Changing to Stay the Same
Chris Difford, co-founder of the iconic British band Squeeze, reflects on the ever changing music business and his love of new technology, and why computers will never help him to write a song.
‘A BAND IS ACTUALLY QUITE A FRAGILE PLACE’
Chris Difford’s quiet statement seems rather at odds with the fact that he’s still playing and touring with Squeeze, the iconic British band he co-founded back in 1974 with Glenn Tilbrook, his writing partner and collaborator for the last four decades.
Chris explains, ‘When you first meet as a band, you don't have a family, you don't have managers, you don't have accountants, you don't have reality. You just cast off and you are all on the same boat. Then you get halfway across the lake and you think “who are these people in the boat with me? These aren’t the people that I left the shore with.” It’s because you've changed. Glenn and I are still in the same boat, but after going round in circles we're now rowing in the same direction.’
Chris Difford’s life and career in music has been defined by change, by continuity, and by one enduring relationship that began with a handwritten note in a sweet shop window.
THE SWEET SHOP WINDOW
While still at secondary school, Chris realised that it wasn’t going to be enough for him just to collect albums and listen to the bands he loved, he wanted to be writing, recording, and performing himself; he wanted a band of his own. So he put a personal ad in the local sweet shop and the only person who bothered to ring him up was Glenn Tilbrook.
‘Within the first six months we’d written forty or fifty songs and we’d fallen into a pattern: I would give him the lyrics and he would write the music. The cast has been set ever since, and we’ve never questioned it.’
Their band was Squeeze, and along with Paul Gunn (drums) and Jools Holland (keyboards/vocals), Chris and Glenn set about living the dream of every young band at the time. ‘We all wanted to be on Top of the Pops. We wanted to play Madison Square Garden and tour America. We wanted cash in the bank, and we wanted girls.’
Before they could do any of that they needed a record deal. They finally got one. ‘It was a really glorious feeling’, Chris remembers, ‘we thought we'd arrived. We had 20 songs that we'd written that we really liked, and we went into the studio with John Cale from The Velvet Underground. He listened to them and said they were all shit.’
John Cale demanded that the band scrap the lot and start again from scratch. ‘Because we were big fans and thought that he knew what he was talking about, we did. We scrapped everything and started again.’
Despite the false start, Squeeze went onto to record 13 albums, have numerous hits — including Cool For Cats, Pulling Mussels from a Shell, Labelled With Love, Up The Junction, and Tempted — and progressed from touring Europe sitting in the pitch black of a Ford Transit to flying the Atlantic to play Madison Square Garden. They even performed on ’Top of the Pops’.
‘I DIDN'T COPE WITH IT VERY WELL’
Everything in life has a price. Dreams of fame and fortune are sometimes no match for the pressures of success — and not just the timeless temptations of a rock‘n’roll life on the road. The simple reality of growing up, getting older, and moving apart while having to stay together eventually took its toll on both the band, and Chris’s personal life.
‘That’s always been a struggle in my life. You don’t think about that when you're a teenager and you're forming a band. You don’t think about having kids — that’s the most alien thing on Earth. But then when you do, you kind of have to cope with it, and I didn't cope with it very well at the beginning. In my first marriage with my first two kids, I was never at home; I was like a merchant seaman or a submariner, I was always away.’
Looking back on those times Chris poignantly remembers, ‘It’s kind of interesting to realise that that’s your life; to be at one with it and not struggle with it. If I struggled with it, I think it would just hurt, and I wouldn't know what else to do anyway.’
Squeeze split in 1982. Then reformed in 1985. Then split again in 1999, before finally reforming again in 2007. They continue to play together to this day.
DIFFORD & TILBROOK
Over the years, the Squeeze lineup has varied considerably, yet Chris and Glenn have endured as the core of the band. Like two planets sharing their own private corner of the rock‘n’roll universe, they seem inexorably linked. ‘It’s about being honest with yourself and — particularly when you're working close to someone like I do with Glenn — about knowing our similarities and our differences, and marrying the two together so that they work.’
Listening to Chris talk about his relationship with Glenn — which like many relationships has had it’s fair share of ups and downs — reveals just how deeply Chris feels connected to his writing partner.
‘A lot of the things that we communicate are unsaid. Sometimes, I can be on stage with Glenn and I can feel what he’s thinking by his body language alone — without having to know what he’s really saying. And I think it’s possibly the same for him with me. You only get that after 40 odd years of being in a relationship which is, and has been like, a marriage in some ways.’
