Rock'n'Goal Week

Half Football, Half Rock, All Genius

2009-04-28T11:30:00Z

It's easy to write a football song – Lord knows, enough chancers have done it, usually badly.

But it's difficult to write a good song that effortlessly references our national obsession in a way that isn't clunky, ugly or desperate.

Luckily for lovers of both forms of entertainment, Half Man Half Biscuit have consistently proved themselves masters at it.

Coming to prominence with the Subbuteo-referencing All I Want For Christmas Is A Dukla Prague Away Kit (“It had all the accessories required for that big match atmosphere/ The crowd and the floodlights and the dug-out too”), the ardent Tranmere fans refused to play gigs on Friday nights when Rovers were playing at home – even if Channel 4 offered to helicopter them to and from the studios to film The Tube.

The football references in HMHB songs range from the well-known to the arcane. Most fans will recognise Bobby Charlton (God Gave Us Life), Kenneth Wolstenholme and Nobby Stiles (Carry on Cremating), Mario Kempes (Took Problem Chimp To Ideal Home Show), Alan Brazil (Our Tune), Barry Venison (Paradise Lost (You're The Reason Why)), Paolo Rossi (Tour Jacket with Detachable Sleeves) and the titular subject of Bob Wilson, Anchorman.

"Just doin' my job"

But chief songwriter Nigel Blackwell specialises in cataloguing that which you'd forgotten, like Ipswich old boy Romeo Zondervan (The Referee's Alphabet), Feyenoord midfielder Wim van Henegem (Girlfriend's Finished With Him), Elton Welsby (A Country Practice), former FA bod Sir Stanley Rous (Albert Hammond Bootleg), '70s pre-season beano The Watney Cup (Rod Hull Is Alive - Why?) and the list of '80s international keepers that is "Arconada, Pfaff and Bats and Joseph Antoine-Bell" (Emerging From Gorse).

And you would have to be a hardcore fan of the teams in question to remember Grimsby's '70s goalkeeper Peter Grummet (Let's Not), '50s Blackpool keeper George Farm (1966 And All That) or '70s Colchester striker Bobby Svarc, whose contract wrangles feature in Fear My Wraith: "I read the news today, oh boy/ Svarc rejects new Layer terms". There are also references to "Stromsgodset Under-Fives" (Malayan Jelutong) and "SupercalafragilisticBorussiaMoenchengladbach" (b*st*rd Son of Dean Friedman).

You'd expect nothing less from the band that recorded I Was A Teenage Armchair Honved Fan, Dead Men Don't Need Season Tickets, Even Men With Steel Hearts (Love To See A Dog On The Pitch), Mathematically Safe ("On a lilo, in a sea of alright/ I’m a mongrel and I just won a dog fight") and the startlingly dystopian Gubba Look-a-likes, wherein the narrator is understandably haunted by doppelgangers of Grandstand's "bits-and-pieces" veteran.

As is often the case, Blackwell sides with the underdog in The Referee's Alphabet: "G is for the gnarled face of someone who’s on £90,000 a week and reckons he should have had a throw-in... Q is the quiet word which I sometimes need to have with some of the more fiery participants. I usually choose the word ‘pleat’."

"Not to quibble, Mr Poll, but..."

Crowd chants are recalled with the ear of an expert. In PRS Yearbook – Quick, The Drawbridge!, Blackwell doesn't need to complete the reference when he sings "Agony aunt, if I had the *rse of a crow/ And the wings of a sparrow and you were below...", while Liverpool's terrace anthem is rewritten for Turned Up, Clocked On, Laid Off: "Sign on, with no hope in your heart/ When you walk through a storm, you get wet."

So if HMHB are unarguably the finest exponents of the football lyric, which is their best effort? There are a thousand answers, but medals must be struck for the Topol-toned bridge of Paintball's Coming Home ("If I were a linesman/ I would execute defenders who applauded my offsides"), while Uffington Wassail throws down the gauntlet to those who spend their weekends re-enacting long-ago wars: "Sealed Knot Society, let's see you try and do this one/ Luton Town-Millwall, 1985."

Prenton Park (family bit not pictured)

But the top award must go to the song that crystallises the band's eagle eye for the minutae of life's disappointments, big and small. Friday Night And The Gates Are Low – its title twisting Abba's joyous Dancing Queen into an accurate reflection of those sparsely-attended Prenton Park games HMHB much preferred to the glamour of the TV studio – is a mordantly witty exploration of a football team failing to attract 'customers', most of whom would rather be anywhere else.

