2023-08-25 16:58:00
Music plays a big part in the stadiums of the world, like the fans of Liverpool FC and their anthem You’ll Never Walk Alone.
Foto: imago/ Action Plus
Probably every football fan and every football friend should be able to sing at the top of their lungs every now and then when football chants ring out in the stadium. Sometimes the team is celebrated, sometimes defeats are mourned, opponents are mocked or certain heroic characteristics of the local fan culture are fervently praised. Music is part of football like flatbread is part of kebab. Musicians have also noticed this at all times and have developed corresponding songs. To get your own fan soul ringing or your wallet ringing. As a cheering ritual, as refreshment. Crazy football pop stars, entire national teams and club women of all stripes, when it comes to singing, nobody shows mercy and often trills ad nauseam.
Every kind of musical subculture is immediately carried into the stadiums and converted into club-related songs by young fans. Schlager, punk, hip-hop, pop, no genre is safe from song-crazed fans that isn’t plundered, corrupted or rededicated. Gunnar Leue has been writing for various newspapers and magazines about music, football and related cultural-historical topics for many years. The spirit of football is in his bones. »Football and music have occupied me as a journalist for many years. I write about it regularly in the 1. FC Union Berlin program booklet, under the motto: The sound of football.«
Hundreds of football records from all over the world are piled up in his home in Berlin. It’s mostly singles that Leue has captured on his trawls at flea markets, collectors’ exchanges and on various platforms on the Internet. »England, Kuwait, Chile, Nigeria, Argentina, South Africa to name just a few countries. My first football record was a flea market catch.« Leue’s book under the programmatic title: »You’ll Never Sing Alone: How Music Came to Soccer«, combines sports history with amusing anecdotes. In a timeline of seven chapters, he illuminates football music from the end of the 19th century to the present day and creates a nerdy hard work that leaves no fan’s eye dry. Leue put miracles upon miracles on the gift table. As early as 1880, a certain J.C. M’Donald yodelled his “The Dooley Fitba’ Club” to the audience. Since then, the song has been considered the original title of all football songs in Glasgow. But even in Norwich there is resistance, “On the Ball, City” is the only true first football song, and not this Glasgow rip-off, which also comes from the pen of an Irish immigrant. As insane as soccer is, so crazy is the world of soccer songs.
Harold Adrian Walden was the first singing footballer, a Briton of Indian ancestry. The wave of football songs swept over to Germany in the Golden Twenties from England and at the same time spread all over the world. Football inspires the masses, with football you can make excellent money if you flip the right switch and the music goes straight to your stomach. Leue says: »My favorite song is by Hans Pirkner. This is an Austrian footballer from the 80s who also played for Schalke 04. He released a single in the beautiful Wienerlied style entitled «A footballer is also a person» and «Don’t scold me about me…».
A real treat is the sensitive design of the 254-page book. A large number of beautiful covers, which depict all facets of the cover art from super good to abysmal embarrassing, make the book a small firework of images. Leue has also included a few very concise photos, along with snippets of interviews in which he lets professionals from the football world have their say in brief statements. But he also poses the question of the core of football culture: Are stadiums important places where all milieus of a divided society come together and sing together? Or just other entertainment arenas in which passive consumers can be sprinkled? The answer can be found in the crunchy book, which I can heartily recommend to friends of music history as well as fanatics who love to sing. But what song should be played at his funeral? Leue: «Monty Python’s »Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life«, with the cover showing the strange comic troupe playing table football.»
Gunnar Leue: You’ll Never Sing Alone. How music got into football. Ventil-Verlag, 256 p., born, 28 €. A musical reading with Gunnar Leue, moderated by Andreas Ulrich (Radio Eins), will take place on September 27 at 7:30 p.m. in the Manchester bar “Posh Teckel” at Pflugerstraße 4 in Berlin-Neukölln. Entry: €5.
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