Audio Autopsy, 1984: The Difford & Tilbrook Duo LP, Labelled With Squeeze
You're Squeeze. You break up after 5 albums. If you're the two writing all the material anyway, just record the album you'd make with "Squeeze," and slap your names on it! Cool for these cats!
Their debut was my first introduction to Squeeze, in 1978, working for a large record store in Houston, TX. With, apparently, like-monikered bands in the U.S. and Australia (particularly a “Tight Squeeze” band in America), the British new wave band (that’s also how they were first marketed) was dubbed “U.K. Squeeze” in the United States. The “U.K.” appendage was mercifully dropped for all subsequent releases.
That similar “U.K.”-added fate (and rationale) also befell Andrew Gold and Graham Gouldman (wanna be wowed by someone’s rock music resume? Read the 77-year-old Gouldman’s) and their great and vastly overlooked Wax U.K./RCA Records effort in 1986.
The first several thousand stateside retail copies of the self-titled debut Squeeze album were issued on “Limited Edition See-Thru Red Vinyl,” as the affixed sticker proudly bellowed. This one, of course (or one just like it), was the one I took home….the white label A&M Records promo.
Sometime in 1983, Squeeze fell apart (they got back together in short order), and the two key songwriters, Glenn Tilbrook (who, generally, wrote the music) and lyricist, Chris Difford, released a self-titled album on A&M in 1984.
In fact, Difford defined the musical relationship between the two succinctly in May 2022 to GuitarWorld: “I’m primarily the lyricist of the partnership, and spend my time writing lyrics. The process is pretty much the same as it’s always been. I send Glenn the lyrics and he writes the music. It’s like Bernie Taupin and Elton John, but without all the money. [Laughs]”
I could give you a brief history of Squeeze, but Glenn beat me to it, and did it all in about the time of a standard album track:
The Difford & Tilbrook album was released in July 1984 on A&M Records (U.S. and UK). According to Jason Damas of Allmusic.com, “Frustrated with [Squeeze’s] lack of commercial success, and encouraged by the success of a similar stateside duo, Hall & Oates, Difford & Tilbrook set out to craft an ‘80s contemporary blue-eyed soul record, emulating all the requisite synth washes and drum machines from early-’80s Hall & Oates albums like H2O and Private Eyes.”
Be that as it all may (or not) be, Damas continues: “The album tanked on the charts precisely because it still sounded like Squeeze smothered by Tony Visconti’s flat, lifeless production.”
To that curious end, Visconti indeed produced the album (as he did many a Bowie album, The Moody Blues, and others), but A&M rejected his mix, and brought in Eric Thorngren to do a new mix. Thorngren has mixed or mastered albums by Cyndi Lauper, Bob Marley, PIL, and Talking Heads.
Damas considers Difford and Tilbrook compositions “Love’s Crashing Waves” and “Hope Fell Down,” “two of the duo’s best singles [included in Squeeze concert setlists since 2010], and song-wise is a more consistent album than the schizophrenic, Sweets from a Stranger” [from 1982].
“Love’s Crashing Waves” reached #57 on the UK singles chart in 1984.
Damas also refers to the D&T album as “the lost Squeeze album, and the missing puzzle piece between Sweets and 1985’s Cosi Fan Tutti Frutti. “Despite being far from the duo’s best work (and it’s certainly the rarest), serious fans will want to seek this out,” Damas concludes. So we did:
Carpenters Help Glenn Nail Down Guitar
Squeeze lead guitarist, Tilbrook, once told GuitarWorld’s Damian Fanelli that he was “very conscious of my guitar playing, particularly early on, and I wouldn’t trust myself to improvise. It’s a sort of an insecurity on my part.
“[One person] who really influenced me is the guy who played the [fuzz guitar] solo on the Carpenters’ ‘Goodbye to Love’ [written by Richard Carpenter and lyricist, John Bettis] in 1972, singer/guitarist/producer, Tony Peluso, [shown below, who passed away in 2010].”
Coincidentally enough, Carpenters (siblings Karen and Richard) signed, in 1969, with the same A&M Records that would sign Glenn and Squeeze some eight years later.
Glenn: “That solo really stuck with me. And it’s interesting, because it starts with the tune and then it branches off into this wonderful thing. You know, it’s like in a musical. A song should carry the plot forward. I think the guitar solo should carry the music forward and not just hang around.”
Picking Faves
Chris and Glenn nominated their own favorite hidden gems from their catalogue, including one from this album: From 2019, and a John Earls interview from ClassicPopMag.com:
Chris: “I’d love to see Love’s Crashing Waves in the set. It was from a time when Glenn and I weren’t getting on particularly well, but we were still able to write some fantastic songs – there was nothing to discuss. It’d be interesting to revisit this one.”
