Squeeze’s Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford’s friendship “ended” almost 50 years ago.
The Up the Junction hitmakers still perform and make music together but they are no longer as close as they used to be and don’t have a relationship outside of the band.
Glenn admitted to MOJO magazine: “Mine and Chris’ relationship effectively ended as a friendship in, I’d say, 1976.
“But as a band, we could still carry on and be productive.
“I think Chris and Jools [Holland] were far closer than Chris and I were.
“During that time, I began to feel the pull of Chris wanting to be doing something different to what we were doing. And that was a bit weird for me.”
Even after Squeeze split for the first time in 1982, Chris and Glenn recorded their Difford + Tilbrook album together in 1984, but were barely on speaking terms.
Chris admitted: “Difford + Tilbrook was a very difficult period where we didn’t talk to each other for a year, but we were making a record and it was crazily difficult to understand anything.”
Glenn added: “Chris was really horrible to be around at that point. OK, he may well say the same thing about me, I don’t know, but the degree of any trust that we could have in each other was completely gone by then.
“I felt D+T was an opportunity for us to take on board some other sorts of music that Squeeze wouldn’t do. Songs like Love’s Crashing Waves and Hope Fell Down were incorporating more of a contemporary black music influence, but at least one half of our duo didn’t really like that.”
Glenn was deeply upset by Chris’ 2017 memoir Some Fantastic Place: My Life In and Out of Squeeze but he thinks they have a better relationship now.
He said: “When Chris’ book came out I found it really upsetting.
“I thought, if he can be as unpleasant as he was to me in that book, and show no real contrition, I didn’t want to work with him any more.
“I’m not sure how much more I should say. I’m not sure I should even say that.
“But – ironically – I think that our relationship since that point has been markedly changed for the better.
“I’m not sure he would say the same though.”