Great London Songs

8 Up the Junction – Squeeze

“I never thought it would happen, with me and the girl from Clapham” begins the 1979 story song from Squeeze. It’s named after a 1960s kitchen sink drama directed by Ken Loach and although the story is not quite the same one, it has many of the same elements. Lean lyrics and no chorus, it succinctly tells a life story in 3 minutes and 10 seconds.

Released as a single, on purple vinyl in 1979, it made No2 in the UK charts – being kept from the No1 by Tubeway Army’s “Are Friends Electric”. The song has a London sensibility, Up the Junction is slang for in trouble and it namechecks Clapham’s windy common. Written by Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford, who were the main songwriters in the band, Jools Holland was the keyboard player in Squeeze when the song was released. They wrote the story of the other person in the song “the girl from Clapham” 20 years later in “A Moving Story”

There haven’t been too many covers for a song that sold over half a million copies in the UK. Travis put it on the B side of a single, The View put it on the B side of Superstar Tradesman and Lily Allen does it live occasionally. My favourite cover is by The Hotrats, a side project of the band Supergrass, who change it up, but manage to keep the sadness of the story.

Advertisement

Great London Songs

As I intend this blog to be a celebration of all things London. This is the first in a series of songs that I associate with London. There are many, if you have suggestions for ones that you would like included, leave a comment and I will give them a listen and look up their links to London!

1 The Lambeth Walk – originally Lupino Lane

The Lambeth Walk is a song from the 1937 musical “Me and My Girl”, a musical about a working class London boy discovering that he is in line to inherit an earldom in Hampshire. Originally sung by Lupino Lane, a popular pre-war comedian, the song became a dance craze and was popular around the world, leading to covers by many of the big bands popular at the time, including Duke Ellington’s and Russ Mogan.

In 1940 The Ministry of Information made a short film of Nazi goose-stepping set to the tune of the Lambeth walk. This was shown in many cinemas, before the main feature, in Allied countries and was hugely popular at the time.

The stage musical was made into a film called The Lambeth Walk in 1939 and this was big hit too. The song was a genuine dance craze in Europe and America, through the Second World War. I recently found a YouTube video demonstrating how to do it. Lambeth Walk is an actual street just south of the Thames, in Lambeth near Vauxhall. It used to host a street market during the week and there used to be a pub on the corner of the street called The Lambeth Walk, but this is now closed. There are still council houses around the area and a small park called Doorstep Green, although it would be regarded as a very posh place to live now. It is where Charlie Chaplin lived as a child. Ian Dury also mentions this street in one of his songs “This is what we find”.