Come On You Reds: Behind the scenes of Manchester United’s 1994 FA Cup song

“I’ve had more No 1 singles than Noel Gallagher has had as a solo artist and I can’t even sing,” laughs Gary Neville. And he’s right.

In 1994, Manchester United’s players recorded “Come On You Reds” as their FA Cup final song. The song, recorded in Manchester with Status Quo, rose to the top of the UK charts for two weeks. It also hit No 1 in Denmark and No 2 in the Republic of Ireland. “Come On You Reds” remains the only club-specific football song to reach no 1 in the UK.

“I’m very happy to own a gold disc from that,” explains former striker Brian McClair. “You don’t throw things like that away. I wasn’t a good singer and I couldn’t play (musical instruments), but it’s amazing how the sound engineers can make you sound. The technology was good, even then. People took weeks to record shit, we did it in an afternoon and we all sounded professional. Some of the lads were really into it. Sharpey (Lee Sharpe) loved it and the other extroverts were there at the front. Ryan Giggs, too. I have a memory of Gary Neville being right onto it and at the front and right at it. We had a few cans to help the vocal cords, but it wasn’t a massive session.”

“I hated recording it, I was embarrassed and sheepish,” says Neville. “You had Lee Sharpe and Giggsy enjoying it.”

Midfielder Clayton Blackmore also has a slightly different recollection.

“Brian McClair was in charge because he knew all about music and how to sort the money out,” says the former midfielder. “He was the brains of the team and the club. He was also the one dancing the most. You know those belt hoops in your jeans? Well, he was putting his fingers through them, pretending to play an air guitar and encouraging us to do the same. I wasn’t big on Status Quo like Choccy was. We were just immature footballers having a laugh, but we had to learn the lyrics and it was right that we were No 1 in the league and in the charts.”

Brentford season ticket holder and Status Quo bass player John Edwards was key to the project.

“I’m pleased to be part of football history,” Edwards told the United We Stand fanzine last month. “It was the perfect song for the times. As in, you could still do an old-fashioned football song and people liked it. It was either Brian McClair or our manager David Walker’s idea, but our David said: ‘Fancy doing a record with Man United? We need it by yesterday’.

“The lyrics were written that night. Myself, a friend Mike Haldenby and Andrew Bown (Status Quo’s keyboard player) wrote them. Andrew wrote the first verse but he knows nothing about football. He’s a great lyricist and it went from there. We went to Manchester and recorded it a couple of days later.”

None of Status Quo were United fans: vocalist Rick Parfitt and drummer Jeff Rich supported Spurs and Francis Rossi was not really into football, thus a Crystal Palace fan.

“We got offered a guaranteed amount to be put into the players’ pool and thought it would be a bit of fun – and there was a tradition of cup final songs, so we did it,” McClair says. “Status Quo are a lot cooler now than they were then, but their millions of fans loved them. They wanted to do it and it suited us to do it. There were no royalties either. It wasn’t like we were doing a song with New Order.

“We’d done songs before that one but they were terrible, really. The ones after ‘Come On You Reds’ were just as bad too but, on the day we recorded it, I said to our captain, Bryan Robson, ‘That’s going to be a massive hit’. And he just went, ‘Yeah’ like he didn’t believe me, but then Bryan Robson was not into music at all. He still says to me: ‘Are you still into that weird music?’, and I reply: ‘Beethoven? The Pogues? The Rolling Stones? Aye, weird’.”

“Come On You Reds” was based on a Status Quo track “Burning Bridges”, which had reached No 5 in 1988, with the lyrics changed.

“Burning bridges never made me cry, I could walk away with no goodbye” thus became “Busby Babes they always made me cry, thinkin’ ’bout the teams of years gone by”.

While “It’s on and off and on again, Going on and then” became “Schmeichel, Parker, Pallister. Irwin, Bruce, Sharpe and Ince”. The chorus followed: “C’mon you Reds, C’mon you Reds, just keep your bottle and use your heads, for 90 minutes we’ll let them know it’s Man United here we go”.

“They’d written hit songs for loads of people and I remember him telling me that writing songs was where you made the money,” said McClair. “We were delighted that it reached No 1, but growing up I’d seen football teams singing their songs on Top of the Pops and wanted a bit of that action, but the gaffer was having none of that. He wanted us to concentrate on playing football, which is not unreasonable.”

“It’s nice to have my name on a No 1 record,” former defender Paul Parker tells The Athletic. “I saw the gold disc up in the loft the other day. It’s the only thing I’ve got to do with music. I was a terrible singer. I was petrified they’d pull us to one side and ask us to sing individually, so I just stood next to Denis Irwin, my comfort blanket. And whatever Clayton Blackmore tells you, he was hiding at the back, too. When he does open his mouth, it’s only to talk about Wales or golf. I remember there was booze when we arrived, during and after.”

Other players were more confident.

“Ince and Sharpey were at the front,” recalls Parker. “Incey had himself down as a good singer – in fact, he had himself down as the best at everything he did. His absolute self-belief and confidence made him what he was as a player, but trust me, he couldn’t sing.”

Parker was also one of the stars of England’s 1990 World Cup campaign, one where arguably the greatest football song, “World in Motion” by New Order and the England players, was recorded.

“I wanted to be involved in ‘World in Motion’ and a lot of the players who were didn’t actually go to the World Cup, but there was a hoo-ha about me not being able to play when they recorded it. John Barnes is famous for doing the rap in that song, but it was actually Peter Beardsley who put himself forward to sing it. He tried it and they wisely went for John Barnes.”

Ince’s only insight was: “If I’m being honest, I can’t remember a thing about it. If something comes to mind, I’ll call you.”

Manchester United had released other cup final songs, going back to Edric Connor’s “United Calypso” in 1957 to “Onwards Sexton’s Soldiers” (ironically with a B side called “Come On You Reds”) in 1979. There had been “Manchester United” in 1976, “Glory Glory Man United” in 1983, “We All Follow Man United” in 1985 and “United (We Love You)” in 1993. Every cup final had a song, with “We’re Gonna Do It Again” in 1995 and “Move, Move, Move (The Red Tribe)” in 1996. United’s last recorded cup final song was 1999’s “Lift It High (All about Belief)”, which didn’t lift itself beyond No 11 in the UK charts.

“For a football song, ‘Come On You Reds’ was one of the best out there,” concludes Parker. “I was surprised it did well but United were back and Status Quo definitely helped.”

Chelsea also released a cup final song in 1994, which reached No 23, called “No One Can Stop Us Now”. Except Manchester United did stop them, winning the game 4-0.

(Top photo: Tony Marshall/EMPICS via Getty Images)