# Once upon a time there was a tavern
# Where we used to raise a glass or two
# Remember how we laughed away the hours
# Think of all the great things we would do
# Those were the days, my friend
# We thought they'd never end
# We'd sing and dance forever and a day
# We'd live the life we'd choose
# We'd fight and never lose
# For we were young, and sure to have our way... #
Shankly! Shankly! Shankly! Shankly!
This is where Uncle Willie, Bill Shankly, was born.
There were four houses in the front, and four houses behind.
The ten children were born within 20 years,
five boys and five girls.
Bill Shankly was the last of the boys.
There was no electricity.
I think there could be running water, but there was no hot water.
Very, very poor conditions.
If you had a neighbour that needed something, and you had excess,
which... There was never a lot of excess, but if you had something
that the neighbour needed it desperately,
you would give the neighbour, because you didn't ever know
the next day that you might need something.
Until the 1790s, miners were serfs in Scotland,
but during the 19th century, they got themselves organised,
and by the early 20th century, miners had replaced the old
hand loom weavers in the past as the vanguard of the working class.
So, a strong socialist tradition, strong self-help tradition,
and also a strong tradition of self-improvement.
So, within a mining community you'd have Burns Clubs,
you'd have football clubs, you'd have all kinds of activities,
and Burns was a living tradition with these people.
It was a living tradition even when I was growing up in the 1950s.
Well, in Shankly's day, even more so.
They'd have been brought up with the ideal of egalitarianism -
A Man's A Man for A' That.
# Is there for honest poverty, that hangs his head and a' that... #
It's amazing for me.
It's my first time, so it's lovely.
It's quite poignant, the fact that we're on a coach load of people,
and going to meet more people that still do this.
It's like he's more famous now
than when he died all those years ago in '81.
The banners rise on the Kop, and the voices call for Bill Shankly.
And now the salute for the champions, and for Bill Shankly,
who takes off his jacket to reveal a characteristic red shirt.
This is the man they love.
He was a big fan of Rabbie Burns. Mm-hm.
Very big fan. But, of course, Rabbie Burns, he was a poor ploughman.
Uncle Willie, as you know, went down the pit when he was 15,
and he'd go down the pit, finish his shift,
and then go and play football.
It may not even be a ball, it could be a tin can,
it could be anything that got kicked about.
This was a photo of Glenbuck Cherrypickers.
This is Grandpa Shankly, John Shankly.
This is the Auchenstilloch cottages.
This is the two houses that was knocked into one,
where Uncle Willie was born.
And, I mean, there could be 10-a-side, there could be 15-a-side,
because that's all they had to do, and that's why
there were 50 professional players came from Glenbuck.
There was a strong football team,
there was the strong loyalty of the coal mining industry,
and they go hand in hand,
and I think the football team really represented the community.
I was born in the village of Glenbuck,
who had a team, called the Glenbuck Cherrypickers.
But they were at the end of their day when I...
And I only played one game for them.
Then they were finished for all time.
Then I moved on to another junior team. I was only 17 years old.
About ten miles from Glenbuck. So I started with them, really.
A team called Cronberry.
In its basics, in what is required to play football, it's quite simple,
and, you know, we know from its origins that it was just
a kind of mob activity originally, and you don't need to be
a very special physical specimen to do it then.
And it may be a small form of romance,
but when somebody beats a man or scores a good goal,
or makes a great tackle or something,
there is undoubtedly, from the lowest levels of the game to the
highest, a tremendous satisfaction and a sense of self-expression.
When you think about it, you know, football was the one thing
you could do, not to go down the pit in these days.
And if you were going down the pit and you were in this very dark and
claustrophobic and dangerous space, imagine the kind of liberation
it must be to run around on a field, you know, to run around playing.
So you've got those blue skies above,
or even grey skies above, but you've got all this space around you.
You're darting around this field,
and then you have to go back down to this dark, enclosed space.
So football must have been, not just a means to break out of that world,
but it must have been an almost kind of spiritual,
kind of existential release. You know, "We're human beings,
"this is what we're supposed to be doing".
One of the foundations of my affinity with Bill,
and it was a very warm affinity over the years,
was that we were fellow Ayrshiremen, and it's always struck me
that three of the greatest managers who've worked in British football -
Shankly, Busby and Stein - were all born within 20 miles
of one another, and were from mining families.
Their understanding of teamwork and of camaraderie
was absolutely in the marrow.
There was nothing else except mines.
You were lucky if you got a job, you were lucky
if you got a job in the mines, and I think, possibly,
the fact that this was the case gave us a...
Well, it built us to the fact that we had to try and better ourselves,
to try and create something or do something.
Bill had a number of brothers,
and all five of them played professional football.
Quite an astonishing feat in those days, for all five of them
to go on and play professional football at some level or other.
