If You Know Your History: The Ties That Bind (Part II)
Football and music are Britain’s post-war belief systems, writes Richard Bowes.
As stadiums and venues around the UK prepare for a huge event that will blur the lines between terrace culture and music, read MTAG’s full feature series on the topic, initially published in 2023.
The 1988-89 season saw one of the tightest-ever battles for the First Division title, with both Arsenal and Liverpool — who happened to be playing each other — in contention on the last day of the season. Owing to its importance, the game was broadcast live on television and finished most dramatically: Arsenal needed to win by two goals to be crowned champions and, with seconds to remain, Michael Thomas scored the Gunners’ second to land them the prize.
With such drama on live TV, it showed how entertaining football could be and, more significantly, how many viewers it could bring in — untapped commercial potential. Within months, conversations between broadcasters and football chairmen about how to exploit this began and the Premier League was born, with BSkyB winning the rights to show 60 live games a season.
The Liverpool-Arsenal match was a key element of the memoir (and later film) Fever Pitch by then-upcoming writer Nick Hornby. The (sort-of) Londoner represented a hitherto low-key football fan; considered, thoughtful but no less passionate and obsessive than the stereotypical supporter. The book was a huge success and for his sophomore effort, Hornby wrote the novel High Fidelity, about an obsessive and sensitive music fan undergoing an existential crisis; a character who was likely closer to home than the author would admit.
Meanwhile, as the Premier League blossomed, music in the UK underwent one of its semi-regular changes and, arguably, the last true youth culture movement exploded circa 1992: Britpop.
Though initially a haven for the more thoughtful, less gregarious acts such as Suede, St. Etienne, and Pulp, the movement fully entered the mainstream in 1994 through a determined effort from Colchester band Blur.
Eager to cast themselves in the roles of cheerleaders, Damon Albarn and Co. put Britishness as their defining trait, lauding key elements of Britishness such as the Mod culture, seaside towns, and football, with Albarn going to great lengths in portraying himself as 'one of the lads' and a proud Chelsea supporter — before that was fashionable.
Albarn’s patronage of the club was mutually beneficial; by 1995 he was one of the country’s biggest pop stars, and in that summer the club made a statement signing in the form of the legendary Ruud Gullit, which in turn opened the gates for a slew of glamorous, international footballers plying their trade in England.
Meanwhile, Blur's biggest rivals had also broken through in 1994: Oasis, hailing from Manchester.
Yet, in the time when Alex Ferguson's United had begun their vice-like grip on the top flight, four-fifths of Oasis proudly declared their love for the Red Devil's rivals, Manchester City. Authenticity was the Gallagher brothers’ watchword, a fact proven by their support for City in an era when United were operating on a different level. The band were working class, dressed like football fans, and — for the first time in a long while — they were musicians who freely admitted they liked the sport.
Not only that, in 1996 Oasis played their first stadium gig at Maine Road, home to their beloved City (apart from rhythm guitarist Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs, a United fan).
The grandiose nature of their era-defining hits owed a debt to terrace anthems: songs that were easy to sing, which Noel Gallagher attributed to his time in the stands at Maine Road in the 1970s and 1980s. Indeed, it's not too much of a stretch to attribute some of City's current success to Oasis, who were the biggest band in the country in the mid-1990s and raised the club's profile significantly (despite a relegation or two).
With Oasis the dominant musical force of the decade, many followed suit, and celebrity football matches became a feature of the era. Three of the four figureheads of Britpop (Albarn, Liam Gallagher, and Pulp's Jarvis Cocker) played in such matches, and many more followed in their wake: Supergrass, Cast and The Verve all openly acknowledged their love of the game, while The Lightning Seeds’ ‘The Lift Of Riley’ soundtracked Match Of The Day’s Goal Of The Month competition.
And speaking of The Lightning Seeds… arguably the defining moment of music and football colliding occurred in the balmy, glorious summer of 1996. With England hosting that summer’s European Championships, in grand tradition, a song was required in support of the team.
