Football and Music

Last one in this KK themed week:

A tribute song done after KK had legged it resigned from the Barcodes.

- A quick reminder of that period from this excellent page about Kev »

It was little surprise to see Kevin’s return to top football management. The king of motivators returned at Newcastle United, which had barely survived relegation to the (old) third Division the season before. It was a triumphant return for Kevin, as he immediately helped the club win the Division One Championship (1992-93) ensuring that the Newcastle United were around for the Premiership from its second season of formation. His god-like status as a player for Newcastle thus continued in his new role as manager, and in subsequent seasons Newcastle finished 3rd, 6th, and runners-up to Manchester United.

But by the next season, the pressure was beginning to tell, a 9 point Championship lead in February 1996 slowly eroded away, and by March Man U were on top again. The Manchester United manager, Sir Alex Ferguson’s gamesmanship got the better of wor Kev. On 29 April, Newcastle beat Leeds United 1-0 to record the side’s third win on the trot, and believing Sir Alex had tried to stir up the Leeds players to win 12 days earlier, Kevin flipped on a Sky TV interview.

All cruel fans just love to see it repeated again and again. Not least because Newcastle ultimately bottled it, in spite of - or maybe because of - Kevin’s high emotions, and were runners-up to Manchester United for the second season on the trot. Halfway through the next campaign, Kevin left the club - curiously to be replaced by Kenny Dalglish as he had been as a player at Liverpool.

Heady days. Not seen since.

I can understand after what happened in KK’s steerage of the club that somebody would pick up a guitar and compose a tune. Luckily it wasn’t Ant & Dec.

Ronnie Lambert, under the alias of “Busker” is a musician from Gateshead who has sung and released a CD of tunes dedicated to Newcastle Utd.

On that album is this track wrote especially for wor Kev:

» Busker - Thank You Kevin

As mentioned the other day I discovered that KK had attempted chart success three times. Head Over Heels wasn’t his first crack at it. In fact he started earlier than this with a single which sadly I didn’t have any success in finding.

I did find the info about the record - It was released in 1973 and the song was “It Ain’t Easy”. But no success with any audio. If anyone out there does have this in their possession, or knows the whereabouts to purchase a copy give me a shout.

Until then we’ll have to make do with the B side to Head Over Heels in which Kev and his chums let their hair dow… uncurls his perm a bit, loosens his wide lapels and lets his bellbottoms swing and rocks out with…

» Kev Keegan - Move On Down

“Hey Hey !

Welcome to Keegan’s Klassic Klips…

What was that ?”

*Looks around*

“Oh this can’t be good…

Roll the clips.”

Edit: MickMills also reminded me of a bit of football/musical/televisual history which I forgot about but cursing myself as soon as I remembered. It was a Jess Conrad level of craptacular when KK got together to sing with Little and Large on their TV show. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it - this moment of Light Entertainment hell doesn’t exist anymore. Unless you know different…

Next up - A slideshow with some memories of the curly perm:

This is part 2 of the KK week. Part 1 here

Ah Kev you old romantic you… I assume he was singing it about his missus ? Was he married at the time…?

You see that’s how it should be. Not like nowadays when the WAG’s get more newspaper print dedicated to them than their talented footie playing husbands. Back when I were a lad we heard and read about how they were playing on the field, not in the nightclub. Apart from Bestie of course, he was the exception to the rule.

But things were changing and footballers realised that there was a big earning potential off the pitch. Again nowadays the bigger money is to be made with fat contracts, but this is before the greed boost in their wages.

KK was one of the pioneers in selling his name and image to bring in a few more quid. Tomorrow I’ll be posting examples of this, but for today back to KK the old romantic -

Actually it wasn’t Keegan who what wrote this song…

A quick Google tells me that: “The song, written by former Smokie members, Chris Norman and Pete Spencer, entered the British charts on 9 June 1979, reached number 31 and stayed around for 6 weeks.

The composers went on to write ‘This Time (We’ll Get it Right)‘, which was the official single for the England World Cup Squad in 1982.”
…Which of course the original perm sang on as part of the team.

» Kevin Keegan - Head Over Heels In Love

Sample Lyrics: “I’ve got news for you babe / all the things you do babe / make me think of how it used to be”

This is the first post in what will be the Kevin Keegan week. All KK. All week long.

As MickMills remarked when he sent me the short video clip which started me off on this particular journey: “What is it with Keegan & singing…?”

He’s right you know. There have been other players (and subsequent managers) who have “assaulted” the charts, but none of them have gone after the musical success as much as the original footballing perm.

As mentioned the Prediction League playing Tractor Boy emailed me with sadly only a very brief clip [embedded and available to view to the right of this column] of KK and it has the audio from his third single.

Yes you thought it was only two but no. Three times did Kev hit the studio.

There will be more, much more about KK and his other recordings throughout the week, but for today…

- After a search far and wide I now present to you the full audio of his 1980 release in which the Mighty Mouse from England, still at Hamburg at the time, got a bit homesick and sang about wanting to be home again:

» Kevin Keegan - England