The game that developed in Scotland was a community game.
Very, very different from what came out of the
public schools in England. But what specifically happened was,
they developed this short passing game and, because of that, it gave
the Scots an advantage in football so the result of that was that,
literally, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of boys from Scotland
went down to England and became the core of the new professional game.
You know, the English league was started by a Scot, the FA Cup
was started by a Scot, but it all goes back to these wee communities.
People like Shankly and Stein were steeped in that tradition
going back literally hundreds of years.
Above all, the main aim is that everybody can control the ball,
and do the basic thing in football.
It's control and pass, control and pass.
So this is the whole of you. It's so simple.
Get it, give an early pass, then it goes from me to somebody else,
and it switches around.
So it's all give and take, and give and back up.
You need help, you get the backing.
But these guys who were kind of fired by that sense of passion
and teamwork, and forging common purpose,
they were very much in the ascendancy with that
industrialisation and that kind of industrial socialism,
whereby everybody worked in the same team and played together.
It came from that ethos, basically.
The sense of being in it together was immensely powerful.
There was a strength about it, you know, there was a feeling that
there was never any doubt about their conviction,
that they were as good as anybody on the planet,
and they were prepared to let people know that.
After a season with Cronberry Juniors,
then I went to Carlisle as a professional player.
Well, I went to Carlisle for one season, and at the end of
that season, Preston North End had been watching me and fancied me,
and they paid Carlisle £500 for my transfer.
Well, obviously, this is it, this is Deepdale.
You can see all the various stands - Sir Tom is behind us, Alan Kelly
and that's mainly the kind of sponsors' stand,
but, obviously, there's your man, there's Sir William Shankly.
Or William Shankly.
Well, my connection to Preston is, my dad played here
so I was born about... less than a mile away.
I think at the age of 12 or 13, I got my first season ticket,
so it's always been my club, and always will be my club, obviously.
Because when the transfer was going through, I wasn't going to go.
Because I said to my brother, Alec,
"I'm only getting ten shillings more and I'm further away from home".
He said, "Well, it isn't what you're getting now,
"it's the opportunity of playing for Preston North End".
I mean, Preston was a working class town,
and really had a working class team, but actually,
when you think about it, it probably had a world-class team.
A mighty burst of cheering announces the arrival of the King and Queen,
and the King meets the players, shaking hands first with Preston,
then with Huddersfield.
I joined them actually in '36, and I would say
they were one of the leading sides in those days,
and always had a very heavy Scottish contingent.
This was, I think, because it was always one of the sayings
of the chairman that all the good players come from Scotland,
of course not forgetting Bill Shankly.
You mentioned Bill Shankly there. What was he like to play with?
Oh, Bill was a real character, you know, he was the sort of chap
that you could be losing the game 3-0, two minutes to go,
and he would still have his sleeves rolled up,
and telling you, "Come on, we can beat this team yet".
The referee gave a penalty to Preston,
and Mutch, who was the victim, took the kick.
A goal in the last minute of the match.
And being in a losing Cup Final,
and going back the following season and having the winning Cup Final,
when the final whistle blows at Wembley, and you've won the Cup,
the elation's unbelievable.
Oh, it was massive.
Absolutely massive, because in those days,
and it would have been the same for me when I was a kid playing in the
back garden, but in those days you played football in the back garden,
and scored a goal, it was always a winning goal in the Cup Final.
It wasn't to win the Premier League,
it was never to win the Champions League so, obviously,
for Shanks and for a club like this, it was utopia.
Remember 1938?
The Yankees won the Pennant.
"Wrong Way" Corrigan.
The last trains ran on the 6th Avenue El.
Well, John Britain got excited about the same sort of thing.
The bet he had on the der-by, or, as he would say, the dar-by.
His job, his kids, getting his exercise on his day off.
Preston North End taking the football cup.
Only 300 miles away, people were cheering another kind of event.
Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!
I think it's absolutely true that the War cut short his career,
certainly his international career,
because football, official football, stopped.
So, there's a good six, seven years which are wasted during the War
when he's not really playing as a professional player.
He's in the RAF.
Because, when I went to Carlisle, which was my first job,
I was 35 years of age,
and I went there, and I knew that I was picking the team.
I started a junior team then, they'd only one team,
so I'd a reserve team, and I started another team.
No, I went to Carlisle with the understanding that if I needed
a player and they could get the money, then they would buy him.
He started with Carlisle United, who were in the Third Division North.
He then goes to Grimsby Town, and then he goes to Workington.
And when he joins the club, he goes in on the first day,
goes to switch the light on, and discovers there's no light switch.
When he asks "Where's the lights here?",
he's told "We don't have electricity, we've still got gas".
And it's little surprise that he then moves on to Huddersfield Town.
