A plaintive melody, a sharp double drum-rap and we are plunged into narrative. Anyone who has ever knocked on the door of a terraced house in an English city will recognise the effect of the opening of “Up the Junction”: stepping straight from street to sitting room and the heart of whatever domestic performance is unfolding inside.
Squeeze’s 1979 hit delivers a psychodrama in three minutes and seven verses — a cautionary tale of doomed romance, poverty and pregnancy in south London. It is highly unusual in theme and structure, owing more from the linear narrative tradition of English folk than the post-punk and new wave London scene from which it emerged. Almost uniquely in pop, it has no chorus — a structure borrowed by songwriters Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford from another urban-set song — Bob Dylan’s “Positively 4th Street”.
Social realism runs through British drama and fiction, but it is rare in pop. Beyond The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby”, The Jam’s “Town Called Malice” and Pulp’s “Disco 2000”, songwriters tend to avoid the domestic lives of the working class. Squeeze’s short story is among the most vivid, and it was an unlikely hit: “Up the Junction” reached number two in the UK chart, and according to Difford sold 500,000 copies.
As a child in mid-1960s south London, Difford was drawn to television plays, among them a BBC adaptation of Nell Dunn’s Up the Junction. Directed by a young Ken Loach, it was a faithful retelling of the writer’s 1963 collection of short stories about the lives of three young women in a Clapham Junction factory.
The essence of that drama would re-emerge nearly 15 years later when Difford, stricken by homesickness while touring the US, wrote the lyrics in one sitting in a New Orleans hotel room. “It was written from a distance,” he recalls. “I didn’t enjoy touring, and I was always reaching for imagery of home.” The writing took minutes, the lyrics arriving in a state of completeness. He delivered the words to Tilbrook, who set them to music — a songwriting method the pair still use today.
Difford’s lyrics bear no relation to Dunn’s plot or characters, but they share a milieu. The tale of a lost love and child is recounted in the first person by the male protagonist, trapped first by joy then by alcoholism and masculine pride (“I’d beg for some forgiveness / But begging’s not my business”). He could be Terry, Ron or Dave — the doomed, frustrated boyfriends of Dunn’s novel.
The song (which features former Squeeze member Jools Holland on keyboards) is rooted in traditional English music: Difford recalls woozy trips to rural folk clubs in Kent as a teenager, listening to performers spin narrative tales. John Wood, Squeeze’s producer on their second album Cool for Cats, had worked with Fairport Convention and Nick Drake. “Up the Junction”’srhyming couplets were borrowed from Ian Dury, who used the same device in his huge hits in the music-hall vernacular, such as “Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick”. Unlike Dury, Difford used half-rhymes that amplify the narrator’s personal failure — “She gave birth to a daughter / Within a year a walker / She looked just like her mother / If there could be another.”
When Squeeze perform “Up the Junction” today, the crowd sings the words — “a literal folk song”, says Difford. That plaintive melody was carried by a kazoo orchestra at the Glastonbury festival in 2017. But despite its place in the popular imagination, the song has rarely been covered, perhaps because a lament is difficult to personalise. Travis, Lawnmower Dethand Lily Allen have all tried — the latter’s striking live version adding a new dimension to the drama as a woman delivers the narrative.
Difford and Tilbrook’s self-pitying protagonist was taken by the devil, but in 1998 the girl from Clapham met a sunnier fate: a new married life by the sea, in a follow-up song called “A Moving Story”. Difford keeps in touch with Dunn, now 82. They occasionally discuss working together on a musical theatre production.
Recently a fan wrote to Difford to point out the logical inconsistencies in the song, how the “now” in the narrative jumps from a hospital birth to two years later. Difford reads out the letter when he performs live. “Up the Junction” has transcended the time in which it was written and, like its south London setting and troubled characters, it is a flawed beauty.
We’re keen to hear from our readers. What are your memories of ‘Up the Junction’? Let us know in the comments below
‘The Life of a Song: The fascinating stories behind 50 of the world’s best-loved songs’, edited by David Cheal and Jan Dalley, is published by Brewer’s
Music credits: Spectrum, Earache Records, Quixotic
Picture credit: Rtwalter/Mediapunch/REX/Shutterstock