been developing a career as a screenwriter, and that’s going very well, and I’ve got parallel careers now as a musician, and as somebody who’s working in the film industry as a writer, so I was writing scripts, instead of writing songs, I started getting right into the scripts, I’ve written four, five feature films now, two, three of which are in production, you know, and they’re in the back burners, and I’ve got others I did, so that sort of, in a weird way, took over from the songwriting, but because it was an entirely different method, and an entirely different, media, it wasn’t attached to the baggage of the past at all, it had no relationship to it at all, so it started completely fresh, it was like this totally fresh, oh my god, I’ve got this whole new world ahead of me, but it fired my imagination in the way that my imagination was fired as a songwriter when I was a teenager, it felt like that, so I just forgot about the song ones, I just thought, I’m going to do this, you know, I’m not going to bother, you know, but anyway, of course, the next minute, I sort of, I just had a kind of, I don’t know what it was, I, I woke up one morning with an idea in my head, a song completely fresh, and it was actually ‘Alone With You’, the first one on this mini album, and, it was in my head like a bright button, it was like, I, I could see the whole tune, I knew what the chords were going to be, I knew what I had to talk about, it was exciting again, and I ran, I literally ran downstairs, picked up my guitar, and sat in me dressing gown, you know, for about five hours, and I just poured myself out, and that happened, that carried on for about three weeks, and I didn’t stop writing, I must have written, well, actually, what I did was, I wrote 20 songs, I set myself a target, once I get to 20, I’m not writing anymore, and I’m just going to see where I get to, and for three weeks, I did nothing but write, it was literally, I couldn’t turn the tap off, and all of the songs that I’ve written for this 20-song collection are all the songs that I wrote in that three-week period, totally fresh, unencumbered, no back, no historical bases to them at all, fresh ears, fresh eyes, fresh approach, fresh perspective, and it completely gave me the power back, and I felt utterly rewarded by them, and I, do you know the thing that I felt about them more than anything else, as I don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks, I couldn’t give a fucking shit, there are less fucks given about this than I’ve ever felt in my life, and it was so free and smudge, because most of my life, all I’ve ever done is write stuff and go, I wonder what people are going to think, I really hope people are going to like it, oh, well, how do I prove myself for this one, I know it’s good, but is it really good, now I just don’t care, I literally don’t care, and I mean that in the most utterly selfish way, I’ve got no problem saying it’s a completely and utterly selfish position, because it is so important that I feel like that, to me, for my own good, and actually what it’s done is, open up the doors even more, throw some fresh wind through it all, get some fresh air at it, get some sunshine on it, and allow it to be what it is, and so that’s what this record is, it is a reflection of the feeling of relief, it is a song of, it’s an album of recovery, that’s why I call it ‘Look Out’, because it’s a warning, it’s a warning to anyone to think, what is your life about, well here’s a little warning to you, keep your eyes open, keep your heart open, but do not give yourself away to everyone, protect yourself, I’m not talking about from violence, I’m talking about from life, and give yourself the right to believe in yourself, etc, and so all of those themes, everything that I’ve written on this record is to do with that recovery, my own feeling of recovery, what I did, reflecting on the past, coming back to myself, talking honestly about myself, and that, and how important that is for me, not for anyone else, for me, and so, and these are the results, you know, and it’s gratifying that people are reacting to it, you know, we’re doing this DTC, it’s direct to the customer, there’s no record label involved, you know, I’ve got an investor friend of mine who’s put the money in to make the record, we’ve already paid him back from the pre-orders, I mean I could not be, I could not be happier, and what I’m happy about more than anything else is that the fans and the people that have followed me from day one are still there, they still believe in me, and I don’t think I, even though I’ve always loved my fans, and of course Little Angels, we were famous for sort of supporting our fans, and indeed I still wholeheartedly believe that, without fans there are no bands, etc, you know, it’s a really important thing, and I’ve always held on to that, always tried to be as nice and as polite and as pleasant to people as I possibly could, because I know that if that, you know, without them I am nothing, I’m just yet another voice shouting at the wind, you know, so it’s been very important to me, but I don’t think I realised to what depth the commitment was actually, and I can only thank people for that, because, you know, I don’t have huge budgets, I’m not interested in budgets, I’m not interested in the music business in lots of ways, what I’m interested in is the relationship I’m having with the audience and how they react to it, and I said to Rob, you know, Rob Townall, who I work with, who’s my business partner in this, I said look, the music business as far as I’m concerned these days for me is in my own control, it’s the stuff I do in my house that you do in your house, it’s the people that we want to involve ourselves with, I’m not interested in listening to the bullshit and the bollocks, I want to just carry on making music in the way that I want to make it, and if people like it then I am absolutely overjoyed, but if they don’t then I can’t control that, and it has to be my truth, you know, you know this phrase is something quite common isn’t it these days, but it felt important that it was my truth, you know, warts and all are good or bad or indifferent.

I’ve got to say we’ve spoken in the past and I believe our record collections are very similar and I find this collection of songs so far is very eclectic, there’s quite a departure, there’s some country tinge stuff there, there’s stuff that I would expect that you would like sort of new wavy punky sort of stuff, but there’s also like there’s loads of mixes within each song, horns, real horns, not synths, so I mean did you hear these sounds when you were writing them or did they develop like that?

