Who would have thought that the lasting image of Euro 2016 would be connected to Wigan Athletic’s Northern Ireland international, born in Solihull, Will Grigg? A track made in his bedroom by a Wigan Athletic fan devoted to Grigg started it all and as football fans at the Euros took up the chant, ‘Will Grigg’s On Fire’ Dance Remix by Blonde became the unlikeliest hit of the month long Euro 2016 event. Annoying and captivating all at once it stands in a long line of football/music crossovers.
Academically it raises fascinating questions in what is a really under researched area. It is of general community interest too. I recently put up a proposal for a BBC 4 programme on music and football with my colleague producer Mick Gold which they did not go with in the end but there is still lots to say on the whole area of football/music. The Will Grigg phenomenon shows the lasting innovation of what ordinary fans do with the music/football crossover.
There is an anthropological basis to all this (chants, singing in previous societies) but the modern post 1960 football fan culture of chants, songs and witticisms is strongly British and has been exported round the world, especially now through Sky coverage globally. Although there were examples of say West Ham United fans singing I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles before the 1960s, the big change comes in the early 1960s and spreads out over the decades till today. Liverpool fans used Bruce Channel’s Hey Baby (a hit in 1962) at the time for syncopated clapping and chanting that year. Ironically it has been a big song/chant used at Euro 2016 – Belgian and Irish fans singing it, though harking back to DJ version in 2001 rather than Channel’s version. The Beatles and Gerry and the Pacemakers (She Loves You, You’ll Never Walk Alone – which was a hit from the musical Carousel – and all) followed onto the Kop in 1963 and the whole damn roadshow takes off until today. Much of it is in fragments – one line, two lines from songs wittily bent for new meaning – for example, ‘We’re not racist, we only hate mancs’ was Liverpool’s response to Luis Suarez being found guilty of racist abuse of Patrice Evra. Orchestration does not have to be there, in many ways it is spontaneous for those who regularly go to games. They learn (especially youth) the culture as they would learn a subject at school.
In many ways the connection of football/music underscores hooliganism as a so-called social problem since the 1960s. Hooliganism – especially through the 400 or so British hooligan gangs I have studied that existed since the 1960s – was rampant in the late 60s, 70s and early 80s. There is no doubt that Acid House (and the loved up culture of MDMA or E) did mellow out the terraces. Two things happened. Alcohol became less of an issue in that culture from 1987 to early 1990s and the ‘peaceful easy feeling’ of the culture for a time genuinely made football fandom more collegial, communal and jokey. Secondly, the gangs of the time got into security on doors and selling E. For a while the gangs themselves saw enterprise in the new culture as more important than violence against each other. I wrote a book at the time on this Football With Attitude and it stands the test of time. By about 1993 the culture had changed, drinks companies pushed alcohol as never before, and aggression, violence, racism and sectarianism came back into football with a vengeance. This weird mix of violence and celebratory pop/football fandom is where we are today.
The examples people use for the football/music connection are sometimes from classical music and opera but I think football culture is still mainly about popular music and popular culture. Sometimes it is a matter of ‘high’ popular culture influencing ‘low’ popular culture. Producer Mick Gold and I made a TV programme in 1992 for Granada called The Passion of Football where we featured people like Aston Villa fan and classical violinist Nigel Kennedy, and Pavarotti with Nessun Dorma from popular opera scored TV coverage of Italia 90, but in reality it is mainly a crossover between the two ‘low’ cultures – football and popular music. It was New Order’s World in Motion (various remixes) which really is the popular memory today from Italia 90.
Pop music and football riffing off each other have been there ever since the early 1960s and the Will Grigg example is one of thousands in these decades. Especially in Britain the music and football cultures (two creative industries if you want to put it that way) are two of the things the country is famous for. It has become a short hand language for millions and for many TV and radio programmes the staple diet over many years (for instance, Soccer AM). In cultures where power is seen to be wielded by ‘others’ (the FA, government, experts, authority) and not ordinary people, football fandom embraces this ‘secret’ language as a defence mechanism for the culture (as in the Ultras phenomenon which is sweeping the globe) to do something about safe standing, ticket prices, overpaid celebrity culture, boring soccer styles, exploitation in modern football culture leading to movements for ‘anti-modern’ football. In a way it is what I have called a dialectical game – modern football is thesis, anti-modern football is antithesis, and future football is synthesis. Pop culture and pop music plays a part in all of this.
My recent book Football and Accelerated Culture: This Modern Sporting Life published by Routledge has a lot of this material in it in great detail if anyone wants to read more.
