Football (Soccer) song question

My friend and I, whilst watching my team be destroyed on Sunday, had an argument about the origins of the Liverpool song ‘You’ll never walk alone’.

We both know that Celtic also sing the song but what other teams sing it and what team sung it first.

You’ll collective help will be greatly appreciated.

Not answering the question, but slightly related. You can hear this song being sung during a match in the Pink Floyd song “Fearless”.

It was the liverpool fans who sung it first.

Give me a minute and I’ll dig up the straight dope.

Probably cos its by a Liverpudlian band

"The song is from the Rogers and Hammerstein musical “Carousel”. The scene is
of a father inspiring his daughter with the words “You’ll never walk alone”, after
she has been shamed at her graduation ceremony.

The song also became a hit for Gerry Marsden of ‘Gerry and the Pacemakers’.
Gerry sung the crowd favourite before the last game in front of a standing Kop
against Norwich and was almost brought to tears by the occasion.

Why did Liverpool fans adopt the song? One rumour is that it was played at
Anfield a few times before matches, then one Saturday it wasn’t played over
the P.A. but the Kop started singing it anyway and from there it grew to
become the kop favourite that is recognised the world over! "

Interesting though this is it doesn’t answer my question.

October 1963. Gerry and the Pacemakers, already a big hit on merseyside and across the UK, release “You’ll never walk alone” from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “Carousel”.

Football fans have a history of singing pop songs on the terraces. many fans adopted pop songs as their anthems (Carlsile have “Delilah” for example).

Liverpool had just started their second season back in the first division (as it was then), and were getting good. The fans adopted the song, and it has stuck with them.

Though no one has answered all of my question.

Who were the first to sing it, sort of but not fully answered, and who else sings it apart from Celtic.

Most sets of supporters have sung it at certain times. There is an offensive version that gets sung at the Liverpool fans relating to the relative deprivation in Liverpool. I believe that supporters started singing it when it was released by Gerry and the Pacemakers (Liverpool band) and it was Bill Shankley’s favourite song (Shankley was the manager in the 60s and 70s and arguably the greatest the club manager. In short it is Liverpool’s song

Oddly enough we’ve been discussing this on the Celtic list the past couple days (well I guess it’s not that odd, since it comes up at least once every six months there). Somebody claims that it was actually an Everton song first - but the Everton fans stopped singing it when they found out Gerry Marsden was a 'Pool supporter!

Well, we Everton fans do have our own version (with words Oscar Hammerstein certainly wouldn’t recognise!), but as far as I know it was the Koppites who started singing it first and our version is a corruption of it, only ever sung in response to theirs.

Andy J’s second post gives a plausible explanation, but interestingly, a query posted here claims that Celtic fans were the first to sing it. Personally I find that hard to believe (and the second comment on that page is surely false – Gerry and the Pacemakers recorded the song in 1963 and was certainly being sung on the terraces before Bob Paisley took over at Anfield). When the song first entered the charts, many fans would have sung it, but I don’t think it would have come as a surprise to Everton fans that Marseden was a Liverpool supporter so we would never have claimed the song as “our own”.

I’d be interested to hear when Celtic fans started singing it, but I only became aware of it during the '70s, so I’d always guessed it was connected to the friendly matches that were arranged between Celtic and Liverpool on the back of Kenny Dalglish’s transfer.

I remember seeing some footage of the Kop singing ‘She loves you’ with amended ‘lyrics’, I assume it was contemporary (looked it). Suggests the Anfield tradition of singing the tunes of local bands does go back to at least '63.

Always preferred 'Ferry ‘cross the Mersey’ personally.

Anyway, more importantly…

Anyone else heard mention of the ‘Tottenham sound’ ?:

“Dave Clark was born in 1942. He was somewhat of a daredevil and always had a strong entrepreneurial flair. Clark worked as a stuntman in over 40 films. When his soccer team, the Tottenham Hotspur, needed money in 1960, he decided to form a band. He bought a set of drums and learned how to play them. He recruited Lenny Davidson on guitar, Rick Huxley for bass, Dennis Payton on sax, and Mike Smith on keyboards and vocals. The group played locally in Tottenham, a suburb just north of London, and became enormously popular.”

As in “I’m feeling…bang, bang,…Glad all over…” - except I’m not after Sunday.

The older Celtic fans are pretty much in agreement that we started singing YNWA in the late 60s - coinciding with the breakout of the troubles in NI and Jock Stein’s subsequent plea to supporters to stop singing Irish rebel songs. That’s about as clear an answer as you’re ever going to get. But it was definitely a Liverpool song before it was ours.

I believe the supporters of Ajax Amsterdam also sing this song.

And IMHO I’d say the 'pool fans sang it before the Celtic fans did.

“Sign on, Sign on…and you’ll never get a job, you’ll never get a job”

…well someone had to!