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Conversation: Adrian Simpson and the enthusiasm for ‘Frank’
608 Plays1 year ago
The year 1989 saw the launch of 'Frank', which was an exciting prospect for Squeeze followers. At the time, it was meant to be the ultimate sequel to 'Babylon & On', and given its predecessor's success, 'Frank' was predisposed to be a hit. However, it did not live up to expectations, from the public or the record company. Nevertheless, both Adrian and I have an immense fondness for this record. Actually... we’re kind of passionate about this album, believing it to be an under-appreciated masterpiece in the Squeeze collection. The songs featured on 'Frank' are remarkable and personal and we can't help but be a bit enthusiastic when discussing them.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Cool for Cats' Podcast
00:00:07
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to Cool for Cats with me, Amy Hughes. We're inviting you in for black coffee and a chat about our favorite band Squeeze.
Meet Adrian Simpson, Squeeze Superfan
00:00:17
Speaker
In this episode, I'm welcoming Adrian Simpson, a native of Maidstone, Kent, England. He is a mega Squeeze fan and has been described as knowing more about Squeeze than they do.
Becoming a Fan: The Spark of 'Electric Trains'
00:00:32
Speaker
Hello, Adrian, how are you?
00:00:35
Speaker
Hi, Amy. Great to hear from you. I'm very wet at the moment. I've just come in from a very long cycle ride, so I'm just trying to dry off. I'm really looking forward to talking about squeezing. And that's a very, very kind quote you've used, which I think was from Glenn when he spoke to me on BBC Radio 2 about 20 years ago.
00:00:58
Speaker
Okay, yeah, so I found that description quite intriguing. So if you want to sort of give us a little bit of a backstory on that, that would be...
Collecting Squeeze: From Greatest Hits to More
00:01:09
Speaker
intriguing Okay. Yeah. Well, I mean my sort of journey squeeze goes back to probably first hearing them when they release electric trains Around that time my my dad bought bought a satellite system We had a vh1 on and they kept playing the video and I quite sort of quite like the song I thought I don't know who this band is And I sort of remember named squeeze from being associated with a milk advert for about 1992 so squeezer were
00:01:37
Speaker
you know, selling milk effectively in the UK around that time. And it was upon the first adverts that subtitles on. So closed caption, I think you might call them over there. So I learned all the words about that advert. And then a few years later, when studying for some exams, one of my friends said to me, you've got to listen to this album, you're really gonna like it.
00:01:57
Speaker
and it was a squeeze greatest hits and I remember listening to it over and over and over and over again being completely obsessed with it from that moment on and then at that stage I went round and bought every single squeeze album I could find and that was sort of before the days of the internet so you used to have to go into record shops and find it and then I started trying to find anything I could on eBay it was very early days of
Meeting the Band: A Fan's Dream Come True
00:02:24
Speaker
eBay
00:02:24
Speaker
And then one day, around that time, around the time Domino was out, I got a call from my girlfriend at the time saying, you've got to switch on the radio, switch on Radio Kent now. And I switched it on, and it was a gental book, and Chris Difford, and they were saying, if you want to phone and speak to them, you can. So I did. And then we just sort of went over how excited I was to go and see them that night, which was at the Leas Cliff Hall in Foulton. And I think I just had a chat, and I just randomly spurted out a lot of
00:02:53
Speaker
random trivia about some of their songs which they liked and Glenn said well Adrienne you obviously know more about Squeeze than we do and you're welcome to come and meet us tonight and I actually went and met them so the first time I ever met Squeeze and got that very nice quote there from Glenn.
00:03:09
Speaker
I appreciate that Glenn was so intuitive to the fact that he could just come straight out and say something like that, because I find that that happens a lot, if you'll probably agree with me, with not only Squeeze, but with a lot of other bands that have people that really enjoy their music, and then they start to go super granular.
Concert Experiences and Band Recognition
00:03:30
Speaker
and dig around and start to find the things that they've obviously left behind 20 years ago. But very nice. You need to get a t-shirt with that saying on it, I think. Oh, absolutely. Well, I'm seeing them again on Saturday in Hammersmith, and I'm not sure which shirt to wear, but that's a good idea, though. I like that one.
00:03:51
Speaker
Yeah, then that way they can actually like, you know, see you and say, hey, Adrian, I remember that. Yeah, he did. I actually remember shouting at that gig back in focus and shouting it to Chris Dipper, but to remember me from Radio Kent. And then he did say, look, there's someone here from Radio Kent in the audience. I think he thought I was one of the DJs or something like that. I didn't quite realize I was that obsessive fan that had spoken to them earlier that day. But it got me backstage in the end. So all's well that ends well, as Squeeze might say.
00:04:19
Speaker
Yes, exactly. Today, what was it, Deaford, tomorrow? I think I eat that for tomorrow of the world, yeah. Yeah.
Exploring Squeeze's 'Frank': An Underrated Gem?
00:04:27
Speaker
So you and I have been going back and forth in our correspondence before this podcast recording, and we both came up with the idea to talk about Frank.
00:04:37
Speaker
And I think most people, most squeeze aficionados would agree that Frank is pretty much overlooked. There's a lot of good stuff on it. It gets kind of sour in the backstory of the actual promotions. The tour that happened with Frank, I can tell you as a fact that I did see the band a number of times on that tour.
00:05:05
Speaker
And it fell to me after I talked with the person I was going with at that time that they did seem off a little bit because I'd seen them one or two times before that. So let's kind of sort of talk about its overallness. And would you agree, and I hope you would,
00:05:28
Speaker
that generally overall, the album is just great. It feels very natural. There doesn't seem to be a real clunker to me in the whole scheme of things.
00:05:41
Speaker
Oh, it feels like a very honest, earthy live album. I think it's probably the way I'd describe it. It does feel like there is that back to basics feel to it, because it followed on from Babylon and On that was just their big sort of Hollywood album. They'd be sort of stomping loud, lots of production on Babylon and On, and this one sort of just sounds like they're playing in a pub.
'Frank's' Authentic Sound and Relatable Lyrics
00:06:05
Speaker
The drums sound even very, very raw. They've got this sort of very,
00:06:10
Speaker
live film and pace to it but it is such a spectacular album just all the way through it just feels like they just want to get back to basics again they just want to be back to being like a live band writing those good honest songs you know there's some real real
00:06:31
Speaker
um relatable lyrics on there as well isn't it you know things like can of worms um even rose i said you know that they're just believable honest uh quality songs and the the the way it was overlooked and it was you know not not many squeeze fans even were able to get it at the time i understand i think some of them had to go through malorda you can just pop into like your local record store and it would be there it just felt like it feels like a like an end of an era album squeeze i i don't know why do you feel that
00:07:00
Speaker
Well, I believe that for me, the entire album feels very up and poppy. This is really a good one. Rolling Stone, I went back and looked at a couple of other reviews, say, of that time. And speaking in context of that time, they said basically the whole album is a, in quotes, sturdy collection.
00:07:25
Speaker
Okay, so I didn't know they were carpenters, but whatever. And if it's love, which was the first single, they say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
00:07:36
Speaker
And I'm wondering if that's just a harkening back to Hourglass, but I look at the generality, the whole of it as a very up album, comparative to what was sort of coming on the horizon. We can look at that in hindsight. So I think it was a nice continuation of Babylon and On.
