Interview with T’Pau (18.10.25)
The theme for this year’s National Album Day is Rock. So I caught up with Carol Decker of T’Pau to discuss the platinum-selling Bridge Of Spies, which is being given a vinyl reissue especially for the day.
OSR: This will be the first time since 1987 that Bridge Of Spies has had a vinyl release. What made you decide to revisit it for this year’s National Album Day?
Decker: We didn’t make the decision. It was Universal, who now owns our back catalogue. Personally, I would’ve waited until 2027, as that is the 40th anniversary of Bridge Of Spies. But Universal want to put out a bigger vinyl box set to commemorate that. I have, however, collaborated with Universal approving the album colour, which is a beautiful cherry red.
OSR: How did you come up with the title of the album Bridge Of Spies?
Decker: I had been very moved by the story of Anatoly Sharansky, a Jewish-Russian human rights activist accused of spying for the United States and imprisoned in Russia for nine years. The news reported that his wife was waiting at the other end of the Glienicke Bridge, AKA The Bridge of Spies, for him. My focus was on how they felt about being separated for so long, so it’s his story as I imagined his feelings walking towards her. It’s a big album track with a powerful message, so we thought it was the appropriate title for the album.
OSR: ‘Heart And Soul’ is a fantastic opener, and has a lot going on in it with its various overdubs. Was that a complex song to make? How did you get the idea to the almost rap style delivery of the verses?
Decker: The provenance of songs can vary greatly. The story of ‘Heart And Soul’ is that my father loaned us some money to buy a new keyboard, and it had an inbuilt sequencer. Ronnie was trying to get familiar with it, he was playing a bass line of middle CC GA middle C G top C and put it on a repeat loop. Then we folded chords across the top, and I very quickly came up with the melody. It sounded pretty good like that, but there was something missing, and we tried all sorts of different instruments and percussion, something to give it a bit of pep. The producer we were working with at the time, Andy Piercey, said why don’t you try something like an answer vocal, so I went away and wrote the rap. It was a great suggestion. If you look at the lyrics on the album sleeve, they are completely wrong. Somehow, the early demo draft versions of the lyrics ended up on the album sleeve. They’re not the final lyrics.
OSR: The single version of ‘China In Your Hand’ is different to the one that’s on the album. Was it the record label’s decision for you to add a bit more to it for the single release?
Decker: Everybody thought the song was huge and wanted it to be a single release from the album. The original album version of this song is very long, and back then, with a few exceptions, such as the magnificent ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (which our producer Roy Thomas Baker produced), you were under a great deal of pressure to do the three-minute radio edit. We couldn’t edit the album version as we recorded it pretty free form, and there are too many slight discrepancies in the drum timing. We didn’t use a click back then, so we went into a studio back in London and re-recorded it from scratch as a three-minute radio edit version. It has a much better and iconic saxophone solo by the brilliant Gary Barnacle. I find the album sax break a bit dull. Ronnie Rogers and Tim Burgess, our drummer, produced the single. We had learnt so much from Roy Thomas Baker, so we were able to make it sound just as if he produced it.
OSR: The promo videos for the likes of ‘Valentine’ and ‘I Will Be With You’ are very cinematic! Did you put extra effort into these to push the success of the album?
Decker: We were just at a level of success where you got all the bells and whistles on anything you did. We had massive budgets for videos, and lots of big artists were pretty much making mini movies as pop videos. There was one video production company that was ruling the roost at the time called MGMM, and we worked with Brian Grant, who was the ‘G’. He has gone on to direct movies and has a very cinematic eye. He was also great at making women look beautiful. I felt very confident in his hands.
OSR: The album was overseen by legendary producer Roy Thomas Baker, who is known for his work with artists like Queen and The Cars. What was he like to work with?
Decker: Roy was such fun to work with; he just had crazy ideas. For example, we recorded Bridge of Spies in a studio in Wisconsin. It was a huge convention centre, so the drums were in this massive room, and we had about 200 mics on the kit and all around the room to pick up the ambience. There were about 5 mics just on the snare alone! We have a massive gated snare sound on this album. Roy was so extravagant. He had a great sense of drama and commerciality.
‘China In Your Hand’ was not yet fully written when we signed our record deal, and nobody had even heard it. There was one track that just wasn’t coming together, and Roy said we need to dump this, as we are wasting time and money. We all agreed we were ‘polishing a turd’. He asked if we had anything else because the album would be a song short. I had the cassette of the basic outline for ‘China In Your Hand’ with me as I was still writing lyrics. I played it to him and he said that is a fantastic song, so I finished the lyrics in the studio and the rest, as they say, is history. He could just spot a winner, that’s why he won a Grammy! The reason we chose him out of all of the producers that were keen to work with us was exactly for the reasons you mention: Queen and The Cars. Ronnie was a massive Queen fan, and I was crazy about The Cars album he’d recently done, so it was a perfect fit.
Bridge Of Spies was a quadruple platinum success, and our next album, Rage, also recorded with Roy, was also another platinum album. Roy sadly passed away in May of this year. He was a huge character and a recording legend.
OSR: Did the huge success of the album (44 weeks on chart, four times platinum with 1.4 million copies sold in the UK) give added pressure to your follow-up?
Decker: Yes, of course, it adds pressure. There’s so much expectation, and it’s really difficult to know what’s going to be a success. Ronnie and I have written songs that I had every confidence in that just haven’t landed, and some songs that were hits for us that aren’t particularly my favourites. When the glory days were over, it was tough to come to terms with, but in the end, all you can do is do your thing.
We had 3 Top 10 albums and Top 40 singles and the original lineup was together for six years. But in a very fickle business, we had a good run of international success.
OSR: Are there any plans to announce new tour dates to celebrate the vinyl reissue?
Decker: We will tour Bridge Of Spies probably November/December 2027, as that is the 40th anniversary. And in 2026, we will put out a new album. Ronnie and I are writing it now, but we are constantly gigging, so if folks want to keep in touch across the socials, you can always find us on www.tpau.co.uk
OSR: What are some of your favourite tracks on the album?
Decker: My favourite is ‘Heart and Soul’. I think it’s a clever song from a songwriting perspective. I’m very proud of it. ‘I Will Be With You’ is beautiful, and that started from me messing about on the piano. I’m a very, very bad player, and I clipped a black note, and that’s the intro. It’s called serendipity, a happy accident. It created this song.
I like ‘Friends like These’, there’s a good message there about people who stab you in the back. ‘Monkey House’ is a song about personal freedom; it’s about the 40’s actress Frances Farmer, who was forced to have a lobotomy by her mother and her movie studio. She had psychotic episodes and was probably bipolar or something, but they were trying to control her so they could continue to make her work and make money out of her.
‘Valentine’ started the ball rolling for us. Ronnie and I wrote that in about 1984, and it was the song that caught people’s attention and got the record company sniffing around. I love the Hammond organ playing and insane guitar on ‘You Give Up’. I pretty much like them all, and that’s probably why it was a quadruple platinum album!
OSR: What are your overriding feelings towards Bridge Of Spies all these years later? You’ve said yourself that it feels like a lifetime ago!
Decker: Gratitude is the overriding feeling towards Bridge Of Spies; they were the happiest of times. The band was so close. We were young, full of energy, ideas and enthusiasm, and working with one of the most brilliant record producers ever. Its success changed my life.
Many thanks to Carol Decker for speaking with us. Find out more about T’Pau on their official website, Instagram, X, Facebook and Spotify.
