37 minute read
My Beating Heart Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.
My Beating Heart
Manchester Gets On the Ball!
Advertisement
Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.
By the time that this issue goes to print, regardless of whether or not the England Football Squad are on their way to answering the hopes and dreams of the nation over in Qatar, the 2022 FIFA World Cup will be a memorable one for Louder Than War’s Nigel Carr, for it has been this tournament that has finally seen the release of ‘Come on England (You Better Believe It)’, an ambitious bid to create a World Cup anthem which had been in the works ever since the last World Cup, at which point, it was thwarted by England’s shock 2-1 defeat by Croatia in the semi-finals in Russia.
‘Come on England (You Better Believe It)’ evolved somewhat between Carr recording and posting a rough draft of the song to YouTube after its chorus came to him a dream and it finally being launched on the 18th of November, just three days before England defeated Iran 6-2 and renewed our faith in the Southgate’s men after their frankly dismal performance in recent UEFA Nations League matches. First and foremost, after producer and serial ideas man Mike Bennett was brought on board, it grew to become a true collaborative effort between a collective of Northern musicians, including Temper Temper, Sub Sub and Haçienda Classical vocalist Melanie Williams; The Membranes / Goldblade’s John Robb; The Fall’s Simon Wolstencroft; The Smiths’ Craig Gannon; Gustaffson / The Naughty Boys’ David Gleave and the Roger Waters Band / Suede’s Jay Stapley. Other touches included a children’s choir courtesy of Chorlton High School; further vocals from Jerrelle Clayton-McKenzie, Coral Roberts and Nigel’s brother, Ian Carr and additional production and mixing by the Pet Shop Boys’
musical director, Pete Gleadall, before it was decided that proceeds from the single, released under the name My Beating Heart, would go to Child Bereavement UK.
On the very morning that ‘Come on England (You Better Believe It)’ was released, we caught up with Carr at his home in Manchester. Whilst we have rarely spoken to such an excited interviewee, as our conversation began, competition from a 2022 reworking of a certain classic footy anthem evidently wasn’t far from his mind. “It is going well!”, he tells us. “We’ve had nearly 3,000 views for the video, I was on Times Radio last night [17th of November] and Mike Sweeney’s radio show [on BBC Radio Manchester] last week, so it’s all been kicking off! I don’t know, I cross my fingers and everything that things are going to build up and then I see Baddiel and Skinner [and the Lightning Seeds] have brought out their new single [‘Three Lions (Football’s Coming Home for Christmas)’] on the same day and
Nigel Carr
I’m like ‘oh my God!’ But, at the end of the day, ours is a brand new song, it’s different and it’s good and everybody likes it, so I can’t complain, you know! So, I’m quite happy. You know, I had an aspiration when I first started this that as long as people said, ‘Nigel, it’s not shit’ [laughs], I’m happy!”
Firstly, hello Nigel and thank you for agreeing to our interview, it is lovely to speak to you. The 18th of November saw the release of Northern music collective, My Beating Heart’s song for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, ‘Come on England (You Better Believe It)’. We had already had a few football-related songs released this year, largely from the official FIFA soundtrack, starting back in April with the release of ‘Hayya Hayya (Better Together)’ courtesy of Trinidad Cardona, Davido, Aisha and FIFA Sound, but they have been quite underwhelming. Congratulations on your single, because we know it is a project that has taken quite a while
Melanie Williams
to bring to completion and the result is great, but what do you feel sets ‘Come on England (You Better Believe It)’ apart from the 2022 FIFA World Cup Songs that we had already heard so far this year?