Glenn: “When Squeeze started, most of my favorite songs happened to be chosen as singles. Towards the end of our second time around, that wasn’t the case. It coincided with the struggle of ‘Where do Squeeze fit in the marketplace?’ conversations with the record label. One A&R said, ‘Why do we need Squeeze when we’ve got Del Amitri?’ [Scottish rockers, Del Amitri, was on A&M from 1989 through mid-1997].
“That happens to every band. I knew we were done, but we carried on writing some really good stuff, and ‘Letting Go’ from 1991’s Play is always a favorite.”
My Cassette
Like Difford, I favored “Love’s Crashing Waves” on the D&T album. In fact, the opener, “Action Speaks Faster” (with the Visconti-arranged TKO Horns, who had played on Elvis Costello’s “Let Them All Talk,” which opened his 1983 Punch the Clock) was an unspectacularly plodding opener, in my opinion, and I much preferred starting the album with the second track.
This meant I had to fast-forward the cassette to about where I thought it’d be!
The album was released in July 1984. At that point, I was 8 months into my attendance at Christ College Irvine, CA (now Concordia University), having just finished my sophomore year at 29 years old.
I was a couple years out from a decade of jocking at two pro FM rock radio stations, as well as working in retail records. I was gunnin’ for a BA in youth ministry (DCE, or Director of Christian Ed), with a certification to work in the Lutheran Church, which I did for eight years thereafter, 1986-1993, at two congregations in L.A. County.
But, in the summer of Difford & Tilbrook, I had taken a job as counselor and Assistant Camp Director at Lutheran Camp Perkins in Ketchum, Idaho. On our daily breaks, I’d rest on my little cabin bed, and pop my cassette in. If it wasn’t the only tape I brought along, I can’t recall the others.
So, the album ended up being a welcoming friend that summer.
The players:
Backing Vocals – Debbie Bishop
Bass – Keith Wilkinson
Drums, Percussion – Andy Duncan
Guitar, Vocals – Chris Difford
Guitar, Vocals, Keyboards – Glenn Tilbrook
Keyboards, Backing Vocals – Guy Fletcher
Mastered By – Jack Skinner
Mixed By [Remixed] – E.T. Thorngren
Percussion – Larry Tollfree
Track #3, “Picking Up the Pieces” is the kind of bouncy and melodic tune D&T seem to roll out so effortlessly. There’s no reason someone couldn’t have covered this and expected a hit. Duncan’s little drum riff that leads into the chorus is a hook, as is the song’s bridge. Tilbrook and Visconti shared duties on the string arrangement, a valuable additive that’s also unobtrusive.
Track #4: “On My Mind Tonight” is mid-tempo, and it took a while, but it grew on me. Again, like most of D&T tunes, they’re infinitely sing-able, and this one’s a fun one to sing.
Sample lyrics: “The silence of the telephone doesn’t bother me, but I wish that it would ring; I’m confined to quarters, I’m in solitary, I’m the man who would be king, the small hand’s on the 5, I’ve got you on my mind tonight.” Nice job, Chris.
“Man For All Seasons” picks up the pace again with a song that could’ve been “Squeeze”-ed onto any album leading up to D&T. Wilkinson gets a solid workout on bass, and shines brilliantly.
Side 2, Track #1: “Hope Fell Down”: Backing vocals shine here, with impossibly catchy “oooh-oooh”s throughout, with Debbie Bishop taking a brief lead, here, as well as providing back-up. Difford provides a pop culture reference point here in 1984, as he mentions a popular prime time soap (that he rhymes with “malice”) that aired in the U.S. (and possibly, the UK) from 1978 to 1991:
I’m banging my head
You watch without malice
(You watch with no interest at all);
I bet all your friends
Compare this to Dallas?
(I might as well talk to a brick wall),
So under the arm I feel the cold shoulder
So I’ll once again
Have to play the wild rover.
The record finishes strong, with up-tempo melodic bangers taking up Side 2, with the exception of the final track, “The Apple Tree,” an odd, electronic dirge of sorts. Frankly, if they’d have excised the first and last tracks, they’d have a solid, noteworthy, 8-cut classic!
If only I’d have had my CD player in my bunk!
But, wait….there’s more!
Substack’s Amy McGrath Hughes met, interviewed, and had a photo taken with Chris Difford (included in her article) after a 1988 Massachusetts Squeeze show (that The Smithereens opened!)…it’s all Write Hear:
Aamer is Still Waiting For at Least One Phone Call
In 2003, VH1 did what they did so entertainingly 2 decades ago, and tried to reunite Squeeze on their Bands Reunited show.
Awesome! I am playing the album now. I love Squeeze.
Squeeze is in my top 5 bands, they tell a story sooo well & it fits perfectly with their music. I always find it amazing that they would write the music & lyrics completely separately. Up The Junction is one of the best songs ever period stop.