Glenn Tilbrook: image

Before MTV there was `the Top Of The Pops! Download Squeeze performing 'Up the Junction' at the Audio & Video page.

Early images of Squeeze were mostly album cover art and grainy black and white newspaper photos.

Album covers did little to define Squeeze's image, and usually didn't have clear pictures of the band members. This one features Jools, Gilson, and…Chris?

Without being reduced to a slut
I'll be as sweet as a nut
-Sweet as a Nut

It was around the time of Squeeze's breakup that image became much more significant in the music industry. MTV had arrived, and the importance of a band's ability to make some sort of visual impact had increased exponentially. Since Squeeze's lack of a strong image is often blamed for the fact that they have spent most of their time as a band with a "cult following" rather than being really hugely successful, let's take a look at how it has evolved over the years.

Miles Copeland, their first manager, took on the task of trying to make the band more presentable when they were just starting out in the late 70's. Chris Difford tells, "Miles did give us spending money to go and buy some clothes. Me and Glenn rebelled. We went down Oxford Street and bought red and blue pairs of suede shoes and we swapped the left and right together, so we had one red shoe and one blue shoe each. Then we bought some cheesecloth shirts in an Indian shop. And Miles fucking hit the roof! I think he wanted us to buy a couple of really tight shirts with collars sticking up and safety pins." Admittedly it wasn't much of a look, but it was good enough in the early days when punk music was still a big fashion influence, and Squeeze was loosely lumped in with punk.

One red shoe and one blue: Early Squeeze fashion statement.

Then music videos came along and changed everything. Videos gave the band new opportunities to get their music out to the public, but this also meant that a band's image was more important than ever. In the past only the fans who made it to live performances had much of an idea what a band was wearing or what kind of attitudes they were projecting, or even what they looked like! But now the music and image of a band were a package deal, and it was streaming right into our living rooms. The audience often saw a band before they knew what it sounded like and judged from there. By the early 80s, videos had become an incredibly important marketing tool and absolutely crucial to any band who did not already have a large and loyal following.

Squeeze gamely hopped on the bandwagon, and got off to a shaky start with the uninspired "Cool for Cats" video (mostly one long close-up of a deadpan Chris lip-synching to the camera), and "Up the Junction" (one long close-up of an even more deadpan Glenn). They made some stabs at wearing vaguely coordinating outfits, etc., but generally their videos looked lackluster and hastily thrown together. Chris once said, "…There was a time once when I thought we should all wear some kind of get-up and get smart. But I can't ever imagine Jools doing that or Gilson!" In fact, it didn't seem like any two members of the band would be able to get behind one look, much less all five of them. But they limped along, and in general each video was an improvement on the last.

"Cooool for Caaaaats"

"I never thought it would happen with me and the girl from Clapham…"

The "Love's Crashing Waves" video had a spiffy set…

nice artsy shots of the ocean…

wind! for drama…

and with matching outfits the band finally looked like they all belonged in the same video.

But Glenn describes it as "Chris and Glenn looking forlorn, staring into the seawater."

Glenn was aware that the videos weren't terribly inspiring. In 1983 he said, "There's got to be some way that we can harness video to put ourselves across better. The unfortunate thing about video is that it always seems to promote individual people instead of music, and it's always tied to a specific person's sexuality. I generally find that objectionable, although there are exceptions." That's a fair point, especially since the "specific person" in question tends to be the singer.

By 1983 MTV had taken root and there was no going back. Squeeze had broken up, and Glenn and Chris released their solo album, Difford & Tilbrook. In a way "going solo" had given Chris and Glenn a clean start as far as their image, but they had differing ideas about what look to go for. Glenn grew his hair out for the first time since Copeland's attempts to "clean them up". He had married a designer, and he wanted to give his wife a shot at addressing the issue. Some years later he told Musician Magazine, "The original idea was that Pam being a designer could help the band get an image. But everyone would have to be agreeable to whatever sort of style came up. And whatever it was that Pam came up with certainly wasn't right for Chris."

In any case, when Difford and Tilbrook released the video for their first single "Love's Crashing Waves" it was far more polished than anything they had done before. For the first time the video seemed to have a theme and a sense of place and, most importantly, their style of dress not only coordinated with each other and the set but also slotted nicely into the New Wave or New Romantics craze that was sweeping from Britain to America. They didn't stay in that niche long, but it was the closest they would ever come to belonging to an identifiable music movement.