This being HMHB, there's humour in the references to "home defeats by Jeunesse D'Esch in the Looks Familiar Cup" but there's also a canny dissection of football's commercialisation since "the family bit got big in the late-'80s":

"Stick a burger in my mouth
Shove a seat beneath my *rse
Buy the shirt, the shorts, the socks
Win the keeper’s sweaty jocks
Point a gun down at your foot
Am I supposed to be at home?"

There's no overbearing, table-thumping message - that's not their style. But only the ignorant would ignore the chasm between the old style of football fan ("Dad's a steward in the stands/ Brace of comps in his hand") and the new ("Fiancee said that it was fun/ Even though the others won"), while there's a subtle warning of the dangers inherent in targeting 'customers' who can quickly take their money elsewhere:

"So you came and went
‘Cos on crap three million was spent
And if Josh wants a five-man tent
There must be forfeits."

But as the song acknowledges, some of us will still be there long after any floating voters drift away. Long may the observers include Half Man Half Biscuit's Nigel Blackwell, football's Poet Laureate.

Previous Rock'n'Goal Week blogs:
Monday: Sing When You're Winning - meet rock loyalty
Friday: If Premier League teams were bands
Thursday: When footballers become pop stars
Wednesday: How football became the new rock'n'roll

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Sing When You're Winning: Meet rock loyalty

2009-04-27T08:00:00Z

You may or may not have noticed, but FourFourTwo.com has a sprawling section of interviews dating back over the 15 years of FourFourTwo magazine's existence.

We're constantly expanding the archive and, this being Rock'n'Goal Week, we've been concentrating on musicians and their allegiances, as featured in the magazine's long-running Sing When You're Winning series. And it's been an interesting flick through history - not just speaking to some of rock's biggest names, but also to see how some things have changed over time.

For instance, when we caught up with Led Zep legend Robert Plant a couple of years back, he was "seeeeething – add in the extra 'E's" that Wolves had ballsed up yet another promotion attempt.

Presumably he's happier now the Old Golds have achieved promotion, a turnout which vindicates decisions like the one he made to watch a game they lost at Norwich rather than do a gig in Rome gig in front of 300,000 with the Gallagher brothers.

Speaking of whom, Noel Gallagher revealed that, besides his well-documented love of City, he's also turned into something of a Celtic fan; with typical forthrightness, he declared that "Michael Owen isn't fit to lace Henrik Larsson's boots" but that the greatest player of all time was a Red...

Noel: Wishing he'd plumped for Parkhead

That wouldn't get an argument with Mani, the United-following former member of Gallagher's inspiration The Stone Roses turned rock royalty with Primal Scream.

Another endlessly quotable Manc, Mani leapt to the defence of hapless goalkeeper Massimo Taibi while presciently complaining that United should have signed Edwin Van der Sar. That Ferguson didn't go for the Dutchman is down the the parsimony of the then chairman, boomed the bassist: "Martin Edwards is a f***ing tit".

By the time we caught up with ex-Roses frontman and fellow Red Ian Brown, Malcolm Glazer had taken over at Old Trafford – but Brown bucked the trend of hatred against the American.

"I don't agree that he’ll be bad for United, like a lot of Reds do, and I certainly don't agree with all that burning effigies business,” shrugged King Monkey. “United's a PLC and someone was always likely to buy it. From what I've seen and heard so far, Glazer will make money available for transfers and the standards will be maintained."

Brown was much more animated about the alleged allegiances of a fellow Mancunian musician, Badly Drawn Boy. “Man City? Man City?! Nah, he’s a fuckin’ fraud, man! He’s a Bolton fan. He’s not Man City.”

The man (or boy) in question begged to differ, obviously, and waxed typically lyrical about what has been lost since teams like City moved from backstreet grounds to out-of-town stadia.

“The great thing about the British game of old was you’d have a ground smack in the middle of terraced houses,” he chuckled. “You still can’t beat passing old dears in doorways, washing their doorsteps as you make your way to the game, though.”

Gough goes all out to dispel the Bolton rumours

Another northerner harking back was former Housemartins and Beautiful South leader Paul Heaton. "Premiership fans are more arrogant," noted the committed Sheffield United fan. "I liked it when we were in the Third and Fourth Division. There was more of a bond between players and fans."

