We're just in the door at Rewind South 2025, and Carol Decker greets us. Not due on stage until the following day, the T'Pau powerhouse has decided to amble down to the festival which happens to be on her doorstep; "I'm socializing today. I live in Henley, so I get to come and hang", she says. The face and voice behind the '80s giants, Carol has lost none of abilities, or indeed her charm; "I've still got most of the pipes", she says, modestly; "I am a bit older, but just you have to look after yourself". Talking that first burst of success, working with Queen producer Roy Thomas Baker, and plans to celebrate the 40th anniversary of 'Bridge of Spies', we sat down with the heart and soul of the '80s giants. Between the lines; Eamon O'Neill.
Photo: Eamon O'Neill.
Hi Carol, how are you doing?
I'm good. I'm socializing today. I live in Henley, so I get to come and hang and just watch other people work hard, and all the people having a good time in the audience.
It's the ideal festival for you, isn't it? T'Pau are massively associated with the '80s, and you get to come and perform here regularly.
I do, and what's lovely is, it's just down the hill from my house. Just lately I've been traveling a lot, which is great because it's good to get work, and I've been up in Scotland a lot for some reason. I don't know why. It goes that way; last year, I kept getting booked in Ireland, Scotland and Germany, so I always seem to be on a plane, so it's really nice just to roll down the hill and do a little singing.
The history of the band is incredible. You worked with Roy Thomas Baker, and your first single was a number one, right?
No, the first was number four; 'Heart and Soul' was the first, and that was number four here, and number four in America. Incredible for us. And then 'China' was on the second single. That was number one for five weeks in the UK.
It was a very different single for that time; you had the strings, and the production was very lush. What was it like recording that track?
Well, like you said, we did that with Roy Thomas Baker, who did many, many great albums. He was a Grammy Award winning producer, but of course, he produced 'Bohemian Rhapsody', so that gives you some idea where his brain comes from. We gave him the cassette of a half-finished version of 'China in Your Hand', because we were out doing the first album 'Bridge of Spies' [1987] in Wisconsin with him, and one of the tracks wasn't working. We were a track short, essentially, and he said; "what else have you got?" I said; "well, I've got this. We're were kind of halfway through this", and it was literally Ronnie [Rogers] on the piano and me with the vocals, and not even with all the lyrics completely formed. And he just said; "that is a fantastic song", so I had to quickly finish the lyrics in my bedroom at the studio, and then he just had that huge vision for it, like he did with lots of the other bands he'd done.
Your vocals are a key aspect; did he produce that, or was that all coming from you?
Of course he produced the vocal, but I sound how I sound, and I do interpret songs as a singer. I'm quite emotional, I think, when I sing. I pull terrible faces on stage to get some of those high notes. You really have to pull a horrible face, like you're on the toilet, so I hate pictures of me performing live. Again, I'm an emotional singer, but Roy had an incredible sense of production and high drama for things as well.
That album was such a success, and after a couple more albums, the band split.
That went quadruple platinum, 'Rage' [1988], our second album was platinum, massive album, then 'The Promise' [1991] was gold, so slightly lesser sales, but still top 10, still a gold album. And then, yeah, long, long story short, because obviously we'd be here for a week, but like a lot of bands, it just all began to fall apart. You know, egos, people are changing, record company wants this, you want to do that, and then the public turned away from the '80s.
I was just about to ask about that; did the changing decade affect you?
Oh, we were out in the cold, completely. If you listen to 'The Promise', our third album, it's an incredibly well produced album, and quite underrated, if I say so myself, but it came out in 1991, by which time everybody was looking at The Stone Roses and The Farm. We were like, just old hat, old fashioned. We didn't fit at all.
There's a famous phrase; 'Nirvana killed my career'; was it one of those?
Yeah, probably. They probably did, yeah, Stone Roses as well.