00:08:00
Speaker
But yeah, I think in hindsight, we both can agree that it was just, there were sort of very weird vibes that were kind of going through, even if you didn't know it. How would you categorize that?
Tensions and Dynamics During 'Frank' Recording
00:08:16
Speaker
I think so you can you can you can feel there's a little bit of attention there between Chris and Glenn. If you see there's a YouTube documentary called I think it's called Frankly Speaking and there's one bit there where they're interviewing Glenn and Chris I think in the in the pub the Yorkshire Grey and even the way they're standing together
00:08:38
Speaker
they look very distant from each other and that there's this sort of underlying tension to them both but they're almost just a bit slightly bit fed up maybe fed up with the state of the record industry maybe the way things were going where perhaps
00:08:55
Speaker
A&M had put a lot of money into Babylon and all, I think it was something like a million pounds to record that album. And then you've moved on to Frank where it was being recorded in this place called the Chocolate Factory in New Cross. And, you know, one of their friends was making the sandwiches and suddenly going out for these big dinners. They were ants calling out the mixing desk. And as I sent you earlier, Amy, I found out there's even a jacuzzi.
00:09:20
Speaker
in the recording studio down in New Cross. So I think it went maybe at the time they were perhaps feeling a bit, I don't know, maybe a bit unloved, where they were perhaps writing what they felt were some of their best material, lyric-wise, some absolutely fantastic lyrics on there, like love circles and pace and place. I mean, all of them, all of them are fantastic lyrics. And there's, perhaps when you felt a bit tired of it,
00:09:50
Speaker
a bit fed up and you say with hindsight I mean you had some fantastic place around the corner which feels again like a very I mean that's another album we could talk all day about but that's that's got another kind of uh different different feel to it and that's uh I think that's another kind of album as well but yeah it definitely feels like a another there's a happy bright poppy album compared to say something like cosy fan tooty fruity which it's just a bit depressing at times
00:10:15
Speaker
I know because the feeling that I got when I watched Frankly Speaking back in the day was I was joyful because I was getting to see a different side of the band. I was getting to see them more on their home ground, which is very, very rare for a band that had been around for quite a few years.
00:10:34
Speaker
And I, but now again, of course, looking in hindsight, I look at the structure of their tone, of their body language. I know for sure that it just felt like a little bit of a rumbling along with Jules. And I know that's unfair to categorize him because he is a much
00:10:56
Speaker
He has a much more dynamic personality than the rest of the band. And I think that that's obviously, that was just a well-known fact. But the way that he kind of downplayed where they were rehearsing, the answers to the off-camera questions that were coming, they tried to be humorous. And I was really, after I watched it again recently,
00:11:21
Speaker
Um, I do agree with you that there was just some tiredness that was going on And it's sad to think that we think that now because we feel that the album is just wonderful, right? Would you say that? Yeah, absolutely. I think yeah, I think jules's comments he say perhaps in the benefit of looking back now decent a bit uh, maybe a bit acidic um at times, um, maybe he's having a little bit of a
00:11:48
Speaker
a bit of a dig at where they are and, you know, where they, you know, you mentioned things like Madison Square Gardens and then you see them sort of rehearsing in sort of pubs in South East London. Because at that stage I think Jules's career was really, really taking off for me. I don't remember at the time, I was only seven when Frank was released, so I don't remember much about what was on some television and where sort of society was at that stage, but I sort of
00:12:16
Speaker
doing a lot of research into Frank. You sort of at the time feel that Jules really, Jules heart wasn't really into this album. I mean, just look at the inlay where you've got blank, you've got the blank photo. So I'm not sure many people have listened to podcasts or seen the album, but if you haven't, there's a sort of part of the inlay shows then the band's gone to different locations to have their passport photo taken. So you've got like Glenn,
00:12:41
Speaker
Glen's at a branch of boots. He got Chrissie's in an Ashford Post office. And then there's just a blank, literally a blank space where Jules was, but it sort of says Jules was on holiday. And I do wonder if that's a bit of a tongue in cheek, perhaps dig at Jules for him not being fully commit, maybe not fully
00:12:57
Speaker
committed to the band at that stage and just wanting to to go and do his TV career because I know they could they could tour them think it's Thursdays and Friday evenings because Jules was was never too recording somewhere so I think that was just all that together and and you know Chris perhaps just wasn't wasn't feeling it and Glenn certainly I feel like Glenn from that documentary the Frankly Speaking documentary
00:13:22
Speaker
that Glenn really wasn't feeling it at that stage and it's really sad because you listen to it now you really wouldn't guess if you sort of put it on and you didn't really know squeeze like we all do you just perhaps playing it to a friend you know we can listen to it and go yeah there's oh it's definitely it's definitely something rumbling on underneath I don't feel like it's a it's a happy squeeze ship at the moment but put on someone to go oh yeah well hopefully they'll go oh these are good tunes you know this is a nice upbeat number and this is something you can tap your foot along to
Praise for 'Frank': Sequencing and Thematic Coherence
00:13:54
Speaker
Right, and there were sort of these weird, it's like a dichotomy, you know, trying to manage, you know, a visual with what you hear because a lot of those songs, actually, I feel that the whole entire album was just paced correctly or the sequencing.
00:14:13
Speaker
of the album was paced impeccably. It made so much sense when you run Peyton Place, Rosie Said, Slaughtered, Gutted, and Hot Broke In. It just works. And that's the weird thing is that the mindset probably of their producer, which was Eric Thorngren and Glenn, you know, Mr. Captain of the Ship,
00:14:38
Speaker
probably had a lot to do with that as well. And I felt that Jules's contribution, Dr. Jazz, really hit at the note of where his heart was and probably, yeah, still is. So, yeah, the visuals just really, you know, to condense it, didn't marry up with the audio.
00:15:01
Speaker
Yeah, I think there's definitely a flow to this album, isn't it, where you say the pace, the pace of the song. So you've got some really fast songs on there. Things like, I mean, Rose, I said, is just incredibly fast and like Melody Motel, but then they sort of almost blend in quite nicely to some of the slower tracks like Can of Worms.
00:15:22
Speaker
which is a very chilled out track on the album, doesn't it? It feels like that's always like a pause on it. It feels like that's a little bit where almost like the band are relaxing a little bit more and just going along with something that's quite light musically. Yes, I think it's just a great album pace-wise and it's just a good one to have on.
00:15:47
Speaker
You can't really have it on in the background, just as background music, because you get so involved in that album. You do find that when it's on, you have to almost stop what you're doing and listen to it and just enjoy it and absorb the music and the words to it.
00:16:01
Speaker
It definitely, to me, feels like a run through, you know, a story or a feeling or a theme, where, again, we have that sort of classic, possibly downbeat lyrics and tone in that sense, in the verbal sense, but you've rescued it with Glenn's upbeat, poppy melodies, which do, actually, like you just said, actually, you just nailed it on the head. You can't have this thing in the background.