Having followed the Blades through all four divisions (before developing a more recent taste for flying to watch La Liga or non-league Italian football) Heaton may have had a hero in one Richard Savage, a centre-forward who made it to the second string at Bramall Lane before opting for an alternative career as bassist with Def Leppard.

Thing is, Savage is actually a Wednesday fan, which irks lead singer and diehard Blade Joe Elliott. "Everyone at my school was a Wednesdayite," he explained. "I was always beaten up for liking Marc Bolan instead of Slade, so becoming a Unitedite was just a continuation of that."

There are no such divisions among Kasabian, all four of whom are Leicester fans (which would make them less than popular with Coventry diehards The Enemy). Ever handy with a soundbite, Fox-fancying guitarist Serge Pizzorno has a theory that fans of poor teams create good music and vice versa.

Support sh*t team = make great music, says Serge

“There’s no doubt about it, supporting a crap football team helps make decent music,” he opined. “Look, on one side you’ve got Led Zeppelin and Wolves, Oasis and Man City, and Kasabian and Leicester. And on the other, there’s Depeche Mode and Chelsea, Spandau Ballet and Arsenal and Mick Hucknall and Man United.”

By that rationale, now Brentford have become champions of League Two, loyal fans Hard-Fi may have a dip in form and release a duff album...

Previous Rock'n'Goal Week blogs:
Friday: If Premier League teams were bands
Thursday: When footballers become pop stars
Wednesday: How football became the new rock'n'roll

The Enemy’s new album Music For The People is out April 27.
Click here to win an exclusive box set or signed T-Shirt

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If Premier League teams were bands...

2009-04-24T07:45:00Z

Leading sportswriter Richard Williams once analysed Cristiano Ronaldo and Kaka’s styles of play in terms relating to classical music.

According to Williams, Kaka is like a C&W twang on a mouth iron, while Ronaldo is a whopping funk riff on slap bass played by a strung-out geezer in a ‘fro and stack heels… oh alright, that wasn’t the point he was making.

Seems Kaka was “allegro molto vivace, with a pronounced fondness for bursts of staccato phrasing via those quick-stepping feet,” while Kaka “plays at a permanent andante cantabile”. No, we’ve no idea either.

Still, it got us thinking. Which bands really speak 'Premier League football' to us?

Now, unlike Mr Williams – who at Melody Maker once accidentally mistook an EMI engineer’s test pressing for a John Lennon album and reviewed it in glowing terms – we’re simple folk when it comes to tunes, so there’ll be no mentions of glissandos, diminuendos or minimalist compositions here. Well, only one.

ARSENAL: Air
This French synth combo are classy, ephemeral and aesthetically pleasing – though the melodies are often lightweight, noodle unnecessarily, and rarely culminate in a satisfying conclusion. (Speaking of music, the crowd at the Emirates are music buffs to a man, often raising the roof with their rousing renditions of John Cage’s 4’33".)

ASTON VILLA: Prince
Prince enjoyed spectacular success in the early-'80s before going steadily – some would say spectacularly – downhill. He’s enjoyed a couple of minor successes since, but most of the time people simply shake their heads and wonder what the hell happened to a once-great institution. (Coincidentally, former chairman Doug Ellis is rumoured to do a cracking karaoke version of Sexy Motherf*cker.)

"Come here baby, you sexy..."

BLACKBURN: Radiohead
The Oxford miserablists enjoyed phenomenal sales in the mid-'90s. They looked set fair for a long period of dominance, but threw it away big-style with a series of amazingly wilful career decisions. Replacing the majestic guitar swirl of The Bends with the piss-in-a-puddle drums of Amnesiac is one thing… but Kenny Dalglish for Ray Harford, Brian Kidd and Paul Ince?

BOLTON: Snow Patrol
A bunch of professional chaps who always turn up on time and get the job done with minimum fuss. Problem is, nobody remembers an effing thing they ever do. Or know what any of them look like.

CHELSEA: Coldplay
Immensely successful – yet equally unpopular. Nobody you’ll ever meet actually admits to liking this lot – perhaps because there’s such a ridiculous amount of money thrown at the production, and what’s produced is turgid rubbish.

EVERTON: The Beatles
A Merseyside outfit whose toppermost days were in the 1960s. They’ve still got a big reputation, but it doesn’t take a genius to spot that only 50 percent of their members have any discernable talent.

FULHAM: The Bangles
They work-for-an-E-gyp-tian.

