Jevons (A Ballad To)
November 5, 2008 | Music | Tags: Everton, GrimsbyTown | Add a Comment »
Phil Jevons… Some of you have heard of him, some of you know of him – and one particular musician who is also a Grimsby fan sung about him.
(Quite a spooky image I created there)
For the uninitiated: Phil Jevons (a striker) was a product of Everton’s youth academy, but he didn’t successfully “graduate” to the first team. In the five years he was at the club Jevons only made 8 starts but didn’t score once. Eventually he was sold to Grimsby Town and this move was well… I’ll let Pete Green, the musician/Grimsby fan who composed the song tell the story:
The Ballad of Phil Jevons
Jevons is a forward signed by Grimsby Town from Everton in 2001. He didn’t score many goals to start with and seemed to lose his way a bit, and then Town stopped playing him (partly because they’d have to pay Everton more money once he made a certain number of appearances), so in that sense this song is slightly unfair, because if he didn’t always look very interested then circumstances were against him as well. The song is partly about my hypocrisy for thinking he was lazy when I’m the laziest bastard going.
Anyway, when Town looked set for a second successive relegation they put him back in the team as a last resort and he suddenly started scoring a lot, but not enough to keep us up, and he left on a Bosman after a horrible defeat at Tranmere in May 2004.
To start with I just wrote the song to amuse my fellow Grimsby-supporting mates, and never intended it for public performance because I didn’t think it’d mean anything to anyone. But then I thought: hmm, well, the enigmatic, gifted-but-lazy footballer is sort of an everyman figure really. Then I thought: hmm, and it’s quite a nice melody so it’d be a shame to waste it, and if people don’t get it, tough titty!
So there you have it:
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Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. » Pete Green – The Ballad of Phil Jevons » How can I object to you
if you score four times in an afternoon? Phil, your boots are white but if you fill your boots like that, we’ll forgive that shite Your finishing was really quite sublime The Barnsley fans were leaving at half time A Scouser’s work is never done And you and me are just a pair of slackers Four grand a week with bonuses You shrugged your shoulders as the Mariners went down |
- I’ve mentioned a couple of times about the singer Pete Green being a big Grimsby Town fan: He is a co-editor and writer for the Grimsby Town FC web fanzine Cod Almighty.
Thanks once again to Jim in York for giving me the nod.
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