Musical Tribute To Favourite With ‘Alternative’ Tastes 

“Are people still talking about that?” laughs Keith Downing at our second face-to-face meeting of the season. He isn’t referring to one of his tigerish tackles, nor anything connected to the game that has brought him a living for more than 40 years.

Wolves Heroes has just brought to his attention an item we thought would catch him completely by surprise – but he is no more disarmed than he used to be when confronted in the heart of the Molineux midfield battle.

Keith Downing is a punk rocker was a raucous number recorded by Wolves fan Bobby Smith in a small flat in Edmonton, North London, in September, 1991 and given new publicity this autumn on the www.alwayswolves.co.uk website. “It took me an hour to do that and the B side, Black Country Boy, which was a love letter to Steve Bull,” he wrote…..”I was playing buzzsaw guitar and singing in a way that can only be described as Frank Spencer imitating Sid Vicious.”

Whatever the self-deprecation, the long-time punk-scene writer had found a kindred spirit in the then editor of A Load Of Bull, Dave Worton, who found time to run a small record label at his home in Leeds when not compiling and selling the fanzine. They happily decided to collaborate on a Wolves-themed musical project, which bore fruit with a flexi disc being given away with a bumper ALOB issue 15 that Christmas. 

So why was Keith Downing celebrated in uncomplicated lyrics containing references to his ‘spiky, punky hair’ and the way he ‘tackles like a bear’?

Smith says it was because he despaired of reading q&a pages in match-day programmes in which players ‘invariably’ named George Benson or Phil Collins as their favourite artists. He yearned to read about someone who idolised The Damned or other punk bands, so he was intrigued when Robert Kelly, in his injury-shortened playing career at Wolves, described his musical tastes as ‘alternative’.

The London-born supporter was curious to know more, so he wrote to Kelly at Molineux, received a lengthy reply and gave qualified approval to the fact the former Leicester midfielder named The Smiths and The Cocteau Twins among his favourite turns. 

Those preferences were still too ‘poppy’ for Smith, who described himself as ‘a hardcore Deutschpunk and Oi! enthusiast’, but he was thrilled to have at least found a player who broke the stereotype and was polite enough to expand in print on his tastes. 

The last of Kelly’s 16 first-team Wolves appearances had long passed come the latter weeks of 1991 but it was his reference in the programme to attending gigs with team-mates – in particular his best Molineux pal, Downing, and Tim Steele – that put the name of the blond midfielder in a record title.

“When we scored in the match at which issue 15 came out, many fans took to throwing the flexi disc in the air in celebration,” Bobby added. “My best efforts to achieve musical fame and fortune were trampled on by the hoi-polloi!

“I had the last laugh, tough. Copies of issue 15 are now the rarest to find, especially those that have my flexi disc attached to the cover with sellotape.”

We put all this to Downing, the current assistant to John Eustace at high-flying Blackburn, and he enthusiastically picked up the baton and ran with it. 

“Yes, I’ve still got a copy of that record somewhere,” he said. “I must have been given it when it came out and it was given to a good home! I’m always more likely to put some music on than watch TV and I know my tastes are different to most.

“There was only one music system between us growing up and my brothers used to take my stuff out and throw it at me, telling me it was garbage. They were more into heavy metal bands like Led Zeppelin.

“In my early days at Wolves, The New Musical Express was essential reading…..we learned so much about different bands and went to watch loads of them, especially if they were up and coming.

“Rob and myself had this real interest in going to see live acts….I remember going to Birmingham, Burton-on-Trent, De Montford Hall in Leicester and the Derby Assembly Rooms. We started to get Tim Steele into some of our music as well when he joined us from Shrewsbury.”

So now we know that the sentiments in Keith Downing Is A Punk Rocker – ‘The music comes on and he starts to shake, he pogos around to the sounds they make’ – are entirely fitting!

And there’s another verse or two…..or an update to this story, to be more accurate, in the form of Bobby’s recent alwayswolves offerings.

“In the late 1990s, I recorded a follow-up to the flexi,” he wrote, “cunningly entitled Keith Downing, He’s Still A Punk Rocker, with the help of a couple of friends on bass and and a semi-professional guitarist.

“Oddly, The Observer once printed the entire lyrics to Keith Downing after declaring it one of the best football songs ever. Really, they did! In addition, I have it on good authority that Sky Sports reporter and fellow ALOB luminary Johnny Phillips still plays my single every now and again, presumably when he needs a laugh.”