00:16:31
Speaker
paying attention and There are two things that I actually like on this album, which you know, we're good. I said we're gonna go back and forth on this We're not gonna go like The first thing that you hear is this like 15-second Intro that's been labeled Frank But I think you probably know what that is. Do you know what that is? Frank is so Frank I think the title itself it was Gilson's dog
00:17:00
Speaker
at the time, but I think the actual thing sounds, the actual track, Frank, if you're gonna call it a track, or, or Silent Pool, whatever it is, or Snippet, it's yeah, it's just a sort of come back and forth between, I think Jules, Gilson, and I think it's Eric, and I think it's a slight, slight laugh, a very, a very subtle laugh from, I think it's Glenn, it sounds like it's got a tool, but
00:17:20
Speaker
laugh to it. Well, I think just after what they say, I think Fatty does, Jules says that, and yeah, you hear that. It's a very odd way to begin an album, isn't it? We've just got this talk back between the studio box. I mean, it's quite humorous, I suppose, isn't it? And sort of paints the picture of a gang of southeast London lads having a laugh in the pub about to play some music.
00:17:50
Speaker
And it's 15 seconds of, like you said, this sort of disconnected out of context talking, although you have Jules calling somebody fatty. And I think it was maybe he was directing it at Gilson. And of course, Gilson was not overweight at that time. He had actually
00:18:07
Speaker
got himself into shape. He had been a raging alcoholic most of the career of squeeze up until Babylon and on.
Humor and Banter in 'Frank' and Beyond
00:18:14
Speaker
And it seems like he's a little bit of a sensitive soul. I mean, are we leaning too much into this? And he says something like, I'm not fat. And then he's like, I take it back, I take it back, which is what Joel says.
00:18:25
Speaker
Yes, I think there's quite a lot of these sort of, I think for Frank, a lot of these sort of talk about these little snippets of conversation, not just on the B sides as well. So you've got things like there's a, there's like a party going on at the end of, Rose, I said, then you've got a little bit of
00:18:45
Speaker
French speaking at the end of, I think it's a red light. You've got Glenn and Chris laughing along there. And then Frank's bag, the B side too, if it's love, there's a little bit of conversation there going on. So I think it seems a bit of a theme around that. Yeah, I'd love to know why they made that decision to keep that in. I mean, what does it add? But I suppose it just sort of sets a little bit of the tone for the album.
00:19:13
Speaker
you know, you wouldn't get something like that on Babylon and on that's sort of polished and very clean and you can see Glenn's perfectionist tendencies coming out on, well, most of the albums, but certainly on Babylon and on where it's just very, very highly polished, highly sequenced, whereas this one is just, you know, so you've got a mixing desk where there are ants crawling out of it and you've got them sort of calling each other fat.
00:19:40
Speaker
I like it. Before I got the album, I really struggled to find this album about 20 years ago, say the days before you, was well adopted. But I did find it very bizarrely, found a copy of it in my local library.
00:19:59
Speaker
And I imagined, I thought, what is this Frank track going to be? Is it going to be, you know, a story about someone called Frank? At that stage, I sort of quite early on into my squeeze obsession and, you know, I knew that there was a lot of these sort of kitchen sink songs. I think it's about a character called Frank, a bit like Tommy or Sonny, as it became, on a cradle to the grave. But no, it's just this,
00:20:21
Speaker
this banter between, between, yeah, I think it's certainly think it's Gilson. I'm almost certain it's Gilson there. I believe so. It just sounds kind of like he's kind of like, yeah, it's a slight gruff, slight slight, slight element of anger to it.
00:20:38
Speaker
Right. And I know that, like you said, it's supposed to be a little bit of a banter and, you know, these guys have been together for for so long, which dovetailed nicely into Frank's bag, which correct me if I'm wrong, right, it in the original release,
00:20:53
Speaker
It was not on there. It resurfaced kind of like in two forms. I think I remember the first time I heard it because it was the B side of the If It's Love single. But we've got a little bit of resurgence on the 2007 remastered CD. So that thing just
00:21:17
Speaker
it just blows you away because it's they unless somebody's just like you say flip the recording button switch and they just you know say basically you know who's gonna start you know and he's like all right I'll you know Jules is like all right I'll start you know which and if let me let me let me cut myself off a moment so here we have this perception of the band
00:21:41
Speaker
being very off the cuff, being very, you know, together as a group of guys, able to joke, able to whip off these, you know, seemingly improvised pieces, instrumentals. But what's going on, really, like you said, is that Jules is sort of
00:22:03
Speaker
popping in, adding his stuff, and then popping back out. And that can seem like a real misnomer to a lot of people because he had come back into the band, he'd been with the band, and then something was going on. You know, like you say, his popularity, they always had felt like, well, we don't want to ride on the Coattails of Jewels.
00:22:25
Speaker
um because now that he's on tv and he's presenting and this that and the other thing but yeah that's like a weird you you look back on it and you're just going man these guys are just nailing it and then you find out what's going on you're like wow they can do that and yet still have this
00:22:45
Speaker
resigned attitude, you're like, yep, that's Jules, we'll take him whenever we can get him. Yeah, as you say, he pops in and out of the band so many times. I remember at one stage, Glen was asking, it might be Glen, it might be Chris asked, what is they want for the band? And I think they said, a keyboard player of loyalty. I may slightly misquoted that. But there is also, I don't know if you heard about this story about when they were touring during the Frank period.
00:23:14
Speaker
It looked like Jules had his head in his hands while he was playing the piano and Chris thought that Jules was playing around and pretending to be asleep. Jules was actually falling asleep playing the piano but was still managing to play with one hand.
00:23:33
Speaker
So that stage I think Jules probably felt was being stretched all across all oil areas. He's trying to keep a couple of comeback, come back to Squeeze and particularly, I mean his impact on the Frank album is just incredible. Things like the solo on Peyton Place is just like something else, isn't it? It's like a man possessed at the keys. And even on the B-sides, even on
00:24:02
Speaker
things like red light which aren't particularly sort of piano intensive you can really hear his his influence there and it's a shame because I think that was probably his last input into into Squeeze wasn't it I think after that he left and then there were various other keyboard players including of course later on his younger brother Chris Holland who was the keyboard player during the I think during the domino period so there's still some of the Holland family influence there
00:24:32
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. In fact, even further back, Chris came in, Chris Holland, Jules's younger brother, and came in and worked on Cozy Fan and did some keyboard work because I had discussed in a previous podcast the fact that when the band went to France to record that album with Lori Latham, there was a little bit of a playful altercation between Jules and Glenn. And that ended up being that Jules, like, severed a tendon in his finger.
00:25:01
Speaker
And he couldn't play. So Christopher came in and filled in adequately and brilliantly, I must say. They are definitely cut from the same cloth. But you're right. I mean, here's a wonderful track that got no official release back in the day, but came back was, Good Times Don't Bring Me Down.
00:25:23
Speaker
And Jules is masterful. I mean, there is so much heart and soul and feeling in that song. I just wonder what happened. I mean, it's like almost the antithesis of Dr. Jazz where you're expecting, you know what I mean? You're expecting that boogie woogie that he's known for. And then he does this and it's just like, whoa, I got to sit back in my chair and think about this one.
00:25:48
Speaker
Yeah, it's an unusual track, that one, isn't it? It's almost like in its demo format. It doesn't feel like very polished production-wise, but performance-wise, it's almost like you can imagine them in a blues club, can't you, doing that? And that's one of the great things about Squeeze, they can just dip in and out.
00:26:07
Speaker
of a lot of genres without sounding like they're doing pastiches and spoofs. It's just such a good range of musical abilities that the band have. And they sound convincing. They never sound like they're novelty. They never sound like they're trying to be someone else. Even the covers, even like Red Light. So I think you heard the original Red Light by Merrill Moore. It's from the 50s. Have you heard it?
00:26:36
Speaker
I have not, no.
