“WE’LL give all we’ve got to give for the folks back home. . .”

50 years ago today, the England World Cup Squad, the reigning champions, released a World Cup song. It would become the first single recorded by a football team to reach number one in the UK chart spawning many imitators down the years from New Order’s World in Motion to Baddiel and Skinner’s Three Lions.

In 1970, it was unheard of for an England squad to record a song, but the 1966 World Cup victory had opened people’s eyes to the potential money to be made from the increased commercialisation of the biggest sporting event in the world.

Before he passed away last month, Bill Martin, who in partnership with Phil Coulter won three Ivor Novello awards and went on to have hit records with the Bay City Rollers and Elvis Presley, told me he’d seen an opportunity.

“We believed that an England World Cup song had never been done properly, so we decided to record an album and single with the 1970 World Cup England squad and we believed that if it was marketed properly it would be a genuine commercial success.”

Govan-born Martin and Derry-born Coulter seemed an unlikely partnership to pen a World Cup song for England. 

The pair had met in 1965 and found international fame two years later writing the UK’s first winner at the Eurovision Song Contest, Puppet On A String sung by Sandie Shaw. 

The following year, the pair also penned Cliff Richard’s Eurovision entry, Congratulations. Both songs were UK number-one hits.

With the England squad travelling over 5,000 miles to Mexico in an age before mass trans-Atlantic travel or reliable communications, the idea of the players yearning for the folks “back home” developed. “I came up with the title first and then Phil Coulter and I wrote the lyrics and music together.”

Growing up during the Second World War, the popular 1939 marching song We’re Gonna Hang Out The Washing On The Siegfried Line, written by Royal Artillery captain Jimmy Anderson, always stuck in Martin’s mind. 

“I had the idea of writing the song like a war song and I came up with the line ‘Back home, they’ll be thinking about us when we are far away.’”

Once the demo was written, Martin had the ominous task of convincing the notoriously irascible England manager to allow them access to his players. 

“I am not sure Sir Alf Ramsey would have thought twice about letting the England squad, with many of the heroes of 1966, anywhere near a recording studio,” claimed Martin. 

“Alf didn’t really disapprove but he didn’t know how to sell it so he suggested I meet up with ‘the boys’ and it would be up to them. The rest is history!”

Martin spoke to the England players at a squad get-together in February. “I met up with the team without Phil at Hendon Hall before they travelled to a match in Belgium. I promised them a No 1 gold disc and an appearance on Top of the Pops. I truly believed the song was good enough.” 

The squad, seduced by the idea of meeting legendary all-female dance troupe Pan’s People, told Ramsey they would like to record the song.

Martin and Coulter invited the players to Pye recording studios near Marble Arch. Coulter recalls: “When some genius in the record company asked the question ‘But can they sing?’, the answer was, it doesn’t matter. We weren’t counting on their vocal prowess, we were banking on their popularity as soccer stars.”

Ramsey allowed the players to attend for four hours on a Sunday morning. “They came to the studio and they were great, they were just like little boys,” recalled Martin. 

Recordings had already been made of The Mike Sammes Singers, a sessions outfit, singing the songs and of an orchestra playing all the accompaniments. “All the players needed to do that Sunday morning was sing along” said Coulter.

Unlike the 1990 World Cup No 1, New Order’s World In Motion, which is best remembered for John Barnes’ solo rap, Back Home was never going to single out any one player, as Martin explained. 

“it was always going to be a group project. No one player volunteered to do a solo but Alan Ball and Jeff Astle were the better singers. No-one mimed to my knowledge!”

Photographers were allowed in for 15 minutes. Coulter remembers: “We lined the players up in front of the microphones and kitted them out with earphones to make it look as if they knew what they were doing. We got the front pages of every national paper the next morning.”

Released on April 18 1970, the single reached the top of the UK charts on May 16, two weeks before the start of the tournament, knocking Norman Greenbaum’s Spirit In The Sky off the No 1 spot. It remained there for three weeks. 

The squad famously appeared on BBC’s Top of the Pops in black dinner suits on April 23, something which was not planned, as Martin explained: “The team were going to a black-tie dinner for the players at the Royal Garden Hotel on the night of the recording of Top of the Pops. The programme was always recorded on a Thursday afternoon so the team were coached in to BBC TV studios and then straight after their performance they were coached on to the dinner. 

“As it happens it couldn’t have been better for the boys to appear dressed up.” 

The Daily Mirror reported that “despite those rather square dinner suits, the players were a big success with the teenagers.” 

Afterwards, Ramsey invited Martin to take the place of the injured Paul Reaney and join them for dinner. “It was marvellous. I felt like part of the team,” he admitted.

Expected to defend their title successfully, the world champions made it through the group stage. The players, led by Astle, sung Back Home on the coach journey to every game.

According to Coulter, “every time England won a game, we sold another truckload of records. I was thinking to myself, if they win this, we could sell millions upon millions of records and I could buy a house in the Caribbean, maybe even retire.” 

However, England were knocked out of the World Cup on June 14, losing 3-2 to West Germany in extra-time after leading 2-0. In his autobiography, Bruised, Never Broken, Coulter recalls: “in my total disgust, I picked up my dinner and threw it at the TV.” 

Goalkeeper Gordon Banks, who missed the quarter-final defeat due to a mysterious illness, was presented with a silver disc to mark 250,000 sales of the Back Home single on the squad’s return to Heathrow Airport.

Martin and Coulter, who won Ivor Novello awards in 1968 and 1969 for Most Performed Work of the Year with Puppet on a String and Congratulations, were convinced that they should have won one for a third successive year. 

Martin believed Back Home should have been nominated for an Ivor Novello in the category of Novelty Song. 

“John Lennon told me how much the song meant to him, that it made him think of being back home in Liverpool.”

Four years later, with England failing to qualify for the World Cup, Martin and Coulter aimed to repeat their success with the Scotland squad.

“The song was called ‘Easy Easy’ and was a totally different song. I couldn’t use the same formula again. The difference was we also included Scottish recording stars like Rod Stewart and Billy Connolly to support them,” said Martin. 

It peaked at No 20 in the chart. 

After missing out on going to Mexico, Martin did travel to the World Cup in West Germany, where Scotland went out at the group stage despite remarkably ending up as the only undefeated side in the competition. 

“I have loads of memories of their campaign, especially flying to Germany with Rod Stewart and his brother Bob in Rod’s private jet. I enjoy the company of footballers and rock stars in equal measure but I would have been a better professional footballer than a singer.”

In 1994, Back Home returned to national prominence as the theme tune of David Baddiel  and Frank Skinner’s Fantasy Football League show. 

“I have great affection for Back Home,” admitted Martin looking back. “I was proud to have delivered my promise to ‘the boys’ that they would get a No 1 in the charts and a gold disc. All my hit songs are dear to me for different reasons and I can’t possibly pick out one from the list … it would be like choosing a favourite child.”

William Wylie MacPherson MBE passed away on March 26 2020, aged 81. He is survived by his wife Jan and four children Meran, Alison, Angus and Melanie. His 2017 autobiography, Bill Martin — Congratulations. Songwriter To The Stars, is published by Dujio Publishing.