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Falling Off the Edge of Success Coventry local heroes Gods Toys seemed to be heading for the stars in 1980 before they abruptly aborted take-off.  What went wrong? wonders Alan Rider

Falling Off the Edge of Success

Coventry local heroes Gods Toys seemed to be heading for the stars in 1980 before they abruptly aborted take-off. What went wrong? wonders Alan Rider

by Alan Rider, Contributing Editor
first published: April, 2025

approximate reading time: minutes

It sort of fell off the edge, you know. It's really disappointing. I wanted God's Toys to continue. I liked the music. I loved Nick's lyrics. I liked what we were doing.

In 1980 it seemed like the stars were aligning for Coventry Art-Rock (or ‘Arty-Natty’ as they termed it) band Gods Toys. Everything was going their way. They blew Siouxsie and The Banshees away on TV, they were an unforgettable and unique live act, they had a couple of singles out, including the prophetic ‘All The Born Losers’, they had recorded a Radio 1 session, and they were support act on the Adam and the Ants ‘Kings of the Wild Frontier’ tour whilst Adam was sitting at number one in the charts. It all seemed to be going so well, and then suddenly it all went wrong and they split up. A lot of bands, I think, have that experience and we can all name bands who we feel should have been really big, but then something happened to prevent them breaking through. This is the story of one such band, as recalled by singer Dill (Stephen Davies).

OUTSIDELEFT: What went wrong for Gods Toys back then, and how do you feel about it all now, looking back? Perhaps you could talk us through the rise of God's Toys, and then what happened to make it all fall apart?

Dill: We formed in about '78 I think. John Hobley, the drummer, was the last person to join. We did some gigs in Coventry, Rugby and Birmingham and got an agent called John Mostin, who was doing The Beat and groups like that. He started to put us on around the country, so we were playing Liverpool and Cornwall and everywhere and we were driving down in the van with the roadie and all our gear. Things were going very well. Adam Ant saw us at one of our gigs at The Camden Music Machine I think it was called and he wanted us to support them. We had Steve Gilmore as our London manager, and we had people in Coventry like John Rivers who ran Horizon Studios, who wanted to take on the band.  They wanted to put us into the studio that Paul Sampson (Pink Umbrellas/Reluctant Stereotypes) ran. What was that called? Single sleeve

OL:  Cabin Studios.

Dill: We were going to use the studio time that no one had booked, but Steve Gilmore, our London manager, said that the deal wasn't good enough. That was a pity because I read later that 10 CC did that, and they were able to go and record and really get used to recording and do whatever they wanted. We didn't have that and as a result I don't think our singles ever really captured God's toys. I do think we should have put 'God's Toys' out as the first single.  I think that was like our anthem, and it would have created more of a stir. Instead, we put out ‘All The Born Losers’, which got us Radio One Peter Powell sessions and stuff like that, but it never really took off. I think the highest we got to was number 114 in the charts. That was during the Ants tour for the second single, which was 'Everybody's Got A Mother', with 'Package Tours To Heaven' on the flip side.

 

OL: I always thought 'Package Tours To Heaven' should have been the A side of that, as it was a stronger song.

Dill: Funnily enough, the TV show, 'Something Else' that we did that track on was shown on the last night of the Adam and the Ants tour, and so the whole thing just sort of came to a climax.  We played Manchester Apollo that night, and we were on the telly! We watched the show before we went on stage, and I did the best gig I'd ever done in my life! I think they were recording Adam and the Ants at that one. The video cameras were there, but I don't think they recorded us. I would love to have seen that video, because I really did feel we were getting somewhere then and that things were going really well.

Dill Gods Toys


OL: Actually, that's a good point because, because there's very little video of God's Toys available.  The only one really is that 'Something Else' performance where you totally blew away the Banshees who were on the same show. I think the TV company that made that programme did a great job of it, because they staged it really nicely for you. You had dry ice, all the camera angles work really well, the sound is good, and it's a great performance. I am sure that without that, probably a lot less people would remember God's Toys now, because that video is mentioned over and over again. Martin Bowes, who was on the show talking about his Coventry fanzine Alternative Sounds, got you that slot.

Dill: We wouldn’t have got on TV without him doing that. We certainly wouldn't have got on Top of the Pops with a 114 placing. So, you know, it was just really good. I did some work for Martin for Alternative Sounds back when we were young punks, so it was kind of like a payback. I think he really did like the band, and the band was good, especially live. There was Larry with his hunchback and Nick, this weird, amazing, yellow man. I did my best, dancing around a lot.