I'm good. I'm socializing today. I live in Henley, so I get to come and hang and just watch other people work hard, and all the people having a good time in the audience.
It's the ideal festival for you, isn't it? T'Pau are massively associated with the '80s, and you get to come and perform here regularly.
I do, and what's lovely is, it's just down the hill from my house. Just lately I've been traveling a lot, which is great because it's good to get work, and I've been up in Scotland a lot for some reason. I don't know why. It goes that way; last year, I kept getting booked in Ireland, Scotland and Germany, so I always seem to be on a plane, so it's really nice just to roll down the hill and do a little singing.
The history of the band is incredible. You worked with Roy Thomas Baker, and your first single was a number one, right?
No, the first was number four; 'Heart and Soul' was the first, and that was number four here, and number four in America. Incredible for us. And then 'China' was on the second single. That was number one for five weeks in the UK.
It was a very different single for that time; you had the strings, and the production was very lush. What was it like recording that track?
Well, like you said, we did that with Roy Thomas Baker, who did many, many great albums. He was a Grammy Award winning producer, but of course, he produced 'Bohemian Rhapsody', so that gives you some idea where his brain comes from. We gave him the cassette of a half-finished version of 'China in Your Hand', because we were out doing the first album 'Bridge of Spies' [1987] in Wisconsin with him, and one of the tracks wasn't working. We were a track short, essentially, and he said; "what else have you got?" I said; "well, I've got this. We're were kind of halfway through this", and it was literally Ronnie [Rogers] on the piano and me with the vocals, and not even with all the lyrics completely formed. And he just said; "that is a fantastic song", so I had to quickly finish the lyrics in my bedroom at the studio, and then he just had that huge vision for it, like he did with lots of the other bands he'd done.
Your vocals are a key aspect; did he produce that, or was that all coming from you?
Of course he produced the vocal, but I sound how I sound, and I do interpret songs as a singer. I'm quite emotional, I think, when I sing. I pull terrible faces on stage to get some of those high notes. You really have to pull a horrible face, like you're on the toilet, so I hate pictures of me performing live. Again, I'm an emotional singer, but Roy had an incredible sense of production and high drama for things as well.
That album was such a success, and after a couple more albums, the band split.
That went quadruple platinum, 'Rage' [1988], our second album was platinum, massive album, then 'The Promise' [1991] was gold, so slightly lesser sales, but still top 10, still a gold album. And then, yeah, long, long story short, because obviously we'd be here for a week, but like a lot of bands, it just all began to fall apart. You know, egos, people are changing, record company wants this, you want to do that, and then the public turned away from the '80s.
I was just about to ask about that; did the changing decade affect you?
Oh, we were out in the cold, completely. If you listen to 'The Promise', our third album, it's an incredibly well produced album, and quite underrated, if I say so myself, but it came out in 1991, by which time everybody was looking at The Stone Roses and The Farm. We were like, just old hat, old fashioned. We didn't fit at all.
There's a famous phrase; 'Nirvana killed my career'; was it one of those?
Yeah, probably. They probably did, yeah, Stone Roses as well.
To be associated with a song as big as 'China in your Hand' however, must be something really special.
It is, and it took me a long time to be grateful for that, because you do focus on being in the charts, your chart position, your status, your relevance, if you like, and so when that's over, when that kind of thrusting side of your career is over, it's hard to deal with, but I managed to hang around and keep getting booked on festivals and television shows and stuff like that, and then I came to realise that I was privileged enough to be part of the soundtrack of people's youth, and they still love a handful of my songs, and I'm grateful for that.
You were quite young as well, weren't you, when that success hit?
