Daily SAll-Star: Gerry Marsden

This is former British Invasion star Gerry Marsden of Gerry and the Pacemakers. It looks like his battery just died, nyuk nyuk! But enough heart failure jokes. Let's get to the facts.

Fact: Gerry Marsden is stupid. Only a true dumbass would be a young English rock musician in the early sixties. As we all know, that demographic was dominated by the Beatles.

Sidenote: These bands really enjoyed misspelling things, didn't they? First, our man here spells his own damn name wrong (is it Jerry or Gary? Pick one, asshole) and then the Beetles have the audacity to intentionally misidentify a common genus of the insect class.

Surprisingly, G and the P's had three consecutive number one singles on the UK Singles Chart, a feat that would not be accomplished again until Frankie Goes to Hollywood did it in 1984. This fact tells you that the English public has tremendously awesome taste in music. "Two Tribes" is one of my favorite 80's songs, by the way. Just throwing that out there in case you're stumped on upcoming birthday presents.

But Gerry's most lasting impact would come outside of his mainstream musical success. His single, "You'll Never Walk Alone," which was itself adapted from the musical production Carousel, quickly became the anthem for Liverpool F.C. The explanation: In the mid-60's, the deejay at Anfield would play the top ten commercial records, ending with number one. But once YNWA left the charts, the fans kept singing it.

The song has meant so much to Liverpool that the club had its gates adorned with the chorus. It is a testament to the continued and perpetual superiority of European football fans over American anything fans that 41,000 plastered off-key drunks can come together for about ninety seconds and deliver a stirring chorus that, I believe, truly inspires the team for which they are rooting. Every time I see a clip of YNWA in action I think of Michigan Stadium and how unreal it would be to hear it filled with voices in unison. But no...we shake our keys on third down. For his tremendous, albeit unintentional, contribution to the world of sports, Gerry Marsden and his poorly-spelled name are today's SAll-Star.





American sports fans.....take notes.