The story behind Viva El Fulham - and why it's time to bring it back
In light of our Spanish revolution...
This caught on - and, given our recent links with Real Madrid, could well do again!
The early 1970s was the era of the European package holiday. Families turned their back on staycations as air travel prices plunged and sales of suncream soared. Y Viva Espana, a Number 4 hit in the summer of 1974 for the exotically named Sylvia Vrethammar (she wisely dropped the last bit) was the song on everyone’s lips.
It was also the era of the FA Cup song, and when West Ham and Fulham made it to Wembley in 1975 there was clearly going to be a battle for supremacy on the airwaves, if not at Top of the Pops.
The Hammers rather boringly updated their familiar I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles anthem, which achieved the higher chart placing at Number 31 thanks to singer Tony Burrows of Edison Lighthouse/Brotherhood of Man fame helping the players out. But who remembers that now?
Instead, those of a certain age recall Viva El Fulham, a crass, obvious yet simply unforgettable variation on Sylvia’s hit of the previous year.
Credited to Tony Rees and the Cottagers, it struggled to Number 46, peaking the week after the game (spoiler for younger readers - we lost 2-0). Billed in the Guinness Book of Hit Singles as by a “Fulham FC supporters vocal group”, it was the first time this writer ever heard us referred to as the Cottagers - prior to that it had always been the Lilywhites or, simply, Whites.
The song enjoyed a new lease of life decades later when, in 1997, the then locally-based Cherry Red Records included FFC in a series of football club-themed CD compilations. Entitled You Lucky People, after a catchphrase of former chairman Tommy Trinder, it featured Viva... as its very first song. It’s clear there weren’t many candidates for inclusion, as the last four tracks were recent interviews with famous players Jimmy Hill, George Cohen, Johnny Haynes and John Mitchell. Mitch had at least played in the final as well as scoring the goal that took us there.
Yet the release Cherry Red didn’t locate is maybe the most interesting - a rival to Viva El Fulham called The Boys In White. Having competing FA Cup Final songs was a rarity indeed, and no audio of this single can be found.
Credited to Cottage Pie, The Boys In White was penned by one Harold Spiro. He wrote football-related songs for Arsenal, Sunderland and QPR among others and, two years earlier, had been the brains behind Spurs’‘s Nice One Cyril. More interesting still, he was the person who set Here we go... to music, borrowing the Stars And Stripes Forever theme in 1976 to create a universal terrace anthem.
The strains of Viva El Fulham have occasionally been heard wafting across the Hammersmith End in subsequent years, to the mild confusion of anyone under late middle age. Surely, with this summer’s Hispanic revolution, some genius can update the words and bring Tony Rees’ finest three and a half minutes back to the FFC songbook.
Viva Garcia: what do you mean, it’ll never catch on?