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winterbadgerDecember 4, 2004
THE SATURDAY PROFILE
The Poetry of 'Gimme an A! Gimme an S! Gimme a T!'
By SARAH LYALL
BIRMINGHAM, England
AS the poet laureate in charge of soccer chants, Jonny Hurst does not have as high a public profile as, say, Andrew Motion, the poet laureate of Britain itself.
But then again, Mr. Motion has never had occasion to write a little song about a dishy Aston Villa player who comes from Colombia and wears headbands during games. Set to the tune of "Copacabana," the chant begins:
His name is Angel
And he's a show boy.
An Alice band keeps up his hair:
Juan Pablo from Col-om-biare.
Trying to explain exactly what his job entails, the 38-year-old Mr. Hurst - who as it happens is a fan of Birmingham City, Aston Villa's sworn enemy - said, "The brief isn't to write about what my team is doing." Which is lucky, because otherwise he would surely antagonize fans of the 19 other teams in the English Premiership soccer league.
Mr. Hurst is the nation's first chant laureate, charged, he said, with "chronicling developments in the football season." (That's soccer, to Americans.) He makes twice as much money as the poet laureate, £10,000 ($19,200) for a year's work, but their responsibilities are vaguely similar. Interviewed while on the job the other day at a soccer match between Tottenham Hotspur and Aston Villa, Mr. Hurst said the poet laureate reacted to national events, and "I respond to footballing events."
Traditional chants are as essential to British soccer as the seventh-inning stretch is to American baseball. Deeply embedded in the game's working-class, tribal roots, chants are a way of bolstering your own team, displaying toughness, cynicism and sometimes sentimentality, and mercilessly homing in on your opponents' every weakness.
Many are short, snappy and mean. Opponents of Liverpool, for instance, like to remind its supporters of the blight and misery the city suffered in the 1980's. To the tune of the team song, "You'll Never Walk Alone," they chant: "You'll never get a job."
No one in Villa Park for the game the other day seemed aware that the chant laureate himself, in blue jeans and an oversize urban-chic parka, was in their midst. In his real life, Mr. Hurst is a short, mild-mannered partner in a commercial-property law firm. He has thinning dark hair, strong eyebrows over olive-colored eyes and a finely tuned appreciation of the subtle distinctions among the viciously competitive teams in the upper echelon of British football.
HE grew up in Solihull, in Birmingham, where people preferred Birmingham City to Aston Villa or else kept quiet. His father, who ran a company that made baby equipment, was indifferent to soccer; his grandparents were not, and he inherited his passion for the game from them. Today, Mr. Hurst lives in a complicated multi-loyalty household in London, which includes a wife who supports Chelsea and two children who support Arsenal. (A third has not yet declared a preference, being too young to talk.)
He has an encyclopedic knowledge of soccer history and takes his role as chant laureate seriously, attending soccer games, watching televised matches, listening to soccer-themed talk radio and, during the lulls, getting soccer updates via text messages on his cellphone.
"It's a good excuse for my wife, because I can tell her that I'm working," Mr. Hurst said.
Years ago, the chant laureate did some stand-up comedy and performed in sketches, playing at the Edinburgh Fringe, among other places. He still writes satirical pastiches of pop songs for fun and for the last 15 years has been contributing to the News Review, a topical comedy stage show in London. When a friend heard that Barclays Bank, the corporate sponsor of premiership football, had organized a competition to find a chant laureate, he immediately urged Mr. Hurst to apply.
He beat out some 1,500 other would-be laureates after producing 20 chants that a group of professional singers performed for the five-panel judge Mr. Motion, one of the judges, declared that Mr. Hurst "stood out head and shoulders above the others," for his "wit, humor, energy and inventiveness."
Although poets laureate are still rare in Britain, institutions like law firms, department stores, zoos and, in one instance, a gardening cooperative in Grimsby regularly sponsor poets-in-residence. Mr. Hurst is in that tradition but apart from it, too, because his poems are meant not to be recited, but chanted. At least in theory.
As the game in Villa Park progressed, the different sets of fans broke out into spontaneous chanting, as fans always do. Many of the chants were X-rated, and not the best examples of soaring poetry. "You'll notice that most of the football chants tend to be one-liners, or two lines at the most," Mr. Hurst said.
