The Crowd – ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’

22 June 1985

In May 1985 a fire ripped through the crowded wooden main stand of Bradford’s Valley Parade stadium during the home side’s final game of the season; 56 people died and hundreds more were injured. This was a charity single to raise funds for the victims and families.

There aren’t Band Aid levels of starriness here. Of whatever pop acts are in the video I recognised only the four Nolans and a bearded, shaded Jim Diamond (the latter rather shamelessly recreating his studio pose from the video of ‘I Should Have Known Better’), and I can’t say any performance stands out. ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ is a terrace anthem anyway so it suits the immediate purpose of raising money for a football community. At this remove there’s a cruel irony in the choice of a song most associated with Liverpool supporters, who four years later were to face another English stadium disaster.