Clever, inventive songwriting is often an art that’s enhanced and perfected when a pair of gifted composers shares ideas. While legendary songwriting duos like George and Ira Gershwin or Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein certainly exemplify that claim, the same is true for some pretty dynamic pop music partnerships. The Beatles’ John Lennon and Paul McCartney or Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, the nucleus of the Rolling Stones’ songwriting prowess, spring to mind in that respect.
Daryl Hall & John Oates w/Squeeze
Monday, Sept. 20, 7 p.m. $22 & up.
MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre
4802 U.S. Hwy-1, Tampa
livenation.com
But, not to be forgotten or excluded from that elite class is Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford, the pair who formed and created one of the greatest British pop bands of all time, Squeeze. Formed in their native England in the early-’70s by both the budding musicians, it wasn’t until 1978 that the record-buying public would get a chance to encounter the clever, witty, hook-laden sounds of Squeeze.
Once the group’s self-titled, debut album was released that year, listeners got a chance to encounter Tilbrook’s dulcet vocal tones and impressive guitar work and Difford’s clever, witty lyrics and his lower octave singing voice. In the midst of the exploding punk rock scene as well as the dawning of the new wave era emerged this sparkling songwriting team’s collaborative band whose sound was more deeply rooted in the strains of The Beatles and The Kinks which set them apart from their spiky haired, flamboyantly attired contemporaries.
Carving out a solid string of hit singles in their homeland, starting with the infectious “Take Me I’m Yours” from that debut album, the group’s catchy, melodic power pop sound transferred to unforgettable slices of pure pop magic like “Another Nail in My Heart,” “Black Coffee in Bed,” and—the song they’re probably best known for on American shores,—“Tempted.”
While Difford bowed out of the Squeeze lineup for a few years in the late-90s, Tilbrook carried on with the brand name. Both men embarked on solo careers but, in 2007, the pair joined forces again and Squeeze was back to featuring both its primary architects and founders. A series of superb albums have followed as have tours to support those records.
Luckily, for local Squeeze fans who might not have seen the band live since its last visit to Tampa—which dates all the way back to 1980 when they performed at old local haunt, The Agora Ballroom—the current formation of the group will serve as the opening act for Daryl Hall and John Oates’ stop at the MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre.
Earlier this summer, while home in England preparing for Squeeze’s U.S. tour dates, I was lucky enough to have Chris Difford take some time out of his schedule to speak about Squeeze and his many other projects he oversees.
Read our full Q&A below.
Besides serving as openers on the Hall and Oates tour, Squeeze is also doing a series of headlining shows on off-nights from that tour. Your tour is being billed as “The Nomadband Tour.” What’s the origin of that name?
Well, we’re basically coming over to America for over two months, and we’re going to be on a bus and that’s going to be our bubble and I guess that kind of sums up what it’s going to be like.
That’s a pretty long tour of the States; is that something you’re looking forward to and are excited about?
I’m really excited to go back out on the road. It’s been a while as you can understand and obviously there’s a bit of anxiety. It seems like in America some states have got a grip of the pandemic better than others so I don’t know how that’s going to play out but we’ll just take it a day at a time.
And what’s your personal feeling about that? Are there feelings of anxiety specifically about being out and playing shows to large audiences?
I’m excited. The Hall and Oates shows are for the most part outdoor shows so those should be pretty safe. The indoor gigs that we’re doing will be monitored very closely. I think the sad thing is we won’t be able to sort of hang out with fans. Normally, if we’re in town, we’d go and wander around and just be amongst the community of whatever city we were in. I don’t know whether that’s going to be possible since we’ll probably have to remain on the bus most of the time which could be claustrophobic maybe but I’m looking forward to it.
So what goes into the preparation for a tour like this? I assume there will be rehearsals and things of the like. What goes on in that process?
Well, Glenn (Tilbrook) and I have been talking about a setlist just in this last week. We’ve got some changes to make, some songs to drop, some other ones to put in and then we start rehearsing in two weeks’ time. It’ll be the first time we’ve gotten together as a band in 15 months so it’ll be interesting to see how thin everybody is!
Of Squeeze’s recent releases, Cradle to the Grave came out in 2015 and The Knowledge in 2017; are there any plans for a new studio album?
Squeeze has no plans to write or record any new material at this point. I think what’s going to happen is this year we’ll finish off the touring which we planned to do last year with Hall and Oates and then we’ve got some U.K. shows at the end of the year. Next year, I think Glenn is going to do the first three or four months on his own and then, beyond that, I really don’t know. It’s really difficult to tell where anybody’s going to be in a year’s time.