The manager of Huddersfield Town at the time
is a man called Andy Beattie, and Andy Beattie had played with Bill
at Preston North End, and he offered him the job as coach,
and Shankly decides to take it,
although he's been number one in various places.
Mainly because Huddersfield Town are in the Second Division,
and they have been a great football team.
He was a character, as we all know.
He was the assistant manager with Andy Beattie.
He then left, and Bill Shankly became the manager.
But they were like father figures in those days.
Sounds strange at this time in the world,
but then it was quite rough, quite tough as well so, if
it hadn't been for those two guys, I'd have probably gone back home.
Andy Beattie was a much more calmer guy, as Sir Matt Busby was.
Shankly was completely different. It was just all go, all the time.
He learnt me everything in the game of football.
One day, we were due to play Cardiff City at Huddersfield,
and the late T V Williams, who was chairman then,
come down the steps at Huddersfield,
and I was offered the managership of Liverpool.
The Kop was famous, even then.
So I came here because there was potential,
and it was possible to make Anfield and Liverpool into a team.
And I knew that there was people here dying to have a team.
Here, in Liverpool, on Merseyside, we have this great melting pot
of nations - the Irish, the Welsh, the Scotch,
and the English, of course.
We think this is the greatest city in the world, not only
a great sea port, and certainly not the picture that some people
have of Liverpool as a dingy, underprivileged slum.
We've got a great deal to be proud of in Liverpool,
and we ARE proud of it.
Liverpool was founded in 1892, and this is where it was founded,
and ever since, it's been associated with Liverpool Football Club.
Me grandad used to live opposite the ground, really, you know,
and me earliest childhood memories were coming up to the ground,
because me dad used to go to the matches,
and I'd come out onto this main road here and meet him.
So, I was obsessed with the game of football from an early age,
you know. I didn't think it was a unique city,
I just thought everyone in the world was obsessed with football.
For our family, where I was, in front of me house
was a gravel pitch, if you like, and me brother's a couple of years
older than me, and all his friends were always involved in footy.
I basically wanted to latch on to them and play as much as I can.
You know, for Christmas presents and birthday presents, I was often
getting DVDs, Liverpool DVDs,
of all the successful teams over the years.
I'm lucky to have a huge football club on me doorstep,
because I knew from an early age I wanted to be a footballer,
and I knew which team I wanted to represent.
Liverpool is football as a city.
Every kid wants to play for Liverpool or Everton,
and there's very few people who haven't got that passion for or
support one of the sides, or get upset when it's not going well,
or vice versa.
Football will always be maybe the biggest thing in the city.
My early memories of Liverpool Football Club go back a long way,
because my father was a dyed in the wool Kopite, and Liverpool,
all my life as far as I remember it, had been in the old Second Division,
and that was where I was used to having them, and I get the feeling,
looking back, that a lot of the powers that be at Anfield then
were quite happy to be a big fish in a smaller pond.
But this guy, Shankly, turned up from Huddersfield.
His ambitions were far and above the Second Division.
I go back even when we was in the First Division,
before we got relegated in '54,
and the place was a joke, a dump.
And when he come, you know, I think it was the training ground,
Melwood, he completely revamped that, like.
It was the first time we'd seen anything getting done at Liverpool!
Well, this is a picture of us winning the league,
and there you've got Bill Shankly, Bob Paisley, Joe Fagan,
Ron Yeats, Ian Callaghan.
A great team, this was.
There wasn't a lot of money around, but it was fantastic, really,
just to be a footballer, so I really put a lot into it, you know.
Running and kicking a ball, kicking a ball against the wall,
trying this and that. Yeah. And it came off.
You know, I told you I was already there when Shankly turned up,
and Bob Paisley was there then, Joe Fagan was there then,
Reuben Bennett was there then, and he kept them all on.
And he says, "This team's going to go places,"
and he didn't bring anybody with him,
so I was very lucky, I think, to actually be there at that time.
Well, before Bill Shankly came, I'd been at the club for...
I think it was three or four months.
I joined the ground staff from school in the summer,
and he came in the October.
I'd work at the ground during the day from, what,
8:30 till 5:00, and then two nights a week,
I'd go to training with the amateurs at Melwood.
And Bill Shankly came, and the first day,
I had a tea break, and he stopped me.
I was surprised he knew who I was, you know,
and he asked me what my routine was. I told him, you know,
and he said, "You're here to learn your trade son."
He said, "Tomorrow morning,
"tell your boss that you're coming training with the professionals".
You know, it was a big thing for me then.
Not for my boss at the ground staff,
but, you know, it was a big thing then.
Priority first and foremost was to get to know the people,
the people I was working with, the players I had on my books.
The ones who I thought were good enough, and weren't good enough.