Thank you very much, thank you [laughs], it means a lot. It’s been a great journey, a nine months journey, you know! Well, who am I to say, but the problem is that they’re [FIFA] either choosing tunes that have been recorded before, like ‘Come on Eileen’ [Dexys Midnight Runners, ‘Too Rye Aye’, 1982 was, to our knowledge, first used as the basis for a football song with 4-4-2’s ‘Come on England’ released to coincide with Euro 2004] and I listened to a Welsh football song yesterday based on ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’ [The Clash, ‘Combat Rock’, 1982], or one of The Clash songs at least, it sounded very similar, and I think what sets our song apart from the others is that it’s truly original and so, you know, it’s not based on any particular formula, or any tune, or any song that’s been recorded before, it’s an
John Robb
original tune and I think that’s probably what makes it different. That and the production [by Mike Bennett]. The production is amazing and it absolutely zings. So, you know, there have been a lot of football songs around and there are songs called ‘Come on England’ as well, which I didn’t even think about when I wrote the song, but ours is called ‘Come on England (You Better Believe It)’, and I think, you know, that the way it’s been written and the way that it’s been recorded sets it apart from the others a little bit. And we’ve also got the children [the Chorlton High School Choir] on there, which is really good and the fact that it’s ... well, it wasn’t recorded for a charity, but I was sort of looking at a way that, if God forbid, it was successful, you know, what would we do with the money? So, we got in touch with Child Bereavement UK, which is something that is quite close to my heart, because my granddaughter, she lost her baby. He died at three weeks old, so that was awful, yeah. So, that’s why and that kind of connects all the story together and the fact that it’s called My Beating
Simon Wolstencroft
Heart kind of mixes the cause with the song and everything. So, anyway, in a nutshell, that’s kind of where we are, you know. So, yeah, there are lots of football songs around and quite frankly, I don’t even want to hear them, I’m not bothered, it is what it is.
I will say here that for Euro ‘96 was my personal favourite tournament for football songs, as there was not only David Baddiel, Frank Skinner and The Lightning Seed’s ‘Three Lions’, but also others such as Collapsed Lung’s ‘Eat My Goal’ (‘Jackpot Goalie’, 1995); Primal Sream, Irvine Welsh and On-u-Sound’s ‘The Big Man and the Scream Team Meet the Barmy Army Uptown’ and Black Grape, Joe Strummer and Keith Allen’s ‘England’s Irie’.
Well, that [Black Grape, Joe Strummer and Keith Allen ‘England’s Irie’, 1996] is a really great song! I think one of my favourite ones is ‘[Touched By the Hand of] Cicciolina’, which was Pop Will Eat Itself from 1990 [‘Cure for
Craig Gannon
Sanity’]. It’s a really good one! It’s a bit dodgy. because Cicciolina is an Italian porn star! [Laughs]. But, the Pop Will Eat Itself song just goes ‘Cicciolina, Cicciolina ...!’ It’s a really cool song, but it’s about a porn star called Cicciolina. ‘England’s Irie’ I think is really, really good and I love ‘World in Motion’ [New Order, 1990] because it’s New Order, of course and I think Ian Broudie [The Lightning Seeds] is a genius songwriter, so who am I to take away from those guys?! I love David Baddiel, I think he’s a tremendous comic and writer and obviously, Frank Skinner is the easy going comedian, you know. He’s not really on my radar, I’m more a Stewart Lee guy, but yeah, I think those are really great songs and ‘England’s Irie’, in particular, is a really great song and it’s got a good rap on it as well! Unlike the one from John Barnes [on ‘World in Motion’]! But, yeah, you know, it’s a bit of nostalgia! I quite like the fact that people do release original football songs. I don’t think that ‘Come on Eileen’, ‘Come on England’ has any value really, I don’t know, you’re just
David Gleave
ploughing someone else’s furrow really, aren’t you, you know?
Well, yes, exactly! Like I was saying, with that ‘Come on England (You Better Believe It)’, it is nice to hear something original that has actually had some effort put into it.
Oh, effort, you wouldn’t believe it! [Laughs].
Music has long been an essential part of World Cup and Euro tournaments, but would you consider to be the essential ingredients that make up a memorable England football song?
I think it’s got to have a chant. I think that’s really, really important and just to fill you in on the writing process [of ‘Come on England (You Better Believe It)’], I dreamt the song, so I woke up with the song in the morning. Well, I was singing it ... I do it quite frequently, I sing a song in my head, because the clearest moments are probably between four and six o’clock in the morning and
Ian Carr
for some reason, my brain is extremely clear at that time. So, I woke up with the chorus to the song and it was forming, ‘Nothing can stop us now, You better believe it ...’, and then you start to get a chant in your head. So, I formed the chorus in my head and I had it all, but I only had the chorus. But, I think what makes a great football song is having that chantable chorus, you know, ‘Come on England, come on England, Come on lads, let’s ...’ and the ‘win this beautiful game’, because, of course, we call it ‘the beautiful game’ and so, to have that in there as well is like a double whammy because it becomes an earworm. So, I think it’s really, really important to have something that is chantable and that can become an earworm and I think we’ve got a few earworms in our song, whether that’s the ‘Ooh, aah, ooh’s, or the ‘Kick it boys!’, or the ‘Come on England’. So, you’ve got quite chantable little earworms going on and I think that’s really, really important. Like, ‘World in Motion’ didn’t really have that ... yeah, ‘We’re playing for England, ENGLAND’, maybe? I don’t
Jay Stapely
know. Is it chantable? I don’t really know. Yeah, there’s a difference between a memorable earworm and a chantable chorus and I think we’ve got a chantable chorus and I think that’s quite important and I think that’s what rings out from the song in my opinion, yeah.
