These are exciting and extraordinary times for everyone in the Little Angels camp. The London show at O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire sold out within days, as a rollercoaster of excitement greeted the news of the Big, Bad & Back Tour. Three more dates were added, and the original lineup of Toby Jepson, guitarist Bruce Dickinson, Jim Dickinson (keyboards), Mark Plunkett (bass) and drummer Mark Richardson are excited to get in the rehearsal room and get things moving.
“It’s been in the planning for quite a while,” Toby Jepson told MetalTalk, “but you know it’s like herding cats with a fork trying to keep a band together, especially given the fact that the Little Angels have been split up thirty-two years and only came back in the interim period fourteen years ago when we did the 2012 tour.
“But, the great thing about that tour was it put us in mind of ‘hey, we can do this again, we’d like to do this again’. It was just a question of when. Of course, when’s the big one, because we’ve all been leading different lives, and quite a lot of tumultuous things happened over the last twelve to thirteen years to all of us in lots of different ways.
“But we sat down a couple of years ago and thought, well, if we’re gonna do this, we want to do it properly, and we want to correct some stuff and have a really good go at it. I think 2012 was a great tour, but it was really very emotional. That tour was built on the back of and prompted by the death of Michael Lee, a savage blow to us.
“But it did get us all back together in a room, and so the emotions were very high on that tour. I think we were just glad to be there. This time around, it feels different. It feels a lot more solid. I think we feel that this won’t be the only tour, and there are other things that we would like to do.
“Weirdly, the planets have all aligned, and everyone’s got gaps in their schedule over the next couple of years. There are various reductions in work processes, and things like that are going on with all the guys in the band. So, it just seemed to be the right time.
“It’s a weird one because you can sit around talking about it. We started talking about it a couple of years ago, and it really was jarring as there was no way it was going to work, as this got in the way, and that got in the way. Then somebody got ill, and then this happened, and that happened. It just felt like we were wading through treacle.
“But then the skies cleared, we got talking about it again, and all of a sudden it was like nothing was getting in the way. Everything felt good, and all the conversations we had felt positive, so we just decided to push the green button, and here we are.”
While the recent promo photo shoot was not the first time Little Angels had been in touch since the 2012 tour, they have not been back in a rehearsal room yet.
“Our lives have intersected quite a lot over those years,” Toby said. “We’re very firm friends. Mark Plunkett spends quite a lot of time in Thailand. He splits his time between there and the UK, so he’s away most of the winter, so I haven’t seen an awful lot of him. But I’ve kept in touch via Zoom. I see a lot of Jim because he lives very close to me down here in the southwest, so we see each other socially.
“Mark Richardson and I have worked on a couple of projects where he’s played drums on things I’ve done, specifically a couple of film projects I was working on. With Bruce [Dickinson, guitar], we see each other when we do, and it’s all really good.
“We haven’t actually been in a room to play as a band yet at all, so that’s what we’re planning at the moment. We’ve got our rehearsal schedules building now. It’s like trying to juggle treacle. You’re trying to get those moments.
“Mark R [Richardson, Drummer] is still in Skunk Anansie, of course. I’ve got film projects that I’m working on, which are coming to fruition, so we’re trying to make that all work.
“But again, amazingly, we’ve managed to do it. We’ve got four or five big chunks through the year where we can go and have a couple of weeks where we’re going to be together rehearsing. We’re determined to put a bomb ass show together for this tour and really deliver on the promise of what Little Angels used to be in lots of ways, but bringing it into now.”
Bruce lives in the Shetland Islands, having moved up from Brighton, which further illustrates the logistical challenges. The craziest commute of all time,” Toby says. “What it comes down to is how willing you are to do these things, and I think we all cherish the relationship we have with our fans.
“I think anyone who was a Little Angels fan back in the day, when we were at our height, knows how much the fans meant to us and the relationship we built over so many years. It was furious, and it was completely and utterly committed. They honour us.
“What I’ve realised over the last week or so, watching breathlessly as the ticket sales went up and up and up, and we had to keep adding shows, was that the fans honoured us with their presence. That’s the way I look at it. It’s not the other way around.
