Footy and Music

“Gah,” I said to DD the other night when the footy kept switching off, “Gah, this is crap. What they playing at?”

“I reckon the director’s pausing it to have a crafty tug over those German birds in the crowd”, said DD (who is an unbelievable pervert and should not really be allowed out on his own).

“No,” I said, “Cos it happened to Iron Maiden the other week as well.”

“Oh aye?” DD replied, “What happened?”

“They had a game of footy onstage instead,” I explained.

That was true, actually; at

Madison
Square
Garden, no less. It’s not a secret that Maiden are massive soccerists – bassist Steve ‘Arry Harris was on the books of West Ham as a youngster before he discovered the ol’ rock n’ roll and as he was rather good at it, and very tenacious, Maiden kinda proved he made the right decision. During the Eighties, too, Team Maiden literally would go round
Europe playing challenge and charity matches against local teams, other bands, journalists and whoever was about.

Footy and music are, of course, linked massively – DJ Erol Alkan was a very talented player and Kasabian’s Sergio Pizzorno was on the books of Nottingham Forest as a youngster, sharing pitch space with the likes of Jermaine Jenas, who to my knowledge has never scored a volley quite as sweet as Serge did on Soccer AM.

Football writing and music writing share many traits too because what you’re being asked to do is interpret an artistic value in another discipline and translate it or pin it down to the page. It’s a curious blend of approaches, really, that’s best termed ‘objective subjectivity’, which is a posh way of saying that we get paid to talk shit about other people’s cool records or gigs, in the same way that a footy reporter makes his living writing about mad skillz other people display on the park. One day someone will find us out and then we’re all out of a job so don’t tell anyone, for fuck’s sake.

Just to extrapolate that one a little bit further, there was one rather incoherent conversation that took place in NASA Club over in

Reykjavik when me and a rock-obsessed colleague decided that we’d make up a team of rock stars to coincide with the World Cup, each with their own particular traits and reasons to be there. It fell down a little due to a little too much Brennvin, and because we ended up I think having to put Frank Black in goal essentially because he was the fattest one we could think of who was in a cool band and who wasn’t Meat Loaf. (Actually we could have had Frank’s brother Jack I guess. He likes the pie, clearly, and Tenacious D are a real band with albums and celeb mates and appear in Dave Grohl’s videos and everything.)

It all stemmed originally from a conversation about how a five-a-side team equates to a classic band set-up as below, made up of rock bands in honour of that conversation and the princely chap that inspired it all:

Goalie = Drums

Big strong fucker who keeps the whole thing together, capable of true acrobatics when called upon.

Examples: Brad Friedel, Travis Barker (Blink 182)

Bass = Centre Half

Fat one who’s not much good at anything else and a bit filthy to boot.

Examples: Neil Ruddock, Fieldy (Korn)

Rhythm Guitar = Centre/Defensive Midfield

All-rounder with a bit of panache but the discipline to slot into the system, makes everyone look better.

Examples: Claude Makelele, Malcolm Young (AC/DC)

Lead Guitar = In The Hole/Tricky Winger

Ponce with stupid hair who gets away with murder just cos he’s got a few tricks.

Examples: Carlos Valderrama, Yngwie J. Malmsteen (Solo Swedish Widdly Man)

Singer = Star Striker

Gets all the glory, girls and thinks it’s all cos of him when actually the ball hit him on the arse on the goal-line when he was sitting down crying about a perceived foul or some such shit.

Examples: Didier Drogba, Justin Hawkins (The Darkness)

So there you go. I have no idea what that proves. But it definitely proves something. I think.