On the subject of other now classic football-related songs, such as David Baddiel, Frank Skinner and the Lightning Seeds’ aformentioned ‘Three Lions’ for Euro ‘96 and New Order’s ‘World in Motion’ from World Cup 1990, there are a fair few contenders for the greatest England football song of all time, but if you had to choose a personal favourite from across the years, which would it be and why?
Oh, that’s a difficult one! I’m a big New Order fan, but I would have to say that, probably, ‘Three Lions’ is the one for me. And, you know, Ian Broudie, he was in Original Mirrors before he was in The Lightning Seeds and he’s a very, very talented songwriter. I mean,
Mike Bennett
I wouldn’t class myself as a songwriter, but he is a bona fide, 100%, copper-bottomed songwriter and I’ve got a massive amount of respect for the guy. Not only that, but, you know, they’ve just brought out a new album [‘See You in the Stars’, 2022], The Lightning Seeds, and you know, I haven’t listened to it all the way through, but I just think it’s [‘Three Lions’] a really great song. After that, the ones that stick in my mind are probably ‘Back Home’ by [laughs] the England Football Squad [1970] ... it’s just a decent tune, badly sung, but it’s kind of a classic! But, it’s not really chantable, I guess. And probably ‘Cicciolina’ as well, but I know that’s a very odd one, but I like Pop Will Eat Itself, I thought they were amazing, and it just has a really cool groove to it, you know, ‘Italia! Italia!’, sung in like half-Italian, you know! And so, yeah, but that’s mine, because I’ve got quite an eclectic musical taste, which runs from, you know, Robert Johnson to Aphex Twin via Laurel and Hardy and the Sex Pistols. I like songs that really have a heart, you know, and that are
Chorlton School Choir
really quite tough, like ‘Firestarter’ by The Prodigy [released as a single in 1996, featured on ‘The Fat of the Land’ in 1997] and, you know, I like songs to really be challenging, which is why I like Aphex Twin, but I did like PWEI [Pop Will Eat Itself] at the time, you know, they were a cool band! I think they were just very, very cool, you know. There was a really cool groove to them and despite the subject matter, I thought that song was a really cool song.
Conversely, there have also been some absolutely terrible attempts over the years, so what would you consider to have been the worst England football song of all time?
Well, do you know what, I probably wouldn’t even comment on that, because I don’t think it’s fair, because in my world ... I mean, I grew up where my parents listened to ABBA and I really don’t like ABBA, but it’s not a popular view and my view is that all recorded music is worthwhile, however terrible one person thinks it is. And the
Pete Gleadall
bottom line is, there isn’t a bad song, there’s just a song that you don’t like. I don’t care whether it’s ABBA, or Demis Roussos, or Fat Les, you know, it’s not for me to cast judgement on somebody else’s songwriting and too many times, I see ‘Oh, that’s shit, that’s shit ...’ and I’ve said it myself, I’ll be honest with you, but really, I don’t think any music is rubbish. You know, I sometimes listen to a bit of Jazz, I sometimes listen to Aphex [Twin], I sometimes listen to just cheesy comedy songs, like ‘My Boomerang Won’t Come Back’ [Charlie Drake, 1961], or ‘My Brother’ [Terry Scott, 1962], or ‘Don’t Jump Off the Roof Dad’ [1961] by Tommy Cooper, you know! They all have a place, whether they move you, or whether they make you cry, or they make you laugh, I think all music is valid and if ten people in the world like Jason Donovan, then who am I to disagree with them?! [Laughs]. But yeah, I think all music is valid, whether it is ‘World Cup Willie’ [Lonnie Donegan] from 1966, the first World Cup song, or ‘Back Home’, or whatever. World Cup Willie was the
The 2022 version of ‘Three Lions’, released on the same day as My Beating Heart’s single
lion mascot from 1966! I don’t know, they tend to be ... football songs, going right the way back, Ronnie Hilton did a football song for Leeds United and I can’t remember the date [1964], but it was called ‘Leeds United Calypso’ and there’s a line in that song about the single black player in that team, called [Albert] Johanson, and this song goes ... and he puts a Jamaican accent on, which is really terrible, and he says, ‘Albert Johanson is one of the few, I don’t know where he comes from, but I think it’s Timbuktu!’ [Laughs]. I know, I know, so, racism in football records! I don’t have a particular peccadillo for ... I haven’t rooted out every football record, it’s just my musical knowledge! I used to one that record, the Leeds United one. I bought it at a car boot sale and sold it. I used to work at Barratts Shoes in Bradford and one of the guys in the office was a big Leeds United fan and I sold it to him! So, I bought it for 10p and sold it for five quid! [Laughs].