 

OL: Touring wiyh Adam and the Ants must have been an experience.  Did you get paid by them to do that, or did you have to pay them to be on it? 

Dill: We got paid a little. Some of us could have signed on, but we were all over the country, so I was late signing on and we were living on two pounds each a day, and that was including fags and everything. Towards the end of the tour we were sleeping in the van every night. I think we only stayed in a Bed and Breakfast twice in a 32 day tour.   Literally the whole band were sleeping together in the van. We were going to motorway service stations at four in the morning and buying chips and stuff like that, whereas Adam and the Ants had a full buffet before they went on stage, but they didn't even eat it! They came from the hotel, straight through onto the stage, played, came back off stage and straight back to the hotel. There was all this food there laid out for them. We nicked a little bit of it and we had a couple of sandwiches and a beer when we got to each venue included on the Rider, but Nick was really vitriolic about it. He was really pissed off about it, because he felt that we were being misused, and that and nothing we could say or do was going to change that. Adam Ant was at number one in the charts at the time, and he was flying down to do Top of the Pops in a helicopter.  There were screaming girls, it was like Beatlemania, it really was. When we started the tour in Liverpool the audience was more punky type people, which were the original Adam and the Ants audience, but by the time we got to Edinburgh, there were thousands of screaming girls up against the barriers, being suffocated.  It was really quite amazing to watch. We were just the support band, but it was like being in the middle of a hurricane.

 

OL: Did that feel that was the wrong sort of audience for you? All the screaming girls, they really just wanted to see and lust after Adam, so you didn't get a fair hearing, whereas maybe at the start of the tour, it was more like the people that would have bought God's Toys records.

 Dill: I think so, but we were with an independent record label, Badge Records, we weren't signed to a major. We didn't get the push that a major would have given us. We just didn't do things properly, we didn't do things right. And so we suffered, I think. People say, "Oh, you were one of the bands that should have made it from Coventry" , you know, with the Specials making it and everything. People said they were very surprised that we didn't.  It was just a combination of things, really. You know, we looked good, but I wasn't a very good singer.  I know I wasn't. And we got tagged as New Romantics and we weren't, you know. So we were sort of stuck.  We weren't a Ska band so we couldn't represent Coventry in that movement. We were sort of stuck in the middle, sandwiched in the middle, and never felt right with either of the two movements that were happening at that time, which was 2 Tone and New Romantic, Towards the end of the tour, it did all take its toll on us.  I had terrible indigestion pretty much throughout the tour, like my throat was on fire. I was trying to drink milk, and coke to calm it, because Nick said milk will calm it, but it didn't.  I really should have got proper indigestion medicine, but we couldn't afford it.

Ants Tour poster

 

OL: That is hardly surprising really. If you're surviving on service station chips and leftover sandwiches, you're not having a great diet!

Dill: Of course, it was a long time ago, but two pounds is not a lot, is it? We were paid two pounds each a day for our food and fags, so we were all a bit demoralised.  Then, of course, we had the TV appearance, which was great. We had our records out. We were playing every day. It was a totally an adventure, and the band was getting really tight from playing every night.  The die hard Adam and the Ants fans used to come to every gig. They just followed the tour around. They were punks and all had similar names. Towards the end of the tour Nick started to travel with them to the gigs. He wouldn't travel with us. So, we're all thinking, is he going to turn up? What if they break down? You know, we've got to do a gig. Anyway, he did turn up, and didn't miss a gig, but I don't think he was very happy. I think, you know, it upset him about Adam and the Ants, their success, and the way that perhaps we could have been treated better by them. At least we didn't have to buy ourselves on to the tour, which was normal at the time, but we were on a small record label that wasn't really plugging us, as far as I know, and didn't have professional pluggers or anything. We got a few things going, but it just never took off. I was never happy with the songs that we recorded. I think Johnny Rivers second recording session was okay, but I wanted Trevor Horn! I was thinking of Frankie Goes to Hollywood, that was the sound I wanted and I was always disappointed with what we had; disappointed with my singing, and disappointed with our records. Really, we were just shouting at each other on the first single. I went outside to the van and put 'Echoes' on by Pink Floyd. I Just didn't want to be there. I just wanted to chill out. It just wasn't happening. I don't think I put in a great vocal performance either. I was very nervous.  We finished the Ants tour and we didn't really meet up for about two or three weeks after that. Larry and Chris Dickie were living in Jerry Dammer's house at Albany Road. You know, the 2 Tone house. They were living downstairs, and Jerry was upstairs. Larry had a mattress on the floor, and rats had got in and chewed all the bloody mattress up! All he wanted to do then was go home to his mummy. It was really cold too, as we had finished the tour in November. Anyway, we arranged to do a gig at the General Wolfe in Coventry on Christmas Eve.

