Glenn Tilbrook: squeeze again!

Cosi Fan Tutti Frutti came out in 1985. I harbor an inexplicable fondness for the cover.

1987's album, Babylon and On. Great album! Not-so-great cover, but it did start the association of Squeeze with bright primary colors.

Unusual cassette single of the Babylon and On hit "853 5937"

Well, they say you can't keep a good band down (or something like that), which turned out to be true of Squeeze. After Chris and Glenn released their solo album, and took some time to regroup, they gamely arranged a one-time-only reunion concert with Squeeze at a pub in Catford. Up until that point Chris and Glenn had been planning to continue with the Difford & Tilbrook band and release another album, but playing with Jools and Gilson again changed all that.

In a 1987 Musician Magazine interview Gilson said, "Jools and I had remained close, I think, because he left the band before it broke up, so there wasn't that feeling of animosity, deserved or undeserved. I played some odd gigs with him and then one day Glenn came by and jammed. That was a weird experience. I hadn't seen him for such a long time. First song I was going, 'Come on, ya bastard, impress me now!' But by the second song that was all gone and I was having a great time."

Glenn said, "The thing with Gilson was the most difficult to broach, but I was totally knocked out with the way he was playing. I hadn't heard him play like that in years and I went up and said so to him. He'd improved so much. Communicating with him was a bit difficult at first 'cause he had a little resentment toward Chris and me for breaking up the band."

But with typical Glenn-like tenacity once he was clear about what he wanted he went after it. He called up Chris the next morning, full of enthusiasm. Chris remembers, "Glenn called me and said he thought it would be a really good idea to reform Squeeze. I said, 'That's outrageous. I really don't think we should do that.'" However, Chris' curiosity was piqued enough to go down and witness the "new" Gilson for himself, and he was suitably impressed. Chris said. "Gilson and I hadn't spoken in two years - at the time he was drinking quite a lot. Since then, though, he hasn't been drinking for a year, and he's a completely different person. He's extremely witty, he's very smart, he's right on the ball - all the things I've never, ever, known him to be." Everyone agreed to the reunion gig.

Things were a bit tense at first. "When we met for sound check," Glenn said, "it was like meeting an old girlfriend - a tremendous amount of familiarity, yet it was also like we didn't quite know each other. It was sort of strange, but by the end of the set we got over that and had a good time. I hadn't even been thinking of re-forming the band. But the gig was fiery and exciting and it suddenly felt right."

"It all made sense then," Gilson said, "because everybody had gone out into the wide world and touched and fondled reality a bit and then came back and said, 'Come on chaps, this is what we do. So let's do it.'"

Glenn on guitar and Gilson on drums, the rift mended and back on stage together. (Photo by Scott Rodas)

They released Cosi Fan Tutti Frutti in '85 to a somewhat lukewarm reception, but followed it up in '87 with the tremendously successful album Babylon and On. In 1996, Glenn reflected back on the band's standing around the time they reformed, "We certainly must have lost some momentum when we split up. I don't think that was a bad thing because one of the reasons we broke up was we couldn't cope with the success we had. By the time we got back together again, we were surprised that we were still playing big places and the audience was still there."

Shortly after the release of Babylon and On, Glenn described the much-improved atmosphere amongst the band, "I think relaxed is the key word. I would look forward to and hope for a lot of success for what we've done now, because I can honestly say - hand on heart - that it's the first thing we've done in a long while that I can honestly believe in. But I'm not going to tear my hair out worrying about it. I feel a lot more secure in myself than I used to. I used to worry about what would happen if we got big or if the band broke up, but it just doesn't worry me now."

He also says, "I found myself coming out of the closet as a guitarist, after a few years not wanting to play guitar at all, especially on record." One can only speculate why that was, but he did say in a 1997 interview with Guitarist Magazine, "I look back at the 80's now, and it makes me laugh to think I was full of embarrassment to play guitar because it was so deeply unfashionable. I can't understand why I felt that way, and I don't think I'll every feel that way again." Glenn's guitar playing certainly gets rave reviews from his fans, but critics tend to write things like, "Never a blindingly brilliant lead guitarist, Tilbrook plays in a offhand way that rarely distracts from the song itself." (MetroActive, August 1996)

So, in a way, it seems that Glenn had managed to get what he wanted from his career. When he wanted big success he got it (careful what you wish for!), and when he didn't want to be exploited in the videos he wasn't. When big fame and the constant touring and churning out of albums got to be too much, Glenn took a break and then cut back to one release every two years. Even the problem of image seemed to be solving itself to some degree, as Squeeze had stuck around long enough to be recognizable without making too many compromises in that department. Glenn said later, "I think there's a certain amount of familiarity now. It's not unlike a box of soap or a brand of sausages in that name recognition counts for something." The band had been through a lot of growing pains, but they were roughly where they wanted to be and were starting to settle in and enjoy themselves.