John Squire Interview





AngloPlugging.co.uk

Dec 2003



John Squire, one of the best and most inspiring British pop musicians of the last two decades, is back on a roll. Little more than a year has elapsed since he made his solo debut with the startlingly bold 'Time Changes Everything' album, but here, already, is his second.

Called 'Marshall's House', it has a very different feel from its predecessor - warmer, less verbally overloaded, aglow with the sound of the electric guitar, full of memorable tunes. Fans of Squire's work with the Stone Roses surely couldn't help but fall in love with it.

Given the short gestation period, one might think that he has finally settled into a groove with a reliable group of players, and is at last delivering on the promise of his early career. The last bit is certainly true, but not the first. Shortly after the completion of 'Time Changes Everything', on the eve of a UK tour to promote it, he was left without a drummer and guitarist when they, in John's words, "priced themselves out of the equation."

Ten days before the tour was due to start, he began rehearsing with Luke Bullen, who had been drumming with the Mescaleros before the tragic loss of their leader Joe Strummer, and a friend of Squire's girlfriend called George Vjestica. Along with surviving members John Ellis (keyboards) and Jonathan White (bass guitar), this was the new touring band, and the one which would record 'Marshall's House'.

"It wasn't a case of listening back to 'Time Changes Everything' and working out how to do things differently," says Squire. "I knew this would be different because the first record was made without a real band, we spent no time together. This time it was a lot quicker, instead of kicking a song around for too long until something interesting happened, as with the previous line-up.

"It does seem far more like a band. The guitarist and the keyboard player - they'd never met before, and they've already got a really sickening understanding. And the drummer's a ruthlessly efficient organiser".

On the tour, for the first time since 1996, Squire revisited some of the songs he wrote for the Stone Roses, such as 'How Do You Sleep?', 'Waterfall' and, to many fans' unbridled joy, 'Fool's Gold'. This had a dramatic effect on their author.

"You tend to think," he says, "'I made that record, there's nothing else it can show me.' But I got more insight into those songs, re-learning them and singing them. After a long lay-off, it's easier to see the strengths and weaknesses. I realised how effective a simple riff can be. I wanted there to be a strong vein through this record, of the good old repetition of rock & roll.

"So, playing live definitely changed the way I made this second record," he continues, "just at the practical level. I didn't want to be faced with the prospect of playing half a set of 3/4 tunes, for example, which sound great in your bedroom, but can leave you hoping that the stage will swallow you whole. I wanted a different groove.

"I wanted to make sure this time that I didn't just thrash away at an acoustic. I tried to concentrate on the melodies. I wanted the riffs and the sounds of the electric guitar to be in at the inception of the songs. I wanted it to sound raw."

Again assisted with production and egineering by Simon Dawson, Squire took his band to Bryn Derwyn Studios in North Wales, where both the Coral and Shack have recorded recently. He attributes the warmth of the sound to the main room there.

The overall mood of the record seems to be upbeat and airier. Titles like 'Summertime' and 'People In The Sun' might imply unequivocal happiness on the part of their author. However, these songs harbour a hidden darkness, which only really becomes clear when you knbow how they were written.

Squire: "The song titles are all derived from Edward Hopper paintings. He painted American scenes and American people - usually quite solitary and depressed-looking individuals, superficially light, and awkward and ordinary, but there was something disturbing about some of the characters. So each of the songs is triggered by one of those images.

"With 'Summertime', for instance, the image is a woman on the steps of what could be a courtroom or a hotel. It looks like mid-morning, and she's about to go for a walk. She looks quite a powerful, strong-willed individual. I tried to imagine that she was influencing the day, just with her presence."

The first couple of songs went well like that, so John decided to continue with this method of writing, rising to the challenge of what he calls "the more lumpy titles". 'Table For Ladies' was the hardest, he says. Though some of the lyrics are entirely fictional, works of the imagination like 'Summertime', there are others where the painting unlocked memories and feelings long since buried in Squire's unconscious mind.

"'Marshall's House' - that one was the most open to interpretation. It's a painting of a house, with blacked-out windows. So I struggled for a toehold with that one. In the end, I wrote it about a night 10 or 15 years ago when I thought I'd died.

"This was before we'd made the first Stone Roses album. It was the first time I heard Electric Ladyland. The real low point came in 'Death Valley 69 (by Sonic Youth) and I came out of it to A Certain Ratio, I can't remember the title of the song. But between those records, I was convinced I was dead. So I transplanted a second-floor flat in Chorlton onto this Edward Hopper timber country-house in New England."

This, then, is an album of immediacy and substance, which works on an instant, instinctive level, and goes on to reveal deeper, more complex dimensions. You'll love it the first time you hear it, and that affection will mature with repeated listens. We should also mention that Squire's singing voice now feels as natural and familiar as if he'd been at it all his life, and that he's on fire, guitar-wise. A great player, at the very top of his game





Released 9th February 2004

Tracklisting:

01. Summertime (Squire)3:13
02. Hotel Room (Squire)2:15
03. Marshall's House (Squire)4:15
04. Lighthouse & Buildings (Squire)2:02
05. Cape Cod Morning (Squire) AKA Satellites4:23
06. People In The Sun (Squire)4:07
07. Tables For Ladies (Squire)2:45
08. Automat (Squire)3:08
09. Yewl Riding A Swell (Squire)3:09
10. Room In Brooklyn (Squire)2:40
11. Gas (Squire)3:55



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