NOT ANOTHER SQUEEZE STORY!

Difford and Tilbrook. Lennon and McCartney. Difford and Tilbrook. Lennon and McCartney. Difford and Tilbrook. Lennon and McCartney. Blah, blah, blah.

Pretty sickening up there, isn't it? Hope Difford and Tilbrook think so too, because face it—such comparisons are inevitable kiss-offs, and no one, least of all me, wants to kiss Squeeze off just yet. In case you aren't hip, get this: Squeeze "could well be" this decade's Lennon & McCartney or maybe "the Leiber & Stoller of the '80s," or else a whole bunch of other things that they're either going to be busy defending or arguing with for the next few years. Gerry Rafferty and Joe Egan once "could well be" the '70s' Lennon & McCartney as Stealer's Wheel—and Leiber & Stoller themselves even produced 'em once—and when was the last time you even wanted to hear "Baker Street," let alone "Stuck In The Middle With You"? Know what I mean?

History speaks: when there were teams like Lennon & McCartney in the early '60s, there were very few practicing, legitimate "rock critics" who could command page upon page of copy exploring the textural differences between the Beatles' music and your average Gregorian chants and be guaranteed people would read it. Pop music was treated as pop music; critics were first and foremost fans, not wizened prophets who could assess the sociopolitical ramifications of Wonderwall and force people to read about it in Rolling Stone. Now there are lots of critics, and most of 'em would give their eyeteeth to have reviewed Sgt. Pepper's the day it came out. But they didn't. And so we suffer.

"I think there's a lot of inverted snobbery against synthesizers, and I think it's complete rubbish. —Glenn Tilbrook"

Squeeze suffers, too. Here's how: How many people do you know who saw E.T. told you "It wasn't that good"? It's inevitable: the highest-grossing movie in history as I write, and people are talking about in negative terms. Now, take Squeeze. On one hand we've got a bunch of '80s rock crits so eager to sink their teeth into anything at all special they can't help drowning it in hyperbole (cf. Laurie Anderson, Marshall Crenshaw, X) and ultimately looking foolish; on the other we've got a bunch of Beatles fans, potential Squeeze fans, mind you, preparing themselves for an argument in which the only winners are certainly not Squeeze.

SO, LET US AGREE:

1) There will never again be a songwriting team as "good" as Lennon & McCartney, because "good" here is a loaded term that implies importance, social relevance, pervasiveness and things that rock music itself—and certainly not the Beatles exclusively—had in its second, most powerful decade, the '60s. Were Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook born 15 years earlier, and had things followed a precise path historically, perhaps they might be compared to Lennon & McCartney without prejudice. But they weren't, things didn't, and they can't.

2) The Beatles' implicit greatness lay in their ability to consistently be good—and, occasionally, great. In other words, the Beatles' most remarkable achievement was their ability to continually produce singles and albums of "A" quality, with minimal deviation. There were many bands in the '60s who released songs better ("A+" quality) than many Beatle biggies —songs like "Friday On My Mind," "Waterloo Sunset," "I Can See For Miles," "Over Under Sideways Down," and random Hollies stuff come to mind—but the follow-ups or band-histories-to-come never ultimately compared to McCartney & Lennon's continual top-line outpourings, and therefore are viewed by many as being "not as good."

3) This is incorrect.

4) "British rock 'n' roll of the '60s" might be represented by the entire output of the Beatles, or, perhaps, these albums: The Who Sell Out, the Kinks' Something Else and Village Green Preservation Society, the Zombies' Odessey & Oracle, the Hollies' Evolution and several others that sociologically are "less relevant" but certainly as interesting in every other capacity as any of the Beatles' albums.

5) That said, let's agree that there is no real point in continuing in this manner except that some may consider it easier to accept that the Difford/Tilbrook songwriting team of Squeeze might be "as good as," individually, Rod Argent or Chris White of the Zombies, or Clarke/Hicks/ Nash of the Hollies.

6) Therefore we need not drag Lennon & McCartney into any further discussions of Squeeze until you decide to be realistic about it, OK?

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Meanwhile, it's time for me to interview Squeeze, which is OK by me because I thought East Side Story was one of last year's best albums, but then so did lots of other people and that's how this whole mess started. Anyway, they're in Detroit to play at the Royal Oak Music Theatre, a good place for concerts 'round here and a far cry from Madison Square Garden, which they played in New York and sold out, sort of.

We're in a Holiday Inn bar, 4 p.rrt., and the band's waiting around to catch the bus for their soundcheck. First I'm introduced to Glenn Tilbrook, 24-year-old lead vocalist and the half of the Squeezeteam that puts lyrics to music; Chris Difford, 27 and actual lyricist, soon arrives to join us.

Now I'm going to print parts of our dialogue verbatim—but I'll change my lines to make me sound intelligent, OK?

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What's this I hear? You think the current state of songwriting art is at a relative low? GLENN: Yeah, to be short about it. I don't think people take songwriting as seriously as they once did bands. Musicians don't seem to be concentrating on songs. When a band forms, or goes into a studio, it seems to me that nine times out of ten they concentrate on a sound, and a production, and a riff—that sort of mentality seems to me to be behind songs these days. Not an awful lot else, which I think is a shame.

