Doing a solo tour supporting artists Bruce Foxton and Christopher Cross, Chris Difford took a break from his band’s tour schedule as part of two-nights at Cadogan Hall performing their classics alongside his own solo material. The Squeeze co-founder opened his set on a blend of acoustic and electric guitar in Squeeze’s 1978 debut album single, ‘Take Me, I’m Yours’.
Between songs he did a sort of standup comedy act, with self-deprecating jokes about Squeeze’s humble beginnings in Deptford playing in the Oxford Arms pub and also Dublin, embittered that their contemporaries and supports such as Dire Straits and U2 achieved far more commercial success. It was partly on these stories that he based the allegorical ‘Deptford’ which was frilled with lap steel guitar played by his Squeeze bandmate Melvin Duffy.
Amongst crude jokes about the size of his contemporaries’ genitalia, he covered Squeeze’s 1979 number two hit ‘Up the Junction’ – kept off the number one spot by Tubeway Army’s Gary Numan, who Difford jokingly called “a wanker” – and ‘Pulling Mussels (From the Shell)’, both tracks he has recorded on his solo discography. While ‘Is that Love?’ was a bit off-key for want of a percussive backing which was amiss without a drummer, audience participation fleshed it out and ‘Tempted’, another underrated release covered by Sting on a Belgium B-side, was sung by guitarist Andy Caine on lead vocals. Difford finished his support set on Squeeze’s 1981 song ‘Labelled With Love’ (number four in the charts), including a melding lap-steel solo, and ‘Cool for Cats’, another number two charting single uniquely driven by Difford’s vocals.
The Jam’s Bruce Foxton headlined the evening with his From the Jam band of Craig Joiner (guitar, lead vocals), Mark Brzezicki (drums) and Andy Fairclough (keyboard), performing the band’s best known songs and some rarities, beginning on 1980’s ‘That’s Entertainment’ – the UK’s best selling import single of all-time – with Foxton’s petrol chugging basslines, and the traffic organ of ‘Start’, sung by Joiner in his fresh sounding vocals that matches original Jam frontman Paul Weller’s spontaneity. They played many of the band’s charting singles, such as 1978’s ‘Down in the Tube Station at Midnight’, which also featured a drum solo.
The band continued to perform from the Jam’s 1979 third studio album, ‘All Mod Cons’, with Foxton doing lead vocals for the staccato Kinks’ cover on that album, ‘David Watts’. Big Country’s Brzezicki paid tribute to past From the Jam drummer Rick Buckler before the delicate piano and acoustics keys of ‘English Rose’ were underpinned by Foxton’s heavy bass strings, with more gothic touched folk in ‘The Butterfly Collector’. The reverberating basslines popped in a further track from that album, ”A’ Bomb in Wardour Street’. The band finished their set on the ringing Farfisa chimes of 1982 and 1980 number one hits, ‘Town Called Malice’ and the boxy ‘Going Underground’ respectively, with them returning for an encore of the Jam’s 1979 first top-ten hit, ‘The Eton Rifles’, containing a flaring keyboard solo.
08-09/05/26: Chris Difford + Bruce Foxton @ Cadogan Hall, London.
Photos © Peter Tainsh.
© Ayisha Khan.