With the Big, Bad & Back UK tour locked for November 2026 and early ticket demand strong enough to force extra dates, Toby Jepson told MetalTalk in Part One of this interview that this Little Angels reunion feels nothing like the emotional 2012 return, but more “solid”, more planned, and built to last.
The original Little Angels lineup may not have hit the rehearsal room yet, and the logistics are borderline ridiculous (including Bruce Dickinson’s Shetland commute), but the band’s shared priority is clear. Honour the loyalty that never faded, and deliver a show worthy of the legacy, then take things further from there.
The enduring pull of Little Angels and bands like Thunder comes down to genuinely great songwriting. Fans first fell in love with the songs for their immediacy and energy, but years later, those same lyrics land differently because life has caught up with them.
As listeners grow older and move through heartbreaks, hard-won lessons, and changes they could not have imagined in their youth, the meaning deepens and the emotional “resonance” shifts, proof that the best songs do not age out, they reveal new layers with every lived experience.
“I think that’s true,” Toby says. “I think the one thing that we tried to do from the very start was to be as honest and as authentic as we possibly could be. Now, when you’re very young, when we first put the band together, we were eighteen years old, you don’t really know what you’re doing. You know you haven’t got a lot of life experience, of course, and you’re really approximating it all.
“You know you’re standing on the shoulders of giants. For us, we leaned into things like Queen and Van Halen and Bon Jovi because they were breaking at the time as we started to put our band together. Bon Jovi blew the doors off everything, and we wanted to be them. That’s the truth.
“But we loved Def Leppard, we loved Boston and were all into those sorts of bands. All those bands are melodic bands. None of us was particularly into the harder stuff. We all loved Metallica, and we all followed them, and they were very much part of our listening tapes on the bus, but we knew what we were.
“The principal idea of Little Angels was to talk about where we came from and escaping a small town, how you can take on the world and how anything’s possible. That’s what I wrote about. All those lyrics are mine.
“I wrote every single lyric in the band and most of the melodies and a lot of the songs, but it was all prompted by our own collective experience, how we dealt with going on the road as young people, especially from a town like Scarborough, which is cut off in the northeast of England.
“We ended up becoming a big fish in a small pond until we got to London, and then of course, all of a sudden, you’re faced with all these other amazing musicians and these bands, and you’re no longer that, so you’ve got to compete. You’ve got to be as good as them.
“We had some amazing experiences along the way because we opened for Guns N’ Roses, Tesla and Faith No More the first time all of those bands came through. They all taught us valuable lessons, and we went back to Scarborough with our tails between our legs most of the time, back into the rehearsal room thinking, oh my goodness, we’ve got to be as good as those bands.
“So I think all of those things went into the music, and I think we’ve lived by that. The one thing that I always wanted to do as a songwriter is that I’ve never been concerned about what other people think about my music. I don’t mean that to sound arrogant. You have to write the music for yourself. That’s the principle. You have to do it for yourself, you have to please yourself first, and then you hope that it will please other people.
“Even though there were a lot of naysayers about Little Angels, we weren’t the coolest band. We just weren’t. But to our fans, what we were doing was speaking their own language, and I think that’s why we’ve managed to maintain it.
“They were the same as us. They were the same age as us, they understood the same things, they’d come out of the same kinds of school, they knew the same kinds of streets in the towns, and that’s where our authenticity came from. I do believe the songs maintain that, and probably, as you say, resonate now more because you can reflect upon them.
“Also, the key thing is that we got on the radio and were a chart band, much to the hatred of an awful lot of the rock press. It’s always surprised me that you try to become successful, you get on the radio, and you’re all over the radio and all of a sudden you’re being slagged off by people for being popular. It’s a very odd relationship.
“It didn’t hurt Bon Jovi, it didn’t hurt Def Leppard, it didn’t hurt Whitesnake, and I always used to hang on to that. I used to think, no, the reality is this is our music. I’m not trying to ape anyone else now. I don’t want to write songs like anyone else. I just want to write our songs, and if they work, they work, and if they don’t, well, what can I do about that?
