Squeeze is back and bigger than ever with a headlining Hollywood Bowl gig
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For more than 50 years, with a few breaks in between, Squeeze has been making memorable tunes by marrying infectious pop melodies with sophisticated and literate lyrics, often about the complexity of relationships. Now, the English band, known for such classics as “Tempted,” “Black Coffee in Bed” and “Hourglass,” is finally preparing to grab its biggest headlining gig in L.A. to date.
Squeeze brings its current nine-member lineup to the Hollywood Bowl on Sept. 19 with support acts Adam Ant and the English Beat.
We sat down with Squeeze’s main men, singer-songwriter-guitarists Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford, during separate Zoom interviews. Tilbrook, 69, was at home in London, while Difford, 71, was holed up in Nashville for production meetings in advance of the band’s North American tour in support of “Trixies,” the group’s acclaimed album released earlier this year.
Congratulations on headlining the Hollywood Bowl. I believe that’s your biggest headlining gig ever in Los Angeles.
Tilbrook: I think so, yeah. It’s quite something. Perhaps that’s another statistic we should have — how long can you be touring before you get to play the Hollywood Bowl as a headliner? Well, 50 years, is it?
You did play the Hollywood Bowl once before, opening for Sting in 1991. Do you remember?
Difford: I do. I’m friends with Sting, and I really appreciate the kindness that he’s shown to Squeeze over the years. He’s a lovely man, and he’s always got a suitcase in the hall. He’s always off on tour, and I admire that about him. I’m not sure that I could do that for the rest of my life, but he certainly can.
Tilbrook: No … I did go with [Police drummer] Stewart Copeland to see Sting when he was with his last band. Stewart asked me if I’d come along to see what I thought of him and I recommended that he didn’t get him, ‘cause he was too jazzy and weird. So he didn’t take my advice, and the rest is history, isn’t it?
How did Squeeze’s nine-member lineup come about?
Difford: I think Glenn had seen Brian Wilson, and Brian had this massive band behind him that supported the instrumentation of the music that Brian had been involved in all of his life. That really inspired Glenn. I brought my friend Melvin Duffy, the pedal steel player, to the band, and then Glenn brought Steve Smith, the percussionist. And then Glenn brought his son [Leon] to the band.
Tilbrook: It came about gradually. We were doing “Trixies” with [producer/bassist and former Roots member] Owen [Biddle]. He was great to work with. He and his partner, Danica Dora, live in Nashville. We were doing some vocals for “Trixies” and Danica did some vocals for it too. And I thought, this is crazy. I think we should get Danica into the band because she’s got a great voice. … Suddenly we’re a bigger band. The big thing is that we’ve got a lot of strong singers now, so we can deliver harmony, and we’re working a lot on vocals, and that’s significantly changed the way that we sound in a good way.
It’s mind-blowing that you wrote the songs on “Trixies,” about this fictional nightclub, when you were teenagers in 1974, within a year of meeting each other. It’s so fully formed and adult.
Difford: As young songwriters, we were ambitious, and we would spend every day of the week writing songs, going off in different directions and being influenced by all sorts of music, from Sparks to Paul McCartney and Lou Reed. All sorts of people would sort of fill our day. The original lyrical idea for this came from me reading Damon Runyon books, short stories based in the ‘30s and ‘40s. And I just loved the idea of there being a nightclub full of perverted people that maybe one day I would grow up to attend.
Tilbrook: When Chris and I met, he was already writing songs. I was already writing songs, but when we met, he gave me a lyric and I straightaway put a tune to it, and we didn’t even discuss that. That was just the way it happened, and that’s the way it kept on happening. We wrote tons of stuff in the first two years, and “Trixies” was just some of it. Every now and then a “Trixies” lyric would pop up, and I’d do something for it. That’s all we had to do. We had a band called Squeeze, but we didn’t have any gigs. All we did was rehearse every now and then. We auditioned for record companies and got turned down by Polydor, by Island, by CBS and RCA before we got signed by A&M in the end.
What prompted you to go back into the vault and revive “Trixies”?
Tilbrook: I never liked the thought of looking back, but when we did our last record [2017’s “The Knowledge”], it came out to a resounding sort of lack of interest. … Someone said to me, who works in the business, “You know what you need? Next time you do a record, you need a story, and the story has got to be something really big.” We didn’t make a record after that until we made this one, and the thought of that was, “You want a story? This is a really good story, and it’s true.”
Difford: It wasn’t something that we could get our teeth into [when we originally wrote those songs]. We were young, we didn’t have the chops. Two years ago, Owen Biddle, who definitely has the chops, listened to the demos and said we should record this as an album.
How did a former member of the Roots end up joining Squeeze?
Tilbrook: Owen joined us just before COVID hit, so we didn’t get to meet for about a year and a half after he joined. We were going to go do all this touring and then suddenly, of course, we were doing nothing. He joined without playing a note. We knew he was the right guy. I think he’s the first member of the band we’ve ever had who absolutely loved the band, as opposed to seeing it as a good gig. He’s just a joy to work with. He’s so smart and musical, and just moves us in a way we hadn’t moved before.
Difford: Owen has brought so much to the band since he joined. He’s brought confidence that is outstanding, and a musicianship that really raises everybody’s game. He’s an incredible player and I think everybody just brings an ingredient that we didn’t have before, so that when all the ingredients come together, it’s kind of like a masterful dish.
Do you have any regrets about letting former keyboardist Paul Carrack sing lead on 1981’s “Tempted,” which turned out to be one of the band’s biggest hits?
Tilbrook: Paul sang it in a way that I could never have dreamt of singing it. I felt I couldn’t sing properly until I was 26. I could sing, but not properly, and 26 is when I found my voice. I sound a bit different now to how I did in my youth.
Difford: [“East Side Story” producer] Elvis Costello’s decision to have Paul Carrack sing was the perfect choice. Without his vocal on it, it wouldn’t be the No. 1 play on Spotify for Squeeze.
I know sometimes in the past your relationship has been difficult. How are you guys getting along these days?
Difford: Glenn has been quoted as saying that we’ve never been friends, and I think he’s probably right. We’re not the sort of people that go out to dinner or we don’t send Christmas cards to each other. But we write great songs and we come together on stage. There’s a reason in life for the way life evolves, and I think one of those is the unsaid, and the unsaid is a beautiful thing.
Tilbrook: Life during wartime. Same as it ever was.