Anyone around who does concentrate on songs that you can think of?

GLENN: Kid Creole and the Coconuts, they've got excellent songs. And I think David Byrne's got excellent songs as well.

Have you heard the Zombies' Odessey & Oracle album?

CHRIS: No. Is it good?

Indeed it is. I think it's a classic album, much like The Who Sell Out and the Kinks' Village Green Preservation Society. Frankly, I feel you have it in you to produce an album of that stature. Does it make you at all self-conscious to be placed in their company?

CHRIS: I think I feel a certain allegiance with the Kinks—who for the most part weren't awfully big in Britain, but were accepted very widely here in the States. Which is similar to our situation here now. Our popularity in Britain goes up and down according to how well each single does. Whereas here, there's a consistent build-up. I've not heard the Zombies, though...

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Speaking of the Zombies, which Chris Difford just did, let me point out famed Al Kooper's liner notes to Odessey & Oracle, in which he raves: "...the songs are so original in thought—a girl soon to come home to you (from prison), the horror of the First World War..." Wave on, Al, but he's got a point—some bands are "original in thought," and as much as the Zombies were, now we've got Chris Difford singing in "His House, Her Home": "I laugh at myself when your son/Is watching cartoons/In the morning he's looking up at me/ When we're in the bathroom/Sees me kissing mother/Doesn't blink an eye/Asks a lot of questions/Answers hard to find..."

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 21

Kooper pointed out "Care Of Cell 44" in his Zombies liner notes; and aside from a very few random rocktunes like Sea Train's "Portrait Of The Lady As A Young Artist" (huh?) and Beachboy Bruce Johnston's "Deirdre," how many other songsi even remotely deal with complexities such as women behind bars, nervous breakdowns, etc.? Here's Squeeze's Difford unfolding the entirely un-poppy story of an outsider's romance with a widow: making love while her & dead hubby's son Junior watches on.

CHRIS DIFFORD: "When I left school I became a solicitor's clerk, and I went through a period of about three to five months working on divorce cases, under the guidance of a solicitor. Because we lived in the suburbs of London, we'd get a lot of sort of 'suburban' relationships falling apart. And I used to just sit and read through a lot of them, because I thought a lot .of them were quite funny—in quite a humorous way, two people would just knock themselves, they'd just lie their teeth out just to get a divorce through. "

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A quick summation of Squeeze's output: five albums, one OK, one good, one real good, one fantastic, one almost as good. In that order. John Cale produced the first one; must've been a bad week for him. Elvis Costello produced the fourth, East Side Story, and it must've been a good week.

GLENN TILBROOK: "Firstly, we knew Elvis—so it wasn't like going into the studio cold with someone you don't know, which I think is One of the main objections to any producer. Obviously you're very much involved with your own work; it's very personal. And you don't want a stranger just coming in and interfering with it. But we had a good relationship with Elvis in the studio; I think he was good in getting the band to give a full performance, getting a live atmosphere going, which was really helpful because we'd never done an album that way before. We used to overdub to get things right—which used to work in its own way, but I think Elvis Sort of showed us another way of doing it."

Are you guys more interested in spontaneity right now—getting the right "feel"—or would you rather just get the perfect track, regardless?

GLENN TILBROOK: "Well, I'm always changing my mind about it. At the moment I'm veering again toward the record, more than the performance. Because we've done two albums now where we've, like, given performances, and I get the feeling that for the next one I'd like to try producing again. In the full sense of the word—thinking about each track, overdubbing—because I think there's something to be gained from going both ways, and any permutation of both ways as well. Because if you take someone like the Beach Boys, say something like Pet Sounds, something I've been listening to quite a lot, there's no way that anything on that album could be termed 'slapping it down' as a performance, sort of going it there and getting a vibe. It's all very carefully worked out. If you do it well enough—but with feeling— that's a great way of working."

WHAT RECORD WOULD THEY TAKE WITH THEM IF THEY WERE ON A DESERT ISLAND AND COULD ONLY TAKE ONE, ETC... CHRIS: "I'd probably take that Einstein [On The Beach] album, by Philip Glass. Because I can't understand it, and I'm sure if I had all that time on a desert island, I'd find out what it was about."

GLENN: "I'd take Pet Sounds, I think. I'd take an album called Frank Sinatra's 20 Golden Greats on Capitol, his best—and I'd try to find a mono copy of it as well. What else? Think I'd take Revolver. Tropical Gangsters, by Kid Creole and the Coconuts."

CHRIS: "I'd take With The Beatles and Beggar's Banquet, I think. And Dare, by the Human League."

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The mention of Human League is interesting because Squeeze, as compatriots of Costello, Lowe & Edmunds—who with Paul McCartney were individually going to produce a four-sided album, a side apiece, which eventually became East Side Story in case you didn't know for which, if you didn't, you can't be blamed, because it didn't happen anyway—uh, anyway, you might think that Squeeze may look askance at modern-day pop bands such as Human League, maybe seeing them as "cold" synth bands that don't play with any degree of emotion, etc. You know the tired argument; they do, too.

