It
was 1983,
and Squeeze had just broken up. Glenn had thought the band would always
be together. In fact a few years before the breakup, in 1980, he had
told Rolling Stone,"It's a pretty good situation for us to have been
together that long, through periods when we had no money coming in
and no gigs. It definitely cements your relationship. When you've
been through rough times like that, there's a certain spirit that
I don't think you can get just by forming a band with good musicians."
But constant touring and churning out of new material had taken its
toll on the band, and those relationships seemed to have crumbled
under the strain. Chris and Glenn's songwriting partnership continued,
though, and they released a "solo" album called Difford
& Tilbrook.
Artistically,
the time away from Squeeze seemed to be a sort of rebirth for Glenn,
and he found himself trying new things. He said at the time, "My personal
approach to singing has changed. I think for quite a while in Squeeze
I found I could sing songs without ever properly thinking what they
were about. The songs on this album are ones of emotional nature mostly.
And the corresponding change taken about in my vocal approach has
been very emotional." (Rockbill, July 1984) There's no denying that
all the subsequent albums have benefitted from that shift. It is one
of the hallmarks of Glenn's vocals that he conveys compassion for
the protagonists in the songs, causing the listener to overlook some
rather glaring character flaws. It complements Chris' lyrics perfectly.
However,
after the breakup Glenn and Chris had a hard time agreeing on a sound
for the new album. "First, Chris got the idea that they should form
a new band with the Sugar Hill rhythm section. Glenn leaned more toward
a state-of-the-art double-synthed Euro-pop MTV-era star vehicle."
(Musician Magazine, c. 1987) In the end, they felt something had been
compromised in the album's sound…perhaps it's not possible to
make a truly great album when you have such diverse ambitions for
it.
"There's a few songs on the Difford & Tilbrook record that I really
like," Glenn says. "But we didn't record them the right way. 'Hope
Fell Down,' 'The Apple Tree' and 'On My Mind Tonight' are all songs
I'm really proud of. But the album sounds like coffee-table music.
It's all a bit polite."(Musician Magazine, 1987)
Later
in the same interview he reflects on how the new band's precision
dampened that impulsive vibe that he had enjoyed with Squeeze, "I
thought the Difford & Tilbrook band live was better than the record,
but my overriding impression of it was that it was all a bit too precise,
which was exactly what I was looking for after playing with Squeeze.
Because Squeeze, until the point we broke up, was the sort of band
that could be really awful one night and great the next. We weren't
terribly consistent. I was after a sort of consistency and I got it,
but I found that while we could always play a really good show with
Difford & Tilbrook, I'd wind up feeling not that inspired by it, either.
Having all that competence around wasn't exciting or moving. It didn't
change, it was always the same."
While
on hiatus from being Squeeze, Glenn and Chris seem to have done a
lot of exploring. A theater company in Deptford was putting on a play
based on the song lyrics from Squeeze's East Side Story album called
"Labeled With Love". Once they heard about it they threw themselves
behind the project with gusto, writing a few new songs for it, helping
with the stage sound, and promoting it. Chris said, "It's about a
pub that's losing business so it's changed into a disco and renamed
'The Amazoon.' The play did very well, and played to sold-out houses
in London for thirteen weeks."
Glenn
also spent some time dee-jaying in a British club, and he did some
work with rap artist Grandmaster Flash. Chris and Glenn did a Dr.
Pepper commercial (1 MB mp3), which some of you may remember.
Chris and Glenn remained the only two constants
in the band's lineup in the late 80's and throughout the 90's.(Photo
©1983 Ebet
Roberts)
Happily,
a year later Squeeze reformed, and although the lineup would change
a lot over the years, they continued to release albums as a band until
1999. Glenn said in 1996, "When we broke up, we'd done five albums
in five years by the end of it, we were burnt out, really. We hadn't
had very good advice and had no experience dealing with it so when
it was offered we'd take it…Chris and I did the Difford & Tilbrook
record which was a tremendous amount of fun…We were so strong
and clear that we'd never get the band back together but yet, when
we played, it was so obvious to me that we had so much more to give…but
we should also take a little bit more control over the way we work
and give ourselves some time to breathe."