Well the principles were never anything other than let the music do the talking, you know, it was I said to Dave the moment we started, because he came down, we started working on these, I’d written all these acoustic demos and I sort of, again because I’ve never done demos, I haven’t done demos for a long, long time, I actually did do some acoustic demos of these songs because I got the 20 and I thought right I’m going to do some proper demos, because I’ve got work with Adam Parsons as well who kind of manages me and manages Wayward Sons and he’s a good mate and he kept saying to me well you know if you want to try and get a publishing deal you’ve got to have something people listen to and we need to, you know, you need to have some demos and I said well Adam all I’m going to do then in that case I’m just going to do acoustic demos, that’s what I’m going to do, I’m not going to do embellishments and I might put some backing vocals on it but what you’re going to get is the acoustic guitar and you’re going to get the vocal melody and the words, but it was really fucking crucial this actually because when I started recording at home, because I’ve got Pro Tools at home and I started recording the tracks, I also wrote all of the lyrics on the spot as well because that isn’t usually what I do, what I normally do is I get the essence of the whole idea, usually it’s very, I know where I want to go with it but then I’ll develop the track with the band or whoever I’m working with and then as I’m going through that process I’ll write the lyrics, you know, as the song develops but I didn’t this time, I wrote them in the most traditional possible fashion you can, lyrics, melody, chord progression, basic arrangement as a recording and it was fixed and it took me, you know, what I tend to do is that commonly if I’ve got a song that’s got three verses I might write 20 verses and I choose the best couplers, the bits that really make the grade and that tell the tale, you know, that’s the way I do it, so it’s a lot of work, you know, I spent like I say three weeks, four weeks writing and recording this stuff, sending them to Dave and then he came down and we were sat here, I remember the first time he came down the first day and he’s like, he said, well how do you want to pursue it? I said, Dave, I don’t even want to discuss this, I want us to listen to the song and I want us, I want you to say to me, god this would sound great with a balalyka on it or fuck, you know, why don’t we have a mellotron, why don’t we turn that guitar part into a mellotron or and I want you to say that and I want to say that to you too, you know, I want to be able to say, god this would be amazing with horns or we should put an orchestra on this or why don’t we get a guy to come and play a banjo, you know, and that’s the way we went, we let the song do the talking and it was a question of where does it want to go, not where do I want to go and so we allowed the music to develop itself and, you know, and what was great about it is that we were almost completely in agreement, 99.9% of the time, because Dave’s a great foil for me, you know, Dave’s a quiet genius who doesn’t have to say a lot but when he does it really means something, he’s one of those guys, you know, and he’s incredibly intuitive and a natural musician, you know, he can play anything if he can’t play it’ll take him a week to learn it, you know, it’s that sort of thing and he’s a revelation really but more than anything else, he’s a brilliant buddy, he’s my closest friend and I can trust him implicitly and I trust him to tell the truth, you know, tell me when I’m talking bollocks, you know, and he does,and so we went through this brilliant process of like, wow, this is going to be exciting, so it had a couple of consequences though because going into the studio, we had two weeks and we recorded 20 songs in two weeks, you know, 20 backing tracks with a live band and all the time me and Dave are going to the, you know, going to the band, well, of course, when we get the strings on this, we get the grand piano, you know, quadruple tracked or whatever we were going to fucking do, you know, that’s where this bit’s going to be, so it was kind of like not always in focus for the guys, you know, and that but that’s been, it’s been so exciting because we’re still, I mean, we’re still recording, I mean, you know, it’s a work in progress, I finished the first volume of course, concentrated on that, I’ve already worked out the running order for the next two, I’m in the middle, it’s been slightly curtailed because of this back injury but, you know, I am in the middle of recording the second one at the moment, you know, I’ve got about three songs nearly done, there’s a couple that haven’t been edited at all, there’s some that need complete relooks on the guitars, you know, and we’re going to replay some keyboards and stuff, so it’s just in a state of flux but I’m loving it because it just means that we’re still doing it, it’s a still a work in progress and that is joyful, you know, and so yeah, it’s an entirely different way of working and it’s, the fruits so far have been brilliant, I mean, I was, I’m very pleased with this first volume, it’s everything I wanted it to be, yes, you’re absolutely right, it’s incredibly eclectic, part of my process was, you know, I wanted to write my version of something I loved, like there’s weirdly quite a lot of vibes on this record, there are two or three other tunes that are based in a kind of northern soul ethic, if you like, sort of from a groove point of view that you’re still yet to hear and it was a bit of a revelation but I suddenly realized the reason why I was is because my dad was a big northern soul fan and he was a big soul fan in general and also as well as he loved rock and roll and so in my house when I was a kid, I think we may have talked about this before, it was an eclectic soundscape, you know, my sister would be playing back in the Sex Pistols up in her bedroom, I’d have Deep Purple on, I’d go downstairs and Ella Fitzgerald would be blasting in the kitchen, you know, so it was all just, you know, sort of merging into one and I’ve always felt that about music and I think this is one of the big things about my processes going forward is that I’m just absolutely sick of calling something something, yeah, yeah, all to death with it, it’s just so uninteresting and tedious and vanilla and familiar, you know, I’m not saying I’m like this great revelatory artist, I’ve come up with this new way of doing things, I haven’t, but what I am prepared to do is to follow my heart and follow the love of the things I absolutely love rather than just adhering to a constant, adhering to a kind of idea, you know, when you’re in a way with Sons to a degree, there is a certain restriction to it because it means a certain thing, it’s two guitars, it’s bass and drums, it’s that kind of band and also there are obviously three other guys involved in it and four with Dave, of course, when he was involved in making the records, where we all had to agree on what we were doing and that brings a certain level of challenge to it, but what it also does, it focuses the sound, you know, so that way with Sons is what it is, but this isn’t, this is anything it wants to be and even though people will say, well, yeah, but alone with you and, you know, and throw it away, they sound, they sound like Wayward Sons, they could be, well, of course, because I’m the writer, you know, that’s never going to change, I’m always going to be the same writer, you know, but I’ve just allowed myself greater latitude and I haven’t put the brakes on at all, you know.

So, you’ve written 20 songs and is this all part of volume one or? No, volume one is the six track, volume two will have seven tracks on it and volume three will have seven tracks.

What can we expect from volumes two and three?

Well, I think what I wanted to do with volume one was give an overview of what’s coming, so it was, it went through a little bit of a sort of metamorphosis really because I had an entirely different running order for a long time and I was chatting to Rob about it, we were backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards and because he’s heard most of the tunes and he was commenting about things and giving his opinions and things and there was a point where we were thinking of doing like three different stylized mini-albums, like a rock one and then one with the sort of slower stuff on and then one with the more kind of like alternative stuff on it, but I just thought, nah, you’re fucking confusing, what is it now, you know, so I just thought, no, this is, that’s pointless, you know, what I want is, I want to tell the story in chapters, you know, I want people to be able to understand lyrically and sort of from a motivational point of view what these, where the song trail works and as I started working that out, I started making connections between the songs, I mean, you know, I haven’t just bashed them together, there’s a reason why ‘Alone With You’ goes into ‘Sweet Smell Of Success’ to me, not that I need to properly even go into the minutiae of why, for me, it makes sense in all kinds of ways and then, you know, what will it take comes out of that, there’s a drama to that, you know, there’s a sort of cosign, and it all seems to work and so really it’s an overview, I think the second record is, again, I think there’s some challenges there for the fans, but I think in a good way, there’s a lot of rock and roll on the second one, but on the third one, you know, again, I think perhaps, it’s hard to say, I think the third one sums up the whole thing very nicely, it’s got a couple of very important songs on that, it’s got one of the biggest rock songs on the third one, which I think is probably the best rock song I’ve written, probably ever, yeah, on the third one.

That’s a big statement, Toby!

It is a big statement, but, you know, I can only react how I react to things, you know, and even though, this is the thing so much, over the years, I’ve gone, my God, I love this, and everyone’s gone, we don’t like it, no, no, no, listen again, we don’t need to listen again, we don’t like it, but I like it, but your, doesn’t matter about you, does it? So, so it’s, it’s a bit like that, you know, I, I mean, I think I’ve written one of the best ballad songs I’ve ever written in my life, and that’s coming on the second one, and I played that song live on the acoustic tour this year, I did in the spring, you know, I took, I played two tunes, they were in their rough position, you know, their rough start positions, if you like, we had recorded them, but we, you know, I wasn’t used to playing them, but I took them out on the road, just to road test them, and the, and this particular song, which is called ‘Falling in Love is Harder’, then it went down an absolute storm, and it was quite significant in the way that it was received, in as much as it was the topic of conversation every single after show. So I was like, ah, this is something, and I knew it was, I knew, I, you know, I think I’m quite a good judge of quality in terms of songwriting, because I’ve done a lot of it, and so it’s, it’s, it represents a kind of moment where I think I’ve hit a bit of a height, you know, and, but we’ve, we’ve recorded it, it’s, we’ve, that’s the only song out of all of the 20 songs I’ve now recorded three different ways, because the first way we recorded it didn’t work, even though the song was still intact, so we tried it again in a different way, um, and it still didn’t work, and then we tried it another way, and I brought it home, and it still wasn’t working for me, so we’re now in our, I think, fourth or fifth iteration of this tune, and I think it’s in the right place, but that’s important, it’s an important point, because you can’t, this kind of validates what I’m talking about in lots of ways, is that I haven’t just rested on it. The trouble with when you make records as a rock band in short periods of time, because no one makes records in six months anymore, not what I am, kind of, but you know, I mean, in terms of going for a record label, you look, if you get three weeks to make a record these days, you know, or less most of the time, and you have to get it done, and what you what you record is what you’ve got, and you go, well, that’s what it is, and you say phrases to yourself, like, oh, well, of course, it’s a moment in time, so that’s what we were at that moment in time, but often, what you really do is going, fuck, we should have done that differently, yeah, but you just don’t have the time, or the money, or the, or the inclination by that point, you know, so I have not done that on this record, I have sat down, and there’s another song that’s, that’s on the last record, which I’m still not convinced we’ve got right yet, I need to redo that song, and I don’t think it’s a particularly important song, but I am going to be fucked if I don’t get it right, but so the process is kind of like that, I think second and third record are going to continue this process of eclectic songwriting, but it’s not going to be all like that, I think there’s going to be, you know, I can’t help myself, I love the sound of a loud guitar, and clattering drums, you know, so there’s still quite a lot of that.

