The Great American songbook has been a gift that keeps on giving. From the early years of Broadway, the “standards” have been reinvented and reimagined by countless musicians in jazz and beyond. These songs live on in clubs, concert halls, and believe it or not, in soccer games — particularly those of Liverpool Football Club, a top-flight English team.
For 60 years, a number from that songbook has been sung before the first whistle of every home match. A sanguine ballad from the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel: “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”
The version that first rang out in the stands of Anfield — Liverpool’s home stadium — was from a hometown merseybeat group Gerry & the Pacemakers who recorded it in 1963. The song forever became entwined with the team during a stateside visit the following year when players from the club joined the band to perform the song on the Ed Sullivan Show.
Bill Shankly, the manager of the club at the time, was smitten with the song — so much as to tell the lead singer of the band “Gerry my son, I have given you a football team and you have given us a song.” Following Shankly’s passing in the early 1980s, one of the gates at Anfield was named in his honor, with “You’ll Never Walk Alone” enshrined in the iron.
It has become an almost sacred, communal ritual for Liverpool fans. Singing shoulder to shoulder, 60,000 strong at their home stadium and across the world at gatherings of over 300 Official Supporters Clubs, including ones in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the New Jersey Shore.
“The words of the song…It really embodies the feeling of family with Liverpool fans.” says Dominic Riozzi, a Liverpool expat who is on the board of the New Jersey-based supporters club.
“You’re welcomed with open arms, wherever you go… It’s a really strong motto that we have. And the sense of family that it brings to us is just amazing.”