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I’d Walk A Million Miles....

If you were asked to supply the next part of the song in the title of this article you would probably answer in one of two ways. If you are of a certain age, you might complete the line with “for one of your smiles, my Mammy.” This was the version of the song recorded successfully by Al Jolson.

However, if you follow up “I’d walk a million miles …” with “for one of your goals”, then you might just have an interest in football, and you might be asking for which team the song’s writers Messrs Donaldson, Lewis and Young provided the midfield trio.

The infiltration of popular music into football is relatively modern. Your grandfather would have baulked at any form of chanting at a football match; shouting was permissible, of course - think of the Hampden Roar - and there might be community singing before the game began, but singing was definitely aff.

The modern form of terracing chanting began with the fans of the great Brazilian World Cup teams of the Sixties and spread over here like their style of football never did. Today it is commonplace to hear the Latin American classic Guantanamera sung with words featuring a favourite player along the lines of “One James McFadden, there’s only one James McFadden.”

But who could have foreseen a football crowd singing a song from a Broadway musical with the original words? The Rodgers and Hammerstein 1945 stage show “Carousel” was made into a movie in 1956 and provided an inspirational song called “You’ll Never Walk Alone”. The original soundtrack version, featuring Shirley Jones and Gordon MacRae, was an enormous success and there the story seemed to end. But in 1963, just as The Mersey Sound was emerging from Liverpool, the song was recorded by Gerry and the Pacemakers. It was played at Liverpool FC’s ground at Anfield and adopted as “their song” by the famed Kop End.

On the other side of the city, Liverpool’s great rivals Everton take the field at Goodison Park to the original version of the theme from Z Cars, played by an Edinburgh musician called Johnny Keating for a television police series which began in 1962. Everton had one of their most successful times during this era and the playing of the tune is probably intended to spur them on to greater things.

Incidentally, I’m sure you know that Liverpool is the current City of Culture, despite its reputation as a good place for crime. I played a gig there recently and when I came out of the hall, my car was sitting on four encyclopaedias.

West Ham United fans have an unlikely choice of song: “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles”. In 1927, an advertising campaign appeared for soap and featured a curly haired child blowing soap bubbles. He was likened to one of the West Ham players and the song is sung to this day. Meanwhile, Manchester City supporters belt out their version of “Blue Moon”, another Richard Rodgers song, this time with lyrics by Lorenz Hart and written in 1934.

But perhaps the strangest club song - and one with a definite Scottish link - is that of Birmingham City. Before every game you will hear fans on the terracing (not sure about the ones in corporate hospitality) singing a song composed by Sir Harry Lauder. The song is “Keep Right On to the End of the Road” and it was written by Lauder in tragic circumstances, after hearing that his only son, John, an officer with the 8th Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, had been killed in action at Poiziers in 1916. His last words to his comrades were to the effect of “Keep on” and Lauder constructed the very moving song around this. A Scots-born Birmingham player named Alex Govan may have been responsible for introducing the song to the club.

Finally, there are tribute songs. It’s back to the Sixties again and my home town team of Dundee. They had three fabulous seasons from 1961-63 when they won the Scottish League, made the Scottish Cup Final and reached the semi-finals of the European Cup. A Glasgow comedian called Hector Nicol, along with the Kelvin Country Dance Band, brought out a song to the tune of Bonnie Dundee. It contained a verse listing that team of teams: “There’s Robertson, Penman and Alan Gilzean; with Cousin and Smith they’re the finest you’ve seen; a defence that is steady, heroic and sure; Liney, Hamilton, Cox, Seith and Wishart and Ure.”

Within a year the stalwarts of the team (and the internal rhyming) Alan Gilzean and Ian Ure were on their way to Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal respectively and the song was no more, once again proving that you’re only as good as your last hit record.

By Alan Brown