T’Pau’s back for 25th Anniversary Trek.

 Listening to the excitement in Carol Decker’s voice as she describes how she will play the Isle of Wight Festival this year, it is easy to understand how that same voice took T’Pau’s third single to number one in 1987, where it stayed for five weeks.

 

Still possessing the powerful voice that took her to the top, Decker is taking T’Pau (famously named after a Vulcan high priestess from Star Trek) on its first headline tour in 15 year to celebrate the 25^th anniversary of the band’s debut album- the quadruple-platinum ‘Bridge of Spies’. 

 

“I thought I would mark our anniversary in some way and come out and sing a few tunes… hopefully some people will come and see me”, she laughs. “Of course I will play hits, but also classic album tracks. I’m thinking of having a little acoustic set in the middle.”

 

In the late 80’s, T’Pau seemed to permanently reside on Top of the Pops. ‘Bridge of Spies’ sold over five million copies, and ‘China in Your Hand’ was the biggest-selling single of 1987. Carol, 55, holds the rare honour of having a number one album and single at the same time.

 

 

Their next two albums, ‘Rage’ and ‘The Promise’, also made the top 10 in the UK.

Other hit singles include ‘Heart and Soul’ and ‘Valentine’.

 

However, Decker, once the flame-haired temptress pin-up for so many teenagers, has a very modest recollection of these memories.

 

She describes the scene of a male crew member wearing a red wig to distract the crowd outside the stage door at her shows as “…my 15 minutes, as Andy Warhol would say. I couldn’t get out of the stage door at the Hammersmith Odeon for the fans and press. Our roadie just put on this red wig, leather jacket and shades and jumped into the back of the limo and everybody sped after him. He had better legs than me as I recall!”

 

After 1991, the original line-up of T’Pau disintegrated. As Carol describes it, “It’s ancient history now, but we were just arguing over creative differences. Also, the music-scene had changed. By the time we came out with ‘The Promise’, it was all club music and groove-orientated. We lost our footing.” 

 

Decker kept performing and recording as ‘T’Pau’. In recent years, she has been participating in 80’s package shows, playing arenas and festivals with the likes of The Human League and The Bangles.

 

She has occasionally collaborated with former boyfriend, guitarist and co-writer, Ron Rogers, and he will appear at some shows. “He can’t do the whole tour with me, which is a shame, but he’s going to do as many as he can.”

 

Decker is determined to make a new album. “It won’t be in time for this tour, but I’m going to get on with it. I want to see if I can push this forward and maybe start touring every couple of years. It’s a bit of an experiment, to be honest.” 

 

News on T’Pau’s tour can be found on its official website.

 

All photographs copyright Carol Decker. Used with full permission.

Things to save up for so far…

Two days into 2013, and there are already things you should be getting excited about. Five Grand Dames certainly are, and here’s why…

1. Stevie Nicks is hitting the road with Fleetwood Mac again for a world tour… and they are releasing new songs for the first time in 10 years!
2. Goldfrapp are set to release another album.

3. Sheryl Crow is releasing a new album- a country album, so a departure and something to keep an eye out for.

4. T’Pau’s Carol Decker is going on tour as a solo act for the first time in over 10 years to celebrate 25 years since the release of the quadruple platinum album, ‘Bridge of Spies.’ 

5. Bonnie Raitt is on tour promoting her new album, ‘Slipstream’. 

Happy Birthday, Marianne Faithfull

Marianne Faithfull, 1979 (Image from Facebook)

Marianne Faithfull, the archetypal fallen angel of the 1960’s turns 66 today.

Famed for being the bad girl of the 60’s. 70’s and 80’s, Faithfull’s music career began as virginal and innocent as her convent school education. When she was 18, she scored her first British hit with ‘As Tears Go By’. Equally innocent songs typical of the era followed, such as ‘Come and Stay With Me’ and ‘This Little Bird’.

However, by the end of the decade, Faithfull had been tempted by the devil. Her relationship with Rolling Stone Mick Jagger began during the mid 1960’s. Along with fellow-Stone, Keith Richards, Mick had written ‘As Tears Go By’ for Marianne and had spent every-waking-moment pursuing her.

Therein followed countless allegations of drug and sex scandals; not forgetting the rather, uhm, risque allegation of a badly-placed Mars bar- an allegation denied by Keith Richards: “That was thrown in by some journalist… we were right out of Mars bars.’ She went from the convent girl to Mick Jagger’s permanent arm candy.