“The reality is, if it wasn’t for the fans, we wouldn’t be here, and we have such a loyal following, and it hasn’t waned one iota. That’s the astounding thing. All those people who were there at the Jammed On Demand tour that were buying those records back in the day that came to our shows, they’re still there, they still want to take part. They still relish it. They still think about our music as something very important to their lives. It hasn’t diminished.
“That is the greatest accolade I think we could ever have, and we want to do right by them. I was chatting with Bruce, and we feel so connected to our audience that we want to do the greatest show for them they’ve ever seen. The other people outside of the cordon who don’t like the band, I don’t really care what they think. What I care about is the people who care about us, and it’s apparent that there are plenty of them.”
There is an overwhelming love and connection between the fans and Little Angels. It is clear, talking to Toby, that he and the band are genuinely blown away by the response to the tour being announced.
“Little Angels left on a high,” Toby says. “We always say it’s a bit of a cliché now about our history, but we finished at the highest point. We literally did a Number One album at the Royal Albert Hall, 7,500 tickets, whatever it was.
“Then we were gone. So there’s a kind of strange poetry to that, a sort of mystery to it all, which has been built. The mythology has been built through that since then, and it’s grown and grown and grown, I think. We want to hold on to that. We want to make sure that it’s maintained, making sure that the levels people remember us at aren’t dipped below.
“So, trying to put a tour together that reflects the legacy is where it could go. The fact that we are men in our fifties now, it’s going to be strange singing Too Much Too Young, but maybe it actually makes more sense now.
“Putting the tour together is difficult, but we work with the Academy Music Group, which obviously is a Live Nation company, and the great Andy Coppin’s in our corner. He’s part of the organisation and the management of this project, and he will be for a while because Andy’s been a great mate of ours.
“These are really high-calibre people, and they understand the audience. They understand what it takes to put a great tour together, and it’s not easy. We held our breath when we announced the tour because there were some big holes in the touring schedule. You’ve got to get a venue that’s available. You’ve got to make sure that it works in the routing. It’s really complicated putting a major tour together at this kind of level.
“There were the inevitable ‘why aren’t you playing in my backyard’ style comments. But I’m not one who makes a fuss about that because I understand that. I really do.
“When I was a kid living in Scarborough and Thin Lizzy came to Scarborough, I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t go, actually, weirdly, because I was too young, but the very fact that they even turned up was an astounding thing. Status Quo used to come every year to Scarborough, and it used to make me feel like haven’t forgotten us. So I totally get it.
“Unfortunately, these days it’s very complicated to make tours work. It’s extremely expensive, and so we have to balance all that stuff against where we go and who we’re going to disappoint because you’re going to disappoint somebody.”
The response to the tour has been massive and has exceeded expectations. “Honestly, I couldn’t believe it,” Toby says. “When we announced the tickets, we were like, okay, we’ve got nine months to sell these tickets. I’ll be really, really chuffed if we do 80% of everything. It would be really, really great. That’s what I was aiming for personally.
“But the tickets flew out. I got a phone call halfway through Friday saying London’s gone. I’m like, what? London’s sold out? I genuinely thought they were joking. I was like, come on, no. What?.”
We’re gonna have to put the other one on sale
Andy Copping, “in his massive wisdom,” had put the O2 Forum Kentish Town on hold for the day after the Shepherd’s Bush Empire show, “just in case.” Toby says that he did not think they would need that.
“With the greatest will in the world, I’d just be really happy to sell out O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire,” he says. “I was jaw on the floor, and to this day, I think we’re almost halfway sold in the Forum. But it’s getting there.
“It’s just astounding, and I don’t know what to say about it. I think there must be something about the band, something about that era of music that is now becoming more relevant than ever before. I think people are going back and listening to the music and regarding it differently.
“I also think there’s an awful lot of bands that are no longer playing, like Aerosmith and Whitesnake. Lots of other bands are coming to the end of their careers. Maybe this is our time. Maybe we can come back and do plenty of stuff, and I hope we can. I genuinely do.”
Part Two of this interview with Toby Jepson will air shortly. Little Angels will be joined by Luke Morley of Thunder and Tour tickets are on sale via Ticketmaster. For more details, visit littleangelsofficial.com.