You touched on this a bit earlier, but we believe that the idea for ‘Come on England (You Better Believe It)’ came to you in a dream, so could you talk us through how you then went about writing the song?
Yeah, it happens a few times and sometimes, because obviously my wife’s in bed, I’ll just jump out of bed and go and record it into my phone or something like that, but with this one, it was running around my head ... it was July 2018 [during the 2018 FIFA World Cup, held in Russia] and I think I’d been to see a game at the pub and we were sitting outside, or maybe I’d seen something on TV, and I just went to bed that night and I woke up and I remember dreaming the chorus to the song, which was the ‘Nothing can stop us now ...’ and that went round and round and round and that went into the last bit where it jumps up half a gear and goes ‘Come on England ...’ And so, I’d got that and I woke up with that running around my head and I quickly went downstairs and my wife was still asleep and I just started strumming it out on my guitar and just recording it on my phone, so I’d got the basics and
then, within about twenty minutes, I’d written the verses as well, because once you’ve got the chorus, the verses just sort of drop out because they have to be in the same sort of chord sequence. So, I got the verses down and I’m still sitting in my pyjamas and I was on the computer ... I know, this sounds crazy, but I’m on the computer and I’m writing down all of the team members from the England World Cup team and so, the first version of the song, which later in that day, I actually recorded on my phone and I put it on YouTube, the first version has literally every member of the England football team [laughs] on it! So it had ‘Come on Sterling, come on Rashford, come on Foden’! It had all of them and ‘Have you got the cheek yet?’ That’s on the original one. And actually, I say ‘Alexander Armstrong’, who is obviously a TV personality, instead of Alexander-Arnold, who was in the team at the time as well and somebody said, ‘You know you sang ‘Alexander Armstrong?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I know, it’s my little joke!’, but actually, I just kept singing it wrong and I kept saying ‘Alexander Armstrong’! So, yeah, within about twenty minutes, I’d pretty much written the song and then a few more minutes after, I’d written all of the lyrics as well and then, obviously, England got knocked out [losing 2-1 to Croatia in the semi-finals. Croatia went on the play France in the final, losing 4-2] the following day! So, my beautiful song lasted about twenty-three hours! [Laughs]. Yeah, so, and that was it! So, it was on YouTube and I’d posted the lyrics to myself and that was it and nothing happened for four years, but that was basically what happened; I woke up with it in my head, wrote it and then put it on YouTube and then England got knocked out! I remember putting on Facebook, ‘That’s the end of my beautiful song!’ [Laughs]. It was hilarious, yeah!
‘Come on England (You Better Believe It)’ was produced by Mike Bennett and you enlisted a whole host of Northern musicians to appear on the track, including Temper Temper, Sub Sub and Haçienda
Classical vocalist Melanie Williams; The Membranes / Goldblade’s John Robb; The Fall’s Simon Wolstencroft; The Smiths’ Craig Gannon; Gustaffson / The Naughty Boys’ David Gleave and the Roger Waters Band / Suede’s Jay Stapley. Meanwhile, the song’s backing vocals were performed by the South Manchester-based Chorlton High School Choir; Jerrelle ClaytonMcKenzie; Coral Roberts; Ian Carr and Bennett and additional production and mixing was provided by the Pet Shop Boys’ musical director, Pete Gleadall. Could you talk us through how you went about assembling the cast of people who have made your dream a reality and tell us a bit about its recording process?