When Faithfull’s relationship with Jagger ended she found herself on the streets, addicted to heroin.

Eventually in 1979, after living on the wall of a bombed-out building, Faithfull got back into the studio to record one of the most ground-breaking underground albums of the decade. ‘Broken English’ was a very different album to anything Faithfull, or indeeed, a woman had ever recorded before. Dark and hard-hitting, it reaffirmed that Marianne was nobody’s fool. Her once sultry and posh singing voice was now a nicotine-stained growl, often cutting out on the album because she could not get the words out- it just added to the ambiance. The album’s final track ‘Why D’ya Do It’, was the personification of her new image. Written by Heathcote Williams, only Faithfull could spit the line “Every time I see your d*** I see her c*** in my bed” with such conviction.

She finally kicked her habit in 1985, but Faithfull has consistently kept creating dark albums. ‘Before the Poison’, ‘Blazing Away’ and ‘A Secret Life’ are just a few of Faithfull’s finest work since the iconic ‘Broken English’.

She’s also stuck to her convictions. Commenting on a Rolling Stones documentary in 2004, Marianne commented that the rules about drugs “…were wrong then, and they’re wrong now.”

Last year she released ‘Horses and High Heels‘, much to critical acclaim. 2013 sees a deluxe edition of Broken English being released. Now 66 Marianne Faithfull shows no sign of stopping… she may be 66, but that’s only two third’s of the devil’s number…

 

 

New Releases

Mary Wells- Something New: Lost and Found

Released 4th December

Mary Wells was one of the artists to sign to the Motown label.

Her voice shaped the way many women still sing to this day. Unfortunately, she left the label in 1964, leaving behind an enormous collection of unreleased songs. Songs that were unreleased until now.

‘Something New’ showcases 47 of Wells’ songs, almost half of which have never been previously heard. A fine combination of soul, ballad and of course her signature Motown sound, this is a must-have for any Wells fan or fan of Motown.

Something New: Mary Wells

Paloma Faith- Fall to Grace

Faith’s second album is almost as polished as her first, which was a result of more than 10 different producers putting their spin on her songs.

On the whole, a rather strong second album, although one feels that Faith is yet to find her voice somewhat. The song Black and Blue comes across a little too melancholy for an artist who prides herself on being an extrovert in style and voice.

Apart from one or two shaky moments, Fall to Grace is a decent attempt at coming back after the success of her debut.

Fall to Grace

 

Top 3 New Releases

Kate Earl: Stronger- Released 20th November

The Alaskan-born singer/songwriter’s third album, Stronger, finds her somewhat returning to the mellow and gentle head-nodding calmness of her first album, 2005’s Fate Is the Hunter.

None the less, Stronger is certainly Earl’s strongest album yet. The albums first single, One Woman Army, is arguably the stand-out trac1k. Ballsy yet vulnerable. More intriguing is questioning whether she’s saying ‘I’ll be your “protector” or “potato”.

This track aside, the whole album is a strong effort. The title track is a strong opener, and I Don’t Want to Be Alone sounds like it was torn straight from a Sheryl Crow songbook.

Buy Stronger

Keyisha Cole- Woman to Woman

Not that much of a departure from 2010’s Calling All Hearts, right down to the blue lipstick on the album cover, Keyshia Cole’s fifth studio effort is another R&B collection of anthems.

Woman to Woman’s opener, Enough of No Love, sounds like it could be a James Bond movie theme song.

Overall, it has quite a warm and celebratory vibe. Hey Sexy, rather unsurprisingly from the title, provides the standard sex-appeal song.

Woman to Woman

Amy Winehouse: At the BBC- Amy Winehouse- Released 13th November

From the earliest performance at the BBC Radio Sessions, to rare gems, covers and rarities, this three DVD, one CD box-set chronicles the painfully short career of Amy Winehouse.

The box-set offers a smorgasbord of songs. Sixties covers are mixed in with Winehouse’s own unique brand of reggae/jazz and rap fusion in her own compositions. A must have for any fan of this truly one-of-a-kind artist.

Amy Winehouse at the BBC

Happy Birthday, Bonnie Raitt

Bonnie Raitt turns 63 today.