Along with Frank Skinner and David Baddiel, The Lightning Seeds’ ‘Three Lions’ mutated from a middling pop ditty to full-on, bonafide anthem as the song caught fire after England's win over Scotland. The soundtrack to those few weeks, the easily chantable chorus was taken to the hearts of millions and has, for better or for worse, been re-recorded and re-released several times since. Although it largely disappeared for several years, England’s unexpected success at the World Cup in 2018 provided it with a new lease of life, sating the current appetite for all things nineties.
As was the case 30 years before, 1996 represented something of a cultural zenith for the UK — Cool Britannia — which couldn’t, and wouldn’t, last. Later that summer, Oasis headlined Loch Lomond and Knebworth (playing to well over half a million people) — gigs that couldn't be bettered and arguably bookmarked Britpop’s meteoric rise.
Meanwhile, England's national team got by on goodwill but that alone wasn’t enough to better their performance in Euro ’96 and, despite some strong showings in certain tournaments, the team failed to hit the same heights for two decades. But the fallout, in terms of pop culture, was huge, with the likes of Loaded Magazine marrying the renewed interest in football and music, even though its tone was incredibly garish and overtly misogynistic.
The perception of the game had changed and, with a new superstar about to emerge, there was no going back. England’s first game after the tournament, a World Cup qualifier against Moldova, featured two debutants: Everton left-back Andy Hinchcliffe and one David Beckham, who had shot to fame with a halfway-line goal against Wimbledon in the opening game of the 1996-97 season.
Perhaps the first footballer to embrace and exploit the celebrity lifestyle, the Londoner quickly became tabloid fodder through his good looks and relationship with Victoria Adams, one-fifth of the Spice Girls, who had wrestled the mantle of dominant music force from Oasis. Another member of the pop group — Melanie Chisholm/Sporty Spice — was often to be seen in a Liverpool FC shirt and certain members of the team itself had been christened the ‘Spice Boys’ due to their good looks and modelling contracts. As the recent Netflix documentary has proven, ‘Posh ‘n Becks’ remain remarkably iconic and hugely influential. Many have tried to follow in Beckham’s footsteps, but none have made the same impact. If Paul Best and Paul Gascoigne were rock stars, then Beckham was a pop star.
Beckham’s fame represented a tectonic shift between football and music, which had coalesced at Euro ’96. The tournament was perhaps the last point where the two titans of modern culture were at parity, i.e., with broadly the same amount of money in the respective industries. The internet was about to pull the rug from beneath the music industry, with the availability of albums and songs through torrents and downloads (i.e., free) negating the need for fans to spend their hard-earned cash on physical releases. Meanwhile, sponsorship and licensing money were taking a vice-like grip on the Premier League as transfer fees and wages spiralled ever upwards. Football clubs became a province of the super-rich in the early 21st century, as Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea, and the game changed forever.
Even if the scales are now overwhelmingly tipped in football’s favour, the relationship still runs deep. This summer, while supporting Pulp at Finsbury Park, the singer from Wet Leg proudly wore an Arsenal shirt. Sam Fender, a proud Newcastle United fan, performed a homecoming at St James’ Park echoing what Oasis had done 27 years previously. On a more corporate level, the largest music streaming site – Spotify – has a partnership with FC Barcelona; Stormzy has one with Manchester United.
No matter how much football and music evolve, they are inextricably linked, forever.
As depressing as the sanitised, corporate side may be, there is still innovation. Witness the adaptation of ‘Freed From Desire’, a 1996 dance classic by Gala, given new life by Will Grigg’s performances in 2016. Or the ubiquity of Neil Diamond’s ‘Sweet Caroline’ at both football matches and as warm-up music for the likes of Kasabian and Gerry Cinnamon over the last five years. All just the evolution of a handful of fans singing on the terraces.
The Premier League was a product of class tourism as rock and roll had been years before — successfully making working-class culture an integral part of the mainstream.
Both are still the best examples of the ‘soft power’ the UK possesses, with the Premier League now Britain’s biggest cultural export, where once it was music.
Yet the ties that bind remain as strong as ever: The emotional investment, the tribalism, and the outlet for escapism in an increasingly depressing world.
By Richard Bowes (@rbmusicwriter)
“ Perhaps the first footballer to embrace and exploit the celebrity lifestyle”
Er… George Best was a good quarter of a century earlier.