May 25, 2011

When Squeeze first appeared on the British music scene back in 1977, they were quickly labeled a New Wave band, probably because their sound was cushioned by a bed of synthesizers and the band members wore a variety of suit jackets and skinny ties. And that type of pigeonholing was always the problem with the odiously vague term “New Wave.”

If you scratched even a little bit beneath the surface, it was pretty obvious that Squeeze’s gifted songwriters, Chris Difford (lyrics; back row left in the above photo) and Glenn Tilbrook (music; back row right) were doing what many New Wavers considered the Big Un-Cool by closely listening to the Beatles, and they showed a lot more compassion in their lyrics than most so-called New Wave acts could usually muster.

Any pop music movement before hip-hop, which has all but abandoned melody in favor of reciting sex-based clichés, lists of boldly purchased merchandise, and awkwardly worded social jingles, was getting off on the wrong foot if it fought to escape the influence of the Fab Four, if for no other reason than the bands involved wouldn’t sell any records if nobody could recall their tunes, and there would soon be no movement to join.

Squeeze was a different story, though. Listen, for instance, to one of the band’s earliest hits, 1978’s “Goodbye Girl,” which is quite appealingly dated by it’s bouncing electro-production while being very much an elegant pop tune that will stick in your head like glue when it’s over. Note also that Difford’s lyrics paint a working class character sketch that comments wryly on his subjects while displaying a disarming amount of warmth toward them.

This approach, which was usually applied to female characters, soon became Difford’s habit, and, along with Tilbrook’s winning voice (odd that the band’s lyricist seldom sang lead), is one of the more readily identifiable elements of Squeeze’s recorded output.

“Goodbye Girl”

“Goodbye Girl,” by the way, didn’t sell a lick in the United States. When one uses the phrase “hit record” while discussing Squeeze, it’s understood that you mean purchases made largely by British music listeners.

The band cracked the charts a couple of times in the United States, just barely. But they gained far more notoriety on these shores when “Tempted,” which was originally released in 1981, started turning up on TV commercials, oldies radio, and - quite incredibly - on the “Grand Theft Auto” video game! This happened loooong after the fact. Americans, in case you haven’t noticed, seldom get it until it’s too late, whether you’re talking Wall Street, wars, or intelligent pop music.

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Happily, Squeeze broke free of the New Wave tag for good with “East Side Story,” a witty, consistently inventive classic that was released 30 years ago last week, on May 15, 1981.

Produced by Elvis Costello and Roger Bechirian (with a bit of help from Rockpile’s Dave Edmunds), “East Side Story” contains a string of sly commentaries on modern female identity, the forever-shifting weight of the world, and drinking to excess (in no particular order), and Difford and Tilbrook’s songcraft throughout is impeccable. This album stands with the best pop recorded by anyone at the time, including Costello himself. It still holds up beautifully in the digitized modern age.

The record covers a lot of ground in the manner of a single-disc White Album, with everything from blue-eyed soul, Kinks-style British social commentary, weepy country music, Sun-era Elvis, and even a string quartet making variously sardonic appearances. Again, though, it’s Tilbrook’s detailed, always observant lyrics that most stick with me.

When I first heard it, I immediately felt “East Side Story” had a lot in common with, of all people, Woody Allen. The album’s setting is consistently urban and the approach is just sophisticated enough to suggest that Difford and Tilbrook have read a few books themselves. And the female characters are affectionately portrayed as either overwhelmed by their pursuit of a fitting partner or dismayed at their inability to pull a logical narrative out of scattershot desires. They waver between laughter and tears, and most of them are more than ready to parry with the suitor who’s desperately hoping to understand them.

Everyone’s trying very hard in “East Side” story while getting nowhere fast, often in an especially humorous manner, and the production, somewhat surprisingly when one considers the heavy laboriousness of the self-produced tracks on Costello’s own albums, is usually light and spacious. There’s a lot going on here, and it’s all enormously entertaining.

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There’s little reason at this point for me to include an mp3 of “Tempted.” If you haven’t heard it by now, there’s a good chance you wouldn’t have any interest in reading about Squeeze in the first place. It’s a great song, though, and the vocal by Paul Carrack (who replaced original keyboard player Jools Holland) is a wonderfully soulful swagger. But let’s check out that strain of femininity, the perplexing female creature, that runs throughout “East Side Story,” and, in my opinion, throughout its best songs.

Take, for instance, “Piccadilly,” a deliriously breathless portrait of a young couple out on a date, with the male half of the equation more or less enduring everything that’s tossed at him to be near the object of his affection. Again, you can tell the kid is head over heels for the girl, even though she “waits to get even with (him)”, whatever it is that he’s done.

“Piccadilly”

She's not a picture above somebody's fire
She sits in a towel with a purple hair dryer
She waits to get even with me
She hooks up her cupcakes and puts on her jumper
Explains that she'll be late to her worrying mother
She meets me at Piccadilly

A begging folk singer stands tall by the entrance
His song relays worlds of most good intentions
A five me a ten “P” in his hat for collection

She talks about office
She talks about dresses
She's seen one she fancies, her smile is impressing
So maybe I'll treat her someday
We queue among strangers and strange conversation
Love's on the lips of all forms of engagements
All queuing to see tonight's play

A man behind me talks to his young lady
He's happy that she is expecting his baby
His wife won't be pleased
But she's not been ‘round lately

The girl was so dreadful we left in a hurry
Escaped in the rain for an Indian curry
At the candlelit Taj Mahal
My lips to a napkin
I called for a taxi
The invite of eyes made it tense but relaxed me
My mind took a devious stroll

The cab took us home
Through a night I'd not noticed
The neon club lights of adult films and Trini Lopez,
My arm around her
But my acting was hopeless

We crept like two thieves from the kettle to the fire
We kissed to the sound of the silence that we'd hired
Now captured, your love in my arms
A door opened slightly
A voice spoke in worry
Mum went to bed without wind of the curry
Our secret love made its advance

Like Adam and Eve we took bite on the apple
Loose change in my pocket it started to rattle,
My heart like a gun was just half of the battle
(Heart like a gun was just half of the battle.)
Like Adam and Eve we took bite on the apple
(Heart like a gun was just half of the battle)

I love that bawdy throw-away line in the first verse, when the girl “hooks up her cupcakes.” Surely, Difford and Tilbrook laughed their asses off while putting these songs together.

