“Burning bridges never made me cry, I could walk away with no goodbye” thus became “Busby Babes they always made me cry, thinkin’ ’bout the teams of years gone by”. “Come On You Reds” was based on a Status Quo track “Burning Bridges”, which had reached No 5 in 1988, with the lyrics changed. He still says to me: ‘Are you still into that weird music?’, and I reply: ‘Beethoven? The Pogues? The Rolling Stones? Aye, weird’.” And he just went, ‘Yeah’ like he didn’t believe me, but then Bryan Robson was not into music at all. The ones after ‘Come On You Reds’ were just as bad too but, on the day we recorded it, I said to our captain, Bryan Robson, ‘That’s going to be a massive hit’. “We’d done songs before that one but they were terrible, really.
It wasn’t like we were doing a song with New Order. They wanted to do it and it suited us to do it. “Status Quo are a lot cooler now than they were then, but their millions of fans loved them. “We got offered a guaranteed amount to be put into the players’ pool and thought it would be a bit of fun – and there was a tradition of cup final songs, so we did it,” McClair says. None of Status Quo were United fans: vocalist Rick Parfitt and drummer Jeff Rich supported Spurs and Francis Rossi was not really into football, thus a Crystal Palace fan. We went to Manchester and recorded it a couple of days later.” He’s a great lyricist and it went from there. Andrew wrote the first verse but he knows nothing about football. Myself, a friend Mike Haldenby and Andrew Bown (Status Quo’s keyboard player) wrote them. We were just immature footballers having a laugh, but we had to learn the lyrics and it was right that we were No 1 in the league and in the charts.”īrentford season ticket holder and Status Quo bass player John Edwards was key to the project. I wasn’t big on Status Quo like Choccy was. You know those belt hoops in your jeans? Well, he was putting his fingers through them, pretending to play an air guitar and encouraging us to do the same. “He was the brains of the team and the club. “Brian McClair was in charge because he knew all about music and how to sort the money out,” says the former midfielder. Midfielder Clayton Blackmore also has a slightly different recollection. “You had Lee Sharpe and Giggsy enjoying it.” “I hated recording it, I was embarrassed and sheepish,” says Neville. We had a few cans to help the vocal cords, but it wasn’t a massive session.” I have a memory of Gary Neville being right onto it and at the front and right at it. Sharpey (Lee Sharpe) loved it and the other extroverts were there at the front. People took weeks to record shit, we did it in an afternoon and we all sounded professional. I wasn’t a good singer and I couldn’t play (musical instruments), but it’s amazing how the sound engineers can make you sound. “I’m very happy to own a gold disc from that,” explains former striker Brian McClair.
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