A long time ago, circa 1987, Iman Lababedi did a phone interview with Squeeze. He asked Chris Difford about the 45s and Under, a best of put out by their label A&M. Difford refused to discuss it, if I remember correctly, and I never understood why.
It is only with the release of Spot the Difference that the reason became clear, at least to me. As explained in a Michael Nessing’s post about this album, Squeeze never owned the copyrights to it’s own songs. As is so often the case, the record label sews up those rights when the contract is signed. Apparently the band never made a penny from “45s”, thus Difford’s diffidence.
Fast forward and Difford and Glenn Tilbrook have set out to regain control (and realize some income) from their greatest hit records by re-recording them.
This is an album for the confirmed fan only. We Squeeze aficionados have these tracks emblazoned on every neuron in the “pop” section of our brains, so we actually can spot the little changes and subtle differences in each track. To start with, Tilbrook’s voice has thickened up a bit over the years, yet he can still reach notes in the same key as the original recordings. Difford never had a lot of range anyway and sings “Cool for Cats” (they do the 45 version) like 1979.
Even better, though, they’ve managed to recreate virtually the exact production values of the original songs, a task which apparently fell to Tilbrook: “We didn’t sit down and plot out a list, we just did tracks as we felt like doing them–whichever ones we thought would be fun to do. I think this is an ongoing thing. Sometimes, it’s sort of like looking into your soul with all the pleasure and discomfort that that can involve. You think about how you made records thirty years ago, and that’s a weird process.”
A few notables: Tilbrooks version of “Loving You Tonight” (Difford says it’s his favorite track on the album) is quite excellent, especially when it has to comapare with the Paul Carrack voiced original.
I can always listen to “Another Nail in My Heart” and while this version contains no great revelations, it’s still fun to “spot the differences” like the longer fade out. Seriously, these versions are so true you have to look for stuff like that!
Speaking of Paul Carrack, the new version of “Tempted” is restrained and very much honors the original. Someone help me out; isn’t this the third version (including Tempted ’94 that showed up in some Wynonna Ryder movie?)
Best of all, I personally found a new Squeeze favorite.
By 1993 I was pretty much over them. They turned me off badly with “Frank” and Grunge had hit the scene by that time. So when the album “Some Fantastic Place” came out, I couldn’t be buggered. It was a number of years later that my daughter gave me the CD single of “Loving You Tonight” and when I downloaded “Spot”, I finally heard the title track. What a revelation!
Tilbrook: “We just ran with it. We made it what it should have been. I love the original record, but this one is more joyous, more gospel-y, more “Oh Happy Day” meets “My Sweet Lord” meets “Some Fantastic Place.” It’s a song to commemorate a dear, dear friend of ours who died nineteen years ago. So, we wanted to make it joyful, and we really have nailed the joyful vibe. I’m really happy with that.”
The song is all that and more, which makes it so gratifying to have finally discovered it. It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to say my new favorite song is by Squeeze.
(the Tilbrook quotes from an interview conducted by Mike Ragogna found here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-ragogna/emspot-the-differenceem-a_b_673197.html)