 

OL: I was there!

Dill: We were going to start rehearsing for the gig, but Nick didn't want to have anything to do with it. We were supposed to pick him up for rehearsals. He was in bed and didn't want to come out and didn't want to do anything. He'd just had enough. We got him up anyway and to the rehearsal. Nick was the main song writer, but he wasn't writing anything at this point, he had a mental block or something. We started rehearsing a song that I'd done called 'Colossus'. John was doing like an Adam and the Ants type tom tom rhythm. We played it, and then - I don't know how it happened - Nick said something and we just broke up!  Literally, he just said, "right, well, I'm going".  We hadn't charted with the record and we were demoralised, I suppose. Apparently, we'd also come to the end of our two single record deal with Badge. However, when I formed 'I' and EMI wanted to sign us, they said that there's a third single we were contracted to do. Badge had never contacted us to say, 'when are you going to record the third single?', but apparently there was a third single that we were compelled to, do and Badge wanted, I think, £16,000 for me to come out of the deal and sign with EMI. So, I couldn't sign the EMI deal and that kind of fucked up the next band as well. That sort of thing happened a lot. I heard a lot of people saying, "oh yeah, our record company stiffed us " and that it's a regular thing in the music business. It's pretty cut throat business. So we (God's Toys) just ended there. We did that last gig. We did do a reunion gig about four or five years later, and, you know, it was good fun. We rehearsed for a week and did it but that was the end of God's Toys. It sort of fell off the edge, you know. It's really disappointing. There were things that were going on that I had nothing to do with. Some people have said I didn't want to do it because I felt I was a big rock star, but it wasn't the case at all. I wanted God's Toys to continue. I liked the music. I loved Nick's lyrics. I liked what we were doing. It was Nick, really, that didn't want to do it anymore. He'd had enough, you know. He was taking quite a few drugs. I don't think he was taking heroin or anything, but we all smoked cannabis. Perhaps it was to do with that, I don't know, but it literally went over the edge of the cliff, you know. The last gig was that one at the General Wolfe on Christmas Eve. Then the first 'I' gig was April the first '82 - April Fool's Day!  So, I was up and running again by April after God's Toys ended, but I'd always say that God's Toys were the best live band and had the best characters and music.

 

OL: There wasn't really anything quite like God's Toys around at that time. There was only one God's Toys really. I don’t think you were copying other people in the way that you were doing that. So, it is a bit of a shame, but it sounds to me as if a lot of things conspired against you. You know, you had bad treatment on the Ants tour and were playing to the wrong audience at the end of that, because it was all teeny boppers. You really needed to be on a bigger label, and you were recording in Woodbine Studios, which had a very toppy, trebly, kind of sound, which suited Ska, but what you needed was a big London studio with a bigger producer, to get that bigger sound

Dill: The guy that Badge sent to produce us was a guy called Wally Brill. He bought a guy called Julian along with him, who was a session keyboard player, but I don't think Nick wanted anybody else do his keyboards.  This was standard stuff in the music business. They bring session musicians in to help make the record better. We had two days to do it, and John Hobley said Wally was a bit of a wally and not very 'brill'! It sounded okay, but it wasn't a hit, and it wasn't Frankie Goes to Hollywood. That's what I wanted. I wanted a Sex Pistols record, you know, and didn't really get it. So, I was a bit disillusioned with the recording side of things, and it would have been better for us to get somebody who could give us a bigger sound. But, you know, he did use a harmonizer on the snare, which was quite nice, fattened the snare up a lot, but it just didn't happen.

 

OL: I wanted to ask you about the impact the break up had on your mental health. Nick's also had some problems in that area too I heard.

