A CONVERSATION WITH GLENN TILBROOK

GLENN TILBROOK: Glenn here, ready to go, finally.

PUREMUSIC: It's a beautiful thing.

GT: So how are you?

PM: I'm great. Jeez, that was a frickin fantastic show last night!

GT: Oh, thank you. I really enjoyed it too.

PM: I mean two hours of just nonstop entertainment. It was relentless!

GT: [laughs] In a good way, I hope. Not relentless like the dentist, I mean.

PM: No, I was bowled over. I keep telling people, "When he wasn't playing something amazing, he was being totally funny."

GT: [laughs] Oh, I'm glad.

PM: I was the guy in the front laughing my ass off the whole time.

GT: That's cool. Thank you.

PM: Yeah, really, really fun. And I said to Bill DeMain after the show, "I'd say we've seen over 300 chord changes."

GT: [laughs] Thank goodness I'm not counting.

PM: There had to be twenty songs. There's definitely fifteen a song. [laughs]

GT: Yeah, that's true. Three hundred different chords, hey... I think I might incorporate that into our marketing effort, in terms of value for the money.

PM: "And tonight you will hear a minimum of 300 chords!"

GT: Yeah. [laughs] Excellent.

PM: So how are things with you?

GT: Things are good. Things are really good for me. It's interesting, carrying on from the conversation that we started, I mean, Nashville is a really good case in point. I'm very aware of the fact that going on the radio and being connected with that helps a show. And in terms of the amount of people that see me, I think it's double now over what I had last time. So that's good, it's heading the right way.

PM: Right.

GT: And that's what I want to do, I want to come back, and again and again. [laughs]

PM: Yes. You sowed a lot of good seeds that night, and I could see that the people were just totally satisfied. I mean, I often see good shows, but you rarely feel truly sated by a performance.

GT: As long as it doesn’t get to the stage where you think, "Enough!" [laughs] "No more!"

PM: Forgive me if I double back on a question or two, because there was too much interference and we didn't really get a good enough tape. Don't you find--and now I know--that playing solo is very liberating in a lot of ways?

GT: Oh, yeah. Well, you saw. Yeah, definitely. I think that, for me, what made Squeeze work is the fact that we were a bunch of very different personalities, even down to the chemistry between myself and Chris. We were quite different in a lot of ways. And it was that push and pull that made our writing partnership work, I think. There was a constant sort of battle between us, but I think we always respected what we got from that, and it was very fruitful and productive. But one of the areas that would suffer is that our sense of humor isn't necessarily the same. It would be impossible and, I think, not right for me to do a show like the one you saw, or to address an audience, which I do in a very personal way, at a Squeeze gig. All that stuff means that before I started performing alone, I would never get to do any of that.

PM: So in terms of being half of a great duo, you felt you couldn't be the single person that you truly are?

GT: Well, I think so, yeah. I think that's true. In the dynamics of my relationship with Chris--this isn't being horrible about him--he's not a relaxed person on stage, and I am. And that's not because I'm great, it's because I'm lucky I feel that way.

PM: Yeah, I think it's just the way some of us are.

GT: Exactly. But our partnership works great when we play songs or have a band, and I was always happy doing that, really happy doing that.

PM: Yeah, and such a fantastic band it was.

GT: Yeah, yeah.  continue

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