Jane Walker


During her time in the New Zealand music scene, Jane Walker was as much an iconoclast as Toy Love, the band in which she became well known. Apart from Clare Elliott – Zero in the Suburban Reptiles – there were very few female musicians in the early punk and post-punk bands.

Jane was not there for novelty or shock value, though she was unmissable in her thrown together, primary coloured, op-shop outfits. On stage, while all was chaos at the microphone, she was one of four musicians keeping the maelstrom together. Toy Love was the sum of its parts, each distinctive, but her clavinet gave the band a pop element that helped transport those great songs – credited to every member – beyond the post-punk audience.

Toy Love: Paul Kean, Mike Dooley (rear), Jane Walker (front), Chris Knox and Alec Bathgate
Jane Walker in Titirangi, 2011.
Photo credit: Stuart Page
Jane Walker's illustration for 'Toy Love on Toy Love', Rip It Up Extra, 1980
Jane Walker with Jed Town and Anna Bailey, Titirangi, 2011.
Photo credit: Stuart Page
Mike Dooley, Paul Kean and Jane Walker in Sydney, early 1980
Photo credit: Photo by Carol Tippet
Toy Love album, 1980; cover designed by Jane Walker
Jane Walker, Toy Love in the studio.
Photo credit: Murray Cammick
Squeeze (with remastered audio)
Jane Walker, c. 1979
Photo credit: Jane Walker collection
Interview with Jane Walker, bFM, 2012
Jane Walker with Stuart Page and Jed Town, Titirangi, 2011.
Photo credit: Stuart Page
Chris Knox and Jane Walker, Toy Love, Island of Real, 1979
Photo credit: Murray Cammick
Toy Love in Christchurch, outside the Gladstone, probably in October 1979: Chris Knox, Jane Walker, Paul Kean, Mike Dooley and Alec Bathgate.

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