I had to make a note of the whole affair,
so I was to get to know the whole thing and the whole place,
and to try and instil into the directors, of course, that the
potential at Liverpool was just as great as anywhere in the world.
Originally, before Shankly came, the training methods were, like,
run round the pitch for about two hours, you know, and then
we'll give you the ball, because you might be hungry for the ball then.
Always remember coming back from one summer,
and he'd had the carpenter from Anfield build all these boards,
you know, "sweat boxes," we used to call them.
I've never heard that mentioned either or seen it anywhere
in a training ground.
So you'd kick the ball, and didn't know where it was coming up,
and then see where it was coming and you had to hit it again.
And that was something completely different.
So you're on from there, he said "You've got to run to
"that board, hit the ball against the board, collect it, turn,
"and go to the other one, and keep on doing that as fast as you can".
He said, "Everything in the game's there, you're giving a pass,
"taking a pass, turning" and, you know you're getting rest
and getting fitness training as well,
so at the end of every game, you were still going strong.
You see, it's not how long you train,
it's how much you put into the training.
Well, the Liverpool training is really based on
exhaustion and recovery.
So you were working hard, twisting and turning and
twisting and turning, which the game's all about.
If you're fit, you've a tremendous advantage over everybody else.
Then if you, as Liverpool do, try to give everybody
a touch of the ball as quick as they can during the match...
Hunt hooks it, and it's a goal!
He was like one of you, one of me.
You know, he wasn't, "I'm a big guy," or anything like that.
He wanted to be with the players and the people, and he used to say
"I want this city to actually have this fantastic team,"
because he loved Liverpool.
He was so right in a lot of things,
and then the crowd - they adored him.
# The Liver Bird upon my chest
# We are men of Shankly's best
# A team that plays the Liverpool way
# And wins the league and a cup in May. #
# The Liver Bird upon my chest (Upon my chest)
# We are men of Shankly's best (Of Shankly's best)
# A team that plays the Liverpool way
# And wins the championship in May. #
Well, Liverpool were in the Second Division,
and very much the underdogs of the city.
People at school, the older kids at school,
their fathers would take them to the match.
Mostly to watch Everton,
because they were in the First Division in them days.
So I pestered and pestered and pestered me dad to take me,
and me dad wasn't interested in football, believe it or not,
he was a snooker man.
So, in the end, he took me.
It was the Lancashire Senior Cup, and a night match at Goodison.
So I didn't know who to support, as I had no guidance off me dad,
but outside he bought me a blue and white bobble hat.
So, anyway, Everton's floodlights, night game, they must have been
250 foot high, you could see them throughout the city, you know.
So when the lights come on,
it was absolutely dazzling on the football pitch.
So, Liverpool come out first, the red shirts.
As soon as I seen the red shirts, I went, "That's my team".
I just got hold of the blue and white bobble hat,
and threw it on the floor, and said "Dad, that's my team".
He said, "I've just bought you a blue and white bobble hat".
I said, "I don't care, that's my team,"
and from then on, I was Liverpool mad, all through me life.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Epstein Theatre,
and our show When Shankly's Dream Came True.
Now, please welcome onstage your presenter, John Keith.
APPLAUSE
Ladies and gentlemen, Bill Shankly, in that wonderful way
he had of plain speaking, called it "a terrible disgrace".
He was referring to the fact that,
when he crossed the Pennines from Huddersfield, and blew into Anfield
like a whirlwind in December 1959, the club had never won the FA Cup.
VOICEOVER: When Shankly arrived, he knew he had to find heroes
and he had Tommy Lawrence, the goalkeeper,
who'd been there a long time, and he brought him in eventually
as first choice goalkeeper, and then he went out and signed Ian St John
and Ron Yeats, to complete what Shankly called his "Spine Theory".
You've got to have strength right down the middle.
Well, Shankly left Huddersfield because he thought
they lacked ambition and they kept on selling their best players,
and he tried to get Ron Yeats and Ian St John at Huddersfield,
and the board had said, "We haven't got the money".
So when Liverpool came knocking,
one of the provisos was that Liverpool had money to spend.
When he started to try and buy players,
the board said, "Well, we haven't got the money",
so he felt as if he'd been duped slightly.
So after about 18 months, a man come onto the board, called Mr Sawyer.
He'd come from the Littlewoods organisation.
He was an ambitious man, big man in the mail order.
So, St John come onto the market. I went to the board meeting,
and I said that St John of Motherwell could be for sale.
And they were talking about the price,
and somebody says, "We can't afford to sign him,"
but Mr Sawyer said, "We can't afford NOT to sign him".
A question a lot of people ask me is about the St John chant,
which started with a record called Let's Go by The Routers,
because, like a lot of music in this city in the early '60s,
it came from America, in the suitcases of merchant seamen.
That was how the Merseybeat era got started,
by all the imported music.