So when you’re singing this ballad, are you safe in being that open?

Oh yeah, I am, yeah, because I thought about this today, funnily enough, it’s funny you should bring it up like this, because it’s totally, totally prompting me. I was chatting to a friend of mine who’s given up playing live. He said I don’t know, don’t want to do it anymore, he called it a pantomime, I was sort of struck by this, because I totally understood what he meant, because it is a fucking pantomime, of course it is, going on a stage and behaving like a prat, running around, you know, jumping around, having a good time, it is a pantomime, you know, it’s part of the process, and the trick is to find a place where it doesn’t feel like a pantomime, where it feels like a performance, where you feel like you’re delivering something that you hope will help people, and makes a connection, that’s the trick, but you can easily regard it as a pantomime, as a performance, as something that’s all the worldly, that’s not what normal life is, of course, that’s the very nature of performance, and it’s, you know, but I do understand the feelings of that, because it can, if you don’t feel real, if you do not feel connected to the music, seriously connected to it, I mean, it’s like, it absolutely means something to you, live and breathe it, if you don’t feel that, I can understand feeling that it’s just a complete load of nonsense, because without that reality, without that need to feel very serious about the music, about very serious about the delivery, then the edges very quickly fall off it, if you know what I mean, it becomes something untenable, because you aren’t, you haven’t got that, you haven’t got that emotional connection to it, so I would say that this is the most emotional music I’ve ever, ever written and recorded, and all I can say to you is, I stood on those stages this spring, playing that song, specifically, I’m playing ‘Don’t Pray For Me’, I’m playing ‘Womankind’, which are all very, very important songs to me, I mean, ‘Womankind’, I wrote about me and her getting together, and me getting divorced, and finding this kindred spirit, you know, even though I may not have expressed that specifically in the song, that’s the feeling of it, and I’ve talked about that many times in the past, so I’ve never, I’m not a stranger to this feeling, but what you get is, when you stand on those stages, it feels utterly solid and completely real, and it feels like an effect of, it’s a clarity thing, there’s a clarity of performance, and it doesn’t just feel like you’re singing a song, it feels like you are delivering some kind of message, whether it’s important or not is not for me to say, but it feels, it feels important to me, you know, and what it is, it’s based in truth, it’s based in honesty, and a very sincere sense of self, that you hope people would recognize, but also part of that relationship is you understand that they may not, and so it’s a kind of, it’s a kind of weird bedfellow, but all I can say is, it feels utterly important to me, and when I was playing that song on those stages, I could feel the, almost like the, it’s a strange feeling, and I don’t want this to sound too stupid, but it does feel like that the room takes a breath, and it sort of, the air stills, and it becomes something different, and that’s to do with me connecting with the, the atmosphere in the, in the room, and connecting with the people, and also knowing that the words I’m singing are somehow having an impact, and that’s, this particular song, ‘Falling In Love Is Harder’, is the strongest I’ve ever felt it. ‘Womankind’, I feel it every time I do it, ‘Don’t Pray For Me’, I feel it every time I do it, but this is the strongest I’ve ever felt it with this song. Now, whether other people believe that, or whether other people get the same sense from it, I don’t know.

Little Angels split, from the outside, people would go, blimey, success, you must have the mansion, you must have the money, you must have the cars, okay, but it wasn’t like that, was it? You, you actually worked for a living, didn’t you, in inverted commas?