Yeah, so what happened was, you know I run Louder Than War with John Robb? So, I became friendly with Mike Bennett quite a few years ago. Basically, I met him a pub in Salford and started chatting about things and I set it up with Mike Bennett that I would interview him, like you’re interviewing me, and we did a very long ... well, I went to his flat, because he needed some sleevenotes for an album he was making called ‘Glamnezia’. It was a big boxset with a coffee table book and things like that and I actually don’t think it’s come out, because there’s been lots of legals surrounding The Rubettes. But, I sat and interviewed him for hours and we did this big ‘Glamnezia’ thing and we just put it on Louder Than War and it did really, really well and then I suggested that he could do some radio work for us, because I was doing a radio show on Radio Alty, which is a local radio station here [in Altrincham] and we ended up setting up our own radio station called Louder Than War Radio and then Mike became one of the presenters. He did a Thursday night ‘Freak Party’. So, he did that for a while and we used to just chat and go out for curries and things and I brought up the subject of the football record and he said, ‘Oh, let’s listen to it’ and I said, ‘I’ve just stuffed in a drawer’ and he said, ‘I’d like to hear it’. So, I sent him
the YouTube link, because it was still on YouTube and he suddenly got kind of inspired by it and he was saying, ‘Nigel, I haven’t forgotten about the football record, we’ll have to do it!’ And I was like, ‘Really? Okay!’ Yeah, because you’ve got this imposter syndrome, where you’re thinking ‘it’s not very good’, you know, but Mike, bless his heart, saw something in the record and kind of started to assemble the bones of an idea of pulling it all together. I didn’t really know that he knew all these people, but he insisted ... well, we started off doing a basic track with Alan Keary. So, Alan Keary did keyboards and programmed the drums and all that kind of thing and then he got Craig Gannon on board, from The Smiths [rhythm guitarist, 1986], on guitars and it was very much a collaborative process. It was like, ‘Nigel, how about we get Jay Stapley?’ and I’m like ‘Jay Stapley?’ He was in Suede and Roger Waters’ band and I’m like, ‘Yeah! Yeah!’ So, we sent the basic sort of basic demo track and we sent the track to Craig Gannon and he provided guitars and we sent the track to Jay Stapley and he very, very kindly did it and sent back all the electric guitar parts, feedback and all that sort of stuff, which really put some zing into it, and then, a friend of mine, David Gleave, who was in a band in the ‘80s actually called The Naughy Boys ... they weren’t successful, but they were on the Manchester scene ... and is now in band called Gustaffson with Andrew Gower and Andrew Gower plays Bonnie Prince Charlie in ‘Outlander’ [Starz / Amazon Prime Video, 2014-]. So, he’s the guitarist in that band and a very close personal friend of mine and Dave put like a bedrock of guitar all the way through it, which is really, really great and then Simon Wolstencroft [drummer The Fall, 1986-1997] came on to add a bit of percussion and then I went, ‘Oh, John?’ ... John Robb ... ‘Do you fancy doing some bass on this?’ and then he said, ‘You don’t need bass, but I’ll do some EBow guitar’. So, he did that for us and so all that expanded the sound, it just started to build up and build up and then, we were looking for a singer and I said, ‘Well, my brother can sing, we’ll get my brother to sing
From left to right: Mike Bennett, Nigel Carr, Lizi Ransome and Melanie Williams, Chorlton High School Choir with Mike, Nigel and Chip Filo
it’. So, Ian Carr is my brother and at that point, he was singing everything and we recorded all of that and all that was done in Mike Bennett’s studio and then, I heard about the Lionesses winning the Euros [UEFA Women’s Euro 2022], so I thought ‘wow, I know what we’ll do ...’ Because we were talking to Melanie Williams [Temper Temper, 1991; Sub Sub (‘Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use)’, 1993) and Haçienda Classical] anyway about her connection with Chorlton High School. We said, ‘Melanie...?’ And I poo-pooed the idea at the beginning, because I’d never head a football song sang by a woman, but it all made sense when I saw the Lionesses win, so I re-wrote one of the verses that then became ‘The Lions are all in play, The esses are the ones to show the way’, so that made sense, but then it made even better sense to have a woman singing it. And obviously she is a legend on the Manchester music scene with that song, ‘Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use)’, 1993 with Sub Sub, who became Doves [in 1996]. So, she was brought in to record it for us and her daughter, Coral [Roberts] put some ‘Ooh aah aah aahs’ on it as well, some backing vocals, and also sounded amazing. So, it was even better formed then and it was studio hopping to all these different people and then, through Melanie, who was doing a competition with them to go to the Castlefield Bowl and meet Peter Hook and see whatever she was doing there with the Haçienda Classical as well ... because I’d always said, ‘We want kids on it’, because ‘School’s Out’ [Alice Cooper, ‘School’s Out’, 1972] was a number one hit in 1972; ‘Another Brick in the Wall [Part 2]’ [‘Another Brick in the Wall’, Pink Floyd, 1979], same thing, same producer, Bob Ezrin ... Bob Ezrin suggested that they double up the verse, double up the chorus, put some children on the record and Bob Ezrin was right because ‘Another Brick in the Wall’ was a number one for Pink Floyd. And then there’s ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday’ [Wizzard, 1973], children on it. So, I thought ‘we need children out’, so Melanie arranged for this school choir at Chorlton High School to do all the harmonies and sing a verse and ...
