I can barely bring myself to include this travesty. Given the standard of much of the music I have inflicted upon you so far, and indeed intend to ongoing, that is saying something. The guilty parties on this recording are none other than Viv Anderson and Trevor Francis, believe it or not, singing ‘You’ll never walk alone‘ - a song which obviously you would associate with Liverpool FC rather than Forest.
The history of the song was the musical Carousel and was written by Rodgers and Hammerstein. It first charted when Frank Sinatra released it, and has been released numerous times since then. It hit the Liverpool radar when, predictably, a bunch of scallies from Liverpool pinched it and released it. So the song is synonymous with Gerry and the Pacemakers, who released it to reach number one in the UK charts in the early 60’s - which was seized upon by those lovable rogues (sic) at Anfield and adopted as their club anthem.
So what Viv and Trev were thinking is beyond conjecture - of course, as mentioned in earlier musical dispatches, our rivalry with Liverpool FC was quite tasty at this time, so I’m hoping that the release was in some way supposed to be ironic - but well, who can tell - perhaps older fans might be able to offer some form of defence for our wayward former-stars?
Should you wish to sully your airwaves with it, then it’s below:
And since the nice folks at Talk Forest seem to crave it, here is a cleansing live rendition of ‘Give him a ball and a yard of grass’ by the Sultans of Ping FC - a song dedicated to the original ‘nice young man, with a lovely smile’, the one and only Nigel Clough - who also, of course, has a Liverpool connection. I linked this in the comments of an earlier article, but it deserves it’s own prominence!
21 April, 2007 at 9:50 pm
I went to see the Sultans of Ping live once. They were OK. However, the support were awful - in fact the worst band I have ever seen. It was Radiohead, about two weeks before the release of “Creep”