Yeah, we really did, it’s, it’s been a massive part of my life, and still continues to be, I mean, Little Angels split up in 1994, and here we are in 2024, you know, it’s 30 years, it’s a long time, the band were only with Polydor from 1988 until 1994, so, it’s not a long time, you know, six years or something, I read something recently that the Beatles were only together officially for eight years, I’m like, what the fuck, I mean, I’ve been in Wayward Sons for eight years, you know, it’s a very strange experience, you know, but of course, it’s all perceived, especially after the fact, and judged by its heights, not by its lows, people don’t talk about when we were playing to 10 people at the rock house in Derby, and we got attacked by a load of Hells Angels, no one talks about that, you know, people talk about selling out the Royal Albert Hall, and, you know, number one albums, and top 10, 40 hits, and all of that, which is fucking amazing, and those are all the heights, but the reality is, getting to those heights took an awful lot of climbing, and also, because of my own personal experience, a lot of it was quite strangely quite dark, because the stuff I was kind of going through it doesn’t feel like that to me, you know, there’s a whole series of thought processes, which are quite difficult to revisit, you know, when I put myself back in those moments, but what I do recognize these days is, and appreciate, is how important it was for other people, you know, our fan base was, like I said earlier, you know, enormously important to us, and they supported us wholeheartedly, you know, we sold records to our fans, we didn’t really cross over, the only time we really properly crossed over was with ‘Womankind’, actually, in ‘Too Much Too Young’, where we were selling records outside of our fan base, that’s why we had big hit singles, and that’s why that record went to number one, and we did, you know, however many copies we did around the world, a lot, you know, so the reality was, when I think about it, we were a workhorse band, who absolutely loved doing what we were doing, we were at our best when we were in a rehearsal room, getting ready for a tour, working eight hours a day, I mean, we used to go into that rehearsal room, honestly, I swear to God, I’ve told this story many times, I’m not going to go through it now, but we, we did a gig with Guns N’ Roses, and it changed our lives, you know, we opened for Guns N’ Roses, the first time they ever came to the UK, at the Marquee Club in Wardour Street, and we went back to Scarborough, a changed bunch of people, because we’d seen a proper band, we’d seen a real, honest to goodness, kick-ass rock and roll band, who had amazing songs, and above all, it didn’t feel like a pantomime, it really didn’t, even though he had his fur coat on, and his bandana, even though, even though the pantomime that surrounds Guns N’ Roses was active, but I suppose what I’m saying is, whereas I might have regarded other bands we’d opened for as a young band, like we the Marquee Club loads of times, you know, before we played with Guns N’ Roses, we played with Tesla, we played with Faith No More, we did lots of really important gigs, all of which were amazing, but Guns N’ Roses was different, they were the first band I ever saw that treated it like their lives fucking depended on, like they were, could have been their last gig, they were biting off more than they could chew, and they were chewing as ferociously as they could, and they were going to spit the fucker out at the end, it was just incredible to experience, and I have never to this day seen a band more electric than that band, they took the skin of the roof of my mouth off, it was un-fucking-believable, and I felt so insignificant next to that band, having gone into that gig expecting to blow them away, because everyone had said, oh they’re just another strip band, and I’d heard ‘It’s So Easy, and I’d loved the single, I thought it was fucking great, you know, I thought, oh they’re great, Sex Pistols meets Aerosmith, all them, you know, I love those bands, but I bet they aren’t that good, you know, and of course we turned up to the sound check, and Stephen Adler, and I forget who it was, but I’m sure Stephen Adler was involved with it, had a fight in the middle of the marquee floor, in the auditorium there, and they were at a proper fight, I mean, bloodied noses, fisty cuffs, blood splattering, it was fucking nuts, roadies pulling them off, you know, dragging them apart, and all the rest of it, and gear everywhere, and like, they didn’t even sound check because of this, so we just thought this was going to be an absolute fucking car crash, and so we were secretly rubbing our hands together, thinking, oh we’re going to have these fuckers, they’re going to be crap, you know, sort of thing, but of course we went on, did our gig, we did really well, don’t get me wrong, we did really well, I mean, we held our own, and we were cocky as fuck, you know, because we, there we were, nobody knew they were going to be the biggest band in the world, no one had a fucking clue, in fact, I remember thinking to myself, this is going to be easy, and we did the gig, did, went down great, came out, they came on, and it changed my life, I’ve never to this day seen anything like it, there was a, there was a visceral human contact that emanated from the stage, that came out in waves, not just the sound, their personalities, the way that they performed, the way they held themselves, that the, the sort of intensity of it all, without them doing anything, well there’s hardly any room on that stage anyway, it’s fucking tiny, so they, but they just, they were like a stadium band before their time, that were, I couldn’t believe, I just couldn’t believe it, it was just extraordinary, and we went back, we went back to Scarborough with an entirely different concept, we went back feeling, we’ve got to get, we’ll never be as good as them, we’d already made that decision, that’s never going to happen, we’re never going to get anywhere near as, we’re not as natural as that, they just have something, it’s a magic, that just no one can sum up, but it’s just, they’ve got it, and they’re going to do it, and we knew it, we knew it, we walked out of that venue thinking, they’re going to be fucking massive, and they were, three months later they were, but whatever, it’s ridiculous, you know, but we went back, and it supercharged us, we went back and we rehearsed five, six days a week, eight hours a day in our rehearsal room, we turned up at 10 in the morning, we fucking rehearsed until fucking six o’clock at night, and we went home, and we did that religiously every single day, writing songs, rehearsing, arguing, getting shit wrong, working out the gear, trying to figure things out, blah blah blah, endlessly, constantly playing, it was like a proper job, we felt like we were clocking in and clocking out, it was that simple to us, and we realised that’s what we needed to do, and that’s why Little Angels succeeded, because we were actually a fucking really hard-working bunch of lads, and we, even though we had to, we struggled a bit to kind of get our songs right, you know, I ended up being the principal writer, but we were all writing to start with, and that was a bit of a clusterfuck, frankly, because everyone’s trying to get their bit in, that’s what you do when you’re young, you try and get your bit in, you know, but you don’t always get, you know, sometimes your bit isn’t good enough, you know, but yet you argue for your bit to stay, and so it fucks the song up, you know, so there’s all that stuff going on, but then you mature, you know, and you get better, and you start to realise, and then you go out there into the world, and you, you rely upon that, and what, what I know we had, which a lot of bands, other bands didn’t have, and I think a lot of bands don’t have today, is a camaraderie that went well beyond just being friends, it was a, an agreed principle of power, we will work hard, we will do what we have to do to make this happen, and we’re going to do it with a smile on our faces, we never fucked anyone over, we were never violent, we were always turned up on time, we were middle class boys playing at rock and roll to start with, and we ended up being middle class boys who were rock and roll at the end, and it was just a fucking amazing experience, and so when I look back at that, it’s an incredible feeling of success from a human point of view, from a, from a, from a creative point of view, from an endeavour point of view, from a spirited point of view, and all of those things are reasons why we were successful, and I knew when I went on that stage, I was the front of that band, and I had the voice, and I controlled that audience like a lion tamer, you know, all those things mattered, and it really, but it was a joyful experience, we never felt, that’s the one thing we weren’t like with Guns N’ Roses. The one thing I remember about that gig was it felt really aggressive, it felt violent, it felt like they were violating you by their power now take out of that what you will, because some people love that, it kind of scared me in a way, because I didn’t think music could do that, but it really fucking did, and they really did that, now there are other people that pretend to do that, and it never gets anywhere near it, you know, they did it naturally, and that’s why they were so fucking huge, because I think they spoke to some of the basest instincts of human, human activity actually, and if you’re singing a song like ‘It’s So Easy’, about fucking people over, and taking drugs, and how easy it all is, you know they mean it, if you’re singing, well, they did it, didn’t they, they did it, exactly, but that’s, that’s the reasons why they did it, so, but we weren’t like that, we were the other side of the coin, we were like, you know, we were the head of the coin when they were the tails, you know, we were absolutely that kind of band that welcomed our audience, wanted them to take part, were joyful in it, wanted to create music that everyone could love, and wanted to wave their hands in the air, could sing all the songs, that’s what we were aiming for, and we did do that, you know, we definitely did do that, and so it’s a, when I look back in those ways, absolutely amazing, no regrets whatsoever, wish we’d never split up, wished we had made some better decisions with regard to other people’s business, but really, I can’t look back on that with any, any negativity, really, in these days, I look back and go, you know, the only reason I can sit talking to you so much is because of that band, you know what I mean, and the fact that anyone’s even interested in me at any, at all, anymore, is because of what that band did for me, and I’ve got nothing but respect for the situation.

You mentioned the word success, I’ve spoken to Andy Cairns from Therapy? and he wrote a song called ‘Success Is Survival’, what does success mean to you?

Oh, very difficult question to answer, because I would say that on a very surface level, success to me means being able to carry on doing this, right, you know what I mean, it’s like making it isn’t having the Rolls Royce or what car you want to drive in a big castle in France, no, that’s just a dream, that’s for most people, it’s an unobtainable dream, and it’s also probably a dream that will come crashing around your ears, because it’s not what you think it’s going to be, really making it for me is being able to call yourself a professional musician on a daily basis, and getting up, and being able to carry on creating work that you hope people will enjoy, that continues their experience, and continues your experience, that’s on a very surface level, but from a deeper level, success for me means being happy, and seeking happiness, and even though I’m not certain what that really is, all I can report about it is that I’m at my happiest when I’m content with the things that really matter to me, and one of those things that really matters to me is writing great songs, so if I can find contentment in writing some songs, then that’s about as close as I can really genuinely say I get to proper happiness, and that’s increased, you know, this bunch of tunes, I definitely think I’m about as happy as I could ever have been with the vast majority of them, and that takes a lot for me to say that, it does, because I haven’t really felt very happy with a lot of stuff I’ve done, genuinely, I think I’ve missed opportunities, or it certainly felt like I’d missed some opportunities, and not financially gained, the opportunity of what the music might have been, now, I’ll caveat this by saying that’s entirely driven by the times, because when you’re 21 years old, 22, whatever, and you’re in your first major studio, you don’t understand what you’re doing, you have to rely upon other people to do it for you, you’re hoping you aren’t going to get found out as a charlatan, you clearly are, you’re led by the nose, you know, and you’re led by kind of instincts which are based more on survival, I think Andy’s absolutely right about that, I think you are trying to survive the process, and that takes quite a while to get used to, and to get your confidence up, to find a place where you can feel more confident about demonstrating it, and I don’t think I ever really felt 100% confident about anything I did in Little Angels, not because I didn’t think it was good enough, I think ‘Womankind’ is still one of the best things I’ve ever written, I think it stands the test of time, I think ‘Don’t Pray For Me’ does, and, ’Too Much Too Young’, there are some moments I think, actually, I got really, really close there, but with the benefit of hindsight, you know, which is always obviously easy.

