Tim Cooper has written for most national newspapers and many magazines on every subject from politics to pop culture. His first published work was in his own punk fanzine, Cliché. He lives in East London indulging his passions of writing, reading, cinema, music, football, cricket, and vegetable gardening.
Here is the late Squeeze drummer Gilson Lavis’s finest – and certainly his most inventive – moment with the band, on their hit single Goodbye Girl.
As can be seen and heard on this clip from an old TV show at the time, it boasts a percussive track featuring a unique array of bottles, tins, and other items.
Glenn Tilbrook commented, “Gilson’s influence in the arrangement was massive, not bringing the drums in until the third verse. Gilson had four percussion parts that he overdubbed one after the other that went throughout the song.”
Chris Difford offered similar praise: “Gilson constructed a washing line of bottles and bits of metal and tin and played them instead of a drum kit. It was a very inventive thing to do – slightly surreal, but it worked a treat.”
The song was written by Glenn Tilbrook (music) and Chris Difford (lyrics). Tilbrook commented, “It had a jolly tune, which later to my horror someone pointed out sounded like the Muppets theme tune.”
Goodbye Girl is another example of Tilbrook and Difford’s trademark “octave apart” harmonies which is really their signature sound.
Here they are on some old TV show with Gilson recreating his unusual percussion kit for the performance.
The unusually named Gilson Lavis joined Squeeze in equally unusual circumstances when he gatecrashed the drum stool at a gig after their previous drummer, Paul Gunn, was beaten up in a fight in the pub toilets, presumably shortly before stage time.
Far more proficient than his predecessor (or the rest of the band), the older Gilson had been a drummer-for-hire on the London music circuit, backing visiting American artists like Chuck Berry, Dolly Party and Jerry Lee Lewis.
He impressed the rest of the band – Chris Difford, Glen Tilbrook and Jools Holland – enough to get the job permanently, later joking: “It cost me a lot of money to set up that fight.” Behind the scenes, though, he had been struggling with a drunk problem.
Sacked and rehired at least twice by Squeeze for his out-of-control boozing, he eventually got sober and when his former bandmate Jools Holland left the group, he recruited him for his Big Band, which subsequently evolved into the 20-piece Rhythm & Blues Orchestra, where the tall, silver-haired Lavis was a fixture on the annual Hootenanny.