Was he disappointed that no one was belting out "At the Villa, at Aston Villa/The greatest club west of Manila," two lines that he included in his winning contest entry?
Not at all, he said. "My job isn't to get them to sing what I write, but to raise the bar of the quality." Anyway, his chants are more like poems or songs, he said.
Mr. Hurst recently wrote a chant commemorating Sir Alex Ferguson's 1,000th game as manager of Manchester United. To the tune of "Mrs. Robinson," it begins:
So here's to you, Mr. Ferguson,
You're the greatest coach this club
Has seen (like Aberdeen).
In other chants he has noted the death of Brian Clough, a soccer star from the past; marked the end of Arsenal's 49-game winning streak, and commented on the fact that three top English players are now playing for Real Madrid, a glitzy team that has not done so well this season. To the tune of "Three Little Maids from School" from "The Mikado," it begins:
Three brittle boys in Spain are we,
Each of us prone to injury.
"Real" signed us all for a handsome fee;
Three brittle boys in Spain.
Mr. Hurst's appointment last spring was not greeted with universal excitement by soccer's jaundiced, snippy fans.
"Football doesn't need a chant laureate, especially if the chant that won was as dire as that," groused Michael from Sunderland, responding to the Aston Villa chant in a posting on the BBC News Web site. "Chants should be simple and to the point, not some long-winded rubbish about a rubbish Midlands club."
Mr. Hurst says there is room for well-considered chants from outsiders as much as for spontaneous chants from partisans, and that soccer is as full of elation as gloom.
"Football is all about joy and disaster, and not much in between," he said. "It's a game, when it's played well, that is poetry in motion."
In his official capacity as chant laureate, Mr. Hurst recently wrote a chant for a boys' soccer team that always loses, as disastrously as the Mets did in the early 1960's. To the tune of Busted's "Year 3000," the song predicts a better future.
"Apparently the team are now singing it," Mr. Hurst said. "I don't think their results are any better, but maybe they feel a little better about themselves."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company ---
THE SATURDAY PROFILE
The Poetry of 'Gimme an A! Gimme an S! Gimme a T!'
By SARAH LYALL
BIRMINGHAM, England
AS the poet laureate in charge of soccer chants, Jonny Hurst does not have as high a public profile as, say, Andrew Motion, the poet laureate of Britain itself.
But then again, Mr. Motion has never had occasion to write a little song about a dishy Aston Villa player who comes from Colombia and wears headbands during games. Set to the tune of "Copacabana," the chant begins:
His name is Angel
And he's a show boy.
An Alice band keeps up his hair:
Juan Pablo from Col-om-biare.
Trying to explain exactly what his job entails, the 38-year-old Mr. Hurst - who as it happens is a fan of Birmingham City, Aston Villa's sworn enemy - said, "The brief isn't to write about what my team is doing." Which is lucky, because otherwise he would surely antagonize fans of the 19 other teams in the English Premiership soccer league.
Mr. Hurst is the nation's first chant laureate, charged, he said, with "chronicling developments in the football season." (That's soccer, to Americans.) He makes twice as much money as the poet laureate, £10,000 ($19,200) for a year's work, but their responsibilities are vaguely similar. Interviewed while on the job the other day at a soccer match between Tottenham Hotspur and Aston Villa, Mr. Hurst said the poet laureate reacted to national events, and "I respond to footballing events."
Traditional chants are as essential to British soccer as the seventh-inning stretch is to American baseball. Deeply embedded in the game's working-class, tribal roots, chants are a way of bolstering your own team, displaying toughness, cynicism and sometimes sentimentality, and mercilessly homing in on your opponents' every weakness.
Many are short, snappy and mean. Opponents of Liverpool, for instance, like to remind its supporters of the blight and misery the city suffered in the 1980's. To the tune of the team song, "You'll Never Walk Alone," they chant: "You'll never get a job."