Chorlton High School Choir with Melanie, Mike and Nigel Chorlton High School Choir with Mike, Nigel and Melanie
actually, they learnt the whole song in their music lesson! So, that was amazing! Chorlton High School were fantastic, they did an amazing job! So, the whole thing just gelled and, you know, we eventually ... we’d used all these engineers, but I needed it to be tightened up and we took a couple of BPMs off as well, just to make it a little bit quicker and this guy called Pete Gleadall, who is the musical director of the Pet Shop Boys, he was on tour with New Order and the Pet Shop Boys in Los Angeles and by the time they had got to Seattle to do their final gig, he’s sent me the final two mixes of the song. So, we got ‘the third Pet Shop Boy’! [Laughs]. And that’s why it sounds so good! He made the difference. Him and Gary Watts [engineering] made the difference. They are, in my opinion, geniuses, because they’re the guys, they’re the engineers ... we can produce, all the people here, and I was directing the choir and doing the video and Mike Bennett was furiously doing all of his amazing work, but really, the final sauce is that the engineers brought this magic and that’s why it sounds like it does, why it sounds well-produced. It’s well engineered. So, that’s the story of the record, from the inception, from my brain dreaming it, which was crazy, to the final production. Yeah, very exciting as well! And also, as well, the guys down at One Media iP were great, very encouraging. So, I went down to see Michael Infante, the CEO of One Media iP, based at Pinewood Studios, which was terribly exciting and we had lunch with Michael Infante and they have very kindly put the record out though their [One Media] iP company, which is fabulous. The whole thing is like a dream sequence, it’s crazy! Obviously, I’ve had to put my hand in my pocket a little bit. Honestly, jobbing musicians ... if you’re Bono or Bob Geldof, who have got oodles of money ... big bands can do something for charity, but there was no way I would have expected everybody to chuck in for free just because it’s for charity, so there has been some outlay, but honestly, I don’t care! You know, as long as Child Bereavement UK can make some money out it, I’m happy with that.
From left to right: Ian, Nigel and Melanie
Definitely, and Child Bereavement UK is a great cause.