You know the handclap, the...
RHYTHMIC CLAPPING
Let's go!
A spectacular header by St John puts Liverpool in front.
He was the beginning, he set the place on fire.
Well, I'd never met anybody quite like him, and I think if you asked
any of the players of our era, they would tell you the same thing.
I mean, he was overpowering, and he was football mad, football crazy.
And, his confidence in us coming down to English football,
and settling in and being a big part of it, was great,
because he made us believe.
Liverpool were looking for a centre half, and he come marching out,
looking up at me, and he said, "Bloody hell",
he said, "Big lad, you must be about seven foot tall".
I said "No, I'm six foot three".
He says "That's near enough seven foot for me, son".
And the thing about the players that played under him -
you learned from him in that it was about giving rather than taking,
you know, and money never came into it.
Yeah, he liked honest players.
I always remember, he asked me, talking about one particular
player, I said, "He might not have had the ability, but he was honest".
And he went "That's one of the main things in life, son, being honest".
Well, Ian, you and Ron Yeats and the boys there, you certainly
wasted little time in putting Liverpool back on the football map.
In your first season, Shankly's new side stormed to promotion
back to the top flight as Second Division champions.
Ian, you and Roger Hunt scored a total of 59 league goals...
Yeah, they made a big difference, those two.
They came off pretty quick, and of course, they were Scottish as well
and, you know, he was more friendly with the Scottish than the English.
But they were two really good players.
For most of Britain,
the Glorious 21st marks the start of the real shooting season.
Shooting for goals, and a jackpot on the pools.
Principal match of the day was between Liverpool and Arsenal,
and the league champions served notice that they were
out for blood this season, too.
Here they come, Liverpool first, then Arsenal.
Well, the boss always said... When he'd come to Anfield,
he said, "It's a disgrace that this team has never won the FA Cup".
Even for us in Scotland, everybody wanted to see the FA Cup Final,
it was the huge game, so when I came down here, Shanks was on about,
"We must win this cup for the fans".
MUSIC: Shankly's Dream
I was going from the year dot watching Liverpool,
but when you talked about the Cup Final, Evertonians, always the thing
that they always had over us, always, all the time,
"But you've never won the Cup, you've never won the Cup,"
and the well-known saying any time you got in any conversation was,
"The Liver Bird'll fly away before you win the Cup".
So, when we got to the final against a good team,
the whole city of Liverpool really wanted to get to that final.
Just... The build-up was unbelievable.
CHANTING: Shankly! Shankly!
We get to '65, and we battle our way through to it,
and we're playing Leeds United, who were the next up-and-coming team.
Don Revie had got some great players there. Hard players.
The warriors in the War of the Roses -
the red rose of Lancashire, the white of Yorkshire.
It was going to be a bit of a game,
because they were great rivals as well,
because Revie was of the same sort of ilk as Shanks, you know.
I come from a big family, and we were all Reds, you know,
and they'd never won the FA Cup,
and getting tickets for that final was the hard thing for me.
Liverpool all in red...
I'll tell you a story - we went out at Wembley to win that Cup,
and I said, "Listen, if it takes us four weeks to win this Cup,
"we're going to win it" and, goodness gracious,
within ten minutes, Gerry Byrne had a broken collarbone.
And it was a heartbreaking thing, and we knew it.
Bob Paisley come up, he said, "The collarbone's gone".
I said, "Oh, no".
And terrible pain, they should have given him all the medals.
So we're playing up to half-time, go in, and the trainer, Bob Paisley,
gets his jersey off, has a look at it, gives it a little
spray with something. "It's only broken." And then we go out,
because there were no substitutes, we go out and play the second half.
And so for the first time since 1947,
the Cup Final went into extra time.
Roger scored, and then Billy Bremner scored a smashing goal,
and then I got the goal with a header from Ian Callaghan's cross.
St John made no mistake this time!
And that was it then, we were hanging on with nine minutes to go.
Nine minutes never dragged like that, but finally they did it,
and all the fans who'd lived their lives without ever winning the Cup
at Liverpool, get what they'd wanted all the time.
And, of course, the boss, to win it...
If he had never won another thing, that was it.
The euphoria in London after that. It was just... You couldn't...
You couldn't go through it again.
And then when that happened, everything seemed to change.
Only later on you realise what the team's done, you know,
like, coming back on
the Sunday seeing all the supporters when we got back to Liverpool.
You can sense the sheer vitality of these Liverpudlians
as they massed in uncountable numbers...
I've never seen so many people, you know,
they were hanging off buildings, lights and everything.
Even when The Beatles came back and did a tour, when they were
at the height of their fame, they didn't get as many people as we got.
Unbelievable.
Oh, yeah, the 1965 FA Cup win was the pinnacle really, because
Liverpool had tried for 73 years to win the FA Cup and never had done.