"I'm sort of anti-Nick Lowe on this point," says Tilbrook. "I think there's a lot of inverted snobbery against synthesizers, and I think it's complete rubbish. In the sense that it's all in the performance anybody gives, whether it's with a syn-' thesizer or a guitar. I think the Human League are a great band that write great songs.

"The one thing a synthesizer does is make it easier to get a good sound for people. The one sort of damaging effect is like the effect TV can have on kids if it's left on all the time: it can make you lazy, you won't try to get better at the instrument because you've got a good sound to begin with."

Is it logical, therefore, to assume that Squeeze are pleased with the current British popcharts, discounting their own presence or absence?

"I think it's great," says Difford. "Very healthy. I know people say Haircut 100 are a bunch of wimps, but the fact is they're coming out with a bunch of interesting songs that carry across the British trademark. Just recently there's been another band that's come to the fore, called ABC, and they're just absolutely amazing. I think the album's gonna be a really big hit when it reaches here, in the same way the Human League was. It's not built on image, yet they've both got very strong images as bands.

"I'm sure the Human League wouldn't have been the number one seller over here—well, I'm not sure, actually—but they wouldn't have been quite as big had people known about them. People would have been more snobby."

While this seems entirely plausible, it also brings up the equally interesting proposition that Squeeze themselves are unknown quantities, at this point—at least as far as the vast American Heartland goes. They have absolutely no image whatsoever, which is both good and bad, of course—but after all this time it must irk them. Does it matter?

"Yes," says Tilbrook. "It matters in terms of other people's perceptions of the band. It also matters in terms of making things easier. I think if we had a more cohesive image, it'd make it a lot easier for the band to establish itself in people's minds. But the fact is we haven't got an image, and I don't think we ever really worked at getting one. And I think it's a bit too late to start trying now."

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VITAL THEORIES, ETC.

DIFFORD: "I just moved into a new house, and Glenn came by and helped me put all my records into their boxes, in different groupings than I'd had them before—quite logically, like '60s pop, '70s and '80s pop, R&B, jazz, that sort of thing. My wife threw a fit. She couldn't understand where everything had gone; she was looking for a Nick Lowe album

and it took her about half an hour." TILBROOK: "I've come to the conclusion that the best way to file records is alphabetically, but then have a different section for records you've bought in the past year. Then, at the end of every year, file them alphabetically. Because when I actually filed them all alphabetically, the new albums that I wanted to get to were difficult to find."

DIFFORD: "Yes. You miss some of them."

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No need to dwell on this exotic scoop; when Difford departs to make a phone call, I suggest to Tilbrook that perhaps Squeeze needed a rubber-masked, charismatic figure much like Iron Maiden's to get their point across in America. Perhaps he should wear an "Ozzy" t-shirt.

"Oh. That's absolute madness. Rock 'n' roll seems to be a really sick thing to me. That sort of rock 'n' roll. The lyrical imagery involved in a lot of those things makes me want to puke.

"I heard this song the other day which instantly became my pet hate, called 'Partytown.' Don't know who it's by..."

Unfortunately I do, I volunteer: cultural icon Glenn Frey of the Eagles, whose album I'd (coincidentally!) heard for the first time the night before...

"The opening line is, he 'got sick' of his kids, got sick of his wife, and left it all to go to 'Partytown.' It's so stupid. And if that's what's working its way into people's consciousness as an acceptable way or mode of behavior—God, I'm beginning to

sound like a Christian or something—but if you get kids singing along with that, and it becomes an accepted way of behavior.. .do you know what I mean? You know what I mean? It's insidious...it's horrible."

This may well be. Nonetheless, more than one song by Squeeze involve concepts as impure as adultery and excessive drinking. It works both way, no?

"Yes, I suppose it does," says Tilbrook. "We sing a lot of songs about drinks—I suppose we attract a drinking audience. But I think it's fair to say that our songs, whether they're about negative or positive situations, do at least have a little bit of heart in them. I didn't detect any trace of heart in 'Partytown.' "

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Later that night I saw Squeeze perform and wasn't very impressed; I don't think that's especially relevant as I don't consider the band's major appeal their instrumental abilities or onstage charisma. It's the songs: bet if I'd seen the Searchers, the Hollies or even the Zombies back you-know-when, they wouldn't have been any better. Wish I'd had the chance to know for sure.

Meanwhile, I suggest the world proper do Squeeze a massive favor: shut up with this Beatles thing and buy enough Squeeze records so they've be able to make lots more, OK?

"When I was 13," reminisced Glenn conveniently, "I bought Led Zeppelin II, and Chicago's second double album and thought 'this is the music for me.' And I sold all my pop records, gave away all my Monkees records. A load of Tamla stuff I gave away as well.

"I've ended up buying it all back again and giving away my Led Zeppelin records."

Huh?