By Paul Zollo

"Song Talk", Spring 1992.

When you talk to Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook of Squeeze, unlike other collaborators who finish each other's thoughts, they sit at opposite ends of the table, paying attention only while talking and tuning out while their partner speaks. It made the setting of our second talk, a tennis court, the perfect place for such a meeting, as I was compelled to constantly turn from one to the other, as if watching tennis. 

It's a style indicative of their entire artistic relationship; these guys don't sit face-to-face and write songs ala the early Beatles, but create completely separately, lyrics and music conceived individually, an approach closest to that of their compatriots Elton John and Bernie Taupin. Like that writing duo, Difford & Tilbrook have established themselves as writers of infectious and sophisticated pop rock, songs like Elton & Bernie's that have everything going for them: great grooves, powerful, chromatic melodies, and a perpetually poetic and dynamic use of language. 

Glenn Tilbrook, the composer, was eleven when he wrote both the words and music to his first song. Though he never felt himself to be particularly gifted with words, the music always came easy to him, and he decided at that early age to become a songwriter, but one in search of a lyricist. He met one when he answered an "advert" looking for a guitarist, and though the meeting of Difford & Tilbrook was initially the meeting of a guitarist and a bassist, they soon discovered that their potential was limitless as a song writing team. 

They wrote songs together for a few years, waiting until 1974 to form a band. They called it U.K. Squeeze, at first, to distinguish it from an American Squeeze. They released an independent EP produced by John Cale, who also produced their first self-titled album. The song "Take Me I'm Yours" was a hit for the band, the first of many hits Difford & Tilbrook would write in the coming years. Although the line-up of the band shifted a few times, the high quality of the song writing was constant, and subsequent albums featured countless gems, such as "Tempted," "Pulling Mussels From the Shell," "Annie Get Your Gun," "Black Coffee In Bed" and more. All had the Squeeze signature of powerful, sophisticated but seductive music and ironic, slightly skewed, finely-detailed lyrics. 

They opened for Elvis Costello, a major admirer of Squeeze's songs, and he produced their marvelous East Side Story album. Though the band essentially broke up in 1982, playing a farewell concert for the Jamaica World Music Festival, the core of Difford & Tilbrook fortunately remained together, and as a duo released the 1984 album Difford & Tilbrook which was produced by Tony Visconti. 

In 1985, Squeeze reformed again to play a benefit concert in England, and since the energy within the band seemed better than ever, they decided to keep Squeeze alive, and have released five albums since then including Babylon and On and Frank. 

Their most recent effort is called Play and was produced by Tony Berg, who has produced albums by Michael Penn, Edie Brickell & the New Bohemians, and others. It's a great return to form for the band, with songs as wondrously complex and inviting as ever. We met up with Difford & Tilbrook twice, both in L.A. on mornings after concerts, meaning that Glenn Tilbrook, the lead singer of the band, was weary of voice, leaving Chris Difford who does provide all the words for the songs, after all to do the majority of the talking. 

SONGTALK: Did you guys write songs together before Squeeze was formed? 

Chris Difford: Yes, we wrote for about two or three years without playing too many shows at all. We used to write pretty much solidly the whole year round. Which was a good apprenticeship, spending that time growing and writing different types of things. 

ST: How did you first meet? 

Difford: I put an advert in a local shop window and I was looking for a guitarist to join our band and get a record deal and go on tour, and all the rest of it. I didn't have an album deal or a touring deal or any of those things. It was a complete bluff. I was just lonely looking for a friend. [Laughs]. 

Glenn Tilbrook: And he found me. 

Difford: And I found Glenn. I had just tasted being in a couple of groups and I thought it was a good living, that it could be a good living, better than a job. And I didn't want to put an ad in Melody Maker because it was too serious. 

ST: So you were looking for a band more than a song writing partner? 

Difford: I can't look back at it now and say how it actually happened. It just happened that way. 