One of the original pioneers for women to sing folk, roots and country-rock music in the 70’s, she has released a new album, ‘Slipstream’, available to purchase now.

Suzi Quatro- Unzipped

The original rock chick, Suzi Quatro, completed a six-night run at the London Hippodrome Casino on Saturday night with her one-woman-show, Unzipped.

Named after her 2007 autobiography, Unzipped weaved the story of Quatro’s life, from the very beginning up to the modern day.

The show consisted of rare photographs, video clips, speech and of course, live performances of some of the fan’s favourite hits to round off the night.

Taking the stage at the piano, Quatro, 62, began to play a small piece of Beethoven. Turning to the audience with a cheeky smile, she announced “Didn’t expect that, did you?” That sentence set the tone for the whole night… for the next 75 minutes the show twisted and turned.

Performing Mack the Knife, she told the story of how herself and her little sister tried to cheer up a recently bereaved widow… which resulted in them getting a front door slammed in their face. As Suzi put it, it was her first professional rejection.

Walking over to the set of bongos in the centre, Suzi announced her talent as a bongo player. Performing a medley of three-chord songs ranging from Twist and Shout by The Beatles, she ended with Summer Nights.

True to her tale in the autobiography, Suzi explained that being a Gemini she is two different people: Little Susie from Detroit and Suzi Quatro- they are the same, they are different, and one cannot survive without the other.

Gasps could be heard throughout the room as Quatro told the now famous story of how she declined an invitation to Graceland to meet her hero, Elvis Presley, before launching into a cover of All Shook Up, the song which featured on her 1973 debut album and won her the invitation in the first place. Her band, consisting of drums, guitar, piano and saxophone all took turns to solo during this number before Suzi Q announced “My turn!” and played an electrifying bass solo… who else could make a bass solo so entertaining?

A somewhat reserved crowd was largely reluctant to stand up at the end of the night as Quatro briefly left the stage and returned wearing her trademark leather jumpsuit to perform full-band versions of Can the Can and Devil Gate Drive, before ending with the only encore song, If You Can’t Give Me Love.

Suzi commented: “(This is) a dream come true. At the age of 62, how lucky am I? Little Susie and Suzi Quatro are both very very happy.”

Quatro is still performing worldwide, and released a new studio album, In the Spotlight, last year.

It can be purchased here. 

Suzi and I before the show, photo by Harri Asikainen.

Girlschool…

This week I managed to secure an interview with two members of the longest-running female rock band of all time.

Denise Dufort, the original drummer of pioneering rock band Girlschool, and Jackie (Jax) Chambers, who took over as lead guitarist from the late great Kelly Johnson in 1998 give us an insight into what it is like to still be head-banging 34 years later…

Q: How does it feel to be a member of the longest-running female band?

Jackie Chambers

JAX : “It still makes me smile when people call me the new girl, I’ve now been in the band for 13 years now and have known the girls for a lot longer but it’s been a great experience and one I’m very much enjoying and as long as we all continue to enjoy doing what we’re doing, we’ll continue to record and play live. 34 years and counting bring it on!”

DENISE: “(It) Feels AMAZING, who would have thought that I would still be in this band

After all these years..PHEW!”

Q:Have you got a particular favourite GS song/album?

JAX : “Before I joined the band I was good friends with Kim (McAuliffe) and she gave me the albums to listen to and on first listen my favourite tracks were Play Dirty and Don’t Call it Love, I thought they were well written songs, neither of which we do live..shame! I also loved Race With The Devil which is still one of my favs. Whilst in the band one of my fav albums has to be Believeas that was the first full album I appeared on and had a hand in writing all the songs on there.”

DENISE: “Play Dirty used to be my favourite album but now its’Legacy‘,

My favourite song on that album is I SPY.”

Q: Who inspired you to become a musician?

JAX: “I think music is in the blood, to be a musician you have to love and be passionate about it. Whilst I was at school it was the ‘punk rock’ era, I was about 13 and hating all the prog rock in the charts I heard this new exciting energetic music and I loved it, something to get my teeth into and express myself and because it seemed like anyone could do it, I wanted to too. I didn’t actually pick up the guitar until I was about 17 almost 18 and even then I only got the guitar as I wanted to write songs and needed one to get the songs across… Ironic.”

DENISE: “My brother inspired me to be a drummer, I grew up watching him play in bands and loved it so much that I always knew that that’s what I wanted to do.”

