Welcome to the latest Squire Fan Club newsletter, and the last before Christmas. We will be back in the New Year, with new releases, along with more discoveries from the archive!
We are closing in on 100 newsletters! A remarkable achievement, and we certainly haven’t run out of things to say! Traditionally, this is a time to look back at the year and so it’s fun to recap on what’s been going on in and around Squire.
Indeed, this is our third Christmas newsletter! In our previous Christmas newsletters, we reflected not only on how the band, and indeed every band and musician, had missed out on performing in front of an audience due to the pandemic, but also how much we were looking forward to returning to the stage!
This year we finally made it happen! Dates in London, Leeds, Southend, Brighton and Scarborough! We really enjoyed meeting with the audience again, and sharing stories at the merch table!
We started the newsletter series with a trilogy of Boys About Town stories, with music from the archive of Anthony, Paul Bevoir, Ed Ball and Simon Smith performing on KUSF radio in San Francisco in 1985.
We followed this with a double look back at the Squire tribute album, The Young Idea, with a deep dive into the who’s who of performers.
While last year saw the continuation of the Squire single re-issue series, this year concluded the series with ‘The Place I Used To Live’, and we connected the release with the story behind the inspiration, New Malden in London, and followed this with the remarkable story of the lost Decca pressing plant that was situated there until the 1970s!
A particular favourite newsletter was the visit to the Rickenbacker Exhibition where Anthony met with Rickenbacker owner John Hall and the books authors Martin & Paul Kelly (who also run Heavenly Record label).
This was followed by the ever popular white label competition, with Chanel picking the winner!!
It was already May and time for the Mods Mayday series of concerts that took us around the country, in the company of Kenney Jones amongst others! It always gives us the opportunity to recount our first ever Mods Mayday performance in 1979.
And prompted by many of you who asked for more newsletter s about guitars, we repeated the Rickenbacker theme, as the live dates also coincided with a swop of stage guitars, from the blue 12-string and red 6 string, to a newer black 12-string and blue 6-string!
The 1999 Mods Mayday event at the Forum London, where Squire headlined is a legendary concert, and so keeping with the Mods Mayday spirit, we dug into the archive to find some rare 1999 memorabilia and also play an unheard song (I Know A Girl) from the warm up concert in April 1999 Chelmsford.
The next three newsletters coincided with mid summer and hot weather, a perfect excuse to focus on Sugarplum - Blue Summer Days, which we expanded into a look at the Powerpop connections, discussing Sugarplum concerts in London, Los Angeles and Liverpool, featuring a live version of the song ‘Holiday In England’
We released a special Black Vinyl edition of No Time Tomorrow in August,
and after a quick tea break, where we revealed our preference for our favourite drink, and our special tea set,
We then took a look at our softer side and discussed the role of acoustic guitars, and used the song ‘Tapestry Of Fire’, an unheard song from Anthony solo album Passengers On Trains, as an example of how they blend on record.
Indeed, most of the second half of the year has been spent quietly compiling this album for release from original tapes and photographs.
We always remember Kirsty MacColl on her birthday, and repeated the video Anthony made from Soho Square in October.
And October also gave us the biggest surprise of all as BBC released a video of Squire performing at the Bridge House in 1979! This newsletter gave a fascinating glimpse of the genesis of the ‘Mod Revival’ in London, and connected the events to existing mod culture in Yorkshire and the upcoming release of Quadrophenia.
November saw us looking back at the summer concerts and the Modern World exhibition that ran coincidently with the Brighton concert on August Bank Holiday. Remarkably, Squire’s first gig ever in Brighton! The Exhibition captured our interest as a classic example of the importance of the fans perspective of music culture, and the exhibition also gave us a good opportunity to have another look at Weller’s Rickenbacker guitars!
And the newsletter also coincided with our last gig ion the year, supporting From The Jam in Scarborough, where we also managed to get covered in the local Scarborough newspaper!
Girl On A Train single was re-released in black vinyl in November alongside a very popular badge set!
And finally, December saw another unexpected surprise as we discovered an archive of photographs taken at the April 1979 Ronnie Scotts concert date in London, the first major London Squire concert!
As we alluded to a few weeks ago, we have been working on the release of Passenger on Trains. We have gone back to the original mixes and photographs, and have reassembled the record and sleeve - and its sounds, and looks, remarkable! Next year’s newsletters will focus on the imminent release and will feature a wealth of unseen archive footage and recordings related to the record. It’s a ‘must have’ for your collection!
We thank you for your loyal support and are always mindful of the Squire fans that have followed us from the very beginning and hope you are enjoying looking back with us over the timeline, and will stay with us as we look forward to next year and some big surprises! We are so blessed with your support, and find tt the ultimate in encouragement to keep on keeping on!
Merry Christmas and have a safe and Happy New Year from Squire!