Tilbrook: I saw the sign in the window. I was interested by the influences Chris had put down there: Kinks, Glen Miller, Lou Reed. I thought, that's interesting. I replied, and got together with Chris, and he was very vague about the band. Then went on holiday for two weeks, and then when he got back, we got together and sat down and played together. At that point what we did was play our own songs for each other. And within about a month or two, we tried writing one together, and it so happened that without even talking about it, our strength became apparent: Chris' as a lyricist and mine more as a tunes-man. 

ST: Do you remember the first song that you wrote? 

Tilbrook: I remember it well. It's not at all...distinguished [Laughs]. We didn't record it. But it was sufficiently encouraging for us to look at that and see that it was probably better than what we had been doing individually, and from that point onwards carry on writing together rather than separately. 

ST: What was the title of the first song? 

Tilbrook: "Hotel Woman" it was called. 

Difford: The titles haven't gotten any better, have they? 

ST: How did hearing Dylan affect you as a writer? 

Difford: I didn't get hooked on Dylan until Blood on the Tracks and at that point I went back and bought all the early albums and started really listening to them. I just loved the way he could create an imaginary story that would be right there in your mind as you're listening to the song. "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts" for me, is the most fantastic lyric for that particular scene within your mind. Where you can play the track and you can see the film running by. And I thought I'd like to be able to do that sort of thing, to be able to create a mini film in someone's head. 

ST: I can see Dylan's influence lyrically on you. Was he a musical influence as well? 

Tilbrook: Interestingly enough, "Up the Junction" was very Dylan-influenced musically, although it didn't sound at all like it. I sort of had in mind, when we were recording it, I was saying that we should try to sound like The Band, and it should be seamless and flowing, and not particularly making any differential between the verses and middle bits. Just try to create an atmosphere, which I think The Band did excellently. Dylan wasn't really that much of an influence on me. I was more interested and drawn to melodic things: a lot of sixties stuff. I was madly into pop radio and it was a great time to be exposed to all those things when I was growing up, and I think a sense of that time has stayed with me ever since then. Further on, towards the time that we first got  Squeeze, I was very influenced by Jimi Hendrix, who I thought was a great songwriter. His songs are incredible; there's such a vast imagination besides being the best guitarist there ever was. He was a big influence on me melodically. 

ST: Unlike most song writing teams I've talked to, you sit on opposite sides of the table, and only speak separately. Is this indicative of your writing relationship, that you work separately? 

Difford: Yeah. It's very individual in that respect. It's more like Bernie Taupin and Elton John in that respect. And when we do interviews, because we've done so many together, I instinctively know what Glenn's going to say. So I just sit back and relax. And probably likewise. I know what you mean. Sometimes the interviewer feels like somebody in the middle of a tennis match. 

ST: When you began writing together, you instantly knew that Glenn should do the music and Chris should the words? 

Difford: It just happened that one day I was writing a lyric, and I passed it to Glenn, and it seemed to take shape right there and then. Glenn asked me to write some more lyrics and give them to him, so I did and it kind of snowballed from there. We wrote a hell of a lot of stuff in that first summer we were together. For a time, we lived in a house together. I lived in a room downstairs. And we literally wrote as much as possible, which was good. It was an exciting, transitional time. 

ST: Would you write a lyric and give it to Glenn? 

Difford: Yeah. And now it's become the case that I'll write a bunch of lyrics and Glenn will write a bunch of tunes, and then we'll have sort of an open-house affair with the lyric at a later stage when it's going to the vocal stages of the album. 

ST: Glenn, how do you go about setting a lyric to music? Do you work on an instrument? 

Tilbrook: Yeah, almost always. I've done it various different ways. I think the way I like best is to look at a lyric when I'm at a piano or guitar, to see if I feel-this is very difficult to articulate-see if I feel something that would suggest a tune. If I'm lucky enough to get started that way, then I'll alternate between guitar and keyboard all the time, just for the change of perspective that it will give me. Things look different if you play them on guitar than if you play them on keyboard. So I'll sort of learn it on both and switch about every half hour and switch back and forth. Other times I will stick to one instrument. Other times, very rarely, I'll just sing a tune with a drum machine and see what chords fit behind that. That's unusual for me, but it's a nice way to work. It leaves your imagination free to go in other places. I like just running a tape and improvising and then figuring out the bits that are good and trying to fashion that in some way. Or you can work the other way, which is also valid, which is to actually slave away on a tune for ages and keep coming back to it. I used to think that that would be over-analytical, but in fact, going back as far as "Tempted," that took me a week to actually get it right and get the changes right. And I know that you can get back to things that can have a spark all the time, as long as you use your sense of judgment and are willing to say at some point that that's enough. 