00:26:38
Speaker
It's worth listening to, so I expected it to sound exactly like the Squeeze version, but I listened to it and the original version here is quite slow-paced, it's sort of like bar sound to it, whereas the Squeeze version has got this sort of real rock and roll feel to it, it's almost like rockabilly sound, and just got this really fast pace to it, got all these hand claps at the end of it that they've added, and then there's that very strange sample at the end that
00:27:07
Speaker
It sounds like someone's slowing down a French record and you've got Glenn and Chris's very distinctive last. It's one of my favourite moments of Squeeze, where you just hear them laughing together. You hear this real camaraderie between the two and you can imagine having a lot of fun producing that song and putting that strange sample at the end of it.
00:27:29
Speaker
It's interesting too that with this album, there are others moments that are just like we, I guess like you were right, we can only call them snippets or why did they do this?
Unique Song Structures in 'Frank'
00:27:40
Speaker
Like, this could be the last time. It's like a...
00:27:44
Speaker
one of the few that I can think of that has a fade-in beginning, and then it's like you hear all of this sort of off-kilter kind of everybody's going, you know, starting off like that. Yes. Strange time signatures that are going on, and yet they manage to make that sound like, let's just, you know, whip this one off in one take, right?
00:28:13
Speaker
Yeah, they don't like that. Squeeze themselves, or Glenn and Chris at least, aren't particularly happy with that song. I think they feel that that's a bit of a filler song, but even Squeeze filler is still amazing, isn't it? It just goes to show you the power of their songwriting and their performance.
00:28:31
Speaker
A very strange faded intro. They like to do a bit with fading in and out on this album. I noticed Love Circles, of course, has that bit at the end, doesn't it, where it fades out and then it fades into this sort of solo bit where you've got almost like they left the recording going on. But I've got no idea why they
00:28:49
Speaker
fade that one out in and again but sorry to jump around a little bit there but to go back to this could be the last time that's got sort of elements of sort of barbershop style backing vocals at point isn't it and sort of Glenn I think when he said he when he was singing he thought he was being Roy Orbison when he was singing that and doing this sort of up and down things that Roy does but
00:29:11
Speaker
I don't think they're particularly impressed with that song but another thing I like about that one is the guitar sound in it has got this real backwards sound to it almost like they just put all these effects on it and it's quite unusual in the sound because there's not many guitar effects compared to some of the other albums it's quite a clean
00:29:29
Speaker
guitar sound with, there's a little bit of chorus in there, there's a little bit of delay on things like Rosai said, but other than that, this is the one where I'm like, wow, listen, listen to Glenn's guitar. He's sort of going back to his cosy found Tootie Footie days of all the, of all the pedals in front and all the sequences running away. It's a joy to listen to that song. I like it. And there's a really good cover version of it on YouTube. It's quite hard to find, but someone's on a really, really, really good version of it.
00:29:56
Speaker
I'd really like to find that one out too, because I'll put it on the podcast website definitely for people who could, because let's face it, Squeeze does not get covered too much. For whatever reason, it's kind of sad. So yeah, definitely. We'll get that up there if we can. Yeah. There's also another cover version of Love Circles.
00:30:20
Speaker
which is done by a guy who's done a very laid-back acoustic version which I'll send you a link of as well. So there are a few obscure tracks on this album that have been covered. I thought people would go for ones like
00:30:35
Speaker
um if it's love which is probably the the biggest um most obvious sort of choice of a of a song with mass market appeal um which they did did try and release um as a single didn't get very far into the charts um like many squeeze songs unfortunately um but i i mean i particularly i think my my favorite song this whole album has got to be love circles um that is a brilliant that is my probably my second favorite squeeze song of all time
00:31:06
Speaker
And I would have to say it's got some tremendous outstanding guitar work from Glenn in the middle part of the song. He just shreds it. I mean, it's kind of like he just took like a piece of metal and used that as his pick, like this long two by four metal and just went sonic on that solo. And it's kind of, again, this mishmash of this
00:31:36
Speaker
Chris being a little bit more laid back in his delivery, kind of the tiredness that you can hear in his voice and there's some bright poppy bits in there from like you know a synthesizer and then Glenn comes out of nowhere like he just flies in with this shredding of his guitar. It's just spectacular. I mean it's just so spectacular.
00:32:01
Speaker
It's one of those moments where the squeeze lyrics and music just go over and above anything else. The lyrics that are so sweet there, they're so relatable, there's lots of little details in there.
00:32:16
Speaker
and quite unusually for a squeeze song it kind of gets the bulk of the lyrics out very early in the song. I think you're up to the last verse by about two two and a half minutes into the song so you've kind of got two and a half minutes left of like that shredding guitar like you're saying and lots of musical bits where it goes up and down it goes around it fades out it comes back it then
00:32:41
Speaker
It's a sort of very nice, very pleasant, delayed reverb guitar that then fades down. It's just spectacular, that song. I remember hearing it for the first time and being absolutely blown away by it. It was on the end of Squeeze Greatest Hits, of course, which was the very first Squeeze album I listened to. You had all these really great tracks and then there was all this quirky one at the end that was sung
00:33:10
Speaker
sung by the guy who sang Call for Cats and it was really different to all the other songs. It's a lot longer, the singing, the vocal style, Chris's vocal style was very, very different, as you say, quite maybe a little bit tired sounding, quite, quite flat. And I mean that in a complimentary way and compared to sort of, you know, Glenn's vocals on things like, you know, No Place Like Home and
00:33:35
Speaker
last time forever. You just had this very quirky song where there's these sweet little details of the matching dressing gowns, putting the phone back on the hook. And I just can't skip it. It's that song where I
00:33:50
Speaker
If I've got 10 minutes to listen to a few squeeze songs, it will be one of the ones I listen to. Although if you've got 10 minutes, it's going to take up half. So you could probably only listen to a couple of other songs in that time. But it's a great song. And I'm really surprised they picked that one as a single.
00:34:09
Speaker
um the second single from from frank um that it doesn't really uh as much as i love it um i'm not sure how much sort of mass market i feel it has i would think something like she doesn't have to shave um which which is a bit more
00:34:24
Speaker
mainstream I think would have got it, even if the subject matter is slightly unusual. Of course, as you might know, Amy, the third single from the album was supposed to be She Doesn't Have to Shave after Love Circles, but Love Circles unfortunately didn't do well at all. It's also extremely hard to find single. If you do get the single version, there is a very slightly edited version
00:34:52
Speaker
of the song which misses out the fantastic fade bit at the end and also cuts short one of the one of the solo bits very very badly I've got to add you can hear it where the tape jumps which is very unusual for Squeeze but that shows probably how little the record company at the time actually cared about the song cared about promoting that they were sort of allowing kind of sloppy things like that to happen
00:35:16
Speaker
Yeah, and I know that a lot of these sort of weird vibes that we're talking about definitely, if we go off track for a moment, emanate from the perception of what are we going to do with this band? You know, they're not the Cool for Cats band that A&M signed, you know, back in 77.
00:35:41
Speaker
They've progressed along. They had a great hit with Tempted, but it wasn't sung by one of the guys that we know of in the band. It was Paul Carrick dropping in, coming back off.
00:35:53
Speaker
And then, you know, there was the long sort of break in the audience perception. And then Cozy Fan, well, you know, we've talked about that many, many times. But we'll ignore that. We'll just ignore that one just for a moment. And then you get back to Babylon and on, and they're on the uphill. They're uphill for that. So you would think that with Frank, it's like, we're going to capitalize on Babylon and on.
