Squeeze founder member brings new tour to the city

Groove Tube with Jimi McDonnell – tribunegroove@live.ie

Formed in 1974, Squeeze are an English rock band who scored massive hits with the singles Cool For Cats and Up The Junction. The band were formed after Chris Difford stole 50p from his mother’s purse to place an ad looking for a guitarist. Through that, he met Glenn Tillbrook and the pair began a collaboration that continues to this day.

Chris Difford comes to Monroe’s Live on Friday March 9, where he will be playing a solo acoustic show. He lets The Groove Tube know what punters can expect from the show.

“The show is based around my book, Some Fantastic Place, which came out last year,” he says. “It’s an intimate show, there’ll be songs from the Squeeze catalogue and songs from my solo career as well. There’ll be conversations about how I got to where I am, and hopefully there’ll be some questions from the audience.”

Given that he’s been a working musician for over 40 years now, why did Chris decide the time was right to put together a book?

“Well, I’d been writing it for about five years and then I met a friend of mine who’s a book agent and she said ‘why don’t you release it?’,” he says. “She got me a book deal, and that made me solidify the whole thing and put it together. That was hard work in itself, but the hardest thing was letting it go and letting people read it. That was the tough bit.”

Why was it so hard to let the book go?

“You can always change it, you always want to add a chapter or say something different about somebody. There’s all these ways of changing things and moving them around.”

And has Glenn had a chance to read it yet?

“I’m not really sure,” Chris says, “We’ve been on the road for such a long time that we’ve not really got round to talking about the book.”

When he placed that 50p ad, did Chris ever anticipate the success that would see Squeeze topping the charts and touring America?

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.