It is a marriage that has endured times of change, and of separation. When he wasn’t working with Glenn, Chris continued to write and record as a solo artist — releasing three personal albums to date. He also collaborated on a variety of other projects with musicians including Elvis Costello, Elton John and Marti Pellow. Chris has even taken on managerial duties for other artists, including Bryan Ferry, and he is currently mentoring a young and dynamic band from Ireland, The Strypes.
EARLY ADOPTER
Chris’s dogged determination to embrace all facets of a musician’s life is matched only by his stoic acceptance of the changes in his personal circumstances. But when it comes to the technological revolution, he isn't content to simply adapt, he’s an active advocate of change; Chris is an old dog who loves to learn new tricks.
‘I have always been crazy about technology’, Chris told me over FaceTime using his iMac. He was an early adopter during the digital revolution, writing lyrics on one of the first Apple portables back in the late 80s — though he remembers it as being rather heavy and not deserving of the name laptop, ‘It weighed a ton and I couldn't put it on my lap very long.’
This willingness to embrace new technology has also stood him in good stead when it came to adapting to our brave new digital world of the internet and social media — a world in which so many in the music industry are still clearly floundering.
When Squeeze reformed for the second time in 2007, Facebook was only four years old, YouTube was only three and Twitter was just two. The explosive growth of social media over the last eight years has enabled Chris and Squeeze to connect to a whole new generation: young people in their 20s and 30s who have become ardent fans of a band whose founding members are now well into their 50s and early 60s.
ON TOUR. A LOT
But regardless of what Facebook and Twitter may tell you, likes and retweets don't necessarily turn into pounds and pence, nor dollars and cents. Despite, or maybe because of the technological revolution, selling albums, filling venues and flogging merchandise has never been more important than it is these days. And the only really efficient way of doing that is to go on tour. A lot.
Chris tours as much as he can. He plays small venues as a solo artist; large concerts with Squeeze; and last year took the ‘At Odd’s Couple Tour’ on the road with Glenn Tilbrook. And after each and every gig, he took time to meet the fans.
‘We make an effort to go and sign records and meet the crowd afterwards, which I have to tell you is bloody hard work when you've done two hours on stage and then you do an hour in the foyer. It takes it out of you.’
It’s tiring, but Chris enjoys it. More importantly, he also knows that it’s worth it, ‘We sell our “merch”; we sign records; and we sign books; and we almost make as much money as when we did when we were signed to a record company. It’s crazy.’
Clearly, spending times with the fans isn't for everyone. ‘It must be hell for the younger band who don't have the wherewithal to want to do that,’ Chris says. ‘A lot of bands want to be mysterious and never meet the crowd. Obviously, I'd love to be mysterious too, but at my age, I can’t be mysterious anymore. I’m like the guy behind the red curtain in the Wizard of Oz: when they pulled the curtain back, it was just this fat old bloke.’
Back home from touring, Chris continues to write new material — he’s currently working on a musical with a friend and is hoping to raise money through Pledge Music to record it at some point.
ANALOG MUSICIAN IN A DIGITAL WORLD
Writing is the one constant in his life that’s barely changed over the years; an area where his love of technology is eclipsed by his passion for creativity. Chris Difford is an analog musician in a digital world.
‘When we recorded Take Me I'm Yours in 1978, we used synthesizers and sequencers, but we didn’t know how any of them worked,’ he remembers. ‘We just turned them on and that was the sound that they made. We said, “Well, that sounds good” and then it became a hit.’
Chris has never been deeply into the complicated technology of playing and recording music in the same way a lot of musicians are. ‘I take my hat off to some people that can spend hours twiddling around with sounds to get them right. It doesn't interest me. I'd rather just pick up an acoustic guitar and shuffle around with a band and make the song work. The song comes first, then the technology.’
‘The song comes first’ is what really defines Chris Difford as a musician’s musician. He is a man who can willingly embrace new technology, and yet still value the simple creative process of picking up an acoustic guitar to write a song. He seems present in the now and stoic about the past. But does he have any regrets? What would he say if he could meet up with his younger self as he prepared to ‘cast off’ with his new band?
‘I would say, “Do everything the same because you have to make the mistakes to know exactly where you are.” I wouldn't try and teach that person anything — other than what they already knew at that time — because it would be folly. Because, as an individual, you need to discover the bumps in the road. I'm 60 years old, and I'm still discovering them. There’s a lot more to unearth, I'm sure.’
Photography by Hal Shinnie