00:36:22
Speaker
And again, the thing that I've always talked about with people who were raised in Britain at that time period is you don't really want to be forceful. It's like, well, you know, they know what they're doing and we do our bit, so they must know what they're doing and then they don't do it.
00:36:42
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's criminal how badly this whole album was marketed and promoted. And I think, as you say, Amy, there was a slight apathy towards the band. Yeah, the album will sell themselves. Everyone knows Hourglass. Everyone knows Call for Cats and Up the Junction over here. So we'll let the album find its way into people's homes. And of course, the sad thing was it didn't. Even at the time, I think
00:37:11
Speaker
fan club members had to sort of order it through through mail order and you know they just sort of dropped them straight after this album because I think at the time A&M was sold I think to Polygram for quite a substantial amount of money and
00:37:27
Speaker
Polygram perhaps looked at the figures for some of the albums and even though Babylon and On cost a lot of money to produce and to market, it perhaps didn't quite deliver the chart success that perhaps the new company was expecting.
00:37:44
Speaker
And then, yeah, there's a very sad situation where the band are perhaps feeling tired, feeling a bit jaded, not seeing any marketing go into their album, not seeing the record company supporting them, releasing gimmicky singles. So by gimmicky singles, I mean at the time the CD single was released on three-inch
00:38:06
Speaker
CD single, so If It's Love, and Love Circles are both in these lovely little card sleeves, and I love the covers, I love all the artwork of Frank, where you've got the tauties on the front, and then you've got the goldfish for If It's Love, and of course the lovely budgery guards looking at each other, but they were being put out on these little 3-inch CD singles that you had to have an adapter to listen to,
00:38:34
Speaker
And I'm really glad they decided not to call it a day at that stage, otherwise it wouldn't have happened, we'd see some fantastic place and all the other, well, and then Ridiculous, and then Domino after that. So it's good that the band did stick by it. If there's ever a time to squeeze the split yet again, I'm guessing it would have been at the end of Frank when they're sort of staring down this abyss of just this sort of sad part of
Squeeze in the Alternative Scene of the 80s and 90s
00:39:00
Speaker
rock and roll where perhaps they might be feeling a bit unloved which of course they're not you know that they squeeze fans are fiercely loyal of course and you know once you get into squeeze you never really drop out of them do they're always you know you're always on the lookout for what they're doing next.
00:39:18
Speaker
And it's a happy state of affairs that actually they continued on because I realized when I saw them at that time, when they were promoting Frank, the musicianship was there. It totally nailed the sort of stage presence that you expected.
00:39:39
Speaker
And it was a little bit of a strange era for the band to be in because now they're older, but the scene that was happening there for us here in the States was alternative. And that's when we started to see a little bit of the rise from Seattle with Soundgarden and Pearl Jam and Nirvana.
00:40:05
Speaker
But they also, A&M also had Robin Hitchcock. And I interviewed Robin when he was putting out, So You Think You're In Love, the song for that. And he also had the same mindset. It feels like it, but he's more outspoken. And he was in the same league as Squeeze, where he knew that it was just going to be college radio.
00:40:33
Speaker
that was going to help him become more visible. And it felt like the alternative music scene had their godfathers. And maybe that's the problem was that A&M at the time certainly wanted to, you know, do something with these guys and they knew they could get radio play, like I said, again, because of the influx of these younger bands
00:41:01
Speaker
they were sort of opening up people's eyes, and they weren't the mainstream bands like REM, who you could still kind of consider alternative, but they had really exploded in more arena type of a band. So we have Squeeze kind of in that middle part of their era,
00:41:21
Speaker
whether or not quite, you know, shredding it in the sense that they're young kids and they got to make a noise. But also, you know, they're not backsliding either into, I guess it would be called like adult contemporary, if you know those terms.
00:41:41
Speaker
Yes, I haven't heard that one that term for a while, but yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think that Godfather term that you use is really interesting because that came up again in about 1995. So when Squeeze released Ridiculous, there was a lot of media
00:41:56
Speaker
titles around them being the godfathers of Britpop which I think Glenn Chris felt was incredibly condescending but was used by, I'm not going to say if it was a record company but certainly was used in marketing around that time to cash in on the Britpop phenomenon which I do remember, I do remember as a teenager that being
00:42:18
Speaker
absolutely massive so you've got like blur, oasis, pulp as well these kind of bands and you know people will link in them to squeeze and say that you know squeeze has sort of been doing that almost that brick pop that very sort of very british sound you know that bit between perhaps like the hoover and the kinks and then you've got squeeze in the middle and then you've got blur oasis and pulp sort of at the end of it and you know come on everyone come and listen to squeeze but that was another example i think
Squeeze: Britpop Godfathers or Marketing Misstep?
00:42:44
Speaker
of where
00:42:44
Speaker
The marketing perhaps didn't didn't do squeeze any justice. I mean just sort of thinking like when this summer was released so This summer of course released in 1995, but it was released really late on So it was released when the kids were going back to school and it was the end of a the end of the end of the British summer And you know, it's far too late for a song like this sums current, which of course is a nice poppy summary song
00:43:11
Speaker
So I think the route squeezes careers, certainly in that, perhaps after the Cool for Cats kind of period, but their marketing never really fitted anywhere. They weren't particularly, they're not a niche band and I do have.
00:43:28
Speaker
but I think things like they are, I mean, I see them. It's great to hear what your opinion is from the other side of the pond, but they're a very, very British band, very British in their sound and their sort of image. I mean, the lyrics are, you know, a pure kind of like Nick Hornby sort of style of British prose.
00:43:52
Speaker
I think they've always sort of struggled with that. Although now, I think now, look at the new Squeeze or the Squeeze that's there now. I mean, they're kind of, you know, beating all that now. They're now, you know, really big here. You know, a lot of people know who Squeeze were. I remember sort of back in the Domino days when I'd be talking to friends about music and saying, you know, this band called Squeeze, and no one had heard of them. Now, pretty much everyone has heard of them.
00:44:16
Speaker
And they're able to, back at that time, construct these songs that really just motored along, like Rosai said. It just, from start to finish, just took off. And yes, you have like those kind of, like we were saying, sound effects snippets that came on at the end of that. But then it just kind of glided into, slaughtered, gutted, and heartbroken, which was kind of like this soft,
00:44:41
Speaker
shoe shuffle, sort of the perspective of what has just previously happened in the other song, and now we're hearing the repercussions. And that requires, to me, a lot of intellectual
00:44:59
Speaker
thought about what is our audience going to extract from the sequencing of these songs. And like you said, you just cannot have this stuff on in the background without actively participating
00:45:15
Speaker
especially with the way that Chris intones the lyrics and the way everybody, especially Gilson, just does this wonderful stuff with the brushes. And of course, Jules is just gorgeous on the keyboard.