It’s 2020, isn’t it?

Of course, you look at it and sort of go, all right, fair enough, you know, I perhaps shouldn’t have written those words, because they’re really puerile and silly, but I was only fucking 19, cut yourself a bit of slack, you know, so those conversations go on in my head quite a lot. This was the greatest thing it could ever be, you know, because that’s all we all want.

But it was the greatest thing it could ever be at that time, though, wasn’t it?

Yeah, of course, and therein lies the rub, that you have to accept it, you have to accept that situation, you have to go, well, okay, that’s what it is. I often sort of think about the ‘Big Bad EP’, I think the ‘Big Bad EP’ is probably the best thing Little Angels ever recorded, and it’s one of the first things we ever recorded, and I don’t know why it was so great, it’s because we’d suffered the ignominy and the failure of ‘Ninety in the Shade’, there’s a single from Polydor, and they were devastated that that single hadn’t happened, they put us in Great Linford Manor, which I know that session cost something like 30 grand back in 1988, 89, when we were recording it, first time we ever went in a studio, properly in a studio, we went in with, with the producer, James ‘Jimbo’ Barton, and spent 10 days recording one, one and a half songs, you know, sacked our drummer in the process, massive upheaval, in the poshest studio in the whole of the country, so Polydor could basically brag about it, that’s the only reason we were there, you know, if they’d have been more sensible about the situation, they’d have put us in some cheap studio, with a real kick-ass producer, who was a young-up hotshot, who could have taught us how to go, fucking figure it out, yeah, but that wasn’t their process, their modus operandi was, we’re Polydor, we’re coming back from the dead. We were a hot signing, and so they had to demonstrate to people in the back of, you know, Music Week, or whatever it would be, Little Angels, recording with James ‘Jimbo’ Barton in Great Linford Manor, you know, first sessions of new signing, and all this sort of stuff, and that’s what they wanted, and so they felt that that was the right thing, so it failed, it completely fucking failed, they were trying to sell us as some kind of surf rock band, you know, it was a complete disaster, because they didn’t, understand us, and so, weirdly, it put them on the back foot, and us on the front foot, and we kind of went, well, we’re not doing that, we’re going to go and record this over here, and we went and did the ‘Big Bad EP’ in a very short space of time, with a brilliant producer, and a great guy who mixed it, and it was a unmitigated success, it was the first thing that got us on top of the pops, it was all of a sudden, the press started taking us seriously, and we were getting really good reviews for the recorded music, and I still listen to that EP, and think that’s a hot young rock band, at exactly the right moment in their career, doing exactly what they should have been doing, and we should have carried on doing that kind of ethic, but we didn’t, it ended up being a clusterfuck, because Polydor got back involved, and they wanted us to work with Eddie Kramer, and all these sort of major producers, we went through a number of different situations, but specifically with Eddie Kramer, which was obviously Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix, and all these people, and we were convinced by them, that he was the right guy for the job, because he was Eddie Kramer, and of course, it was an unmitigated disaster, and we lost a load of money, and spent a load of time recording absolute rubbish, with a man who didn’t really know what he was doing with us, and it was a failure, and so, you know, we went into the first album, completely on the back foot, having had to have convinced Polydor to give us the money from the second records recording advance, to record the first album, so it was ridiculous, it was ridiculous, and we ended up working for three weeks, in a studio, with an unknown producer, who frankly wasn’t up to it, we had to then take the reins of the production, with our manager at the time, to then try and rescue the project, and we just hoped for the best, and I look back on that situation, thinking, oh my god, why did we let that happen, why weren’t we working, why didn’t somebody, somewhere along the line, say, this is fucking stupid, we’re going to go in with a hot young producer, we’re going to spend a load of time recording with the band, we’re only going to put something out when it’s really great, and we’re going to make a record when that record arrives, you know what I mean, it was like, there was no clear thinking. Yeah, it was a kind of crazy, crazy, crazy time, and so, you know, like I say, I’m waffling here, but looking back on it, I think that’s, I do think that’s a kind of natural response, I think most artists, I remember reading an article about Mark Knopfler, saying that he struggles to listen to the Dire Straits records, I mean, to be fair, I struggle to listen to Dire Straits records, but I understand what he meant by the conversation, I remember, I can see it in my head, it popped up on some, it might have been MTV or something, and I’m talking about the time when they were at their height here, and this, you know, this journalist was saying to him, it was a filmed interview, and I can remember Knopfler, head in his hands, you know, looking like the world was on his shoulders, and this guy says, well, what do you think about your latest record, and he said something like, in all honesty, mate, I can’t listen to it, I was like, and he said that, he said, I don’t listen to any of my records, I really can’t, I just can’t, I just, for me, I just record them, I forget them, and I kind of got that, I do get that, you know, that’s an extreme version of it, but therein lies the torment of being a recording artist, is that, you know, if you really, really, you know, you’ve kind of got high ideals, and you’ve got, this desperate need to kind of demonstrate yourself, like I had at the time, because of all the things we’ve talked about, it felt almost impossible to get to where you needed to go, and like I say, when I look back on it now, I look with a wryer eye now, okay, fair enough, just accept it, it’s fine, you know, and of course, it’s not regrets, because how can I regret the success of a band, we had loads of success, and it was, we must have been doing something right, so maybe I’m talking total nonsense, you know, so it’s only a very personal position, you know.

I know it’s something you can’t really answer, what do you think would have happened if you’d have stayed together?

Well, for a start, I wish we had, and I still, to this day, feel very angry at myself that I didn’t stand up to what was going on around us, which was in part to do with the times, to do with the way that music was changing, I accept that, I mean, for a long time, I didn’t accept that, and I think I’m right to a certain degree, but I do think, that the times were changing, there’s no doubt about it, you know, the sort of idea of long-haired rock guys, wearing cowboy boots, cruising up and down the strip, were about to change, we could feel it coming, you know, I mean, I’ll never forget going into a record shop in Bradford, when we were playing Bradford St. George’s Hall on one of our big tours, and hearing ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ for the first time, and I just thought, the world’s about to change, the music is about to change, it was so stark to me. I remember hearing it, I went over to the guy at the counter in this record store in Bradford, and said, who’s that? He went, oh, it’s a band called Nirvana, he said, they’re going to be massive, and I went, could you put it on again? And he put it on again for me, like, live in the shop, you know, he knew who I was, you know, he was a rocker, and he was coming to the gig, and I was just open-mouthed, I just thought, this is fucking, this is a different animal, you know, everything was changing, and so I could see it coming, but I think it wasn’t just that, there was a lot of other things going on, Polydor, some struggles there, although I will also celebrate Polydor, because I have to say that the people we work with in Polydor, because I don’t like it when bands slag off their labels, labels don’t go into a situation with a band to make them shit, nobody signs a band to have a crap time, and to make it the worst thing that they’ve ever worked on, everyone’s expecting a massive result, that’s part of the problem, is that there’s just huge expectations, but our team at Polydor were wonderful, they worked hard for us, they were, to a man and a lady, committed to the band, loved the band, worked really hard, wanted it to be successful, yeah, there were moments, you know, it’s a corporate business, what do you expect when you sit around a table with 25 other people that are all telling you how to make your music, you know, it’s never going to completely all land, but we did have some amazing people, some brilliant people, Jimmy Devlin, David Munz, Susan Collins, some incredible people that we work with, Shona French, incredible people that were utterly in love with the band and worked their fucking bollocks off for us, and celebrated and cried their eyes out when we got number one like we did, so, but of course, they’re under structural pressure, they’ve got Alan Levy, the head of the business at the time, breathing down their necks, looking at the bottom line and saying, well, why aren’t this band selling five million records, you know, but it didn’t make it any less difficult to understand, and for reasons I don’t really want to discuss, it fell apart, partially because, you know, we were all getting very frustrated with each other, because we were growing up, and we all grew up in the spotlight, and we all grew up as, you know, we were young people, and we were very young, I mean, we were fucking young, Jim Dickinson had to get his mum and dad to sign it, He was barely out of his teens when you split, wasn’t he?