ST: Are your songs written on the keyboard more harmonically complex than guitar songs? 

Tilbrook: Almost always. There's a greater opportunity with my playing, to expand on keyboard than there is on guitar. But then, that's not always the case. There's a song called "House of Love" which is quite complex musically and that was all written on guitar. 

ST: Was "Tempted" written on keyboards? 

Tilbrook: Yes, it was written on piano. Which is the way I'm playing it tonight, in a fashion [laughter]. 

ST: When you write a lyric, Chris, do you write it to a melody in your head? 

Difford: Occasionally I get a sort of feel for some kind of flow, yeah. But mostly not. Mostly, you're just trying to build a story that's going to rhyme. 

ST: Do you signify what is the chorus, the verse, etc.? 

Difford: Not anymore, no. I think the verses always pretty much speak for themselves, and the choruses and the middle-eight sort of speak for themselves. Quite often I'll give a whole lyric to Glenn and Glenn will find his own middle-eight, and his own interpretation of that. I don't think there's any rule at all. Sometimes it's very obvious. Other times it's a complete open book. 

ST: Are you the kind of writer who jots down notes constantly or do you only write when writing? 

Difford: More and more, sadly, it's just when you know you have the time to sit down and write. I sort of miss, in a way, the regimented way I used to work, which was quite frequently. On our last tour with Fleetwood Mac, there was such a lot of time to kill that I did do a lot of writing though I was out on the road. I got a portable Macintosh, and I found that quite inspiring to work with. Occasionally a notebook. For this album, a lot of lyrical ideas came from one of those little portable tape recorders. Because I lived in the country, and driving into town you can waste a whole hour just sitting there looking at the road listening to the radio. And quite a few ideas actually came to me, so I went and bought a little Olympus mini-cassette thing and just spoke into it. Or go for walks and speak into it. If I'm riding in a car or walking across a field, it's usually just a dribble that you have to sort of create a lake of when you get home. You get home and put it on the computer and say, "That's a good idea. Where can it go from here, logically speaking?" Then you take it a stage further. 

ST: Do you usually write more than you need to and then cut it back? 

Difford: Glenn mainly does the editing in that respect, because I am one for rambling. Again, going back to songs like "Lily, Rosemary and The Jack of Hearts," if I could write 36 verses to a song, I would. And it's fun because you can ever expand the characters. But I know it would be difficult to fit that kind of thing onto an album. The last time that lyrically that succeeded with me was a song called "Melody Motel." The lyric kind of flowed and told a story, and it all sounded like a good, old-fashioned song.

ST: When you set a lyric to music, do you try many musical approaches before settling on one? 

Tilbrook: Good question. I think I try to settle on one approach from the beginning, but sometimes I'll get so far down the road with something and realize that it's not working. I try to always finish off every idea that I've had. I would rather finish it up and leave it and figure it's no good, or be able to come back to it. Very rarely, but sometimes I will completely abandon what I'm doing and start anew.  Sometimes I have the tendency to write these horrendous tunes. And not be able to see it. 

ST: Is "The Truth" a true song? 

Difford: Yes. it's very autobiographical. For a log time I had a lot of trouble with the truth. I think most men do. It's very easy to paint yourself into a corner sometimes and the only way out of it is to lie. It's an awful sin, but everybody does it. I was very clever for a long time juggling the truth with lies. And then I got to a point where I didn't know which was real. So this song is about me turning round to all the men in the world and saying, "Face up to it. We're all liars. This is the truth." Lots of men come up to me and say, "I understand 'The Truth.' It makes perfect sense." It's the most masculine of lyrics on the album. 

ST: How did "Walk a Straight Line" originate? 