00:45:33
Speaker
Yeah there's another point isn't there in the album where you've got this sort of loud to quiet bit which is you've got Melody Motel going into Can of Worms and I think those two pairs where you've got Rose, I said a slaughtered, gut and heartbroken and Melody Motel and Can of Worms, you've got this sort of
00:45:54
Speaker
almost got one song that's, I think, personally feels very British and one song that's very American on both sides. So you've got like, I think it's thought of Gutton Heartbroken to me feels like an American soul, whereas Rose, I said, feels very British. And then you've got, you know, Can of Worms, which is, you know, very
00:46:12
Speaker
almost up the junction kind of British kitchen sink observational song that was preceded by a melody motel which is just pure american probably their most american sounding song i mean what a song that is and and like rose i said it's fast it's punchy gilson's
00:46:30
Speaker
Gilson's an absolute fire on those fast songs, isn't he? He's really hitting those snares and it creates that unique sound that's on Frank, that popping snare sound is the only way I can describe it, where you can instantly hear it.
00:46:47
Speaker
and go, if you don't know Frank that well, you go, oh, that's a Frank song. It's a bit like Cozzy Fantusi Fruity's, the other one, where you hear a certain snippet of someone going, I can tell Straywell what album that one's from. Yeah, that's got that popping snare. That's going to be, that's a Gilson Davis special from Frank. And what he does on, Rose, I said, just he is the engine behind a lot of what's going on because you nearly feel with Glenn's delivery
00:47:15
Speaker
that he's gonna be running out of breath because he has to deliver the lyrics at such a fast pace, which, you know, he can only describe it because, you know, he wrote the melody. And I suppose he decided the pace of this song has just got to go like 120 miles an hour. And it still has remained one that they don't play that often. And I'm not sure why, unless of course it's just because it's a mouthful
00:47:46
Speaker
Yeah, it's not technically, music-wise, I don't think it's that complicated. It's not something like letting go that is chords all over the place. And I know Chris sometimes struggles with some of the more complicated chord changes. Sorry, Chris, if you're listening. I haven't offended you there. But I know that, like Rose, I said, it is
00:48:11
Speaker
hasn't got that many chords in it. It's quite straightforward music-wise. You've got Glenn doing that sort of nice over-the-top riff, but there's not that many chords in it. I think, yeah, I think it's the delivery. I mean, it's 110 miles an hour, that one, isn't it? And it's all very, very fast-paced. There's lots of visions in there. I mean, there's even some... It's unusually for a squeeze-on. There's even a line, I think, that doesn't rhyme, which, you know, swallowed my sandwich and picked up her boots.
00:48:37
Speaker
which always seems to me slightly out of place that bit. I don't know why it's in there. I guess it's one that's quite hard to rhyme, but I'd love to know the story behind that.
00:48:50
Speaker
And Chris's words are just outstanding. It's like you almost miss it because Galen is doing it so quickly. And there's just such imagery in this song, like you're inhabiting him as far as what's going on in his mind. The fact that he's, like he's noted, you know, picking at the bread stuck in his teeth. I mean, who comes up with those lines, you know?
00:49:20
Speaker
it's the detail isn't it and you know she worked in an office as an article clerk and she heard it different from a referencing vet today who said she saw us kissing down in any way and just those images I mean when I hear that song I always I always think of it as occurring in the same area that where patient places because of course you know patient place is a real place in Greenwich
Imagery and Locations in Squeeze's Lyrics
00:49:40
Speaker
it's just down the road from King George Street, so if you're ever doing like a mini-squeeze tour of an area, you can walk from one to the other. And there's a road near there, I think, called Burney Street, and I think there's an alleyway down there somewhere. And I sort of imagine it happening down there. You sort of imagine this little play or a musical of some of these songs where it's just so visual and it's the micro-levels of detail there.
00:50:07
Speaker
you know the things like you know the drawers left half open and her clothes laying near and it's just it's a classic Chris Dippard lyric I mean it's like an it's like an up the junction level I think of of lyric rights and that one and it's such a it's such a fun song to hear and there's that live version isn't there on the frankly speaking documentary and so you sort of hear it how it how it was how it would have been live and it's a real it's a real shame that it doesn't go in the set but
00:50:34
Speaker
You know, they are putting some interesting, less played songs in there like Letting Go, I think, back on the current set. Sorry, don't give out any spoilers there, Freddie, please not seen anyone on the tour. But I mean, a few years ago, for the 2007 tour, we were having laugh circles live.
00:50:50
Speaker
It was an absolute joy to hear that one. And Chris was playing that. I remember hearing that solo gig in Maidstone in 2005 at Pizza Express. He surprised us all by playing love circles. So you do occasionally get that. Let's think about Squeeze. The catalogue is so big. They can just pick out these fairly random songs like just on the Food for Thought EP where you've got the new version of the very first dance. I mean, I never thought that would ever make any sort of reappearance, but here we are.
00:51:20
Speaker
right, and they have that ability to just transform, you know, something that maybe it wouldn't have gone over too well. And in the case of Frank, I know for sure that if people don't know this, the first song, If It's Love, here's the single. It's fantastic. It's got a cute little video, a la Hourglass. But on the reissue, you get to hear Glenn's demo.
00:51:48
Speaker
He's interestingly titled, If I'm Dead.
00:51:54
Speaker
And just literally, listeners out there, it's literally like substituting if it's love with if I'm dead. And it's like almost hysterical. What are your thoughts on it? It's a creepy song, that one, if I'm dead, isn't it? It's this very sort of bittersweet chord sequence. There's a very positive power pop chord sequence. It sets this sort of creepy music box sound with lots of reverb, lots of delay. You've got sort of Glenn.
00:52:24
Speaker
Glen singing about imagining, yeah, if he was dead and what the consequences of that would be. It's an unsettling song. I remember sort of playing it to a friend many years ago when the remaster Frank came out and I was like, you know, what do you think of this? And I mean, he had no idea that it became If It's Love, you know, because it's a night and day song, isn't it? Night and day song between If It's Love and
00:52:48
Speaker
And I'm really glad we end up with If It's Love, which is obviously very, very nice, a sweet soul with a choir, with three people in it. And that cute little video where they've got that sort of house set up, isn't it? And they're all sort of doing different things in different rooms. I mean, you've got Chris sort of pretending to be like a father figure, I think, with his pipe. And Gilson Dean sort of a painter and decorator. I haven't seen the video for a while, so try and remember it.
00:53:15
Speaker
and Jules, of course, being an artist, I think. Did he write Hot Banana Love Room in there or something like that at some point? I may be misremembering that. Yeah, I think it was also designs of being like a French artist or something.
00:53:30
Speaker
It's so interesting now to think about it. It's so, it really does set you back a little ways when you come up with things like, you know, like who's that, which again is like a demo-ish kind of thing that it's got some ethereal, but you know, it's even a better word. It's got like this cathedral sort of
00:53:58
Speaker
vibe to it, almost like the long and winding road, where you're not getting any answers because Glenn is, you know, questioning nearly in every single line in that song. But it's just gorgeous. It's just so in like an angelical church kind of feeling. How do you, do you get that vibe?