HULL CITY: Elbow
Phenomenally underachieving northerners suddenly hit the big time and get the ‘overnight success’ they’ve worked decades to achieve, to widespread hair-ruffling delight. But it’ll be interesting to see how they follow it up…

LIVERPOOL: David Hasselhoff
To the human eye these two institutions appear so identical they suggest a single hybrid. The Hofferpool, if you will. Both enjoyed glory days in the ’80s when they bossed Europe with some of the finest perms the world had ever seen. Both have huge followings in Germany. And both emerged from the doldrums in the Noughties to score unexpected hits as varied as Jump In My Car and winning the Champions League.

The Hoff, complete with all-conquering hairdo

MANCHESTER CITY: Oasis
Yes, it seems far too obvious. But examine the evidence – they’re wealthier than they’ve ever been, but are past their best, fail dismally in their goal to recreate the heady days of the 1960s, and are prone to occasional bursts of extreme violence.

MANCHESTER UNITED: Thelonious Monk
The legendary jazz pianist pressed keys which should never have worked together in a million years, but somehow did. Fergie meanwhile cobbled together a winning side with a midfield containing the likes of John O’Shea and Darren Fletcher. Mmm, nice!

MIDDLESBROUGH: The Magic Numbers
Cuddly, wholesome kids who no one really minds but who seem inexorably headed for the dumper.

NEWCASTLE: The Grateful Dead
Blessed with an unbelievable number of rabid fans who can see no wrong in their heroes whatsoever. Everyone else looks on in total bemusement.

PORTSMOUTH: Massive Attack
Peter Crouch gags are great, aren’t they?

STOKE: Motley Crue
Like ’em or loathe ’em, you can’t deny the formula works. May be prone to the odd bout of in-fighting but you wouldn’t want to get into an argument with their army of loyal, noisy fans.

SUNDERLAND: The Arcade Fire
The Canadian hipsters first hit the big time a couple of years ago, and enjoyed much critical success with their initial effort. But despite good early notices, in reality their second effort saw them merely treading water, and nobody’s talking about them much any more. Let’s face facts, their time is already running out.

TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR: U2
Big on bluster and not half as important as they think they are.

WEST BROM: The Smiths
So many of The Smiths’ lyrics speak directly to Baggies fans. “I know it’s over.” “Heaven knows I’m miserable now.” "Sing me to sleep / I don’t want to wake up any more." “Panic.” “Until it’s mathematically impossible to stay up / We’ll carry on giving it our all.” Actually, we’re not sure if that last one was one of Morrissey’s or not; we’ll have to check.

Mowbray: "Heaven knows etc..."

WEST HAM UNITED: Chas ’n’ Dave
Yes, we know Chas, Dave and the drummer from Chas’n’Dave did all the FA Cup final songs for Spurs. But you couldn’t get a more typical Sound of East London if you strapped Lee Bowyer’s head to the axle of his Baby Bentley and went wheel-spinning around Dagenham for a couple of hours.

WIGAN: Fatboy Slim
A chancer who made his name in the ’80s and now pieces together loads of different bits of old tat to make something which is passable at best.

Wednesday: How football became the new rock'n'roll
Yesterday: When footballers become pop stars

The Enemy’s new album Music For The People is out April 27.
Click here to win an exclusive box set or signed T-Shirt

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When footballers become pop stars...

2009-04-23T08:00:00Z

United forever, whatever the weather
Less than 100%? Never!
The son of a miner, funkiest rhymer
Always in the news, my crew the headliner
£7.5 mill record breaker, I’m rapping on the mic, keeping it real
I’m keeping the raw.
Andy Cole, Outstanding, 1999

In the late ’90s, then-Manchester United striker Andy (not yet Andrew) Cole, flushed with Champions League success, released his debut pop single – a cover of The Gap Band’s Outstanding, featuring a painful diatribe rapped over the top.

It stiffed, but in the accompanying promotional junket Cole delivered a revealing interview to Time Out magazine, assessing a selection of other singing footballers.

When played Ian Wright’s Do The Wright Thing, Cole enquired, “I remember this well. Who wrote this? Stock, Aitken and Waterman?” (Pop fans note: it was actually Pet Shop Boy’s Chris Lowe).

On Martin Buchan’s Martin Buchan Blues he awarded a “10 out of 10. It’s cool when you consider what type of music was out in 1976.”

