Squeeze (the A Side)

Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford talk about Squeeze's 1981 album, 'East Side Story'.

Series in which leading performers and songwriters talk about the album that made them or changed them.

Recorded in front of a live audience at the BBC's iconic Maida Vale Studios, each edition includes two episodes - the A-side and B-side.

In the A-side, Glenn and Chris talk to John Wilson.

'East Side Story' was originally intended as a four-sided double LP with each side using a different producer (Dave Edmunds, Nick Lowe, Paul McCartney and Elvis Costello). It was released in 1981 as a single LP with 14 songs. With it Squeeze moved away from their traditional ‘new wave’ sound to a more varied mix of genres that took in rockabilly, R&B, blue-eyed soul, Merseybeat, and psychedelia.

With tracks like Tempted, Is That Love, Messed Around and Labelled with Love (which was only on the album because eventual producer Elvis Costello persuaded Glenn Tilbrook it should be included) the album is packed with keen, precise, funny and sad lyrics about lovers, drunks, deadbeats and lonely working girls – or as Chris Difford describes them: ‘suburban short stories’.

In the B-side of the programme, it's the turn of the audience to ask the questions.

Producer: Paul Kobrak

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2015.