You do a lot of live events and songwriting workshops on virtual communication platforms like The Social Club and the online songwriting retreats. Have you done those online out of necessity because of the pandemic or were you leading those events virtually before the pandemic started?
It’s something that I generally did before, but it became more apparent because of the pandemic. There were a lot of songwriters in various parts of the world who wanted to write songs but obviously couldn’t do that without Zoom; Zoom became the important tool. So, every other week for the last year, I’ve been running workshops with about 10-15 writers. This week, I’ve been doing a workshop with writers in Nashville, Tennessee so it runs quite late in the day for me but it’s been going extremely well. We’ve got a Zoom show to show off the songs at the end of this week. It’s been beneficial for my focusing point. I haven’t just been sitting in an armchair looking out the window; I’ve had something to do. I never value the idea of retirement, whatever that is. When I look at people like Bob Dylan, and I think, “These guys have hobbies but they carry on,” and I think that’s exactly what you should do.
I agree. If you’re still motivated to do it, you should definitely continue to do so. Do these sessions and workshops give you a chance to nurture songwriters that you work with? What do you get out of these experiences on a personal level?
Well, last night, after hearing the songs that were written, I got very emotional. I found it so incredible what people can achieve within four or five hours when writing a song. It’s something that we used to do as a band when we were younger was to write songs in a very confined way, a very quick way. And that was the energy that you have as a teenager. That doesn’t quite exist, but to see other people developing their skills in such a short time, I just find it really amazing.
I have to imagine that’s very encouraging.
It’s totally encouraging.
Speaking of songwriting, from your perspective, you’ve often straddled the line in your compositions. You often write from a very personal standpoint, sometimes you write in more of a narrative style, how does the inspiration come to you for writing in a specific style? You might write something really personal like the song “Parents” from your 2006 debut solo album, I Didn’t Get Where I Am. Was that something you consciously decided to do at that point? Or does that inspiration come to you in various different ways or shapes?
My hand was held during the recording of that first solo album by Francis Dunnery, who produced the record. He suggested that I write something about my parents and he came up with some music and the lyrics fell out. But, mostly, I would say, the good songs are written very quickly and they kind of just come. The ones that I have to labor over, I wonder whether the laboring is for a reason, you know? (laughs). It’s like “Is there a problem afoot here?,” but just recently I’ve written 24, 25 lyrics just by sitting here at my desk and allowing myself to be a songwriter.
So you just let that kind of flow through you and let it dictate the direction you’re going to go in, it sounds.
Yeah, I just invite the songwriter into my life and he just gets to work.
You mentioned you and Glenn going over setlists. I have to imagine the setlists you create for an American audience is going to vary slightly from what you’d create for a British or European audience. Is that a fair statement?
Well, actually no because there are a couple of songs in America that do down better than they do in the U.K. but largely we try and keep the theatre of Squeeze quite tight, so we very rarely change what we’re doing once we’ve got it in our heads. I used to wonder what it would be like to be in the theatre and read the same lines every night and go onstage and be that guy and then I realized what actually being in a band is like in that you have to, absolutely, be 100% in your song.
Here in America, as it is all over the world, a song like “Tempted” is so recognizable and so associated with Squeeze for many people from those who may not know that much of your catalog to those who are diehard fans. Why do you think that particular song has been so enduring and has continued to appeal to so many fans of different ages?
I don’t know; I think it’s because it was beautifully sung by [former band member] Paul Carrack, the production is simple, there’s nothing fussy about the song particularly. It’s an intriguing chord sequence over the top of the lyric and I just think it resonates with people maybe because of the temptation within the lyric.
For a while there, you’d kind of gone away and taken a break from Squeeze while the band toured without you and you were working on solo material. When you came back, many fans were really thrilled by your return to the band. You’ve alluded to the fact that your professional relationship with Glenn is better now than maybe it was in past times. What do you attribute that to?
Glenn and I have been together probably for 48 years, something like that, and he’s the person I know more than anybody else on the planet apart from my brother, and that’s quite an extraordinary relationship. We’ve had our ups and downs like any relationship does… it’s like a marriage. But it’s about knowing each other’s differences and our similarities and respecting them. Sometimes I think we probably get very frustrated with each other because we don’t understand what we’re trying to communicate, if we’re trying to communicate. The thing that draws us together is our music and the band. The feeling and the rhythm of our songs onstage is something very special for us.
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This article appears in Sep 9-15, 2021.