This Time..., the 1982 England World Cup song and Liverpool’s Anfield Rap both received the thumbs down, before Cole was played Diamond Lights, as performed by Spurs’ flamboyant midfielders Glenn Hoddle and Chris Waddle.

“Nah!” snorted Cole. “Forget this. That was shocking, man. No, really, fast-forward this.”

Anfield Rap: Thumbs down from Coley

Despite Outstanding’s lacklustre entry to the pop canon, Cole had inadvertently smacked the nail on its head.

Footballers, despite repeated attempts at musical stardom, cannot make records – in much the same way that Diana Ross can’t kick a football into a gaping net at the opening ceremony of the 1994 World Cup or Chris Martin wouldn’t pick up the ball on the halfway line, weave his way through a barrage of defenders and ping a drive into the top corner from 25 yards in the Champions League final.

Even to the casual observer it seems nigh-on impossible to hold down a career in both. Dedication, physical perfection and regimented diet hardly feature on the schedules of most touring bands. Drugs, groupies and sleepless nights are frowned upon at most professional clubs.

Not that a string of players have cared – they’ve had a riot peppering the charts with poorly-produced novelty singles.

Terry Venables and John Charles both released records in the 1960s before Kevin Keegan made the first laughable stab at pop stardom with his single Head Over Heels in 1979. It only reached number 31 in the charts but a trend was set.

By the mid-’80s, Spurs midfielders Glenn Hoddle and Chris Waddle had released two records – Diamond Lights and It’s Goodbye – to muted response, while a decade later Ian Wright and Andy Cole were laying down hip-hop cuts with a level of fan enthusiasm unnoticed within Spicemania.

For an indication at just how bad these singles were, it’s worth considering that Gazza topped the lot with his Number Two smash Fog On The Tyne in 1990.

Gazza and his guitar top the charts, almost

But rock stars have added to the whole sorry phenomenon too – lyrically at least.

Bands referencing the game in song include Morrissey (Roy’s Keen), Billy Bragg (Moving The Goalposts, God’s Footballer and Shirley – “How can you lie there and think of England when you don’t even know who’s in the team?”), Don Fardon (The Belfast Boy – a song praising George Best) and Half Man, Half Biscuit (I Was A Teenage Honved Fan).

Also guilty are The Wedding Present, The Fall, I, Ludicrous, and Super Furry Animals, whose single The Man Don’t Give A F*ck featured notorious Reading player Robin Friday on the cover.

“His daughter and wife were really upset about it,” says drummer Dafydd Ieuan. “They got in touch to say, actually, he did give a f*ck.”

Still, when it comes to creative inspiration, there’s nothing to match the FA Cup final muse which so often drives bands to pen songs for their favourite teams, most notably Chas’n’Dave who penned the Rockney masterpiece Ossie’s Dream for Spurs in 1981, complete with the couplet:

“Ossie’s going to Wembley
His knees have gone all trembly.”

Clive Allen reaches for the high note

This seasonal horror is only surpassed by the build-up to an international tournament as the whole process goes into meltdown and bands proffer their support for the national team.

Step forward New Order (World In Motion, 1986), Echo And The Bunnymen, The Spice Girls and Ocean Colour Scene (Top Of The World, 1998) and Ian Broudie of The Lightning Seeds (Three Lions, 1996 and 2002).

“I've never ever written a song about football apart from Three Lions,” says Liverpool fan Broudie.

“I remember when the FA got in touch and asked me to write a single for Euro 96 and I said no first of all because I was a little bit uncomfortable with the whole En-Ger-Land thing. I know New Order did that song but I didn't even like it that much.

"I remember they were doing games at Anfield for Euro 96 and before the end of the season a few pennants went up and that's when I thought, ‘Actually it's going to be here at Anfield’ and I got quite into it.”

Of course, it could be worse. Scotland’s 1998 World Cup campaign was infamously soundtracked by folk rockers Del Amitri’s prophetic Don’t Come Home Too Soon. Craig Brown’s team were duly knocked out in the group stages.

Still, what these singles really create is an arena in which John Barnes can rap, Gazza can sing and the entire squad – complete with kitman, physio and masseur – can sway awkwardly in a low-budget promotional video while clutching oversized headphones.

What songwriter could resist the association? Sadly, the results are often intolerable.

“England players can just about play football,” hisses Ian McCulloch, “let alone sing.” Nevertheless pop’s elite are as wide eyed in adulation of footballers as the next man.

Football is the great leveller. Most bands, despite their too-cool-for-school demeanour, will boast at least one long-suffering fan among their ranks.

