Squeeze Concert including one odd tidbit


I saw Squeeze (or, more precisely, Chris Difford and Glenn Tillbrook of Squeeze) in concert at a local club last night. They performed mostly acoustic versions (tho Tillbrook played some electric guitar) of Squeeze's greatest hits and they did so with great style. The simpler arrangements still managed to capture a lot of the kinetic energy that is central to so many Squeeze songs. Overall, a very fun show and one worth catching for any Squeeze fan.

Squeeze is a band that I admire greatly: IMO, they combine outstanding songs (irresistible hooks) with excellent musicianship (Tillbrook is a fine, under-appreciated guitarist) and they often provide witty lyrics rife with clever wordplay. When the band performs, they rock with much more power than you might expect from such shiny songs. When they perform as a duo, however, the concert is less manic and involves more interaction with the audience. I've seen them do request-heavy shows in the past, but last night they had a guy with a mic walking thru the audience to take questions.

While most of Squeeze's best lyrics are probably best characterized as "clever good fun", one of their songs, "Some Fantastic Place", is a kind of pop elegy. The song is sung as a paean to a lover who died young. I've always wondered whether it was a true story or an imagined one. I've also always found it to be a tremendously moving and inspirational statement at a time of great sadness. I like a lot of Squeeze's lyrics, but I've always felt that "Fantastic Place" is a cut above anything else that Squeeze has done lyrically. (Actually, I find it a cut above all but a very few lyrics from anyone - there's just a very intense personal connection with that song on my part.)

When the mic came my way, I asked if a two part question was okay. They approved and I first asked:

"What lyric are you most proud of?"

Tillbrook hemmed and hawed for a minute ("That answer might change every day"), before he eventually settled on...... "Some Fantastic Place". Tillbrook said he was very proud of that one and then he thanked Difford for penning the lyric that told the story so movingly. He then asked me for part two of my question.

I told him that my second question was about..... "Some Fantastic Place". I asked whether the song was about an actual person in his life and, if it was, whether he might share that story.

He explained that his first great love died young of Leukemia. When Difford first provided his lyric shortly after her death, Tillbrook said the chords just spilled out of him in a spontaneous torrent. It was evident that it was a moving moment for him. It was satisfying to see that I had shared that sentiment with him regarding the power of the song.

It was a nice cap to a really fun evening with two terrific pop musicians. It also made it clear that a chance to interact with the people who write our favorite songs is an opportunity that happens way too rarely. If you like Squeeze, and Difford/Tillbrook comes to your neighborhood, I'd urge you to check this one out. Come armed with a question, too - it might make the night special.

martykl
Schubert, 60's pop/rock is no different from any other genre. There's a lot of horrible-to-mediocre stuff and then there's good, better, great and the very top. The Beatles were at the very top. If they produced something that wasn't top-shelf they usually had the sense not to release it. Leonard Bernstein got on board pretty early on (but Glenn Gould hated them). In more than 30 years of teaching guitar I've come across two students who did not care for the Beatles. That's an astonishingly low number. Anyway, Harrison was a great pop/rock guitarist and McCartney was perhaps the premier bassist of his time (I wouldn't compare pop bass to jazz). No flies on this boys
marty--in deference to your response i relistened to sfp--what's curious about the song is that, at least by squeeze's standard, it's largely unadorned/unarranged--until you get to the bridge it's really just difford (tilbrook?) and his acoustic guitar--no keyboard flourishes, cymbal rolls, harmonies, etc. accordingly, if you don't wholly buy into the melody it doesn't grab you like some of their sonically-overloaded ditties. you have a very interesting point, tho, about playing in service to a song--if i grasp the concept correctly someone like mike campbell or george harrison (johnny marr?) does that very well, whereas e.g. a richard thompson is so wildly inventive that the guitarwork sometimes becomes larger than the song.
I'm a big fan of "playing in service to the song", which is one reason The Band is my all-time favorite, uh, band. George Harrison was really good at pistts, his guitar "break" (as opposed to solo) in The Beatles "Nowhere Man", as an example, is absolutely sublime, very reminiscent of James Burton's in Ricky Nelson's recording of "Young World". Kind of, as Marty said, just replaying the melody, but it works really well musically, not virtuosoticly (I know, not really a word).

Marty, Iris' recording of NTTC isn't a "cover"---she wrote the song!
Schubert,
That was snobbish, and reveals you as ignorant to the value of music and musicians that don't conform to your taste.
I was reading about Bob Dylan's Infidel album.

I did not know Mark Knopfler produced it which I found interesting.

Knopfler was quoted as saying Dylan's skills as a musician playing guitar and keyboard were limited but pointed out how little it mattered because Dylan was a great poet really in the role of a musician and that his music spoke to so many as a result.

I've never even given thought to Dylan's music skills. He's been so prolific for so long it seems mostly irrelevant. He seems to know how to make good music by leveraging his unique talent with those of others.

So there you go. There is more to music than great chops it would seem.