Well, he was 16 when we signed the record deal in 88, 89, he would have been 22, wouldn’t he? So, you know, he’s a fucking nipper, I mean, I’ve got three daughters, they’re all in their 20s now, look at them, you know, they’re young people, how would you expect them to deal with, anyone to deal with that, those decision-making, major life-changing decisions, so what you do is you turn over those decisions to other people you think know better, who trust, and you trust, yeah, yeah, and of course that trust doesn’t always work, and so there’s a whole massive mass of things, but I think, you know, I’ve talked to Joe Elliott a lot about this, because, you know, me and Joe are good mates, and I sort of said to him, how do you keep going, because they went through the same thing, obviously at an enormously different level, but the point is, they had to downsize, he said, you know, we all of a sudden, no one was coming to our shows, you know, and we had to completely downsize, we had to change the way we were looking at the music, and they made that, I forget what was it called, ‘Slang’, which was a kind of a sort of a response to the changing times, old Def Leppard fans didn’t like, and then the new rock fans didn’t like either, so they were struggling a bit as well, but the reality is that they stuck to their guns, and it’s the same thing with Thunder, I mean, I toured with Danny and Luke, you know, with my first solo bands when I came back in 2002, and I got back on the horse after being away for quite a while, and I was absolutely blown away that they were still playing Hammersmith, and that was all down to their dogged determination to continue as a band.

I think they were one of the first to, I want to use the word cottage industry, they were the first to release their own records, I think they saw, before a lot of people saw it coming, they saw that the benefit of doing it all in-house.

Absolutely, and they absolutely smashed it, and Danny is a genius businessman, an amazing singer, you know, Luke’s a brilliant songwriter, the band were intact, and the thing is, what they did, is the complete opposite of everyone else, they didn’t fucking get scared, they weren’t frightened by it, they weren’t fearful of what was going on, they just thought to themselves, hang on a minute, we can sell out Hammersmith Apollo, where do you think those people are going to go? The last gig Little Angels did was the Royal Albert Hall, you know, seven and a half thousand people, or whatever it was, you know, sold out, we still, I think we still hold the record of the most amount of people in the Royal Albert Hall, by default, because they actually had taken the seats out of the top balcony, and there were so many people queued up down the street, God’s honest truth, that the guy that managed the venue at the time said, you know what, we’ll let all these people in, but they’re gonna have to go right to the top, and they can stand up on the top balcony, he let them in, so by default, we had more people in than they would normally allow, because it would be seated, so it was a, it was a kind of crazy sort of thing, but it was, where were those seven thousand people going to go? They weren’t going to disappear overnight, and most of them told us that, so it was a crazy stupid decision based on misinformation and misdirection by certain folk, and also just the generality of what was going on in the music business at the time, this panic and this change, so I understand it, and of course you can’t go back on it, and I’m not actually blaming anyone, I think it’s funny, I’ve now realized I can’t blame anyone, if I’ve got anyone to blame, it’s myself, I should have been the one stamping my feet saying, what the fuck are we doing, why don’t we just bang our heads together and take a year off and come back or something, you know, it wouldn’t have made any difference actually, we probably could have easily gone back into the theatres and carried on, you know, but there was a lack of will, and when the lack of will goes, everything goes, so, that was tough, you know, but I think if we had stayed together, I think we could have continued, I think we would have done a Thunder, we could have probably gone on to greater things and bigger things, and the thing is also, I often look at Wayward Sons, you know, what I’m doing with that band, really, Wayward Sons is just little angels in different clothes, it’s just me writing the same kinds of songs really, it’s melodic, pop rock songs, you know.

There’s been some big deals in America recently, and when you released the first Wayward Sons album, there was a certain bloke in charge (Trump), he’s now back, what are your opinions on it, and will that open your well of creativity again, because the first Wayward Sons album was quite biting.

It was all about that, I mean, it was all about the absolute bunch of charlatan clowns that run in our country, as well as that, yeah, a bell end in America, you know, so mate, I don’t know where to start, you despair, don’t you, you despair, I do despair, because what astounds me about it is, and I think this is a kind of strange indication of where we are from a humanist point of view, if you like, is that it’s sad that half of the world, which is pretty much, I would say, evenly split, have little or no regard for others, quite prepared to allow a kind of instinctive, selfish impulse to cloud their better judgment, because no matter what anyone might say, to use the excuse that it’s all about the economy, because they’re paying 10 cents more for a litre of petrol or something, and a little bit more for the foodstuffs, like has been expressed over here, and that’s enough reason to allow a character like him back in control of essentially the world, that’s an incredible indictment of where we are, and I think it’s also an indication of this sort of like cognitive dissonance, which is going on across the globe, this sort of, the very people that are going to be affected by these decisions are the ones that are voting for it, do you know what I mean, it seems crazy to me that we that there isn’t a rational understanding or a rational thought process based on, hang on, how am I feeling about this, what is the atmosphere here, because there’s no positivity in the atmosphere surrounding Trump in America, nothing, nothing, it’s all aggressive, violent, control, coercion, threats, management of people based on, ridicule and putting people down, you know, etc, so there’s no positivity in that at all. What I heard someone say the other day, in a kind of like, almost excusing us, oh it’s strong, it’s strong man politics, we need some strong man politics, do you think it’s a step backwards, I mean, you know, a massive step backwards, yeah, I mean, I applauded Obama for, not only for being the first black president, but for what he did, he stuck up for people, he was right in the way he went about things, he was, and I think, I heard someone talking about this a couple of days ago, which I thought was really true actually, I think what we’re in at the moment, is we’re seeing the aftershock of Covid in real time now, we are seeing that sense of, of utter shock about what happened, and how it then manifests itself in living conditions, and living standards, and how people then were, lost their jobs, you know, people died, and then also the conspiracy theories that surrounded all that, all of it, which is, yes, something else which I find astoundingly stupid, that there isn’t this kind of, that I think there’s an aftershock there, and I heard someone say that everywhere around the world in recent years, the last couple of years, where there’s been an election, the populations of every country have by and large thrown out the people that were in charge over that period, whether they agree with them or not, they’ve just thrown them out, because they want some change, they want to try, they want to believe that something else can happen, whether they believe, it’s no longer about politics anymore, it’s no longer about people having a position, no, this is the difference, is that it used to be when I was a kid, I was brought up in a very political, politically proud household, my dad was very left-wing, still is, I am, but it’s not left-wing politics with a capital L, where I want to be a communist, and I want everyone to eat gruel, and live in a fucking shed, you know, it’s about giving everyone a chance, it’s about supporting each other, and looking at the greater good, and apparently that’s woke, apparently that’s now weaponised the language of caring, and consideration, and as a negative, you know, a negative connotation, and therein lies the insidious nature of where the control elements of this world have gone, and most of it exists online, and of course that’s been weaponised by controlled groups of people that just want, essentially, to basically own everything, when it comes right down to it, the sadness of it is, is that it’s no more difficult than somebody wanting to own more stuff. Trump just wants to have more money, he just wants to own more stuff, Elon Musk, don’t get me started on that motherfucker, there’s nothing clever about Elon Musk, who was born into super wealth, who used his family’s money to buy into the Tesla car, which he didn’t invent, by the way, you know, they’re just charlatans, these people with just vast wealth, and they are the elite, now I don’t have any conspiracy theory based on the concept that there’s this super, super elite that run the world, as a cabal, don’t believe it, I just think there just are people that just have got a lot of money, and trouble is with money, is it corrupts, you know, I mean, I’ve seen this myself in a smaller levels with various people who’ve got super amounts of money, you know, it’s a terribly insidious thing, they think it’s the answer to everything, when really the reality is, if only we could believe in the idea that we’ve got enough, as opposed to we want more.

