Sage, GatesheadChris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook may be celebrating 45 years together, but their catalogue of stone-cold classics is still far from up the junction
‘This year, Chris [Difford] and Glenn [Tilbrook] celebrate 45 years together,” says the pre-gig announcer, making the Squeeze songwriters sound like an old married couple. There are certainly parallels. They met in Blackheath in 1973, after Tilbrook answered an advert for a guitarist in a “recording and touring band: influences the Kinks, Lou Reed and Glenn Miller”. This unlikely combo turned out to be an imaginary group that Difford had dreamed up in his bedroom. But once his lyric were paired with Tilbrook’s tunes, their band struck pop gold. There have been ruptures and reconciliations since, and it was decades ago that they took up residency in the top 20 and 1981’s East Side Story saw them talked about as the natural heirs to John Lennon and Paul McCartney. However, Squeeze’s 2015 song Cradle to the Grave, the theme tune to Danny Baker’s sitcom, explains the secret of their longevity. Tilbrook sings about not “being a slave” to past mistakes, and of defiantly fighting on: “I won’t go ’til I’m ready.” His band may be a much-loved institution rather than afforded the national treasure status granted the Kinks or Madness, but the vast Squeeze songbook documents a changing
Britain as effectively as any historical drama.
1985’s King George Street, among the lesser-played songs that, according to Tilbrook, deserve another airing, mentions council estates, “from before they sold them off”. Lately, Squeeze have become more political. Their merch stall donates to food banks and in 2016 Tilbrook spontaneously changed his lyrics on The Andrew Marr Show to rail against “the destruction of the welfare state” under fellow guest David Cameron. That mischievous side surfaces here as well. There are audible gasps among some shockable punters when Tilbrook introduces Mumbo Jumbo as about “being young, punk and full of spunk”. Heaven knows what the more prudish present make of 2017’s Please Be Upstanding, a beautifully sensitive song about erectile dysfunction that includes the line: “Trying to balance in the air, with nothing but a dribble there.”