Yeah, it’s fabulous. And it’s not the reason we did the record, because, as I was saying to you before, we did the record before that and we looked for a worthy cause after that. It didn’t make us do the record, it just gave us a kind of home for the funds if you know what I mean. I didn’t even think about it being for a charity beforehand. Yeah, I’m no saint, I didn’t think of that before, I kind of thought of it along the way and it kind of went from an idea ... because I needed a name for the group as well and Ian and I were just talking about it and we were going, ‘It would be nice, why don’t we do it in aid of Child Bereavement UK. But, it is, it’s like a dream sequence, the whole thing. Because I said to a friend of mine about twenty years ago and we had a drink ... I worked in the shoe business and I was in Taipei, Taiwan and we’d just got a 350,000 pair order from Peacocks for shoes, so we were so happy and we getting very drunk in this bar and this friend of mine said, ‘Nige, what’s your
Nigel and Ian
dream? What would you really like?’ and I said, ‘I’d like to write a record that got in the charts!’ [Laughs]. So, maybe, maybe! Hey, it probably won’t, but, you know, it’s kind of been like a little bit of a dream of mine, but it just needed the right moment. It could have been a Punk song, it could have been a love song, it could have been anything. You know, obviously, I’m more into Punk and Post-Punk and hard, aggressive music from, like I said, the [Sex] Pistols to The Prodigy to Aphex Twin ... you know, anything, I’m into a lot of music. So, that’s it really, the whole thing is like a dream sequence and God forbid, it becomes successful. I mean, we’re hammering it out! I don’t know, we’ll know next week! I won’t be disappointed, whatever happens; just getting it out there is a major achievement. The fact that we’ve got this far is fabulous and, you know, I’m really, really proud of it ... not in a conceited way, but I’m proud of it and I’m proud to have been involved in it. I’m proud of my brother and Melanie and Mike and everybody else for just sticking the course,
Melanie and Ian
because, you know, there’s been dodgy moments, like ‘Oh shit, we haven’t got the final mix! What are we going to do?!’, or ‘Aargh, the video! We’re going to miss the release!’ So, there’s been a little bit of ... we’ve never fallen out, but there’s been a little bit of agitation along the way. But, it’s just great that it’s out there.
I hadn’t actually realised the single had taken so long to make, but then again, with all the work that has gone into it, I don’t suppose it has actually been that long really considering what you have achieved, has it?
Do you know what, Alice? I think if I had to make an album, I think I’d go and hang myself! [Laughs]. One song has taken nine months! But, yeah, I can’t imagine doing a full album. But there’s such a lot gone into it, it really has, and, you know, my initial thought was ‘We’ll phone Dean and we’ll go into his studio with a band and we’ll just bash it out in a day, 500 quid’, but it’s not that sort of song. So, unfortunately ... you know, it’s like a
Nigel, Mike and Melanie
Trevor Horn number, it’s been layered and layered and layered and it was like, ‘Ian, we’re going to have to treble-up your vocals!’, so his vocals have got one, two, three, slight delay, slight echo, incredible!
Well, that is really good, because, like you were saying, you could have just gone into a cheap studio and done it in a couple of hours, but because it has taken so long and it has had so much put into it, it has been a real labour of love, hasn’t it?
It has been done so professionally and that’s why it has got this zing to it and you don’t get that in a cheap, one day studio. If I had a Punk band, and I did have a Punk band when I was a kid, I would have been very happy to just take them into a studio and bash it out on the guitars furiously and make it sound raw, like Garage Rock. I like Garage Rock, so, you know, that type of thing is perfect for that genre, but it’s not for this. And, quite frankly, when I was writing it, I didn’t even know what genre it was going to be! I don’t even
England v Iran. Photograph by Ian MacNicol
know what genre it is now, because it’s not Punk, it’s not Rock, it’s not Soft Rock ... the drums have got a lovely shoegazey shuffle to them and, you know, you’ve got a lot of modern stuff in there and then you’ve got amazing Rock guitar, so I can’t even categorise the song now, even when it’s finished! It spans the genres a bit, it’s anthemic, and there’s an Indie edge to it as well.
As we were discussing earlier, with a release date of the 18th of November, ‘Come on England (You Better Believe It)’ actually went head to head with David Baddiel, Frank Skinner and the Lightning Seeds’ updated version of the legendary ‘Three Lions’, which has been revamped as not only a football anthem, but also a Christmas anthem entitled ‘Three Lions (It’s Coming Home for Christmas)’. Much like the new version of ‘Three Lions’, ‘Come on England (You Better Believe It)’ taps into the hopes and dreams of a nation who, following the recent success of the Lionesses in the recent UEFA Women’s Euro
England v USA
2022, still believe that the England men’s team can go all the way in Qatar, but how do you rate England’s chances and what predictions do you have for the tournament?