“Johnny Rotten would always get pissed off when we started talking football,” recalls former Sex Pistol Glen Matlock, a QPR fan.

“He couldn’t get his head round it. He would say things like, ‘What’s so special about 22 grown men kicking a football around a muddy field? It’s crap.’

"And then, with Euro ‘96 and football suddenly becoming a fairly credible sport again, all of a sudden he’s saying, ‘Oh yeah, I’m a massive Arsenal fan. I’ve always been a massive Arsenal fan.”

Rotten: "Goooooooners"

Not content with falling over at celebrity five-a-side tournaments, countless artists have played shows at a treasured stadium (Oasis at Maine Road) or bought the club (Elton John at Watford), while Leeds Britpop band Kaiser Chiefs stole (and misspelt) their name from the South African side once captained by Elland Road favourite, Lucas Radebe.

“Bands love football because it’s such a contrast from what they do in the studio,” says The Delays’ Greg Gilbert.

“When you’re recording an album it’s all about thought and analysis. You’re expressing yourself, but in a thoughtful way. When it comes to football there’s no bullshit. It’s a physical one on one where great players rise to the top. And you can’t help but notice great players.

"Everything is so quick and instinctive too, more instinctive than making a record. As a musician, I’m into the detail, whereas football is more about getting on the pitch and doing it.”

Footballers aren’t above a little hero worship either – and not just towards the likes of perennial favourites, Luther Vandross and Phil Collins. Rumour has it that former Scotland midfielder Pat Nevin was such a fan of indie band The Cocteau Twins that he was substituted during a Chelsea reserve game so he could catch their London show.

Mani recalls seeing a string of Manchester United players at Stone Roses gigs while punk fan Stuart Pearce went so far as to introduce The Sex Pistols at a Finsbury Park show in 1996 with the cry of “Who said there were no more heroes? Ladies and gentlemen... The Sex Pistols!”

Nevin: "Five more minutes gaffer, then I've really got to go"

Fortunately, these “superfans” seem aware of the unwritten rule: a little love is OK but unwavering obsession is a dangerous thing.

Any player unsure of the consequences of falling too deeply should look back at history and the likes of Gazza, George Best and Stan Bowles.

Mixing the rock’n’roll lifestyle with training ground discipline just doesn’t work. And nobody has ever taken the football aspirations of Harvey from So Solid Crew, Rod Stewart or Robbie Williams very seriously.

But you can’t blame people for trying, both are rewarding businesses after all.

“Football is like music,” says Mani, Manchester United fan, formerly bassist with Stone Roses, now Primal Scream.

“There are so many people who are really good at it and they’re worth every penny they get. And when it comes together, whether that’s on the pitch or on record it makes it all worth it. It’s f*cking beautiful.”

Wednesday: How football became the new rock'n'roll

The Enemy’s new album Music For The People is out April 27.
Click here to win an exclusive box set or signed T-Shirt

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How football became the new rock’n’roll

2009-04-22T07:20:00Z

In their grotesque autobiography The Dirt, LA metal band Motley Crue tore up every moral known to man.

Groupies were molested nightly; spiralling booze, heroin and cocaine addictions led to individual breakdowns, spells in rehab and frequent overdoses.

Meanwhile, Hollywood girlfriends were betrayed with such regularity that the band resorted to rubbing their unwashed "parts" with meat – the process apparently ideal for disguising “the smell of p*ssy.”

This was imperative: drummer Tommy Lee gleefully recalled sleeping with one girl who could spray her come 40 feet across a room.

Yet anyone detailing football’s sordid back story might just discover a greater catalogue of rock’n’roll misdemeanour.

In the past 50 years, the tabloids have reported dogging, drug busts, prostitution, trysts with the mafia, murder, kidnapping, counterfeiting and group sex on a scale not witnessed since Led Zeppelin’s Starship last scorched the JFK tarmac.

In half a century of headlines, footballers have taken on rock’n’roll’s most despicable at their own game (not to mention their very punk attitude towards public spitting). However, given the merging of football and music in the latter half of the 20th century, this behaviour comes as no great surprise.

Modern players, with their multi-million pound contracts, glamorous girlfriends and fancy cars, now carry the swagger of a marauding rock star, despite their clean-living athleticism.

