In League With The Devil's Music

If anything can possibly be worse than a musical hero following one of your rivals it must be someone who you would consider to be the bane of your musical life following your beloved side, for Arsenal have quite a few of those. Islington born and bred, singer Dido (left) to her credit did the decent thing and supported her local side; it’s just a shame her musical output happens to be terminally dull. In an interview with Four Four Two magazine in September 2003 she reveals that her father had taken her and her older brother, Rollo from the equally dreary techno band Faithless from a very young age. She had also dated Sol Campbell back in 2004. Dido stated in the 2003 article that she held no objection to the gentrification of the club in recent years, then again how could she oppose gentrification of anything when her albums are more than likely to be the soundtrack of many a dinner party held by the flood of nauseating bourgeois types who have invaded the borough of Islington in recent years.

As a fan of Soul music I've always considered M People's bland radio friendly output the antithesis of the genre. As those who have subscribed to Arsenal TV know full well their Bass player Shovel, quite possibly named after the instrument I'd like to hit him with, has tried to build for himself a second career as a professional Gooner. From the same brand of Anti-Soul we also have Sharleen Spiteri from Texas - The band who was once famously second on the bill to David Brent’s Foregone Conclusion. She is also a major fan of North London’s finest and is close friends with Thierry Henry. Henry, as many of you will remember, had announced the birth of her daughter Misty Kyd via a message on his shirt after scoring against Manchester City on the same day back in September 2002. (below)


On the subject of music which lacks any authentic degree of soul, were it not for that well known maxim ‘Americans don’t do irony’ you would have expected Starsky and Hutch actor turned singer David Richard Soulberg to have chosen his adopted moniker with a large dollop of the stuff. If he’s dreary ballads were typical of the charts circa 1976-77 then no wonder many a pop picker turned toward the anger and alienation of Punk rock. However on emigrating to London in the mid 90s Mr Soul had took residence in Islington and had encountered David Dein at a dinner party in the local area. As he explains ‘I talked to a gentleman for several hours about everything except football, and at the end of the evening I asked him what he did. He told me he was the vice-chairman of Arsenal’. After taking up David Dein’s invite to attend a game at Highbury, Soul became hooked on the red and white. The career high point for David Soul had been displacing Elvis from the UK number one spot he had been occupying for 6 weeks in the wake of the King’s untimely death in 1977 with the tune ‘Silver Lady’. Who knows, maybe another Trophyless season for the Arsenal might see Soul displacing Elvis’s ‘Wonder of You’ with his other UK chart topper ‘Don’t Give Up On Us’ as our official anthem (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlfhIo4QeAg).

If the dross of mid 70s pop is personified by David Soul, then symbolic of the detritus that is early to mid 80s music and style are Islington born and bred Spandau Ballet. Lead singer Tony Hadley and the Kemp brothers have publicly professed their allegance to the Arsenal, the latter two even decorated their house red and white for the 1971 FA Cup final. Gary Kemp explains though how at the start of the decade they helped to define, his Football supporting was relegated to back of his rather extravagent closet. He explains that ' if you’d asked me who I was in the early ’70s, the answer would have been simple. I was an Arsenal fan and a David Bowie fan. As I got older there was a period when I started to hide the football side away. You wouldn’t go to the New Romantic nightclubs, such as Billy’s or the Blitz, and talk loudly about football'. However by 1986 two of the Spandau boys publicly attached themselves to the beautiful game in it's ugly post-Heysel period. Both Martin Kemp and Steve Norman (below) were snapped up by legendary player manager Roy Race for Melchester Rovers.


In consideration of the flatness of the surrounding landscape of 80s pop, Wham, with hindsight seem reasonably good. In terms of ability though, they were very much a one man band. George Michael's musical partnership with Andrew Ridgeley could well be described as thus - George made the music, Andrew made the coffee. In expressing the dreadfulness of Jedward, Frank Skinner had described them in his column in the Times as 'Wham made up entirely from a partnership of Andrew Ridgeley and Andrew Ridgeley'. Sadly for us though, it's Andrew who is the confirmed Gooner. Appearing on Fantasy Football League in the mid 1990s, Andrew had revealed that he was an Arsenal fan, just as Football and indeed the Arsenal were becoming more and more fashionable. However this would come as a great surprise to avid viewers of 80s pop videos. In the video for Freedom in 1984, back in the days when Arsenal were banned from Match of the Day for being too dull and Islington was much less fashionable, Andrew quite clearly sports a QPR shirt (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d_1puJ4kFQ). What would be cool though is if Andrew ever accompanied the talented one to Highbury. Did Andrew ever take George up the Arsenal? Maybe they were never that close.

We did however dodge a major bullet in the 80s. I can recall at the infamous FA Cup 3rd Round tie against Millwall in 1988, while surrounded by ugly scenes on the terraces an equally ugly one appeared on the pitch. Phil Collins had turned up to present a cheque to the winner of the Arsenal Lotto, leaving us wondering if the bald one was a Gooner. In a Shoot magazine feature on famous fans, I remember Collins had been listed as a QPR fan. Was Phil going through an Andrew Ridgeley moment and considering defecting to the Arsenal? Quite possibly. Luckily though, a few years later at the 1991 FA Cup Semi against Spurs at Wembley, at the height of national 'Gazzamania' the Beeb had interviewed 'Tottenham fan' Phil Collins at half time. Sadly for Collins (below), I very much doubt that he has experienced too many days in Paradise since.