So, for this man to come along and take them to the Holy Grail,
which it then was, the FA Cup, was huge.
And even though they won the league each side of the FA Cup,
they had won the league before but they'd never won the FA Cup
and it really changed Shankly's persona in the eyes of the fans,
because this man was then the man who'd led them to the promised land.
Well, in all honesty, he had a Scottish accent but if he wasn't
a Scouser in another life - that's the best way I can sum him up.
Everything that we were or we think we are, that was Shankly.
And being a good socialist helps with me, like, you know what I mean?
He was actually part of the fans, should we say.
He wasn't in any way detached and he enjoyed the success with the fans.
More than anything else he just got everyone up for it.
They were really up for it, you know,
and everyone kind of bonded together and he was just one of the people.
He was just one of the people, but like a leader of the people, really.
Yeah, I mean, his link with the people,
with the fans was quite incredible.
His house in Bellefield Avenue,
he actually had the front garden paved over because
so many people knocked on his door and they'd always get invited in.
That's it there, I recognise it immediately.
This used to be grass, basically, but because of people coming
and knocking on the door all the time, it literally just wore
away so, at some point, my gran just asked him to sort it out.
People have got stories, so many stories about coming to
the door and him inviting them in or always being very welcoming.
You know, football without people, without people watching,
without supporters, is absolutely nothing.
I mean, there's no noise, there's no enthusiasm,
there's no shouting, there's no passion.
There's nothing.
So, for him, all of that, and being accessible to the people who
would come and watch faithfully, was kind of really, really important.
You know, that was where the joy, the passion came from.
There's simply no way nowadays of keeping this huge Merseyside
city out of the headlines.
So that's the memories that people have.
Not just the players but all the fans and then, of course, on
the Tuesday night we're here to play the semifinal of the European Cup.
# ..and the sweet silver song of a lark... #
At the age of 11, one of my abiding memories
was 1965.
We'd just become FA Cup winners for the first time
and we were playing the great Inter Milan at Anfield.
You couldn't get a ticket for love nor money.
How my mum did it, I don't know,
but she got three tickets and we were right on the front row.
# ..with hope in your hearts and you'll never walk alone... #
The gates had been closed by about 5.15,
so many people wanted to go to that game,
and we were all on the Kop and all the Kop was chanting "We want
to see the cup, we want to see the cup,"
and Shankly has this brainwave.
Gerry Byrne, with his arm in a sling, and Gordon Milne,
who missed the final because he was injured, parade the cup.
And it's one of the highlights of anybody's career
to see that and remember it.
I'm getting nostalgic about remembering it.
The lads went out to a packed house.
And we're playing against THE great team, Inter Milan,
who were probably the best team in Europe at that time.
Shanks had us believing this was our time, this was the team,
and it was just an absolute wonderful spectacle.
I scored in the fourth minute to start it off.
The crowd were absolutely... I've never heard a crowd like that.
Hunt. A goal. A great goal, a great goal by Hunt.
And I remember he done this celebration which he
jumped in the air and twirled in the air.
We were all doing it at school the following week,
it was something that hadn't been seen, a celebration like that,
and I remember it vividly.
..and that could put Liverpool in the final.
To beat that team with our team at the time, which was just
growing, was just incredible.
Had we beaten Milan over there, and got through,
we could have won the European Cup.
Shanks would have been the first manager to do that.
It would have been great for him and I think about that,
then I think "Did we let you down, boss?"
But that was out of our hands, really,
the Milan game in Milan, when we were cheated out of it.
The replay, Shankly was very angry
because there were a number of dubious goals.
The ball was kicked out of Tommy Lawrence's hand, there was
a free kick which was supposed to be indirect
but they scored directly from it and the referee had allowed it.
The referee was said to have been bribed.
Shanks was told, "You'll not win this game over there.
"You'll not win this game with this referee," and it was a fact,
without a doubt, he had been got at.
We were very disappointed about that
because we thought we were going to win it, you know.
But we got beat and you can't take it back, but, yeah, I think
we got a raw deal.
But the boss went on and we were still picking up trophies.
It got to the stage where it was a team, you know.
Everybody was aware of what was going on.
The players were brought up not to worry, not you to worry
as an individual too much because we wouldn't expect you just yourself
to win the game.
We want not only to share the ball,
share the game, but to share the worries and all.
BAGPIPES PLAY
You know, obviously, we've come to Glenbuck.
For me, it's a very emotional occasion. Shankly's spiritual home.
I think it's a testimony to what he meant to people,
so many people here and people made the effort to come here.
You know, we came here for the 50th anniversary of the Cup Final and I
was probably too young to appreciate it but I remember my dad was
at the match, I remember him coming home from Wembley, and my grandad,
who first took me to the match and lived in Granton Road opposite the
Kop, when he found out they'd won the cup my grandad burst into tears
and I think that was the reaction for a lot of people in Liverpool.