I was always told knowledge is power, but it’s just proving that money is power, isn’t it?

It is, because, you know, knowledge isn’t power, is it, because we’ve got the knowledge at our fingertips, haven’t we, you know, with the internet, the greatest encyclopaedia of all time, how many people are looking up Nietzsche and analysing him. They’re using it for porn and ‘Love Island’. And nine times out of ten, a rabbit wearing a hat, or a kitten wearing a bowtie falling off a piano, this is the shit that people invade them, and the trouble is we’ve been forced fed all this stuff. it’s like they always used to call TV, the opiate of the masses, fucking social media is the opiate of the masses now, it’s just a distraction whilst super wealthy and super powerful people just rape the fuck out of the rest of us, and the trouble is that isn’t a conspiracy, that’s commerce, and people say things like, well, it’s just business, but if the business is killing the planet to somehow make yourself look good, which is exactly what Trump’s about to do, drill, drill, drill, baby drill, or whatever he’s been saying about the Alaskan wilderness and, drilling more oil when we ought to be turning all of our attentions to, let’s just, let’s have a really frank conversation about this, the world is fucking in peril, you don’t have to be a fucking brain of Britain to figure this out, you don’t have to be a scientist, you know, we rely upon very, very learned people who studied these subjects for fucking decades to give us the answers, this is what they’re there for, that’s their jobs, my dad was a scientist, he always used to say, it’s empirical, you have to go and prove these things, you can’t just make it up, it has to be proven and documented, it has to be then re-proven, and science changes all the time as we learn more about it, this is what we have these people for, and then you get someone like Trump who wears a red tie, whose daddy gave him a load of money, who bought a hotel, decides he knows better because all he wants is to hold on to more of it for himself, these are the facts, but whilst we all choke to death on fucking carbon monoxide, it’s beyond abhorrent, and I only hope, my only hope with this is, and I think this is probably going to be borne out, maybe we ought to have a conversation about this in four year’s time, if we’re still here, that people like Trump reveal their true nature, and eventually all autocrats get found out, you only have to look back in history, you know, we haven’t, we don’t seem to learn from anything, can you imagine, can you fucking imagine 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, an American president saying, making the statement, well Hitler wasn’t all bad, and getting away with that, no, which is what he has intimated, and the things that he’s talked about, so something’s fucking gone wrong on it, I don’t know what else to say, I could go on for hours about it, because as I said mate, I love talking to you.

It’s great to hear your thoughts, but thank you for being so open and honest, and more power to you, and keep doing what you’re doing.

I appreciate it, and it’s a privilege to keep doing, again, I always think it’s a privilege to be here, to be able to talk to people, and to be given the chance to even say anything, you know, I genuinely, I genuinely mean that, it’s not virtue signalling, I’d be happy, the truth of it is, if I could sit in my house and carry on making music, and carry on writing my scripts, and if no one gave a fuck, I’d still do it, of course it’s not, you know what I mean, it’s an impulse, you can’t stop it, you know, it, it just so happens that I can, I’ve got a platform to hopefully, to deliver stuff to people and enjoy, and it is a real privilege, I still really mean that, it feels like a privilege that people even give a shit.

What would you do if you couldn’t have that release?

I don’t know mate, it’s, you know, I’ve done all kinds of jobs, you know, in between Wayward Sons and Little Angels, if I can say, I’ve worked in the film industry, and that’s very creative, which I’m still working in, you know, I’ve run a building firm, I’ve, I’ve done all sorts of things, I’m not shy of hard work, I like to work, I think I’m probably a workaholic in lots of ways, you know, I like to create stuff, I think it’d have to be something creative, and actually having a building firm was very creative, you know, you are helping someone realise their dreams a lot of the time,, I’m too old for the building, I wouldn’t go back to that.

But it would have to be something creative, I think one of the things that you often say to yourself when you’re, when you’re under stress and under pressure when you’re in the creative world, is that the first thing I do is when I feel like that, I pinch myself and say to myself, look, don’t be such a fucking idiot, you’re doing something you really want to do, that started out as a vocation and you’re now doing for, you’re doing for basically for a living, you might not be making a king’s ransom, but you’re making enough and, you can just about get by and that’s fine, that’s enough for me and the rest of it is filled in by the joy of doing it, but, you know, but often what you do is when you get to that point where it is stressful and you are under deadlines and, I’ve been under a deadline for a script recently for a film that’s getting made next year in Australia and it’s been really stressful, but then I’ve sort of caught myself and I thought, hang on a minute, I’m sat in my own house in front of a computer, just writing stuff on a screen, what am I getting fucking worried about? Because I have been that guy stood in a fucking hole in the ground, in the snow, you know, digging a hole to lay a pipe, you know, for months on end, I have been that dude, so I do understand the feeling of that as well. So it I keep thinking that and I think, sometimes in my darkest moments, I thought, fuck it, I’ll just go and stack shelves in Sainsbury’s and just lead a really quiet life, but that just wouldn’t fucking work, I wouldn’t be able to, I don’t know, I’d start building, I’d start building sort of sculptures out of the tins of beans or something in the middle aisle, you know.

You would also get annoyed. I’ve worked with loads of guys who’ve retired and said, no, I just want to stack shelves in Sainsbury’s, yeah, whatever, and then the next thing, you know, because they’ve had a bit of power, because they’ve, they’ve led a team, they’re being told what to do by a 21-year-old graduate who has no fucking idea about anything, life, or how to do something, or common sense. I bumped into a mate of mine a couple of years ago, he was a sergeant in the Police, and I walked into my local Lidl and he was the manager, and I said, how long have you been here, he said, three months, and was already the manager, he said, I was here for two weeks, and all I did was stack shelves, I was having a great time, and then I just looked at the way he the manager at the time was doing things, and I just said, no, no, no, no, he suggested all these changes and the area manager said do you fancy being the boss?