Laughable attempts at pop stardom (Glenn Hoddle, Chris Waddle, Gazza, Andrew Cole) have dented the charts, Japanese girls have pursued David Beckham through Tokyo streets, while Roy Evans’ pretty-boy Liverpool team (plus Robbie Fowler) were even nicknamed The Spice Boys in the mid-’90s.

Fowler, McManaman and Redknapp sport 'those suits'

Meanwhile rock stars, in thrall to the off-the-cuff creativity and drama of the game, have made desperate attempts to associate themselves with football teams and players.

Elton John bought Watford FC in 1976 and later tried to sign Vinnie Jones; Harvey from So Solid Crew played for AFC Wimbledon, and Rod Stewart constructed an 11-a-side pitch at his California home.

“We’ve got the only team with our own showers and a bar,” he once said. “I wash the kit... well, kind of. I get my personal assistant to do it. It’s beautiful. I’m trying to get Vinnie Jones to play for us too.”

Rock’n’roll and The Beautiful Game: a marriage made in heaven. But which matchmaker hitched these two unlikely bedfellows?

“Just play the way the ball bounces / And bounce the way the ball plays / Cos you won’t have long in the limelight / No you won’t have many days / Georgie, Georgie they call you the Belfast Boy.”
Belfast Boy, Don Fardon, 1970

Football’s tryst with musical hedonism began in 1963. London to be precise, where the Swinging Sixties was in full sway. A generation hardened by war and financial hardship watched in horror as sexually-liberated teenage girls gobbled down The Pill.

National Service had been scrapped, life was affordable, and a desire for shiny technology and modernism reached a grand peak. Meanwhile, in Liverpool, the Beatles were recording their first number one album Please, Please Me, kicking a revolution to the head and shaping the decade’s remaining years.

It’s worth mentioning these historical facts because, within a spectacular cultural shift, the world began viewing celebrity and football with very different eyes.

Televisions – available in most homes – presented fame as a realistic opportunity for the ordinary Joe Bloggs. Now, everybody could live the life of the pop star. Even if you kicked a leather ball around a boggy park for a living.

“Whatever field they worked in,” claims former music mogul, Simon Napier-Bell, “everyone wanted to make it the way the Beatles had. Suddenly there were opportunities for anyone with energy and flair who could look at things in a new way. The Beatles had got everybody chasing success.”

Televised games and Jimmy Hill’s abolition of the maximum wage had transformed football, and George Best had energy and flair in abundance. A few hours up the M1 from Carnaby Street, sexuality, sideburns and a hedonistic streak had positioned Best alongside a score of British bands.

Like Please, Please Me’s arrival at Number One, Best’s Manchester United debut made an immediate impact. Almost overnight he was a football and cultural phenomenon.

Two years later, his clubbing and womanising was in full swing. By 1966, after a 5-1 thrashing of Benfica in the European Cup quarter-finals, Portuguese newspaper A Bola had dubbed him El Beatle and Best was iconic in the same way as John, Paul, George and Ringo.

The papers even nicknamed him The Fifth Beatle as girls, drinks and parties followed harder and faster than before.

“In six years, he has become a cult for youth, a new folk hero, a living James Dean who is a rebel with a cause,” wrote The Times.

A new era had began. Best’s actions – on and off the pitch – turned on a host of kids more in tune with the hit parade than the football results. Suddenly, footballers were cool.

“I was a Best worshipper,” says Simply Red’s Mick Hucknall, a United supporter. “He captured the imagination. He was the first footballing pop star. We looked up to him as kids, not just for his footballing skills but for his whole personality. He had pop star qualities as well as the hair, the fast cars, the women. He was a hero to us.”

Players, with one eye on the pop media, became aware of their own glamour potential. And from then on in, English footballers began embracing rock’n’roll iconography and hedonism, opening clothes boutiques on the Kings Road and sashaying around nightclub dance floors with glamorous blondes, rock star admirers and fashion models.

'Fifth Beatle' Best shows off his boutique

Chelsea’s Peter Osgood even scored with sex siren Raquel Welch, leaving club chairman Brian Mears to admit: “Osgood epitomised Swinging London as much as David Bailey or Paul McCartney.”

When Best left London nightclub Tramps one evening, he was followed from the door by the same Beatle and wife, Linda. “Just as they were leaving,” said Best, “Linda came up behind me and whispered, ‘You know we love you, don’t you?’ It was fantastic.”

Football and music had always been entwined. Old church standards had been adapted for the terraces for as long as the game had been a public event. Yet their lyrics had never referenced danger or controversy.