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I would accept Difford and Tilbrook as drinking buddies - they must tell funny stories - and their songs strongly suggest they’ve had a bit of practice in the drinking department.

Quite often, there’s alcohol consumption in a Squeeze lyric, to the point that my friends and I laughed out loud when we saw the cover of their consistently popular greatest hits collection, “Singles”: 45s and Under,” which features a woozy scrawl of a little cartoon character reaching for yet another glass. The band members themselves have never appeared drunk to me - they’re not like the Replacements, pissing their pants and collapsing on stage for fun and profit - but one imagines a pint of Guinness would not last long around these guys.

It probably wouldn’t stand much of a chance around the fed-up housewife protagonist of “Woman’s World,” either. This is one of Tilbrook’s more vivid character sketches, and it’s genuinely funny. The middle-class domestic setting makes it a little more Mike Nichols than Woody Allen, though.

“Woman’s World"

The crown of the kingdom is given to the woman
The kingdom of the kitchen
Where she says she shouldn't
There on the stainless steel
Her cigarettes and matches
Whistles to the radio
Not every hook she catches
But the frowns, eiderdowns, tie her down
But she likes to wear the crown of the kingdom

She like the recipe
A touch of oriental
Steaming up the windows
Burning egg on metal
Sees in a catalogue a shiny new appliance
Another role swallowed by the wonders of science
Lobster hands, omelet pans, understand
How the crown can stick like jam in her kingdom

He's been so busy
And she's been neglected
The problem is computed
Always it's rejected,
Out of her heart I catch a spark, and being smart
The crown is left out in the dark
Now there's no kingdom

Fed up with the glory
She abdicates her title
Sitting at a bar stool
She gives her day's recital
The family watch in horror
As she staggers up the hallway
Makes herself a sandwich
As they're looking through the doorway
She goes to bed, leg by leg, nothing said
There's no crown upon her head
There's no kingdom

Press the button on the toaster
It's a woman's world
Tuck the sheets in on the bed
It's a woman's world,
Take your apron from your holster
It's a woman's world,
Shoot the crown off of your head
It's a woman's world

Tilbrook’s lyrics are great here. You can clearly envision the housewife as she suddenly lets it all hang out, and her cowering, dumbfounded family is a nice touch. Pivotally, though, the narrative is amusing, but there’s great empathy in “Woman’s World’ that keeps it from being one of those too-mean takedowns Randy Newman composes when he’s in an extra-shitty mood. This is deceptively sharp songwriting.

“Labeled with Love” is another “East Side Story” track in the same vein as “Woman’s World,” but this time the tale of motherhood-meets-the-bottle is conveyed via a tongue-in-cheek country tune that’s ridiculous enough to be real, but too knowing to truly qualify as legitimate. Here’s Squeeze performing the song live in 1982. Feel free to sing along to the character’s downfall. Everybody else does.

Nice. The studio version of “Labeled with Love” also has a synthesizer laying down a faux fiddle backdrop, which is taking the cowboy satire about as far as you can go when you’re a wise-ass Londoner who’s never even eaten grits.

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Difford and Tilbrook are still out there, and have periodically plugged away as Squeeze over the years, with varying lineups of musicians. But the band’s commercial glory days came to an end with “East Side Story”’s less artistically successful follow-up, “Sweet from a Stranger.”

The real last hurrah, though, came on “Singles: 45 and Under,” with “Annie Get Your Gun,” a ridiculously catchy, shamelessly frothy final salvo - Squeeze announced they were disbanding shortly before its release - that was as appealing as anything they ever recorded. And, yes, it’s about a hard-partying woman who’s buying the drinks.

“Annie Get Your Gun”

She goes for her medical
She's passed
It's a miracle
She's up over the moon
She whistles nonsense tunes
She wants drinks for everyone
She's found a chord that she can strum
Emotions leaking out
Her paint's all over town

(chorus)
What's that she's playing?
(Annie get your gun)
What's that she's taking?
(The song has to be sung)
She's gone electric
(Annie wipe them out)
That's unexpected
(Strum that thing and shout)
Don't pull that trigger
(Annie get your gun)
Don't shoot that singer
(You're shooting number one)

He's not into miracles
Sees life all too cynical
The cat has got his tongue
Now she bangs on his drum
He says, “Pull the other one”
Bells ring, look what you have done
Emotions leaking out
Her paint's all over town

(chorus)

Man, it’s a good thing that wasn’t a hit in America back in 1982. We might have been forced to listen to something witty on the radio for a few weeks. And you can’t have that.

DOWNLOAD: “East Side Story” (1981), in its entirety, for a Beatle-esque travelogue through early-1980s London. “Singles: 45’s and Under” is also a must-have, and benefits as greatly from its crisp re-mastering as any record I’ve ever heard. There’s layers of sound in there that I never picked up on the old vinyl.

Paul Tatara