Oh no, listen, that’s absolutely true, you end up sort of finding yourself, and do you know what, I think the thing is, if you’re that way inclined, and you’re a decent person, what you do is you end up kind of gravitating towards, I would suggest that, I don’t know that guy, but I would suggest he did it as a kind of instinctive pulse, he’s like, I can really help you, I can change things, it’ll make it better, it’ll streamline it, and it’ll help everyone else, most people who that kind of are doing it for good, they want to do things, they want to bring their A-game, you know, that’s a very positive thing, I think it may well be that, I mean, I have over, over the years sort of dabbled with the idea of going into politics, but I think there is a kind of sense about being a politician that’s kind of, at the moment, people don’t trust politicians at all, more so than ever before, and I think there’s a sadness about that, because I don’t believe for one second that, that most politicians, and I’d even say that about some Tories, which is hard for me to fucking even utter, but there are some good people out there that are on the other side of the fucking line, and I would imagine most of them are trying to do what they think is the right thing, and it’s a hard, I’m sure it’s a very hard job being a politician, would you like to make decisions that affect people’s lives across the whole of the country, I certainly would find that very tough, and then have to take the flak because of it, someone’s got to take control, there has to be an adult in the room, and often the adults are the ones that are getting screamed at by the little toddlers in the corner, I don’t know whether I could do that, because I think actually I’m probably far too sensitive, I think I’d get upset about that, but that has been something I have sort of toyed with, but I do think that there’s actually quite a good, there is a place for mavericks on the outside, I do like shouting at idiots, you know, I think what I regard as idiots, I do think there’s quite a lot because you know, actually kicking the honest nest is not a bad thing sometimes, you know, you can’t just, and I think that’s what I’ve done with my songs, really, when it comes down to it, I’ve kicked the honest nest a bit, you know.

I think, I’ve asked you this before, whether you’d go into politics, I think you’re too honest.

No, you’re absolutely right, and do you know what, weirdly, when I moved back to Scarborough years ago, I got involved with the local government quite a bit for a number of artistic things, they had this thing called Yorkshire Forward, it was a company called Yorkshire Quango, went in to try and sort of create a new situation for the town, and it was everything from like the street scene of things, you know, changing all the way that the paving stones were, reinventing the town centre and all that, millions and millions of pounds were spent on it, and very little got done.

It’s one of those situations with all these big conferences, and I, because I was a bit of a local celebrity, I end up sort of sitting on a lot of these panels, and they really didn’t like it, and they disagreed. It was actually really quite shocking that really, at a local government level, it is just an old boys club, it was all white old men who were not prepared to be disagreed with, and I had a guy come up to me once and say, you know, Toby, we’ve been talking about you, it’s an old fellow, and he said, you could be very, very, very, very, very good as a politician, as a local politician, but you just don’t fit, just don’t fit, and he said it with real, was like signing me off, you know, that was like, because they just didn’t want someone like me to be rocking the boat, because they just had it all in house, you know, and they were very smart, and I immediately went off the whole idea of it, I thought, you know what, someone like me would never get anywhere in local politics.

You know, the biggest failure in politics for me is that it’s not visible enough, the Labour Party have always made, have already made major mistakes, in as much as they haven’t vocalised or discussed the problems that they’re now trying to mop up in a, constructive, sensible manner, it’s not been visible enough, I don’t understand why there isn’t far more visible presentation of the reasons behind why decisions are being made, it’s still done in dusty rooms in Westminster, in back rooms of local councils, where the normal man on the street isn’t invited, it’s made to feel as if they can’t take part, why do they think we don’t trust them anymore, why do you think the normal bloke in the street who just wants to go down the pub and have his pint on a Friday night with his mates, works a normal job, who then discuss how shit the government are, why do we think that’s happened, it’s because , we’ve been ostracised by it, there’s no connection to it, and I said that exact thing in Scarborough, they were banging on about, you know, we’re meeting at 8.30 down in some fucking dusty room in, the middle of the bowels of some place in Scarborough to have these meetings, I’m like, these meetings should be held in the centre of the town, as an open door policy, in the middle of the fucking shopping centre, with loudspeakers, you know, with screens where you can say, the reason why we’re thinking of doing this is because of these reasons, so can shout from the audience, explain it better, why should I trust you, I’ve said this to these people, a lot of these people, and their answer was, oh, we wouldn’t get anywhere, we wouldn’t get, we have to make these decisions for people, and I’m like, what are you talking about, it’s the same with Starmer and all the rest of it, you know, he’s the devil at the moment, but I’m sure the guy’s trying his fucking hardest, he’s trying to juggle a million balls in the air of a country that’s been fucking bankrupt by a bunch of fucking Eton schoolboy pricks, who’ve lied to our faces, have we forgotten that? So, you know, you never can win, and so I think there’s a kind of, to me, you can step outside of it, and sort of, that’s where art’s brilliant, because me as a songwriter, I can write a song, that will resonate with a few people, and might help them to make some informed decisions, it might not, but it might give them a bit more information, because I’m in a rock band that they like, you know, so that’s the way I look at it, I’m not like a Trojan horse, you know, it’s not like a Trojan horse concept, it’s more like, listen, here’s the information, here’s some information, here’s my perspective on it, and if it helps you, then great, if it doesn’t, then hey, you make your own, you make your own choices.

But you’re giving the people opportunity to make their own decision, aren’t you?

I hope so, and I hope that, a lot of musicians do feel that, you know, I do think it’s, a sort of heavier sense of responsibility, that sort of heavy crown thing, you know, you do feel there’s a responsibility to report on the world, I think we’ve talked about this before, it’s, necessary, you know, because, I’m the same as anyone else, there’s no difference between me and anybody else who comes to the gig, we’re all the fucking same, we’ve all got the same aspirations, really, when it comes down to it, I mean, that’s the thing, you know, if I’ve had arguments with people who have polar opposites about politics with me, it doesn’t mean to say I don’t like them, you know, it’s just a difference of opinion, and actually, most of the time, if you hadn’t mentioned politics, you’d get on like a fucking house on fire, you know, so, I think we’re all looking for the same things, really, it’s just when you kind of get extreme versions of it, which is what we’ve got now, haven’t we, we’ve been pushed to the extremes with, you know, fucking Donald Trump on the one hand, and Putin on the other, although I think Putin’s pretty much the same as Trump, really, when it comes down to it, I think there’s a sort of, that’s where we’ve run into problems, there’s no moderation, there’s nothing in the middle anymore, is there, and that’s where we’re going to have to get to, and the trouble with getting back to moderation, and it’s happened to us before, is that it all has to collapse, then we’ll be rebuilt.

Our conversation then veered off into our respective families. Toby and I both have daughters the same age and both are at university. I’ve always wanted to ask Toby if his kids were impressed by having a famous dad?

No, of course they’re not, I wouldn’t expect them to be, I mean, the thing is with it, what’s been glorious about it, really, joking aside, is that, they were born roughly when I was sort of back in the music business, so they started coming to the gigs, and then they came, we took them to download every year, and backstage, and, you know, they came on the shows, and when we were touring with various bands, when I was in Dio’s Disciples, they were hanging around with all those dudes, when I was knocking around with Steve Strange, of course, you know, they met loads of people with Steve Strange, so they got very used to being at those kinds of events, and knowing that it was going on with me, and watching me on TV, or watching me on a stage, and so it became a kind of, just like, a very normal thing for them, but we’ve always had a very, homely home here, you know, we’ve never, it’s never been sort of, like, daft, you know, we’ve had lots of musicians staying here, and people hanging out, and stuff, but not in a kind of drunken rock and roll way at all, it’s very, always been very, kind of, homely here, so they’ve kind of grown up around it, and actually, I think that’s really helped Maddy, you know, my middle daughter, who’s now going through this sort of path of success, through an entertainment format, it’s really helped her, because she can deal with it really well, I’ve watched her, you know, she’s sort of, it’s no surprise to her, and I think that has been because she’s been around me doing what I did.