Hi and welcome to the latest Squire newsletter! It’s Mods Mayday London - again! Unfortunately Squire had to withdraw from the line up at the last minute this year - unplanned last minute family obligations, not illness thankfully. But its a shame because we never miss it! And this year we were looking forward to meeting and seeing our overseas mod colleagues The Inciters, from California, and Little Murders from Australia.
But here we are as a special treat, on stage at The Forum in London in 1999, playing the rarely performed ‘The Youth Of Today Are Gonna Make It’, followed by ‘Live Without Her Love’!
It got me thinking about how many Mods Mayday events we’ve actually played and how much we enjoy the camaraderie and celebration of the event.
Indeed an similar warm and friendly atmosphere was enjoyed last week when The Jetset played the 100 Club in Oxford Street to celebrate the life of their dear lead singer Melvin J Taub.
I was honoured to be asked to play at the event. I recorded the guitar solo on the ‘What Can I Say' track on the 1985 ‘There Goes The Neighbourhood’ album! And got to repeat the performance live on stage! The event was a veritable who’s who of the mod scene with Jetset fans from all over coming together to honour Melvin and his family. And of course, The Jetset have replaced us on the Mods Mayday bill! Which is rather fitting because Paul and co. keep popping up all over the Squire history. If it were the ’60’s Im sure the Squire house would be in the same street as the Jetset house!
So, since it is 2026, Ive come up with a ‘six of the best’ Squire at the Mods May events. It’s more a chronological order than a best of order, but it illustrates that if there’s a Mods Mayday, were usually there!
First of course
is the original 1979 May 7th date! We were the first and to arrive, and I was actually the first through the door of the pub! We were there early for good reason, we hadn’t been invited to play! And were there to beg for a spot, not knowing it was also going to be recorded, and on the Ronnie Lane LMS mobile studio truck! The same mobile studio that had captured The Who’s Quadrophenia. No one knew the connection at the time! Fantastic gig!
The next real Mods Mayday gig was 1999
Mods Mayday at the Forum, London. Squire were invited to play top of the bill! And we went all out to impress. Interestingly both Paul Bevoir and Richard Fairclough, and Steve Rinaldi were on stage with Squire on the day! And they were on stage at the Jetset 100 Club show last week, and will all be on stage and performing at the Mods Mayday this weekend, as members of The Jetset and Secret Affair! Squire are there in spirit!
To say that gig was fun, and full of emotion and energy is to casually dismiss it! We were on fire and blew the roof off! The above clip of the encore, with us playing the rarely performed ‘The Youth Of Today Are Gonna Make It’, followed by ‘Live Without Her Love’! is just part of the hour long filmed concert! Here it is again! Note the dancers for the second song!
The next date is outside London, in Birmingham
The promoters picked up the baton for the Mods Mayday and here we are again, bravely topping the bill! And look at the bill! A three day event perfectly capturing the mid 2000s mod scene where bands haven’t quite decided to reform and are trying out new line ups.
But there’s Squire, as usual! And in London too! Mods Mayhem at the 100 Club a few days later!
The next connection is Cambridge 2014
And so the celebration of the event seemed to have ‘gone on tour’ The Cambridge show was exceptional. The Mods reformed for the occasion, and Paul Sawtell the promoter, who is the mod kingpin of the area, asked us back the following year. Indeed we played it in 2024 as well! And probably dates in between. Certainly on one occasion, we played the entire Bridge House set, in the same order as that fateful day, a centre piece of the set! It was captured on video called ‘No Time Tomorrow’. Note the title - a Squire song!!
The next date of note is 2022,
I'm capturing them in decade jumps, but we’ve played at a Mods Mayday event every year since im sure since 2009. 2022 was interesting because it was the year it went ‘on tour’ again, and we played Mods Mayday in London, Leeds, and Margate with Kenney Jones, so the Mod umbrella had started to widen to include artists from either side of the 1979 centric era.
Lets then jump to 2024
Squire emerge as a 4-piece! Playing London, and again in Cambridge.
So we are sad not to be in attendance this year.
But have something else to share. During the opening months of 2026, Ive been working on a very special project that will hopefully surprise and delight some people! Deep in the run out groove of the 1983 Get Smart album, are scratched the words ‘GET SET FOR A SMASHING TIME…’ It was the teaser for the next upcoming Squire album! Yet, as detailed on the sleeve notes for the Singles Album, the album was planned to follow September Gurls, and the recording was cancelled. It appears to have been planned and put off a couple of times. Indeed it has been attempted a couple of times since! But the songs exist and have been recovered from the original tapes! The songs exist as a suite of 15 tracks, some as short as a minute or as long as four minutes. Over on Substack, I’m going to start playing some snippets and talk about how the record came about, what it was supposed to be and how its going to come out this summer!
All the best from Squire, and enjoy your Mods Mayday!