“I think we all sort of felt that we stood out in our own little world. IIt was sort of like a little island, really, and I genuinely think that’s the reason why we’re the sort of band people remember and want to take part in again.
“It stands for something in a way. That era with Thunder, The Almighty, Gun, Skin, Dogs D’Amour and us and all those other bands, it was a kind of movement. I’ve heard it being called ‘Brit Rock’ these days, or it was the ‘Brit Rock period’.
“Well, if we were part of that, which I think we were, and we were one of the main bands in that era, then I’m really proud of that, and I think the fans remember that. We definitely did attain heights that a lot of bands didn’t because we got on the radio. I think that’s the key thing, really.”
Despite this gatekeeper attitude from some, Little Angels pushed through and had success, and this inspired others. There is a great band called This House We Built from Scarborough, whose singer, Scott, said he was inspired to get into music by coming along to a Little Angels gig.
“Yeah, which is amazing,” Toby says. “I think that’s true. I think every generation is inspired by the previous generation, and that’s a great thing to hear. I’ve heard that from a few bands, and I can definitely hear an element of what we were trying to do in a number of bands today.
“Because the fact of the matter is, a lot of those people have probably got a Little Angels record. We were amongst the Def Leppard’s, amongst the Bon Jovi’s, amongst all those bands, so that it was just yet another record. I think I forget that we were amongst all of that stuff, so it’s great to hear that.
“It was a different time back then. The print media and everything that surrounded the way a band was promoted were so entirely different from what they are now. I enjoy the freedom of the way that the press works now and the fact that fans can create their own, whether it be a podcast, a kind of fan site or a Facebook group, so they’re not concerned with the sort of minutiae of what it means to promote.
“They just love the band, and they love the music, and they want to talk about it, and that’s so powerful. It really is people power. The print media and the big corporations no longer have a stranglehold over everyone to tell you what you’ve got to listen to.”
Toby Jepson has said that for the Little Angels reunion tour of 2012, they did not do things as they wanted, then, because it was emotional. What was not quite right with that 2012 tour?
“Well, for a start, we didn’t have Mark Richardson playing the drums because he was involved with Skunk Anansie and had a prior arrangement with that,” Toby says. “So we used Dominic from Reef, who was wonderful. Dom was a great guy to have in the band, but he wasn’t the drummer that we would normally have used. So it was a bit strange going on stage with a totally different player, so that was a bit of a jar.
“As much as we love Dom, and we massively appreciated him stepping in, it wasn’t Mark. Mark’s got a very certain muscularity to the way he plays, as did Michael Lee. We’ve always chosen drummers who were utter powerhouses. There’s been a bit of argy-bargy online about us calling this ‘the original lineup’, rather than the classic lineup, and I think that does hold some water.
“I think that’s true to a degree. But you know what, Mark for us was one of the original members because he made a record with us, he toured with us, he’s part of the family. Poor Michael Lee, that can’t even be levelled at us really, but I think it was more to do with the fact that the focus on it was getting back in each other’s lives and re-addressing what it meant and how the songs were going to transfer and how we were going to deal with that.
“I can only talk for myself, but I have discussed it with Bruce and Jim, and I think we all have our own versions of it, but my version was that I was just so glad to be on that stage with those lads. I just felt so privileged to be there with them and so thankful that we were back in each other’s lives.
“The focus wasn’t on let’s get the set perfect, let’s make something really unusual, let’s try looking at this, let’s try looking at that, let’s do this song over here that we’ve never done before. None of that was even in the mix.
“It was more about just getting through the gigs and just happy to be there and reconnecting with people and making a statement that we were able to still play these songs. So that was the inference.
“So it wasn’t the case that we did anything wrong. It was more a question of how it felt. But this time around, we’ve already done that, we’ve cleared that bit away, and it feels a lot more solid.
“It feels like the old days, I mean, it really does. When we launched the tour last week, it completely put me back into those times when we were talking to Mike at ITB and the promoters with MCP and all these guys about anticipating ticket sales for the latest tour on the latest album. It felt like that.
