SQUEEZE: PERFECTING THE FINE ART OF ARGYBARGY

SQUEEZE: PERFECTING THE FINE ART OF ARGYBARGY

Rob Patterson

argybargy (arr-gee-bar-gee): “If you’re in a crowded bar and the barman says ‘Drinks are free for the next 30 seconds,’ what you get is argybargy...lots of argybargy... shoulders knocking into each other...”

Defined by Gilson Lavis and related by Glenn Tilbrook

In fishing about for a good premise, one can easily cast the Squeeze story in the charming mold... A sort of modern-day rock ’n’ roll Gilbert and Sullivan operetta.

The curtain opens with three plucky, likable, and occasionally stammering British schoolboys. They have their school rock band and dream of success. But more importantly they are earnest, and by seizing whatever chances they could to play, they get quite good at it.

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...Pop music isabitof a dirty word over here.

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Of course you know that the curtain drops after Act Three with our heroes big DOD stars, and that the real meat of the plav is what happens in between those two points. Otherwise this might just be Beatlemania, or that hit British stage show—John, Paul, George, Ringo and Whatshisname. (I think it may have been Harry?).

Not that slipping into a Beatles analogy wouldn’t make my whole job easier...But I pass on that idea, even though the strings on “I Think I’m Go Go” keep whispering “I Am The Walrus.” It’s too simplistic, unfair to our heroes, and the kind of fusillade of praise that can get a writer into trouble. But then again we haven’t really heard a British rock band who write and spin out gloriously original, intent, and intelligent pop ditties as well as Squeeze do since...

But back to solid ground, which is decidedly where Messrs. Tilbrook, Holland and Difford seem to reside offstage. Slightly shy in varying degrees is the best way to collectively describe all three. Not timid—you can hear that in their music— but slightly sheepish. Difford explained to me that he’d had a problem with stuttering as a youth, still does a bit, and I detect in Jools a similar stammer. Both sing without a hitch, and besides, Buddy Holly made stuttering a rock ’n’ roll art.

That’s where the charm comes in—these guys are the kind of young—in their early 20’s—that rock bands used to be. Big kids and youthful adults, still in touch with the razor’s edge that hits during adolescence, which is one of the motivating forces behind great rock ’n’ roll: kids’ music made by kids who know.

You hear iton their first two albums—the flexing of their rock ’n’ roll muscles on U.K. Squeeze, and their wry, perhaps too ironic commentary on the dictates of youth fashion with Cool For Cats. On Argybargy they’ve come of age, but not without a bit of youthful struggle. Because sometimes people don’t really understand what kids are really saying.

The list of lyrical crimes these unlikely gents have been accused of over their first two discs is enough to earn them rock’s Jack The Ripper award: brutality and sadomasochistic acts (“Sex Master,” “Slap And Tickle”), lecherous lyrical kiddie porno (“Out Of Control”), flagrant self-abuse (“Touching Me, Touching You”). And to think they don’t even wear dog collars, heavy leather, or pierce their cheeks.

“If I had a hot dinner for every time we said: ‘It’s only an observation, it’s not what we actually do,”’ says Jools. “I could open a TURN TO PAGE 62 diner. We said that loads of times, and people printed it, but I think we should have taken out a full page advert explaining it.”

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“I was just commenting on what I saw around me at the time,” Difford had explained to me the year before. The primary lyricist for the band, Chris said that “a lot of guys I knew at the time were into mistreating their women. It was a scene that was going in that I didn’t like, and I wanted to say something about it.”

It’s hard to see these guys a$ whips and chains types, especially when Cool For Cats’ prime cuts were two utterly appealing, poor boy romantic odes. “Goodbye Girl” and “Up The Junction” are so rich with heartbroken puppy love that the sexist charges seem to melt away from their gushing admiration for sweet womanhood.

But when you’re a shy kid, and you see all the other guys getting attention from the ladies by punching down hard with the macho, once you get that guitar in your hand and a little flash power, you’re bound to prove you can be a cool cat too.