I wasn't as young as you think, I just always looked young, but by the time 'China' was at number one, I was 30. I used to get asked for my ID in pubs when I was 25, 26. I always crack a joke that my dad looked fabulous when he died; he had no wrinkles! Yeah, I wasn't as young as you think, and funnily enough, my PR company used to shave a few years off my age whenever they discussed me, because if you're marketing a pop star, especially a girl, you know, I didn't start singing until I was 22, didn't get a deal until I was 26, so I was positively geriatric! So they kept lying to everybody about my age, and I became paranoid about my age, but thank you. I just naturally look quite fresh faced, but I think the big thing was, I'd been around a lot; I'd been in local bands. I'd been in covers bands, real hard work, playing working men's clubs, holiday camps and stuff like that, and that's not where I wanted to stay, personally, in my career, but by the time I caught a break, all that experience really stood me in good stead.
You would have been hardened to the tough music business, in that case.
I was, I just rolled with the punches. I'd know what was needed of me that day, how much to give, how much not to give, so you learn a lot.
You see all these stories of the industry eating up these young girl and boy bands, spitting them out and ripping them off.
I got ripped off by my manager, like a lot of bands. I brought out an autobiography called 'Heart and Soul' in 2016, and I discussed all that because a lot of bands from my era did get ripped off because we really didn't know what we were doing. I think a lot of kids today are a bit more savvy, but I wasn't. I was just, like I said, because I'd been knocking around a few years, I signed anything to get going. It was like; "what? Okay. I'll sign that. I'll just sign up", and then you find out you signed the wrong thing, but it's too late.
All these years later, you've still got that voice.
I'm quite lucky, I've still got most of the pipes. I get a little bit tired now and again because I am a bit older, but you just have to look after yourself, whereas when I was young, I would put my whiskey down, stub my fag out on the floor, and walk onto the stage. Now I've got a lot of shows coming up, and I have to rest. I back off the wine, I do all my warm ups, I drink revolting herbal teas, honey and strange concoctions, and I'm always on YouTube looking at these fantastic singing tutors, looking at different techniques and how to move my voice in my sixties, you know, the bits that are still strong, the bits that aren't as strong as they used to be, where to manoeuvre my vocal range around that. So I'm always working on that.
Are there any songs that you prefer to stay away from, vocally? I remember Joe Elliott saying when they were recording 'Hysteria' that Mutt Lang was pushing him to sing these notes, and you don't realise you're still going to have to sing that on stage thirty years late.
Exactly, I used to know Joe, and he's lovely guy, and I feel his pain. They're called 'studio notes'. You're young, you've got all the energy, and also you can drop it, because back then, we didn't auto tune, we dropped it; so you do it until you got it right, and then you have ten takes, and then you go through and pick the best one. Very occasionally you'd need to tweak it. I've never needed auto tuning. I'll just sing until I get it right, but I feel Joe's pain; there's a couple of songs on 'Bridge of Spies' I've never actually ever sung in my life, because they're just so difficult.
Could you name them?
God, can I even remember all the tracks on the album? It might have been a b side, actually, and it's just got screechy notes in it, and a couple of my tunes. Oh, 'Bridge or Spies', I've never toured it in the key. I recorded it and I had to bring it down to D, a semi-tone down, so whatever key I recorded in, which was dog whistle, I have never, ever toured that song in that key. Again, they would just put it into a ridiculous key in the studio, and I could get all the notes on the day, because you can rest; "give me five minutes, let me have a hot cup of tea, and I'll try that again", and you get it, and the record sounds great, but you can't sing that live.
Finally, what's coming up for you next?
Okay, so lots of gigs, constantly. People can always find us. If they want to know what we're doing; we have a website and all the socials, so it's tpau.co.uk, and that links into the Facebook and Instagram. You'll see where we are, if you want to come see a show. But Ronnie Rogers, who co-founded T'Pau and co-wrote all of the songs with me, we're working on a new album, so that'll be out next year, 2026. Then 2027 is 40 years since 'Bridge of Spies', so we are touring with 'Bridge of Spies' in the UK. We're coming to a town near you, but do check out the socials, folks, because that's how to find out what we are doing.
For all things T'Pau, visit the band's official website.
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