“2012 didn’t feel like that to me. 2012 felt to me like, okay, let’s go and have a go, let’s see what happens and let’s just do the best job we can, let’s do a greatest hits package and just remind people of who we are. This isn’t that. This is something a lot deeper, a lot more layered, a lot more dynamic and a lot more future-based.”
I have seen Little Angels everywhere, from huge places like Milton Keynes Bowl and Wembley Stadium, through to the Oval Rock House pub in Norwich, which was probably the sweatiest gig I have ever been to.
There seemed to be a bit of an issue near the end of last year when Norwich UEA leaked early that there was going to be a show there, and that started causing the ball to roll and possibly could have forced Toby’s hand a little.
“It was a weird one because in a strange way it did us a little bit of a favour, but we genuinely did not engineer that. It was just the promoter’s rep or whoever it was in the office got a little bit joyful and decided to say something. We’d obviously put an embargo on it. We were trying to close it down.
“But of course those things leak out, and of course it sends Chinese whispers, but there’s nothing we could do about it. For a number of reasons, we wanted to be very careful. We didn’t want to say something that wasn’t going to come true. That’s the main reality to it.
“There was a chance that the dates would have to be moved and we’d have to change things around for a number of reasons, but we decided to stick with them. It was just a bit of a, ‘oh no, what are we gonna do?’ but actually it did us a little bit of a favour because it got the rumour mill spinning and that buzz started, which is exciting for everyone.”
The tour opens in Glasgow. As we know, the Glasgow fans are so fanatical. How is Toby Jepson going to feel?
“Oh goodness me,” he smiles. “I know that that’s the $64,000 question, isn’t it. Well, it’s the biggest venue we’ll ever have played in Glasgow in our career. We always used to play Barrowlands, which has a slightly lower capacity than the Academy. It’s an old cinema, a fantastic old building. I’ve played there a couple of times with Gun, and I also played there when Wayward Sons opened for Steel Panther.
“It’s a fantastic venue. It’s a barn of a place, it’s enormous. But when it’s rocking, when it’s full, and it’s pumping, my goodness me, it is one of those shows where the roof just goes up. I’m really looking forward to it.
“As ever, if you don’t feel nervous, then you’re in the wrong job. You’ve got to feel a bit nervous. You have to feel that adrenaline pumping, and for me, it’s all about preparation. It’s all about knowing what we’re doing. I’m a big one for rehearsals and detail.
“We’ve got a fantastic lighting director that we’re involving, a young lad who I’ve worked with before. We’ve got a brilliant front of house guy, Jess Walton, who me and Bruce have worked with a number of times, so our front house team are impeccable, as are the stage team.
“It’s all about that stuff for me, knowing that we are a finely oiled machine and we go through the rehearsals correctly, which we will do. What you have to say to yourself is when you go in front of an audience like that, when you’re in front of 2,500 people all expecting you to be as good as you ever were, you’ve got to just hold your breath and just do the job.
“You can’t pretend. You can’t all of a sudden do rehearsals and then, oh my God, we’re now on stage. It doesn’t work like that. You’ve just got to do the gig as you’ve done at the rehearsal and that’s it. Then it builds its own atmosphere as you go along.
“The great thing is that we’re all very experienced, and I haven’t stopped doing gigs and I haven’t stopped playing Little Angels songs ever since the band split up. As far as I’m concerned, I know all the words off pat.
“I think it will be an extraordinary feeling. I mean, Glasgow’s always a special place to play. We’ve played a lot there over the years, but Scotland and Glasgow specifically are a real rock ‘n’ roll town. Opening the tour there is going to be brilliant.”
It is sure to be an incredible night for everyone, for the fans and particularly Little Angels hitting that stage and the euphoria that will doubtless fill the place. There is a lovely bit of symmetry as Luke Morley is the opener for the tour, and Toby performed a solo slot opening for Thunder for their tour in 2006.
“Luke’s great,” Toby says. “When we were talking about who the special guest would be, his name came up immediately, and we all felt that was the right thing to do. We invited him, and he was gracious enough to accept. We feel extremely privileged to have him on the tour.
