Episode Sixty Six – Squeeze

Readers of my age will remember the rock band Squeeze who had a string of hits in the late seventies and eighties, including ‘Cool for Cats’, ‘Up the Junction’ and ‘Labelled with Love’. Mick and I went to see them about thirty five years ago at De Montfort Hall in Leicester. At that time Jools Holland was their keyboard player (whatever happened to him?)

Anyway, despite various break-ups and changes of members, Squeeze is still touring with the original guitarists and vocalists Chris Difford and Glen Tilbrook, who have also written most of the band’s material. When we saw they would be performing at the Princess Theatre in Torquay, we decided to treat ourselves to tickets, using my birthday last month as the excuse. The concert was billed as part of the ‘Food for Thought’ tour during which the band were supporting the work of the Trussell Trust and its network of food banks. Special guest at the concert would be John Cooper Clark, the performance poet who also made his name in the eighties.

So we set off for the concert with high expectations and soon took our seats amongst an audience which, as you might have expected, was entirely composed of couples our age.

Before the interval we listened to John Cooper Clarke giving us his thoughts on growing older and love and marriage and reading some of his poems. Whilst some of his material was funny and some very clever, he swore far too much so I did not always feel comfortable. By the end of his performance my bad knee had stiffened up and was really aching and I wondered how I could possibly sit through the rest of the evening. Of course, I needn’t have worried because the rest of the evening was to be spent tapping my feet and then standing up as soon as we were encouraged to do so.

The Squeeze performance was fabulous, from the first lines of ‘Take Me I’m Yours’ to the last strains of ‘Black Coffee in Bed’. I had forgotten just how many Squeeze songs there were that I could sing along to but as soon as the intros played I was transported back to my youth. The set was interspersed with a few less familiar album tracks and a new song called ‘Food for Thought’ written especially for the tour. The performances were energetic and the light show enhanced everything. All in all it was a night to remember.