Squeeze: how we made Up the Junction

Glenn Tilbrook, singer/songwriter

When I was 15, I saw an advert in a shop window. A guitarist was needed for a “recording and touring band: influences the Kinks, Lou Reed and Glenn Miller”. This was Chris Difford’s fictitious band! Even then, he had a gift for making up stories. I’d been playing with Jools Holland for about a year and, though it was lovely, we’d never sparked as writers. Then Chris played me his songs, and his lyrics were incredible. I’d been writing songs since the age of 11 but I’d never have come up with the things he did. I didn’t feel a failure, though. I felt excited.

Once the band got going, we shared a house. Chris would leave lyrics for me on a silver breakfast tray, and I’d go off and put tunes to all this wonderful stuff. Up the Junction was groundbreaking in many ways. Chris had been writing narrative lyrics since we’d met, but this was the first time they’d made it to a record. I was proud of Chris, being able to tell that story – a couple have a baby, but she leaves him because of his drinking – in the space of a pop song. It was a privilege putting music to such an amazing lyric like that was a privilege, inspirational.

We’d been recording at Pink Floyd’s studio and, when everyone went to lunch, I sat down at the piano with a guitar and had the tune by the time they came back. The music was partly inspired by Bob Dylan’s Positively 4th Street. There’s no chorus because I thought a repeated section would spoil the flow of Chris’s story.

When we gave it to the record company, they told us to go back and finish it, so I came up with the little keyboard melody that Jools plays at the beginning, just before I sing: “I never thought it would happen with me and the girl from Clapham.” We made the video in the kitchen of John Lennon’s old house, where he’d done the Imagine video, with the white piano and the door that read: “This is not here.” What a place to visit when you’re starting out! We’d spent all day making the video for Cool for Cats, and had had quite a few beers. Then the director said: “Oh yeah – and we’re going to do Up the Junction, too.” That’s why we look so bleary.

The press started calling us the “new Lennon and McCartney”, which was a gift for our marketing people. We never lived up to that, but I think I can say Up the Junction is a timeless classic.

Chris Difford, guitarist/songwriter

There was a young English teacher at my school who was quite debonair compared to the others, who were all ancient. He noticed I’d been writing poetry on the back of my exercise books, so he gave me some Donovan and Bob Dylan albums and said: “These people put poems to music. Maybe that’s something you could think about.” Very forward thinking for 1970. We also had a great art teacher, who was also young. She’d tell us to bring in our records and we’d play them while she tried to touch us up, which was great fun.

After school I was lost, looking for friends really, somebody to team up with. I’d written a few songs and had this idea that I could be the David Bowie of Deptford. Then I met Glenn. We were like two barges on a river banging into each other. It was – and is – a very intense relationship, like a marriage. I’m emotional and a fantasist. Glenn is more thought out, and a much more fluid guitarist. So we decided that I would write the words. And I knew I could trust him to come up with wonderful music.

Up the Junction took as long to write as it takes to read it. My mum and dad used to watch The Wednesday Play on BBC1, and I got drawn into those half-hour, kitchen-sink dramas. One was called Up the Junction, an adaptation of Nell Dunn’s book by Ken Loach. I pinched the title, but the rest of story is from my imagination, though there was a Railway Arms pub in Blackheath, where I was living. I never “got a job with Stanley, who said I’d come in handy”, but I loved those Ian Dury-type rhyming couplets. The line “I’d beg for some forgiveness, but begging’s not my business” still makes me chuckle. It sums up male stubbornness.

Our manager said he’d eat his hat if Up the Junction was a hit – and then it reached No 2 in 1979. It’s still one of my favourites. Many years later, the “girl from Clapham” turned up in another Squeeze song, A Moving Story. She’d moved to the sea front, remarried, and her daughter was getting married, too. I thought they deserved a happy ending.

Squeeze tour in September to accompany their album From the Cradle to the Grave. Details: squeezeofficial.com