00:54:21
Speaker
I feel with that song it's like I think of that as like a Sunday pub sing-along song so obviously we have this vision when I hear it of Glen sort of being in the corner of some pub in Greenwich, we're back to Greenwich again, playing along this sort of song that's got a very Sunday afternoon sort of laid-back vibe to it where you're
00:54:41
Speaker
yeah say you've got these sort of rhetorical questions um kind of a lot of imagery again in there you know who's that drinking all the daniels um who's that you know singing or laughing in the rain um but i can see that sort of almost yeah sort of slight uh sort of yeah sort of slight church sound to it isn't it like um the chord sequences like something yeah would sound really good like on a church organ i think
00:55:03
Speaker
agree definitely on that point. It's just the sort of cadence that he has on that. It's interesting that you say it has to be on a Sunday. It can't be some gregarious, let's go and have a few pints down at the pub kind of thing. Maybe those guys are doing the pints, but Glenn's sitting back, you know, playing this song on the piano or something and he's kind of very being very introverted about
00:55:33
Speaker
You know life, you know, it's very existential, you know, if I can you be existential at a pub. I'm not sure
00:55:40
Speaker
I think we can after a few points. We've all questioned the meaning of life after we've had one too many in the pub. OK, all right. So there's something there to be said for that. But you were kind of correct about, to go back to Rose, I said seeing them perform that song in rehearsal, it's just they just knocked it out. And there wasn't almost any thought to it. It just happened. It just rolled right out.
00:56:06
Speaker
And maybe that's because they couldn't, they can do that sort of stuff. But like you said, it seems like it's couched in a lot of things that we were unaware of back then. And we wish, don't you wish you could go back in time and say, guys, this is a great album. Please don't do that.
00:56:26
Speaker
Absolutely. I don't know if you can say some cards. Just preserve this great vibe that you've got going on and would you believe it, about 20-30 years time there are going to be people speaking about it on podcasts, reminiscing about this album, going to detail about it and just going about how great it is. It does come up quite a lot as a lot of Squeeze fans' favourite album, this one I noticed. So which favourite album it tends to be?
00:56:51
Speaker
I think you hear some fantastic plays a lot but I hear Frank a lot and it's definitely my favourite album by Country Marl and I love everything they've done so this is super human levels of love towards this album.
00:57:06
Speaker
And also, like you mentioned previously, maybe you can speak to it from the UK point that, yeah, it's great. It's streamable now in this day and age. And of course, you could get it with the little extra bits in 2007. But like you said, maybe discuss that with me here. Because of it sort of being felt like it just fell off the edge of the world with the rocks and water,
00:57:31
Speaker
It's really difficult to find but now there's like this resurgence of cassettes and vinyl. I just went to a website and somebody wanted to sell the vinyl version of this for like $60.
00:57:46
Speaker
Wow. Well, the great thing is now that you can just think of a squeeze song and most of the time you'll be able to find it online. So like when I'm out cycling, it's usually Frank I like to listen to. But sometimes I think I just want to listen to like, you know, something like the other day I want to listen to Vanity Fair, but the demo version that's the B-side to If It's Love, which is the very unusual piano and bass arrangement.
00:58:15
Speaker
And you just go, I'll just get that now. And I don't have to sort of go and traipse about through record shops trying to find it. But sometimes that was the fun. I could just remember the absolute joy you'd get when you'd go to record shops. And I'd always straight go towards the S section and you'd see these
00:58:33
Speaker
other bands around them that you know it was associated with Squeeze like Squirrel Nut Zippers, never heard of them other than seeing them sort of next to Squeeze in record shops. You see Bruce Springsteen you know Squeeze is there and you'd see a little bundle of CDs and you'd think please be something that I haven't got and occasionally you'd find something really special like you know like there's a
00:58:54
Speaker
I managed to get one, say, like a gold remaster of East Side Story, that Glenn himself was like, where did you find this? And that was actually, I actually got it in a HMV store in Singapore when I was on holiday there, when I was a teenager. So there's this real excitement about finding some of these houses. Now you don't really get them, but you do get these sort of instant gratification, didn't you go, oh,
00:59:17
Speaker
I want to find this song, but I think the squeeze, the frustration I get is when you can't find some of the B sides. Things like splitting into three, which is obviously a fantastic B side from Babylon and On era. I think there's a video of it on YouTube, but you know sometimes you're out, you just want, you just want to play, sometimes I just want to play splitting into three to people who don't really know Squeeze. It happens, it's a great song.
00:59:40
Speaker
Because inevitably it's one of the songs that people always end up liking and going, oh, that's a great song. But you can't find it. But I do know that you can of course get Frank, the remastered edition, which has all those bonus tracks. All of them are fantastic, all the added tracks. I mean, I think the standout one for me, though, has got to be Red Light. I absolutely love that song.
01:00:03
Speaker
And I'll also just kick in here as an aside, too, that it's not directly connected, but somewhat, as I was mentioning, Robin Hitchcock, around that same time period, because they were kind of sharing from Babylon and on a little bit more into the Frank era, they were sharing
01:00:20
Speaker
Andy Metcalf, who was supplying second keyboard duties along with Jules. It was interesting to see that Glenn went and sang some harmony vocals with Robin on his song that's called, what was it called? Beetle Dennis. It's wonderful because he had done that so long ago with Elvis.
01:00:46
Speaker
Costello, but like you said, there's just like these little blips that you would like to get like I look at the marketing standpoint and you know, you got to give credit a little bit on the A&M side for partaking into the technology of
01:01:04
Speaker
the sort of novelty of those little three-inch CDs, which I did get at the time. I don't know where they are now, and I probably didn't keep them because they were such a novelty. You can't play them anymore. So there was a little bit of that. There was a little bit of
01:01:22
Speaker
trying to help the band keep keep face with the you know trying something new keep them keep them busy as far as being in the the eye of the the the public consuming you know by being able to buy various versions of their stuff so you know they were ahead of their time weren't they
Marketing Challenges and Chart Positions
01:01:45
Speaker
I think so, yeah, trying to make things stand out back in those days. You had to sort of do, I think the word I might use a bit on Carly is be a bit gimmicky at times. So you had to do those three inch CDs, put some strange perhaps choices of cover versions of things like red light, which is a very
01:02:05
Speaker
unique kind of cover version, perhaps put a new version of a Vanity Fair that's just a bass and piano so that people go super still realise that Squeeze are there, that they're still relevant, still making records. And at the time the VH1 did that frankly speaking documentary. So there's definitely something there to kind of keep Squeeze going and keep them keeping the public eye. I don't think
01:02:30
Speaker
feel that it was enough of course and that's reflected in the very poor positions of the albums and the singles which I don't think, I might be wrong here, someone might email in and say I'm wrong but I don't think either of the singles actually charted and I think the album frames, I think number 51 in the UK and number 113 on the Billboard 200, I don't know, I know there's Billboard 100, I don't know there's Billboard 200.
01:02:56
Speaker
And, you know, after then, so they sort of sank and went away for a few years. And, you know, it wasn't until play came back, wasn't it? Which was on a different record label. Reprise, was it Warner Reprise? Who then dropped them again? It must have been really devastating time in the band to just see yourselves, you know, on these labels that perhaps had these other artists who were getting lots of promotion, like the police.
01:03:25
Speaker
you know, who've always been, you know, sort of similar to Squeeze, you know, musically and image-wise, getting all the, getting all the, all the plaudits and then sort of saying, not really getting much. It's been really tough for Squeeze at that time.
01:03:40
Speaker
And it also seemed around that time, too, that before Frank came out, and I will have to go back and check my dates, but at that time, it seemed like it was more like a homemade, do-it-yourself kind of pre-album tour where Chris and Glenn went out and did an acoustic tour. They came to this dates and I saw them on that tour and Glenn does this whole,
01:04:04
Speaker
promotion thing that I was able to go to at one of the rock stations, where he just, you know, played and talked about it. And then later that night, Chris and Glenn had their, you know, their little gig. So they were still in that mindset of, well, it I mean, this could be totally wrong. Like you said, we could be totally way off on this with with the promotion and who was going to take them places and what were they going to do?