“Luke’s a giant in the rock business, and he’s a wonderful chap. He brings that legacy of Thunder and, of course, at the moment, because Danny’s recovering from his injuries, who knows what’s going to happen with Thunder. I really sincerely hope they get a chance to go out and play again.
“But whilst we’re waiting for that wonderful moment when they can return, we’re delighted to have Luke with us, and I’m sure he’ll play some Thunder tracks. I’m such a big fan of him as a guitar player, and I think the solo record he put out last year was great. I’ve got nothing but respect for the guy, and of course, I’ve got a couple of my mates playing in his band.
“I’ve got Dean Howard from T’Pau, who used to play in my solo band. He’s playing guitar for a second guitar for him, so it’s like having a bit of my family around me, really, in lots of ways. It just harks back to that great golden period of rock to have Luke on that stage. It’s gonna be great, I can’t wait. I’m getting goosebumps just talking about it frankly. It will be thrilling.”
This Little Angels reunion is not going to be one and done. While it is, maybe, a bit too early to start looking forward, Toby says there “definitely” will be more to come.
“I made the point to the guys that from my own point of view, I’ve got lots of other things going on,” Toby says. “It isn’t the end of Wayward Sons, for instance. I definitely want to keep Wayward Sons going. We will make another Wayward Sons album. I don’t quite know when that will be, but you know that band is very important to me.
“I’ve made three albums with Wayward Sons, made three albums with Little Angels, so you know these things can all work in conjunction with each other. It doesn’t have to be about one thing, and I think these days that’s quite common.
“But Little Angels is extremely important. The very fact we can do this is exceptionally important to us all. I said to the guys, ‘Look, if we’re gonna do it, if we’re willing, why not think about the medium to long term as well,’ and everyone went, ‘Yeah, let’s do that.’
“We’ve been offered it all, every festival in Europe under the sun. We’re talking to various people. We’ve got some really big plans and some great ideas with some really great offers from people. That probably means new music at some point, but I’m not certain when and how that’s going to be. We’ve been discussing that, but I’m trying to keep that not so obvious and look at what that can be.
“The question is, how do we preserve what Little Angels means to the audience? How do we bring it into the now as men in our fifties, and how do we hold that conversation, because I don’t write songs willy-nilly.
“My songs and ultimately the band’s songs have to reflect who we are and have to reflect the times, and they have to make sense. Above all, with Little Angels, they have to be really optimistic because most of our stuff was very, very optimistic, really or at least searching the human condition, and so it’s about trying to find that.
“What are the key things that make Little Angels tick that we can bring into the now, and can we make music that will equal, if not better, what we’ve done before.
“So that’s quite a tall order. Now we’ve got a bit of an idea. We’ve got a bit of a plan which we’re working on, but nothing is cast in stone. I do think it would be a little bit foolish not to have some kind of new music in the market if we’re gonna continue for the next two or three years, but I just don’t know what it’s going to be yet.”
It’s all to play for, so exciting times. People cannot wait for the tour and cannot wait to see Little Angels back on stage, where they all belong, experiencing that thrill once again.
“Thank you for saying that, and I think we all feel the same,” Toby says. “Just because it’s been done before doesn’t mean to say it can’t come again, and just because the body wearies, it doesn’t mean to say the spirit is also weary.
“We feel completely excited about this and feel like a bunch of teenagers again, so it’s just a joy to even have the chance. The very fact that it’s kicked off with such aplomb and such a kind of power with it all, it’s honestly, and I’m not just saying it, blown us all away.
“We are all so surprised and grateful for it, and that’s not being disingenuous. We absolutely genuinely mean that. It’s like we don’t expect anything. It’s one of the great things about the guys, I think, all of us, we’ve never had those expectations. We all feel that we’re there at the behest of the audience, and that’s it.
“If the audience wasn’t interested, then we would accept that, that’s the relationship we have. But no, joyfully, it’s the other way. It’s exciting, really exciting.”
Tickets are on sale via Ticketmaster. For more details, visit littleangelsofficial.com.
