8 November 1963
Are Gerry and The Pacemakers a Liverpool Aslan to The Beatles’ U2? I ask because here in Dublin, Aslan are seen as the people’s band and U2 the band for tourists. Football being the people’s game and a crucial Merseyside identifier, Liverpool’s terrace anthem is this Gerry track, and there’s no one Lennon or McCartney song as famously synonymous with either Liverpool or Everton. After the Hillsborough disaster in 1989, a high-profile charity fundraising single saw Paul joining the massed ranks of other Liverpool pop personalities on the Gerry-penned ‘Ferry ‘Cross The Mersey’. McCartney and Marsden had previously contributed to a charity ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ after the 1985 Bradford stadium fire. Even at Strawberry Fields in Central Park the Lennon paraphernalia includes souvenir Liverpool club badge plaques with the words You’ll Never Walk Alone; perhaps the cognitive dissonance at seeing a famous Gerry and The Pacemakers song title at a Beatle memorial site was mine alone.
(Digression: The Beatles’ personal football loyalties are not as clear. Paul has said he’s an Everton fan through family allegiance, but has also occasionally chanced the old I-follow-both gambit of diplomacy. John and George weren’t known to have an interest in either club or even in football generally. Ringo through his London-born stepfather may actually have been a childhood fan of Arsenal. Now read on.)
Anyway, this Gerry single now has a cultural impact far above that of a mere 1963 Merseybeat hit. As a recording ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ is solid and functional. Maybe those involved knew that the song’s inbuilt stirring inspirational feels, though not religious in the context of source musical Carousel, were sufficient to do the anthemic heavy lifting on their own. Being a Rodgers & Hammerstein composition produced by George Martin also helps: the chord changes in the second part of the verse stir up the emotional content underpinned by restrained strings, and the climactic drop-out to Marsden’s Everyman voice is a solid choice. For a record that, more than you’d expect, holds back from histrionics and sentimentality, ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ has led a remarkable afterlife as the people’s song.