I think that we have a very good chance of getting through the first stages. We’re playing Iran [England 6, Iran 2] and then the USA [England 0, USA 0] and then Wales [England 3, Wales 0] and I think that maybe the USA will give us a run for our money and are maybe, and forgive me, we are better than Wales and definitely Iran, so I think we will definitely get through the first stages and then really, it’s in the lap of the Gods. I haven’t followed every single England game to be an expert on it, to give you the expert critique, because my knowledge of football is that my mother and father we’re Manchester United fans when I was a kid, so they had season tickets, but there were three boys and you can’t take three boys to the match, so no boys went to the match! That was the difficult thing, so in terms of my own
England v Wales
football upbringing, yeah, I’m a Man United fan, but do I go and watch them every weekend? No. Do I watch them in tournaments? Yes. Do I watch the England team? Yes, of course. And, call me what you want, call me a fairweather football fan, but, you know, I like to see Man United win and I love to see England win, but as for their chances, I think they’ve got a fighting chance. I think Brazil are strong; obviously France are strong, but, you know, you can never discount Germany. It just depends whether we get through that Argentina section. If we can beat Argentina, then obviously, we can get through and win. I’ve seen a sort of schematic, sort of pie chart of the matches that we’ve got to get through to win. So, yeah, it’s in the lap of the Gods, I think. Southgate’s a competent manager and if he wasn’t, he would be manager and he obviously has been for the past X years. I think we’ve got a fighting chance, but I’m not the expert, honestly!
If you had to name your favourite England World Cup moment from
Most iconic World Cup moment? What else?
any tournament during your lifetime, what would it be and why?
Alice, there’s only one and that’s when we won it in 1966! When the crowd was on the pitch! We even used it in the lyrics, ‘The crowds are on the pitch, It’s been that way since 1966’. But that’s the iconic moment, when Kenneth Wolstenholme said, ‘Some people are on the pitch ... they think it’s all over ... it is now!’ That is the iconic moment and even though I’ve got no recollection of it, because I was too young, it really is that moment when we last lifted the World Cup, that moment with Bobby Moore holding the cup aloft with everybody else. That is the iconic moment. And really, unfortunately, we’ve not surpassed it and it’s not been that way since 1966 and I don’t know, it’s like a blight on England, isn’t it? It’s like a curse! I mean, the World Cup started in like 1930 [when it was held in Uruguay, with the host country being crowned the winners. England did not take part in a World Cup until 1950, when the tournament was held in Brazil, with
Uruguay winning their second title] and we’ve won it once! And we invented football, it’s our national game and we’ve won once in the ninety years of the tournament, so yeah, what is the iconic moment? Of course that’s the iconic moment. Everything else, unfortunately, apart from David Beckham bending a few in, you know, probably our memories of the World Cup are blighted by the failed penalty shoot-outs and again, I allude to that in the song, you know, ‘No more open skies, No more tries’, where it goes over the bar, right? I’ve kind of intertwined some of that frustration into the lyrics, because it’s kind of written from the point of view of a frustrated England football fan, ‘Come on England! ... No more tries!’ So, the lyrics kind of reflect the view of a frustrated England fan, because there’s nothing greater than just down to Earth pragmatism and, you know, we can hope and we can dream and pretend we’re going to win, but this song is not about ‘we’re going to win’, it’s ‘please win!’ [Laughs]. There’s no pretence there, it’s about having your feet firmly on the ground and going ‘Come on England!’
Finally, this interview will be featured in our Christmas issue and, hopefully, with a bit of luck, by the time it goes to print, England will still be in the World Cup. But, regardless of what happens, do you have a Christmas message for our readers and football fans?
Never lose hope. There was a wonderful line that was scrawled on the side of our local pub, the Cheshire Midland and everybody had their photograph taken under it and it said, ‘There is always hope’. And do you know what? As long as you’ve got that ... And people forget very, very quickly. If we crash out of this tournament, there will be a sort of sultry few months where we’re going ‘Oh my God’, but after that, we’ll be thinking about the Euros [UEFA Euro 2024] and we’ll be celebrating the women’s victories and we’ll have something to be proud of the team about. But, all I would say is, you know, if we’re winning, fabulous, but if we’re not, look, there’s always hope and that’s all you can say really, because without hope, there’s nothing. The problem at the moment is, there’s so much negativity in the world. But, if we lifted the trophy, it would be such a fillip and it just makes people feel better and things are bad, but, you know, it would be so good if we could win it. Just keep your hopes up, that’s what I would say, that’s the most important thing.
Thank you for a wonderful interview, it has been lovely chatting to you. We wish you all the best with ‘Come on England (You Better Believe It)’ and for the future.
‘Come on England (You Better Believe It)’ is out now on One Media iP.
mybeatingheartmusic.com