Incidentally, this was when I first discovered Glenn. I had never heard of Squeeze, but when I saw the "Love's Crashing Waves" video I ran out and bought the album. When I returned to the store for "more Difford and Tilbrook", they pointed me to the Squeeze section. I still like the video now - all the footage of the ocean, the beautiful setting with the pillars and the black and white marble floor, and the relaxed pace that exactly matches the pace of the song. Glenn is apparently embarrassed by it these days, though. He told an interviewer from Record Collector that he was lucky never to have seen it, and then added, "Actually as a piece of kitsch video, it's quite a good laugh; Chris and Glenn strolling down the beach looking forlorn. We had big long hair, long coats, staring into the seawater."

In their later efforts, things picked up, and they have had some interesting concepts. Their videos are offbeat, lighthearted, and have succeeded in highlighting the band without forcing the songs into the back seat. They have found creative ways to hold the viewer's interest without having to peddle their sexuality too overtly. Two excellent examples are the videos for "Hourglass" (1987) and "If It's Love" (1989). The Hourglass video is crammed with clever props and sets that trick your eyes, so that you are kept guessing throughout the video. It was a good ploy because people wanted to watch it over and over to see how the things were done. It borrows some visuals from Salvador Dali's famous "melting clock" painting, "The Persistence of Memory", although it's much more cheerful! Chris' guitar neck suddenly "melts" in the middle of a solo and Gilson plucks the hands off a grandfather clock to use as drumsticks. It also fit the song very well and used a lot of objects and images featured in the song to tie the two together.

In "If It's Love" lots of props were also used, and it has a silly, fun feel just like the song does. The video cuts several times to Glenn holding an enormous artificial daisy and plucking off its petals one by one a la "she loves me, she loves me not." He seems to be having some fun for once! In most videos he looks bored to tears.

Glenn with the giant daisy in "If It's Love"

The Hourglass video did a lot of playing around with perspective.

The set looked a little like a Salvador Dali painting

Clocks were a big theme. Jools stands looking Joolsy.

Here the sand in Keith's hourglass flows upwards!

Glenn boogies around a little for a guitar solo, looking bendy like the set and props.

Sadly, though, just as they started to get the hang of making videos, the TV stations seemed to lose interest in playing them. I think probably one of their best videos was "This Summer" (1996), but I have only seen a small clip of it which I downloaded from the official Squeezefan.com site! Glenn and Chris look relaxed and happy, strumming their guitars from brightly colored striped beach chairs and sometimes in front of what looks like an old barn in the country. They're near the ocean and the video is sunny and breezy just like the song. But it was released in 1996 or '97, and by then MTV had changed a lot. With new emphasis on rap, hip hop, and programs like The Real World there was no room for Squeeze. Once again Squeeze's image went back to the content of their songs, the covers of their albums, and their concerts.

But then a funny thing happened. The Internet exploded into our worlds, and suddenly there was a new way to promote the band that did not involve money or require that Squeeze be hip. All they needed was a fan base, which they had. I don't think I had ever seen a magazine article about Squeeze in my life, so it was a long time before it occurred to me that they might have a fan site. But one day I was idly surfing the web and happened to punch in the band's name. Up came the enormous (now defunct) Songwriting site! It was the official Squeeze web site at the time, and was the biggest fan site on the web. Squeeze now have a huge official web site at Squeezefan.com.

The net gave fans access to tons of pictures, magazine articles, and all kinds of information about the band. They can listen to some of their radio appearances archived on the net. They can join a mailing list where news of what Glenn and other Squeeze members are doing is reported almost as soon as it happens. This has had an enormous impact on those who are able to access it because it means that it doesn't matter as much if the record companies and press think Squeeze is marketable; fans still get to hear about them. For a band like Squeeze, whose image has largely been "just who they are", it made image somewhat irrelevant.

A band that stays around a long time needs an image flexible enough to change with the times. For Squeeze, I think that has meant years of just being who they are and continuing with their own unique brand of songwriting, so that eventually people do have a kind of lasting impression of them that doesn't need updating in any radical way. Glenn says, "Squeeze is a sort of collective body of people that gather around Chris and my songs. What I like about the group is that there is a certain distinct character and personality that emerges from the songs."

Apart from Glenn and Chris' brief flirtation with New Wave, they have avoided the pitfall of being associated strongly with any one movement which then goes out of style. Although I guess that robs them of the opportunity for huge record sales, it also allows them to maintain integrity and do what they believe in and what they want to be doing. It also means they don't get mobbed on the streets. Glenn once said, "I don't think we're in any danger of being pin-ups. But I wouldn't want to lose that element of being able to blend in with my surroundings, which is what I have now, that I love, it's great."