Squeeze and Crowded House weren’t just two of the finer pop bands on the charts during the mid ’80s — they were virtually the only bands (save for the studio-bound XTC) who regularly brought Beatles-rooted hooks and harmonies to commercial radio and MTV. Both broke up around the same time (Crowded House in 1994; Squeeze, after a longer run, in ’97), and a happy coincidence finds their reunion tours hitting the Pavilion within four nights of each other — Squeeze on August 1, Crowded House on the 5th. Squeeze also play the Cape Cod Melody Tent July 31. Both, however, are hitting town with altered lineups, having weathered some tough times on the way back.
Heroin addiction, alcoholism, neurosis, friends at each others’ throats . . . all the things you’d expect to encounter in a film about Metallica. But in the story of a generally cheerful pop group like Squeeze?
According to the recently published UK biography Squeeze: Song by Song (credited to Difford & Tilbrook with Jim Drury, published by Sanctuary), that’s indeed how it was. The book reveals that pop masterpieces like 1980’s Argybargy and 1982’s East Side Story (both A&M) weren’t made without major stress. Singer/guitarist/composer Glenn Tilbrook and guitarist/singer/lyricist Chris Difford were, respectively, into heroin and cocaine during the early ’80s; Difford fought an alcohol problem for many years afterward. The two friends’ love/hate relationship also caused several dark patches — Squeeze’s up-and-down commercial fortunes didn’t help either. Difford and Tilbrook have now revived Squeeze with semi-original bassist John Bentley and two members of Tilbrook’s solo band, keyboardist Stephen Large and drummer Simon Hanson.
Fans might not have known there was so much intrigue behind the scenes. “I didn’t know either,” Difford said by phone from London recently. “Glenn and I were interviewed completely separately for the book — we didn’t know what each other were going to say. That’s how we found out, for instance, that we didn’t like each other’s wives. We were completely honest, and honesty pays dividends. We both needed to vent our lives out, and when we read the book it was the beginning of us coming together again.” The pair’s relationship hit its nadir at the start of Squeeze’s last tour in 1997. Having recently taken control of his alcoholism, Difford was having anxiety about going on the road. Barely 24 hours before the first show, he decided he couldn’t go through with it, left a message for Tilbrook at the airport, and went home. (Tilbrook and the remaining members soldiered through that tour, which hit a half-full Avalon.)
“It’s a cliché to say that life’s a journey, but it is,” Difford says now. “At that point I was in the middle of the woods, not knowing which direction to go in. I absolutely felt like I did the right thing, but I did it in the wrong way. Glenn is a really understanding person with a lot of love in his heart — it would have gone differently if I’d learned the art of communication and we’d sat down and discussed things. I don’t think I’ll ever make up for the cruel way that I left him to turn the lights out. Maybe by doing this tour, I can have one way of saying that the music still means a lot to both of us.”
Given the baggage involved, nobody’s sure whether Squeeze will last beyond the dates scheduled for this year. Rehearsals hadn’t yet started when I spoke with Difford in June. “We’re taking it one day at a time. Right now I see this reunion as being 27 or 28 shows, and it feels like going into the theater. I know the script and I’m going to enjoy playing the role of Chris Difford in Squeeze.”
Like Squeeze, Crowded House had some recovering to do: original drummer Paul Hester killed himself in 2005. Singer/guitarist Neil Finn and bassist Nick Seymour originally came back together for catharsis’s sake. And the reunion album, Time on Earth (on ATO), definitely sounds that way. It’s arguably the most loss-ridden pop record since R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People, with a similar haunting undertow. Some tracks are specifically about Hester, others address the passage of time and general melancholia. As a commercial comeback it’s downright perverse, but deeper songs were always Finn’s specialty anyway, and this disc is up to their standard even if it takes more getting used to.
Finn says that the disc isn’t only about grieving — the upside was the kick that he and Seymour got from reviving the band after a decade-plus (they’ve since been joined by later-lineup keyboardist Mark Hart and new drummer Matt Sherrod). Finn, after all, doesn’t need another band — he’s done three solo discs and two with his brother Tim, and even toured Australia lately with Split Enz, his and Tim’s original band from the ’70s. Still, Crowded House seem the closest to his heart. “There’s some bands where you play for no better reason than you feel like having a play,” Finn tells me on the phone from LA. “For me that’s been unique to this band. There were a lot of things on our minds for these songs, the loss of Paul certainly being the most pressing. So it probably evokes what we were thinking about, which is living in the here and how — not just loss. I hope there’s some whimsy and exuberance in there too.”
The feel of the new songs might seem an odd match for the traditionally upbeat flavor of Crowded House shows. “That’s still there,” Finn promises. “There’s still a great bonhomie when we’re onstage; it’s very much in the moment. People might have their own private moments about Paul not being there — they might feel it when we do a song like ‘Four Seasons on One Day.’ It’s like having a family gathering, when you toast to those who aren’t there anymore. It doesn’t have to mean the whole gathering goes down the drain.”
SQUEEZE | Cape Cod Melody Tent, 21 West Main St, Hyannis | July 31 | 508.775.5630 | SQUEEZE + CHEAP TRICK | August 1 | CROWDED HOUSE + PETE YORN + LIAM FINN | August 5 | Bank of America Pavilion, 290 Northern Ave, Boston | 617.728.1600