Interview by: Smudge
Pictures: Adrian Hextall / (C) MindHex Media
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.
Part II….To Be continued….
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