No one in Villa Park for the game the other day seemed aware that the chant laureate himself, in blue jeans and an oversize urban-chic parka, was in their midst. In his real life, Mr. Hurst is a short, mild-mannered partner in a commercial-property law firm. He has thinning dark hair, strong eyebrows over olive-colored eyes and a finely tuned appreciation of the subtle distinctions among the viciously competitive teams in the upper echelon of British football.
HE grew up in Solihull, in Birmingham, where people preferred Birmingham City to Aston Villa or else kept quiet. His father, who ran a company that made baby equipment, was indifferent to soccer; his grandparents were not, and he inherited his passion for the game from them. Today, Mr. Hurst lives in a complicated multi-loyalty household in London, which includes a wife who supports Chelsea and two children who support Arsenal. (A third has not yet declared a preference, being too young to talk.)
He has an encyclopedic knowledge of soccer history and takes his role as chant laureate seriously, attending soccer games, watching televised matches, listening to soccer-themed talk radio and, during the lulls, getting soccer updates via text messages on his cellphone.
"It's a good excuse for my wife, because I can tell her that I'm working," Mr. Hurst said.
Years ago, the chant laureate did some stand-up comedy and performed in sketches, playing at the Edinburgh Fringe, among other places. He still writes satirical pastiches of pop songs for fun and for the last 15 years has been contributing to the News Review, a topical comedy stage show in London. When a friend heard that Barclays Bank, the corporate sponsor of premiership football, had organized a competition to find a chant laureate, he immediately urged Mr. Hurst to apply.
He beat out some 1,500 other would-be laureates after producing 20 chants that a group of professional singers performed for the five-panel judge Mr. Motion, one of the judges, declared that Mr. Hurst "stood out head and shoulders above the others," for his "wit, humor, energy and inventiveness."
Although poets laureate are still rare in Britain, institutions like law firms, department stores, zoos and, in one instance, a gardening cooperative in Grimsby regularly sponsor poets-in-residence. Mr. Hurst is in that tradition but apart from it, too, because his poems are meant not to be recited, but chanted. At least in theory.
As the game in Villa Park progressed, the different sets of fans broke out into spontaneous chanting, as fans always do. Many of the chants were X-rated, and not the best examples of soaring poetry. "You'll notice that most of the football chants tend to be one-liners, or two lines at the most," Mr. Hurst said.
Was he disappointed that no one was belting out "At the Villa, at Aston Villa/The greatest club west of Manila," two lines that he included in his winning contest entry?
Not at all, he said. "My job isn't to get them to sing what I write, but to raise the bar of the quality." Anyway, his chants are more like poems or songs, he said.
Mr. Hurst recently wrote a chant commemorating Sir Alex Ferguson's 1,000th game as manager of Manchester United. To the tune of "Mrs. Robinson," it begins:
So here's to you, Mr. Ferguson,
You're the greatest coach this club
Has seen (like Aberdeen).
In other chants he has noted the death of Brian Clough, a soccer star from the past; marked the end of Arsenal's 49-game winning streak, and commented on the fact that three top English players are now playing for Real Madrid, a glitzy team that has not done so well this season. To the tune of "Three Little Maids from School" from "The Mikado," it begins:
Three brittle boys in Spain are we,
Each of us prone to injury.
"Real" signed us all for a handsome fee;
Three brittle boys in Spain.
Mr. Hurst's appointment last spring was not greeted with universal excitement by soccer's jaundiced, snippy fans.
"Football doesn't need a chant laureate, especially if the chant that won was as dire as that," groused Michael from Sunderland, responding to the Aston Villa chant in a posting on the BBC News Web site. "Chants should be simple and to the point, not some long-winded rubbish about a rubbish Midlands club."
Mr. Hurst says there is room for well-considered chants from outsiders as much as for spontaneous chants from partisans, and that soccer is as full of elation as gloom.
"Football is all about joy and disaster, and not much in between," he said. "It's a game, when it's played well, that is poetry in motion."
In his official capacity as chant laureate, Mr. Hurst recently wrote a chant for a boys' soccer team that always loses, as disastrously as the Mets did in the early 1960's. To the tune of Busted's "Year 3000," the song predicts a better future.
"Apparently the team are now singing it," Mr. Hurst said. "I don't think their results are any better, but maybe they feel a little better about themselves."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company ---
