By Michael David Toth
Combining some of the catchiest melodies ever written with wickedly witty lyrics, Squeeze is easily one of the most fondly remembered artifacts of late-1970s British new wave. Further inflating Squeeze’s legendary status, the band’s central songwriters, Chris Difford (lyrics) and Glenn Tilbrook (music), often get lumped with the likes of Lennon/McCartney as one of Britain’s most all-time important songwriting teams. Squeeze hits like “Tempted” and “Pulling Mussels from the Shell” were the tip of a proverbial iceberg of pop-music genius.
Between 1983 and 1997, Squeeze disbanded, reunited and disbanded yet again, but Difford and Tilbrook still remain friends. Although no public concerts or any formal reunion are planned, the duo will likely do UK media appearances together this year in support of a new, comprehensive Squeeze reissue campaign.
Although Tilbrook has played a couple of solo dates in Cleveland in recent years, Difford’s current tour marks his own first return to the States since the last US Squeeze tour in 1995. Since then, Difford has conducted a successful series of annual songwriting seminar retreats and has released two solo albums.
With its title referencing Squeeze’s 1981 East Side Story, Difford’s latest solo project, South East Side Story, features 10 prominent Squeeze classics redone folk/country-style. Although it may initially sound like a nutty novelty gimmick, it’s an idea that makes some logical and artistic sense. As snapshots of everyday, working-class life, many Squeeze standards weren’t too far from the core content of a centuries’ worth of folk songs. As such, Squeeze lends itself nicely to such folk-y treatment. The approach works, and is probably at its most interesting when its new delivery most radically differs from the originals. The previously slinky, punchy synth anthem “Take Me I’m Yours” reveals a tender intimacy hidden in the original when revisited with slow elegance.
“It’s been quite successful for me to regain some kind of ownership of those songs,” Difford explains in a recent phone interview. “For a long time, I didn’t feel like they belonged to me, even though I’d written them. I didn’t want to compete with the originals, because they’re already so good and there seems no point in going over old ground. So I decided to take them into a country feel. I think all good songs can lean in that direction.”
The acoustic approach also fits Difford at his older stage in life.
“I’m of an age where folk music means a lot more to me now than it did when I was a kid and had millions of hormones running around in my body,” he says. “Now that I’m getting to be a mellower chap, I kind of prefer the folkier versions, which come quite naturally to me now. I’ve rediscovered people like James Taylor and Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. I’ve discovered something that I kind of had a problem with when I was growing up. Now, it’s beautiful and something I feel comfortable being part of. When you’re younger, you don’t really think about what you’re doing; you just do it. I certainly spent the first 10 years of my songwriting life not really thinking terribly much about anything at all. It took me a long time to realize just what I was doing and what effect it was having on people, and what effect it was having on me.”
Even as a solo artist, Difford is never exactly “solo.”
“Collaboration is the name of the game for me,” he says. “I like working in partnership with other people, and I’m not very good at doing it on my own. I think it’s really important for somebody like me to have a songwriting partner. I can write lyrics ’til the cows come home; I just have to find somebody who can put music to them. Having had a relationship like that with Glenn for so many years, that’s what I do every time I sit down to write but with somebody else. For my [forthcoming] album, I sat down with a guy named Boo Hewedine and we wrote the whole album as one piece.”
Difford’s tendency toward collaboration, not surprisingly, extends beyond songwriting and into performance. Geoff Martyn and Dorie Jackson have joined Difford for the South East Side Story album and tour. Martyn handles guitar, pedal steel and banjo duties, while Jackson fills Glenn Tilbrook’s role of higher-register vocal harmonies atop Difford’s distinctively resonant, lower-register voice. The trio’s concert at the Winchester will present Difford’s more recent work alongside the folk-flavored revisionist Squeeziness.
Chris Difford
8:30 p.m. Thursday, March 8
The Winchester
12112 Madison Ave.
216.226.5681
Tickets: $20