Denise Dufort

Q: What prompted you to re-record your 1981 hit album ‘Hit & Run’?

JAX: “(It was) the record companies idea, it was the albums 30th anniversary and we didnt want to just put the old one out we wanted to mark the occassion like we did the bands actual 30th anniversary. We re-recorded it basically as we wanted to own our own songs again, didn’t quite work out but it was fun to go back in the studio with the old songs and re-do them. We do about eight of them live anyway so it was an easy and quick album to do.”

Q: Are there any plans to go on tour to promote it?

JAX: “Well we’ve been out and about promoting it all this year really. It was supposed to come out in April, we recorded it last Xmas..record co’s tut! We have a couple more gigs this year in the UK and then the gigs start again in Europe in January 2012, so we will keep on going through the summer and do the festivals again too; well that’s the plan.”

Original bassist, Enid Williams, live in Brixton

Q: How did you end up joining the band?

JAX: “My band had just split up in 1995 and I’d put an advert in the Melody Maker to look for a new band. Kim answered my ad as she was also doing a side project in a covers band, we chatted on the phone, got on well, met up for drinks that night and kept in touch. I didnt join her covers band as at that time I didnt play lead guitar. Kelly (Johnson) at that point wanted to do something different and kept trying to persuade me to join so she could leave, so she offered to help me with the lead guitar parts by teaching me them all. I ended up joining a covers band to practise lead guitar and practiced Girlschool songs until my fingers bled, then finally in 1999 I was ready. I was supposed to do Wacken as my first gig but thought that would be a bit much so Kelly did it as her last…the rest is history!”

Kim McAuliffe

DENISE: “Its a Long story..lol…too long!”

Q: Are you still in touch with past members of the band?

JAX: “Yes we pretty much keep in touch with everyone, it’s like a little family. I lived two streets from Cris Bonacci and a half mile from Kelly and Denise when I first joined so we were always hanging out together .Then I shared a flat with Kelly, Now I share with Kim and live on the same street as Enid, can’t get away…lol. We don’t see Jackie Carrera or Gil Weston that often as they don’t live in London but we do keep in touch and Tracey, now lives in Spain but were in touch via skype etc.”

DENISE: “Yeah, we’re still in touch with Tracey Lamb, Jackie Carrera and Gil Weston.”

Q: What has been the highlight of your career?

JAX: “That would have to be supporting Alice Cooper, he was always my musical hero whilst I was growing up so to sit and chat with him was amazing! And of course I got to see him play straight after us, result!”

DENISE: “Touring with my heroes…bands like Deep Purple, Rainbow, Sabbath, and of course Motorhead.”

Q: What music do you listen when you’re not on tour?

JAX: “I like to play Rammstein very loud to get me in the mood, always brings a smile to my face too… Love it!”

DENISE: “I love Rammstein and Muse but I’ll listen to anything that’s good…”

Q: The last album of new material, Legacy, was released in 2008- do you plan to make another album of completely new material?

JAX: “LOL, give us a chance we’re still promoting this one. I guess by the summer of next year we will be at least talking about it, so hopefully so.”

DENISE: “We are still promoting the Hit and Run Revisited album..that’s only just come out..give us a chance ha ha.”

Q:Do you have a favourite song to perform live?

JAX: “I like to do Never say Never and still get a buzz from doingRace with the Devil even after doing it every gig for 13 years, LOL.”

Jax & Kim rockin’ out

DENISE: “Yeah I love playing I SPYlive.”

Q: Girlschool has toured with a lot of different big names- is there anyone you would like to tour with?

JAX: “Yes we’ve been very fortunate over the years, there’s probably a few bands that I’d love to play with but to nail it down I’d say Rammstein or Foo Fighters for me.”

DENISE: “I would love to tour with AC/DC, they have always been my favourite band.”

Many thanks to Denise and Jax for agreeing to the interview; to find out more about Girlschool and see their latest tour dates, see their official website.

Their new CD ‘Hit and Run Revisited‘, can be purchased here.

Welcome to Grand Dames Rock

Welcome to Grand Dames Rock.

This blog is dedicated to the great women in the music business, both past and present.

It will be updated with both interviews I have done in the past, mixed in with recent and upcoming ones.

Grand Dames Rock will also include reviews and features on female artists- past and present, big and small.