Difford: It was a story about somebody who is crippled by alcohol and the kind of abuses that come with that. It's really about a character trying to find some reformation in himself. Looking for a reason to believe, I suppose.  Tony Berg, our producer, brought up a good point. He thought the two characters were trying to get sober, to walk a straight line together to get married in a church. So they could walk a straight line to the altar to get married. I think that's really a good observation. 

ST: Had you looked at it that way yourself? 

Difford: To be honest, I hadn't. 

ST: Your collaboration is similar to that of Elton and Bernie Taupin, except for the fact that, unlike Bernie, you sing and play in the band. 

Difford: Yeah, unfortunately. I like being in the band, but I am a lyricist-songwriter. That is my trade. If I were a carpenter, somebody who was building furniture, that is what you would do. But I'm a songwriter and somebody who goes on the road. And when I go on the road, I can't do any song writing. One negates the other. So you can't always concentrate your whole time on one particular aspect of your life. You have to keep swinging from one to the other.  It's great to be in a band, but as one gets older, you tend to wonder where your loyalties really lie. Are you a writer or are you in a band? And then the catch is that one doesn't really exist without the other, anyway. So it's an interesting twist. 

ST: Being a musician yourself, do you have musical input to the songs when you write a lyric? Do you have melodic ideas that accompany lyrical passages? 

Difford: Sometimes I do, yeah. Sometimes I can sing a lyric into a tape recorder, write the lyric down and give it to Glenn and he will never know where the melody has come from. For the most part I write mainly from the first word on. From the first idea. Without melody. It's an interesting phenomenon, which I still don't understand. How can you sit in front of a computer and create a lyric like "Satisfied," which took maybe three minutes to write, lyrically. How that came about without any melody in my head. I'm not really sure. 

ST: You mentioned the lyric for "Satisfied" took only three minutes. When writing something like that, do you write it in meter so that it's easily set to music? 

Difford: Glenn approached me once and said, "Your metering isn't as good as it could be." He was finding it hard to put music to some of the lyrics. And ever since that event I've been very careful to make sure the metering is as close as it could be to a mathematical equation. I labored over it for a long time, but now it just comes naturally.

ST: Do you usually start with a title, or do you create the title later in the process? 

Difford: I'm not terribly good with titles. That's probably my weakest aspect, I think. Glenn always seems a little shocked by the audacity of my titles. I used to steal a lot from books titles and film titles. I thought I came up with one the other day that was not from a book or a film. It's more of a pun, and for the week or so I've been conjuring up the image of what this particular title and song could be. 

ST: Can you tell us that title? 

Difford: It's a thing called "Third Person Removed." I thought of the title and now I've got to fit lyrics into the title. 

ST: Songs often share titles with other songs, or with movies or books. Yet in songs you are able to present a fresh twist on a title. 

Difford: Indeed. It's not like plagiarism. It's an interesting way of drawing people's attention to the song. 

ST: As in your song "Annie Get Your Gun," which is a wonderful usage of that title. 

Difford: Indeed.  Annie was not a real person. It was a jumble of ideas, really. Kind of a melting pot of images more than anything else. I had written, a lot earlier in my life, songs about Annie Oakley. I don't know whether that had anything to do with that, but it probably did. 

ST: Do you recall writing "I've Returned?" 

Difford: Yes. For the most part, that whole album, SWEETS FROM A STRANGER, was sort of soaked in alcohol. There are a lot of alcoholic images in the context of that album, that song being one of them. A drunken character returning...abruptly...onto the scene, as it were. The way alcoholics do. 

ST: Yet it seems like such a triumphant return. 

Difford: Yeah, it's almost like a fanfare. You expect trumpets to come blaring out. 

ST: One of your most intriguing titles is "Pulling Mussels from A Shell." 