Dill: That contributed, I think. I've been schizophrenic since I was 17. I've heard voices and stuff since I had too much cannabis one day and flipped. I don't smoke cannabis anymore, and that was a contributing factor. I tried to hide my symptoms because I was breaking the law, you know. it's difficult for me to say whether that contributed to God's Toys demise, but then I did my best. And, you know, we all did really. It was just sad that it never happened. I'd love to have gone around the world doing the music, but I believe in guardian angels and things. I'm a Christian, so I think it'll all turn out okay at the end.  It is sad that John is schizophrenic as well, and Nick is bipolar. Chris is as well. He did quite well. He became an engineer and worked with the Rolling Stones and all sorts of things. He taught music in Australia and now he's finished and retired, and Larry is sort of down on his houseboat by the Thames. I went to see him. We are all still in touch. It was a great band, and I was glad that was part of it.

 

OL: I wanted to ask you about the 'Sent from Coventry' compilation album of local bands that came out on Cherry Red at the time, which your old friend Martin Bowes was involved in putting together. That's seen now as quite a summary of the local scene at the time, but people have always said that there was a big omission, which is that it didn't have God's Toys on it. Was that to do with the record label? Or was that a decision that you made as a band?

Dill:  I'd love to have been on it, you know.  It was a pity. I bet Martin was quite hurt, really. I think it was Nick that said no, as far as I know. He felt he was 100% a genius, and he let everybody know. He was a bit of a narcissist.  He was really very, very talented. I just think it went to his head a bit. That's probably the reason for the breakup, you know. it was very much Nick, who was the one that wrote the music and the lyrics, who didn't want to do it anymore, perhaps because of the Ants tour. He didn't want anything to do with music anymore. He stopped making music after that.

Nick Gods Toys

 

OL: Nick has got a YouTube channel now, hasn't he? He has put out lot of the old God's Toys demos on there since, and on your own Bandcamp channel you've also put together a collection, an album I suppose, of what might have been. But these are just demos. I don't know how you feel about making these things available now and the substandard nature of them. You did touch earlier on the fact that they weren't recorded as well as you would have liked. Would it would have been better just to leave the past behind and only have the better recorded songs remaining?

Dill: Nick had already put them out on YouTube. He and Steve Gilmore, our old manager, had got together and tried to do something with them, but the actual result wasn't very good. I tried to remaster them, but the tape hiss and everything, you know, it was not good. Because people still wanted to get hold of God's Toys songs, I just remastered it all and put them on my Bandcamp site. So, if anybody wants ever to have them, they can just download them for free.  I must admit, I still love the songs, and I wish that we'd recorded them properly and got a result with it, but it just didn't happen.  I don't want to keep looking back. I am looking forward. I'm really enjoying recording. I love doing my music, because it's just me. There is no 'us' or 'we', it's 'I'. So, yeah, I'm very happy. I just want this to be a success. I've left all my money to charity and I love living in Blackpool. It's brilliant being by the sea.  I'm quite happy I never married.  I haven't had a relationship for 40 years, so I'm sort of on my own. I'm a loner. I would do a God's Toys album, if somebody asked me, but it just didn't  happen for us. We made the wrong decisions and it wasn't to be.

 

OL: Just to end with, use your imagination. Imagine that God's Toys had have got that big contract, and you were on your second or third album. Where do you think it would have gone? What do you think God's Toys would have been like by album number three or four?

Dill: I don't know. I just don't think it was meant to be, Alan. I don't think that situation could ever have existed. Nick is actually writing again, and if he wants me to, I'll put singing on it.  He is recording, or starting to at least, and I said just send me them if you want. I've said to Larry too, send me stuff and I'll do this, that, and the other. I've just bought a tablet to write lyrics again, because I'm going to sit on the beach and tap, tap away, and write some lyrics.   I'm using other people's backing tracks, which is great, and I'm just really enjoying recording each Friday, and doing that right through the year, you know.  I just love doing it. I do have to be careful with paying for everything, because, it's £100 a shot, but I do 10 songs in four hours.

 

OL: I know you have released over 200 albums now, and written more songs than anyone else in the world, including lightweights like Paul McCartney, so when you get close to releasing album 250 we will come back to you and talk about that.  Thanks for being so open about the demise of Gods Toys.  It’s a story I'm sure a lot of people will identify with.


Essential Information:  Download an album worth of Gods Toys for whatever you want to pay here

Check out Dill's 200+ albums created as 'DaffoDill' here

 

 

Alan Rider
Contributing Editor

Alan Rider is a Norfolk based writer and electronic musician from Coventry, who splits his time between excavating his own musical past and feeding his growing band of hedgehogs, usually ending up combining the two. Alan also performs in Dark Electronic act Senestra and manages the indie label Adventures in Reality.


about Alan Rider »»

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