01:04:29
Speaker
to get this album in the face of the public or the people that they knew were going to be able to buy this. And I think that that was also another big problem because they played a very small club and the audiences there were at that time my age and a little bit older. So we're talking between the ages of say like 25 to 35, 40 at that time back in like 89.
01:04:53
Speaker
So you do have this weird dichotomy of, well, we should be selling them as the college crowd is the one who should be getting it because now we've decided they're alternative, but really, they're not. You know, they're still very mature individuals who have a lot to say. And that was, I guess you and I would agree that in hindsight, that was the sad part of it all.
01:05:18
Speaker
Yeah it was, it was a shame that they never sort of tried to market Squeeze to much more of a mass audience.
Squeeze's Growing Appeal and Lyrical Maturity
01:05:27
Speaker
I mean nowadays you go to Squeeze gigs and there are lots of younger people. I remember sort of going on the first sort of domino tour and that stage I was 16 and it was quite unusual to see someone of my age there. I don't recall
01:05:43
Speaker
anyone sort of uh in their teens at the time and I remember even uh I think uh Chris Difford being quite surprised that someone say yo was that much into Squeeze because I suppose it's because a lot of their lyrics uh themes are are quite mature you know I'm uh I'm in my 40s now and I get a lot more of their lyrics now when I listen to them I sort of understand them and empathize and not but I suppose when you're a teenager and listen to something like um
01:06:10
Speaker
I don't know, maybe something like letting go. It doesn't, you know, you can appreciate that tune and you can sort of see the crafts and the words, but you can't really feel it as much as you would do perhaps when you're a little bit old and you've got the more kind of life experience. But it is good to see.
01:06:30
Speaker
that Squeeze do have this, you know, I think it feels to me like quite a recent phenomenon, certainly in the UK that, you know, they've got this sort of appeal to younger people. I'm very pleased to say that my five-year-old son absolutely loves Squeeze. I'm not sure he has much of a choice to listen to them, but he particularly likes and he'd get your gun and call for cats, which are really good choices.
01:06:54
Speaker
and obviously fantastic taste in music that you cannot dispute. And the good thing is that they're still here. We've been talking for the past hour or so about these ups and downs and
01:07:11
Speaker
being able to rescue them from the cliffs, you know, before they actually fell over and disappeared. And for some reason, I would say that probably past the, you know, 91, 92, 93, and then it was probably a good thing around Domino that they just had to stop. Because if they had continued on, it really would have been a drag. It just could have gone really, really awful. And I think that's what we appreciate now
01:07:39
Speaker
about what they're doing and being so relevant in this day and age, but also being able to go back and introduce your recording like Frank to people who don't necessarily have to be introduced to them through singles because that's such a small, small chip in the stone of what
01:08:00
Speaker
Squeeze can offer, you know, they have a they have like a massive volcano size back catalog and also the new stuff and We need to keep that kind of that we need to keep that ball rolling if if I can you did I did I mix up a bunch of But if you know if we're here to say, you know, let's go forward with being able to somehow
01:08:29
Speaker
give Frank a much needed kick in the pants, try and cast aside what was going on in the background. And I'm sure a lot of people don't realize that, but
01:08:44
Speaker
you know, note the importance of the songs and how they are still relevant because we're here 30 plus years later talking about this album, how it still kicks, and how much we enjoy because we wouldn't be spending all this time talking about it, you know?
01:09:02
Speaker
The album hasn't dated at all, has it? It's still fresh and relevant today. As I imagine it would have been back in 1989, back in August 1989, I think when it was released. It's great to be able to introduce new generations to Squeeze and keep them going. You can see how much their popularity has exploded there. They're doing these huge tours. They are on primetime television here in the UK very often.
01:09:31
Speaker
You know, they were on my local TV a couple of days ago, I saw, you know, there's household, almost household names here now. It's almost like they've, they had that perhaps around, well, they had to call for cats when I was doing called cats and not junction by two number twos in a row back when
01:09:48
Speaker
uh you know the charts were a lot lot more relevant than they are today i mean i couldn't name um many on the top 10 today um but you know back back then those charts are the real importance but now it's not it's not really that important now people can you know can get that instant gratification and go oh you know well you know you've been a shop somewhere and you hear a here hear an interesting song you're shazam it and you're going oh that's that's good you know you can buy the time you leave the store you're listening to it you can get the great sits out with that particular artist
01:10:16
Speaker
So now it's great to be able to say, I send over Squeeze songs to friends occasionally to try and evangelise about how great this band, I'm sure they must be fed up a bit now, but it's great to just be in the car sometimes and play an album like
01:10:34
Speaker
Frank or I think something like Ridiculous is a good album to introduce someone to. Or you can go, of course, like you said, The Greatest Sits and the singles, 45s and under compilation, or one of the many, many other compilations that have come out throughout the years and say something like, you know, listen to this, see what you think.
01:10:53
Speaker
You know, and just sort of, you know, I think most people who aren't even hardcore squeeze fans like you and I would, you know, be able to at least hear one squeeze song and really like them. And I can always name my friends and family, exactly, and go, all right, they like that song. Like, you know, someone who likes his favorite song is Hourglass. So, you know, it's like, my son's favorite is Only Get Your Gun. My other son's sort of favorite one is Up the Junction.
01:11:19
Speaker
It's just, they're brilliant. Their appeal just goes on and on. And we're not far off 50 years of Squeeze now, are we? I think it's next year. It'll be 50 years, five decades. And I still, in my head, think we're at the domino phase where we're still loads more Squeeze albums to come. I can remember actually being absolutely devastated when they split up at the domino phase because I just
01:11:46
Speaker
I just got into Squeeze at that stage and I'd just gone out and bought every single Squeeze album, anything I could find. And I sort of had this growing collection and I went and saw them many, many times around that time. So I was at some places like at Paradise Bar, I remember seeing Squeeze, which is just down the road from the chocolate factory where, of course, Frank was recorded. And then seeing that it's a little
01:12:10
Speaker
places all around south-east England and London and then seeing them split up and just being, oh no, how devastated that I've got this band I'm absolutely crazy about and I'm not going to be able to see them live and I just rely on things like a round and a bow.
01:12:25
Speaker
and the odd bootleg that said other Squeeze fan would be kind enough for me to send. So we had this little drought in between and it wasn't until 2007 and I was very lucky to be at that gig that was at the all-depth for the Albany Empire to the very, very, very first Squeeze gig of the new Squeeze and hearing the intro to Take Me I'm Yours, hearing that sort of synth
01:12:51
Speaker
sample will be a moment I will never forget for the rest of my life, just feeling squeezed back. We've got our squeeze back. It was absolutely brilliant. I know, and I absolutely feel the same way you do coming from the States. And like I say, I'm happy that you took time out to talk about this and enthuse so much about a release and a band that thankfully, like you said, we've got them back.
01:13:17
Speaker
We are not going to let them go. And we are going to continue to promote at any juncture we can the beauty of this band, their lyrics, their music, their everything. So Adrienne, thank you so, so much for sitting down talking with us. I really, really appreciate it.
01:13:41
Speaker
It's been an absolute pleasure, Amy. One of my favourite things in life is talking about Squeeze and being able to talk in granular detail about some parts of my favourite album has been absolutely brilliant. I've really enjoyed it.