The new ‘Fields of Anfield Road’ single, produced to help raise awareness of the Hillsborough disaster, is now available to buy or download.
The ‘Fields of Anfield Road’ is sung regularly by the Kop, and is based on ‘Fields of Athenry’. A number of local musicians and former players are amongst those who have recorded this new version, which features an extra verse poignantly remembering the ninety-six supporters who died almost twenty years ago.
The club are fully behind the single, and manager Rafa Benítez has asked that all Liverpool fans buy a copy. He said: “I was lucky enough to be at the launch of the single and I think it is fantastic. My message to our fans is to go out and buy it because it’s for a very, very good cause.”
The fight for justice for the 96 continues, and although it’s a fight that should have been won a long time ago it’s a fight that won’t end. As Rafa says, “We must never forget the Liverpool fans who lost their lives at Hillsborough.”
If you prefer old-fashioned physical copies of your music to just a downloaded mp3 version, you can buy the single online or in person from the club shop or from HMV. It’s actually only as old-fashioned as a CD, not vinyl, but features four tracks in that format.
There’s the “A” side, ‘Fields of Anfield Road’, by the Liverpool Collective featuring The Kop Choir. The owner of the copyright to the original version of the song, Peter St.John, has agreed to not receive a penny from this single. There’s also a second version of the song, entitled ‘Fields of Anfield Road (Sunday morning version)’, performed by Starsailor’s James Walsh.
Wah!’s Pete Wylie has also donated a recording of ‘Heart as Big as Liverpool’ as one of the four tracks on the CD, with the other track coming from Elvis Costello, who has supplied a special version of his ‘Turning the Town Red’ track.
That Costello track was the theme tune to the excellent Channel 4 series ‘Scully’ which was screened in the mid-eighties, well before the awful events of Hillsborough, featuring cameo appearances from a number of Liverpool players.
Please do as Rafa says – buy the single – and see if you can not only help it get in the charts but to give the subject of Hillsborough the chance of some extra airtime and perhaps the ability to reach an audience that are unaware of what happened, or why it happened, in Sheffield on April 15th 1989.
Buy ‘Fields of Anfield Road’ from the LFC official online store.
Buy ‘Fields of Anfield Road’ from HMV
Buy ‘Fields of Anfield Road’ as a download from iTunes
For more on the single, visit the official ‘Fields of Anfield Road’ single website or see the video on the club’s official site.
Liverpool’s Dutch forward Ryan Babel has been ruled out of Euro 2008 after tearing ankle ligaments in training this morning.