And thankfully as success has come to Squeeze (with a number of British hit singles and similar action in Europe and Australia), they’ve no need for tough pub posturing. Argybargy is filled with tales of hopeful courting (“Vicky Verky”), eloping (“Separate Beds”), romantic evenings (“If 1 Didn’t Love You”), and lovers tom apart by miles (“Wrong Side Of The Moon”). Their latest British hit has the ‘man getting whammied, recounting his lover’s departure, decrying his failures, wftile “in the bar the piano man’s found another nail for my heart.”

It seems to be the album that will finally bring Squeeze an American audience, full as it is of merry, appealing pop sensibilities that are universal.

“Coo/ For Cats was a very English/ London sounding sort of thing,” says Jools, “so I wasn’t surprised that it wasn’t a big record here. Though we didn’t plan it that way, this album has a lot more elements that should appeal to the American audience.”

But Glenn observes a problem they face on these shores: “I don’t know, but I guess what is accepted here as ‘pop’ is Andy Gibb or Leif Garrett, which is a total misuse of pop music. I call that crass commercialism.

“What we’re doing should really be called pop music—we’ve got intelligent lyrics, music, and arrangements, but we’re not making any heavy statements. It’s just pop music.

“I think we’re only getting accepted now in Britain as a pop band.. .finally. But that’s only been after initial reluctance on a lot of people’s part that there, could be such a thing as a pop band that didn’t necessarily get up and turn on the radio and try and write songs like the ones coming out.”

“We can also be a crossover,” adds Jools, “accepted by rock audiences who don’t know that we’re a pop band. The sad thing is that pop music is a bit of a dirty word over here. But The Beatles were a really great pop band. What else would you call them?” . '

“The first time we came over here,” observes Glenn, “for a lot of people, especially in the more out of the way places, we were the first British band they’d seen. The publicity was that we were a ‘new wave’ band and so people came along expecting to see something like the Sex Pistols. They were so shocked when they saw we could play, that we also moved around and had fun and didn’t have spiked hair.. .they were shocked and so was I.”

But even Merry Ole England had a hard time accepting what Squeeze were, and that they were good at it. After their manager Miles Copeland first heard them in their cramped London basement, he put them on occasional gigs with bands he worked with like Renaissance and Climax Blues Band.

“This was back in 1975,” Glen tells us, “and here we were, 16, 17, 18 years old, playing short three-minute songs. I don’t know what the audiences thought of us, but we knew there had to be some place between what the headliners were doing and that pop crap for us to fit in.”

Their progression to fame “stumbled along” as Jools tells us. They began to break out as a live band from a neighborhood pub “that we used to play every Friday night because we could just push our gear there. It was next door to where we practiced, and that’s where we got a following. It was a great place...so great the police shut it down.

“We always thought we’d be doing what we do now, says Jools. “So we just carried on playing pubs and whatever until it grew from that one pub to a part of London, then the city and all over England.”

Luck has been in their favor too. Trying to find a new drummer, they gave lengthy auditions. The very last one was Gilson Lavis, one of the best rock drummers you’ll ever hear. “We’d had such a time—some of us would like one guy, but he couldn’t play a certain style. Another bunch of us liked another, but he was limited. Then Gilson walked in and blew the lot of them away in every style. We thought ‘He’s never going to want to join us. (Lavis had also just successfully auditioned for Wings). But he surprised us all and did!”

He probably sensed that there was a place for him in the Squeeze scheme. As Glenn explains, “We are unique. There’s a whole range of different influences that go into creating a whole range of different influences that go into creating what is Squeeze. All five members arrange each song, and our influences run the gamut from jazz through boogie-woogie to r&b, 50’s rock, 60’s pop—all of those things make us ourselves. Other bands have a common interest in a certain kind of music and play just that. We have an uncommon interest in many types of music.”

Lyrically, Glenn feels that “wry observations are a lot funnier than making jokes in songs or singing songs about girls with big tits. Also, we never take ourselves too seriously, even though we take the band and music very seriously.”

To wit, explains Jools, “if I was filthy rich,

I might want to do crazy things. Like you see that building over there,” he says, pointing to a 57th Street skyscraper. “I’d like to make that building into a giant penis. And I bet there’d be all kinds of people who’d love that and say, “Fuckin’ hell, wish I’d thought of that...”

Glenn looks at him strangely, then turns to me. “Well, to each his own.” @