Difford: That song was influenced really by The Small Faces. I used to adore the way they would write about English situations. Very British picture postcard situations really. I wanted to write about the experience that a lot of working class English people do of going to the seaside and what a day out for them would be. And then taking it a step further by talking of old people, young people, and family people at the seaside. So you'd have a cross-section in each verse, virtually, of how I saw seaside villages. So you have the old people looking round the shops, and then in the chorus you have the young people who are trying to have sex with strangers behind the chalet on the beach.  A lot of working class people in Britain go on holiday in England. That's as far as they ever go, you know. I suppose it's the same here in the States. People only go to the end of their garden for a holiday and they come back and they're satisfied with that, that's their life. I find that really intriguing. I think it's island mentality. I don't like to travel. If I wasn't in a group, I wouldn't go anywhere. It must be something steeped way back in your past, hundreds of years ago. 

ST: Can a person be a good writer without traveling? Some say you can sit in your room and do it, that you don't have to go all over the globe. 

Difford: I'd like to think that you could sit in your room and imagine. The traveling that we do, you don't really experience anything. You're on a bus, a plane, in a hotel. It's not like we're going to the Museum of Modern Art everyday, or exploring my environment. One day I'd like to come to America and hire a Winnebago and drive around and see it for real.  There are influences, of course. You turn on the TV in America and you can see the absurdities of Richard Simmons and the church ladies and that sort of thing. But you're really only scratching the surface. 

ST: What was the inspiration for your song "Piccadilly?" 

Difford: It was basically about a couple that used to drink in a pub where I used to work in London and I just happened to be observing them one night. They seemed to have reached a pinnacle in their relationship at the bar. And they'd been out somewhere, to the theater or something. They looked as if they didn't have anywhere to go, as if their evening had ended. And I took their situation a step further and put them back at her house, where her mother was, and she wasn't supposed to spend the night, the age old situation. I've been through it myself when I was younger. You go back to their house and they say, "You can't really stay, but if you're quiet, we can sneak up to my room." You've spent all evening trying to impress upon this girl what a great guy you are by taking her to the theater and taking her for an Indian meal. And then you get found out. 

ST: Do you remember writing "I Think I'm Go Go?" 

Difford: Yes. Now that was influenced by touring. I felt like I was going go-go last night after doing two shows. I felt like this is murder. The lyrics speak about different continents. And the middle verse that I sing is obviously about America. It's about a state of mind one can get in as a young musician on the road for the first time. Abusing one's self to the nth degree. 

ST: Was the ascending chord progression and melody in the chorus on "Go-go-go-go" part of your original conception? 

Difford: No, Glenn did that. I don't know what enhanced him to do that but it made perfect sense. He's fantastic at weaving a chord sequence, there's no doubt about that. It mesmerizes me how he gets that together. He creates some really fascinating tapestries with what he does. In "Satisfied" for example, going from a B-flat to a G in the chorus is such a magic moment for me. It's such a strange selection.  On "House of Love," when Glenn played me that on acoustic guitar, I thought I'd been hit by a machine gun, there were so many chords in it. For that reason, it really complements the lyric. The lyric is very bizarre and the chords are very bizarre so it all makes for a bizarre picture. 

ST: Where did you get the idea for "If I Didn't Love You?" 

Difford: Again it came from one particular line: "Singles remind me of kisses, albums remind me of plans." that line I wrote first because I was going out with a Swedish girl at the time and I was finding it very difficult to make love with her. I found it very hard going, if you'll excuse the pun. So I put on a Todd Rundgren album, SOMETHING ANYTHING, that had a very long side to it, 28 minutes I think it is. I used to play that because I knew I had 28 minutes to get it on with this girl. And that led me to write that line. And the rest of it followed on from there. 

ST: Do you ever feel restricted by having to be at the screen when writing? 

Difford: When I write, I go and turn the computer on in the morning, come to the front page of what I'm writing, and then generally leave the room immediately as the lyric appears. I go and have some tea, or do whatever I have to do, and then come back to it later. There's a mystical element of having the lyric sort of churning away in the computer. It's very odd; I'm sure it's just my imagination. 

ST: Do you enjoy the use of a computer for writing lyrics? 

Difford: Yeah. It's good. I think the fascination came from being brought up on TV when you're a kid. Now I see my own lyrics on a TV screen and I'm impressed. It's like watching "Wagon Train."