Bill Shankly said it was his proudest moment.
When you get to Glenbuck, you know, there's an eerie silence there,
but you think this is his village and this is what chiselled him
into the man he was.
He was infallible, you know, to us.
Looking back on it now, obviously he was a human being
but we elevate it to something else.
This is not just football, this is more than that.
Bill Shankly died 30-odd years ago
and his spirit lives on, and when we started the Spirit Of Shankly that
was the idea behind that, because we wanted to keep his ideology alive.
Years of disconnect now between Liverpool Football Club
and the local community
because, basically, you can't afford to go any more, you know.
Our sport is football, as working class people, and I'm not
ashamed to say I'm working class, I'm quite proud of that.
Now, obviously it's been taken out of our hands at the moment
by greedy people, basically, who've got involved in football
because of the money that's involved.
When Shankly came,
the clubs on Merseyside were still rooted in the community.
Obviously now it's a global brand,
but I think Shankly would be shaking his head saying, you know,
you should keep those links with the community otherwise you've
lost your soul.
I think it's probably kicked in since '92, as well,
when the Premier League was formed.
Obviously the huge swathes of money that have come into the game now
have made the clubs conglomerate businesses, basically.
Luckily enough, there's enough of us still around to try and make it
better for future generations but we need to get the clubs back to being
community-based, I think, and that's why we're doing the protest at the
moment, you know, we're trying to get it back to somewhere like that.
It's going to be a hard slog.
No, I agree with you, but I think that the game moves on,
it does change.
I'm not sure how Bill Shankly would find it today,
he'd probably be a bit wound up with how it works now
but we all do talk about the corporate side of football and
the business side of it, it's run like a business,
and I think sometimes
that is lost, that at the end of the day it's a game of football.
Ticket prices now is a big thing, the way we treat supporters.
It feels like a lot of the time it's any which way you can to extract
more money from supporters - kits, season tickets,
tickets for away games, travel, whatever it may be,
it feels like it's a constant sort of charge on the man
on the street, who, without them, what would football be?
I mean, football is about being with your friends, having a laugh,
going to the match, and it's sort of something you build up over
the years and you take your children then and it's kind of important.
It keeps the communities together, and if they are just
treated as customers then that's definitely not what my grandad was
about and that's not what he wanted Liverpool Football Club to be about.
Being in Liverpool in the 1960s was the greatest place on earth.
We had the football, whether you were red or whether you were blue,
we had the two best football teams in the country,
and we had the music.
You felt like the spotlight of the world was on Liverpool.
It was a marvellous place to be, yeah, it was.
# Our day will come
# And we'll have everything
# We'll share the joy... #
I think I was lucky, lucky to be there at the right time, you know.
I was very lucky.
It was a great time to be a Scouser.
You know, it was incredible,
28,000 on the Kop singing The Beatles' songs, taking
Gerry And The Pacemakers' You'll Never Walk Alone as their anthem.
It was astonishing.
Saturday's weather perfect for an historic Scouse occasion.
They would be the champions of England
and they wanted their own people to see them become so.
They care so much about football.
# She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah... #
When you seen the Kop in full flow,
and you were in there as part of that flow, you could
feel that energy, and I think
one of the best comments you can
make about Bill Shankly is that he was able to bring that energy out
and transform it into his team and onto the terraces and everybody
wanted to be part of the Shankly revolution, and I was no different.
Natural enthusiasm, that's the whole thing.
It's the greatest thing in the world, natural enthusiasm.
You're nothing without it.
I used to dream about playing for Liverpool, every night.
It was a dream I never ever thought would come true
because there was only a handful of black players playing
professional football and I remember,
through the school holidays, we used to always go to Melwood
and climb on the walls to watch Liverpool train, and he'd come out.
He'd come out onto the road.
"How come you lot aren't in school?"
And he'd say to us in that dulcet Scottish accent,
"Make sure you get your education, you need your education
"if you want to play for Liverpool."
And this was like this is your invitation,
if you want to play for Liverpool, but you need your education.
Unbelievable. Unbelievable that a man of that stature and he come out.
He was very intense, you know, about football.
He loved the supporters and he didn't like us letting them down.
If we got beat or whatever, he took it personally.
And he spoke and the whole city just shut up and listened
and he spoke to their hearts and they understood what
he was talking about and they really did idolise the guy.
It was just an amazing experience and that was just an offshoot of,
he's still a football manager,
and at the time he could have done anything.
In our language there's words that are similarity, you know,
they're spelt differently but they mean the same thing.
And there's words that mean the same thing
but the big men use these words, knowing full well that maybe
10% of the viewers will understand what he means.