By the ’70s, the terraces roared with LSD-inspired Beatles songs. Elsewhere, the media mashed sport and sex together, introducing a public audience to live games and a role call of glamorous players eager for attention.

“Footballers and rock stars were similar because they became folk heroes,” says Greg Gilbert, singer with The Delays, a top 20 band in their own right.

Gilbert had his own football career shattered when, in a fit of pique, he threw a shirt at his youth team coach at Portsmouth. “Footballers can do things that are instinctive and exciting, things that most of us can’t and it’s the same with bands. Everybody watches them and talks about them in the pub or the playground. And the legend of different players gets passed down to generations just like albums.”

Both Best and the Beatles derailed in the ’70s, but a host of characters filled their vacuum, each one blessed with flair, skill and a reckless attitude to authority. As a swathe of rock bands (and later punk) leapt from the radio, football provided its own anti heroes: Charlie George, Peter Storey and Stan Bowles.

“Bowles was the greatest,” says one-time Sex Pistol Glen Matlock, a QPR fan. “He was a bit of a villain and I suppose he was a rock’n’roll character, but that’s why I admired him, because he had that streak in him that wanted to cause trouble.”

In playgrounds up and down the country, cigarette cards of Frank Worthington became as thrilling as a new single by The Clash or The Jam.

Girls were excited too – for every footballer cut with an anarchic streak to appease the boys, a pin-up was made available for bubblegum magazines. From Kevin Keegan to David Beckham, the game threw up its own pop stars: squeaky-clean poster fodder for teenage girls and cooing grannies.

Meanwhile, as the Government’s introduction of career advisers in schools took hold, teachers sought vocational aspiration within their students. Usually, they were bombarded with two answers:

a) “Sir, I want to be a rock star.”
b) “I want to play for England.”

Anyone looking for psychological clues to these two career choices need only search their own brain. Successful players and bands are often graced with financial security, glamorous lifestyles, pin-up girlfriends, admiring peers and, above all, hero worship on an obscene scale.

Which hormone-fuelled male hasn’t craved all of the above at one time or another?

Then of course there’s the actual “doing” of both. It doesn’t get much better than playing football with your mates, winning the local league or scoring an important goal at any level.

Likewise, sitting around listening to records, making an unholy, neighbour-baiting racket on a drum kit or crowd surfing at a festival is another world of joy. Imagine doing all of that and being paid for it too.

“The buzzes of football and music are very similar, because the very best bands and footballers are doing something creative that other people can’t,” says Greg Gilbert.

“It’s all about showmanship. The greatest players play with a smile on their face because there is a joy in what they’re doing. It’s not a considered motion. But the experience they both share is the feeling of walking a tightrope - whether you’re playing live at a gig or playing football in front of 40,000 people there’s that worry that you could fall off either side.

"But if you pull it off, do a great show or play well and come through the other side, there’s no greater feeling.

“Live, both share a spontaneity which can’t be described,” continues Gilbert. “Which is why it’s unfair to have a go at players for not being insightful during post match interviews. It’s like asking Noel Gallagher to talk the fans through an improvised guitar solo after a show.”

This adrenaline rush often causes the overambitious to stab at both vocations. Rod Stewart (Brentford), Badly Drawn Boy (Manchester United), Manic Street Preacher’s Nicky Wire (Wales U16s), Julio Iglesias (Real Madrid), Luciano Pavarotti (Lepanto) and Take That’s Mark Owen (Manchester United) all spent time under the tutelage of football clubs.

Sadly the closest Shakin’ Stevens and Mick Hucknall got was an appearance in Viz’s Billy The Fish cartoon strip.

Iglesias: Real Madrid career truncated by car crash

Meanwhile several pros have started their own rock bands, including Alexei Lalas (The Gypsies), Christian Dailly (South Playground) and one-time Nottingham Forest striker, Paul McGregor (Merc).

Of the two, most agree that football presents the greater pressures.

“When you’re doing a gig, you haven’t got thousands of people screaming at you,” says Echo And The Bunnymen’s Ian McCulloch, Liverpool fan and writer of England’s 1998 World Cup single, Top Of The World.

“You don’t have people telling you you’re shite. Yelling at you at if hit a wrong note or f*ck up. Not normally anyway. I could never play footy in front of all those people.”

Thursday: Watch out! Footballers' records

The Enemy’s new album Music For The People is out on April 27. Click here to win an exclusive box set or signed T-shirt

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