Jools Holland reunited with Squeeze on Sunday’s Later... with Jools Holland for the first time since 1990, bringing the band back to the show where he once began, left and later returned. Squeeze played their 1978 debut single Take Me I’m Yours as Holland sat in with Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford for a performance that linked the group’s past to its present.
Holland formed Squeeze in 1974 with Tilbrook and Difford when he was 15, left in 1980 and returned in 1985 for a five-year stint. Speaking to Difford on the programme, he said people had kept asking whether he was going back to the band. “Just because of circumstances really, it’s never worked out,” he said, adding that there had even been offers in America and a TV show that tried to bring the group together.
The reunion landed as Squeeze continue to promote Trixies, their first album of new music in eight years. The record is a collection of stories set in a fictional night club called Trixies, with the stories written by Difford at 19 and Tilbrook at 16. Holland told them he loved hearing the songs and praised the band’s catalogue, saying its covers ranged from material that could have been written by Burt Bacharach to songs fit for a rock and roll band.
The episode also gave Niall Horan his debut on the show. He performed the title track from his forthcoming fourth album Dinner Party and delivered a world premiere of Tastes So Good from the same record, adding another high-profile booking to a night built around reunion and first time appearances. The new series of Later... with Jools Holland begins on Sunday at 10pm on 2 and iPlayer.
For Squeeze, the appearance was more than nostalgia. It brought together the man who helped form the band, the songs that made it endure — including Up the Junction, Cool for Cats, Labelled With Love and Pulling Mussels — and the first live reunion with Holland in more than three decades. The timing also pushed Trixies into the spotlight, giving the group a national stage on the night their old lineup briefly sounded like it had never been away.
