The other night I watched an episode of Video Killed the Radio Star, on the Sundance Channel. The series features interviews with the musicians and producers of the early music videos, who discuss the sometimes haphazard way in which they were slapped together.
While haphazard can describe many of the earliest music videos, it certainly doesn’t describe those of the UK band T’Pau, that yes, got its name from the original Star Trek Vulcan matriarch of the same name.
While T’Pau—the band, not the Star Trek character 😉 —had a slew of hits in the late 80s and early 90s, they used a saxophone player in only one of their Top 40 hits. That song was China In Your Hands.
T’Pau’s power ballad cleverly uses a saxophone to back the vocalist
Besides being a powerful ballad that held the #1 position on the UK charts for 5 weeks, China In Your Hands was also a mini movie that was very much a cinematic masterpiece. Its timeless quality makes it as relevant today, as it was when it was first released in October 1987. The alto sax solo comes in around 2:25, and continues weaving throughout the vocals for the remainder of the song.
Who was that mysterious saxophone player? Well that’s a good question—one even Carol Decker, the woman who fronts T’Pau, only knows 50% of the answer to.
It seems there were two recordings of China In Your Hands. There was a single version, as well as the studio album version.
In The History Of Top 40 Saxophone Solos 1955-2005, John Laughter and Steve D. Marshall have the following quote:
[Carol] said the sax player on the “single” version was Gary Barnacle, but she didn’t remember who it was on the “album” version. I’m sorry about that as I know that’s what you really wanted to know. She said it was a session musician whom they worked with in the States, but no idea on the name I’m afraid.
Regards, Ryan
http://www.tpau.co.uk, T’Pau CentralSource: The History Of Top 40 Saxophone Solos 1955-2005, John Laughter and Steve D. Marshall, page 374
Where did the song idea come from? Likely not where you think!
For those of us old enough to remember the 1980s, and specifically the song when it originally came out, I would hazard a guess that we sang along to China In Your Hands without knowing what the words really were referring to. I suspect too, that we got a number of the lyrics just plain wrong.
Apparently Carol Decker, in part, drew inspiration for the song from Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein. Here is how she describes the story behind her chart-topping hit:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJcQFxGqZOs&feature=youtu.be video has been removed, but the following from Wiki explains it and provides the former links:
The song’s lyrics refer to the novel Frankenstein and its author Mary Shelley. This is more readily heard on the longer album version of the song, as the re-recorded single edit omits most of the more obvious references to the book. The song’s title was more unclear however and when quizzed, co-writer Ron Rogers was unsure of its source material. Lyric writer Carol Decker explained that it is the effect that if you hold a china cup to a light, you can see your hand through it – therefore “china in your hand” means something that is transparent.[3] In a segment on the BBC1’s The One Show on 6 March 2014, Carol Decker explained that she had been holding a china tea cup belonging to Ronnie Rogers’ mother in her hand while washing up and had felt a lump in the bottom. She held the cup to the light and saw an image of a young woman in the base of the cup. Decker had the cup with her and showed the viewers the image.
Source: wikipedia.org
This past weekend, when I first heard Decker’s explanation of the backstory on Video Killed The Radio Star, I was really quite amazed. However, not nearly as amazed as I was when I watched the Brian Adams interview, in which he described what his song Summer of 69, was really about. 
How could I have listened to this song for 25+ years, and not figured out Adams wasn’t referring to 1969, but rather to the sexual position? This makes me wonder just how many other songs I’ve been so incredibly clueless about.
