Squeeze - Interview

  by Eoghan Lyng

published: 7 / 1 / 2023

Guitarist Glenn Tilbrook is in fine form. It's not just that he's written a new composition with Squeeze bandmate Chris Difford ("Our first in five years",) but the reviews - nominally laudatory, at least in this part of the world - are among the best of their career. "We played in Dublin in March, I think," he says. "We were playing with Madness, and it was brilliant. Really brought the house down. It was our first time in Ireland for some time." Established during the 1970s, Squeeze stand as one of the most enduring, and most charming, bands England has produced. With their rapier-sharp wit and choppily infectious guitar hooks, Squeeze's best work stands up with the most inventive songs Genesis, Badfinger and 10cc proffered to the world. "I have a lot of time for 10cc," Tilbrook confirms. "I've done a few gigs with Graham Gouldman over the years. Even before 10cc, he was writing these great songs for The Yardbirds and The Hollies. Genius, really." He says he encouraged Gouldman to return to the stage in the late 1990s, feeling that the songwriting bassist had a lot to offer to the world. Like Gouldman, Tilbrook thrives in collaboration, and I'm curious to hear how he tailors his melodies to Difford's words, considering that they are applied after the lyrics have been penned. "Well, it's normal for us," he chuckles, acknowledging that most other composers focus on the lyrics after they have finished the melody. "Elton John and Bernie Taupin worked in that way too. When I was growing up, I had all these books on popular songs, and I'd re-create the songs on piano or guitar if I didn't know the tune. So, I've been writing this way for a long, long time." The Beatles, he confirms, were a formative influence on the band, but he credits Difford with The Kinks, and says pianist Jools Holland brought "boogie-woogie and early rock and roll" to the first incarnation of the band. "You really regurgitate those sorts of things when you are young." I sympathise: Some of my early poems read like John Cooper Clarke knockoffs. "We all go through that," Tilbrook says. "Well, not John for everyone, obviously [laughs]. But we all follow in the style of our influences, before we peel away those layers." Clarke recently toured with Squeeze, and I suggest that his barbed, jagged monologues bear a lot in common with Squeeze. Tilbrook won't go that far, but says, "He's a great social commentator, a genius, and has a wicked sense of humour." Clarke doesn't appear on the Food For Thought EP, but he toured with the band, driving awareness of the myriad food banks that are spread across the United Kingdom. "The situation is much worse now than it was five years ago, when we started working with these charities," Tilbrook sighs. "All the profits from this [EP] are going towards these organisations." Tilbrook sounds pleased with the initiative, although he highlights the dire situations families in less comfortable conditions are forced to live through. Indeed, it's a timely reminder that Squeeze have not drifted too far away from their roots, even if their music continues to progress and change. 'Black Coffee In Bed' suits him better these days than it did forty years ago. "A lot of that was Paul Carrack's influence," Tilbrook elaborates. "I still can't sing like Paul, but I can sing much better than I did back then. We re-recorded the song for the ‘Spot The Difference’ album, and I much prefer that version." Contented with the vocal, Tilbrook nevertheless says the Spot The Difference album proved challenging for him, both as a musician and a performer. "We were trying to re-create everything, which is not what I was used to doing." He doesn't subscribe to the Joni Mitchell school, feeling that the songs are more like diary entries rather than breathing organisms that reflect an artist's personal truth. "When I sing them, they bring me back to when they were written," he says. Later in the interview, he says Squeeze hope to release two albums, one steeped in history, and the other focused on the present. "One of the albums is going to be songs from fifty years ago," he says, "and they're all songs Chris and I wrote. Back then, we were writing lots and lots of songs, and we always liked the songs we wrote the next week more than the ones from the week before. So, we discarded lots of great stuff, but listening to them now, they still have our character. And I think that's a very good thing, seeing the character. Even back then, at that time, there was a lot of Chris and me in the songs. We were on such a roll." Tilbrook points out that in the 1970s, rock was still in its relative infancy ("It wasn't even twenty years,"), but he's fortunate to have stood around to witness its evolution ("Now, it's something much bigger.") I ask if 'Up The Junction' is about an abortion, which surprises the singer. "I think you're the first person to think that," he chuckles. "It's about a full-term pregnancy." But there was a reference to abortion in the TV play that was directed by Ken Loach? "Yes, that's right," Tilbrook says. " Yeah, the title was influenced by that show." He sounds more relaxed when I ask about 'Tempted', which was sung by the band's keyboardist, Paul Carrack. "That was actually the second version we recorded. The first one was with me singing, and it was like ELO on steroids. I'm so glad that didn't come out!" Tilbrook appears to be on good terms with his bandmates ("I've never met The Beatles, but Chris and Jools did,"), and we decide to end the interview on a jocular note, much as it started on. How did 'Cool For Cats' come about? "Originally, it was a very different song," Tilbrook replies. "We had the backing, and I was singing something very different. Chris said to me he had an idea, so he went away to work on it, and came up with the song we all know and love." And with ‘Food For Thought’, it looks like there will be more to love.

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