Well, we don't. We speak the language that everybody understands.
Instead of me saying someone was avaricious,
I would say he was bloody greedy.
I mean, his bark was worse than his bite.
He was a bit soft underneath.
It's hard, if you try to get rid of somebody, it's not easy, is it?
You know, like Shankly in my situation,
because I had a great time there, and I owed a lot to him,
and it was difficult for him to let me go.
Bob Paisley said that one of the things he observed about
Bill Shankly was his loyalty to players
and he said, "You can be too loyal."
He was in a place just down the corridor and Bob Paisley said,
"The boss wants to see you."
So, you're walking down thinking, "What does the boss want?"
And then, when he started talking, his first thing was,
"How do you think you're playing?"
And I said, "I think I'm playing well," you know,
because I wasn't playing all that well.
"Hmmm." Didn't know what to say. He said, "Oh.
"The directors don't think you're playing well."
I said, "Well, how long is it
"since you've started taking notice of directors?"
And he said, "You're bloody right, son!
"You go and get changed."
But that was the beginning, you know, he'd warned me there.
He had this great affiliation with the players who'd done him
proud throughout the mid-'60s,
who'd done all these great things, bringing the first FA Cup.
So to have to change that must have hurt him a lot
but he knew that he had to do it because they'd all come to a point.
It was as though it was like a brick wall - bam,
hit it, I have to do this and this is going to hurt me.
Some of the great players all started to move on and I was,
if you want, at the hub of it
because I'd just signed in '69 as an apprentice, so you were seeing this
team evolve now with these younger players being given a chance.
So it was like a new spark again and it was, again,
a great place to be and to be part of it
and I was on the inside witnessing what was going on.
CROWD: Toshack! Toshack!
At that time, I was £110,000,
it was a record signing.
Doesn't seem like it now, I mean they earn more than that a day now.
Fortunately, as I'd done with Cardiff, I scored in front
of the Kop, my first game against Everton.
A game that we won 3-2 after being 2-0 down at half time,
so that got me off on the right foot, you know, with the Kopites
and with Shanks and, as I mentioned to you earlier, we were all young
lads who came from lower divisions and he just pieced us together.
Didn't work or tell us about our bad points,
just pushed forward our good points and put us
into areas of the field where we would be able to perform and gel
together as a team, and coached us and trained us so that we were fit.
If you want to fix your taps, you send for a plumber,
if you want to fix your electrics, you send for an electrician.
We had specialist places for these players.
We didn't complicate them, we gave them something that was,
basically, easy to understand.
And this is what football's all about, it's really a simple game.
CROWD: Kevin Keegan! Kevin Keegan!
Would you welcome the chance to move on to another club?
It depends what sort of club, really.
I remember my manager, Ron Ashman, at Scunthorpe, picking me
up in his car.
I had a new suit that I'd bought and obviously I knew a little bit about
him because Liverpool were starting to get a big club, and he was...
But I didn't really know him,
and he was fantastic from the minute I met him, you know.
He just came out and said "Son, welcome to Liverpool,
"the best club in England, maybe the world."
I can remember him saying that.
He was saying, "We get 26,000 people
"standing behind that goal, son."
I was playing in front of 3,000 people in the whole stadium
but, to be honest with you, I was such a small signing in
the scheme of things that it just went
right under the radar, you know.
I wasn't supposed to be a player for the time present,
I was one for the future, maybe.
Well, I found out about Kevin Keegan from Andrew Beattie,
who used to be manager at Huddersfield Town
and Peter Doherty, who was scouting then for Preston North End,
was on about him too and I thought, "Christ, they can't both be wrong".
He was first in everything.
Oh, he was a fantastic little fella and I've never seen such enthusiasm.
You could tell right from the start he was out to prove a point.
You know, from his humble background, hard brought up, father
a miner and all that, and this was the kind of background
I had an' all.
So Keegan, right from the start, didn't want to lose, was a winner.
He's one of the great signings anyone's ever made, I think,
Kevin Keegan.
Originally, strangely enough,
he was going to replace Ian Callaghan in midfield.
That's how they saw Kevin and it was a sheer accident that, just before
the start of the '71/'72 season, they had a practice match and they
put Kevin up front alongside John Toshack and it was a revelation.
Keegan, Shankly did have this father and son relationship.
I was in the reserve team in pre-season
when Kevin had first come, and I remember playing at Southport
and Ronnie Moran was the reserve team manager.
And he's gone like that. The game was 0-0 at half time,
Keegan's come in, he's only just joined the club - long hair,
which was, like, forbidden, and we were all like that
"Oh, Reuben Bennett will tell you you've got to get your hair cut."
He says, "Nobody tells me to get my hair cut,
"I decide," and I was like... And he did, he kept to that.
And we played and, at half time,
Ronnie Moran was, like, we never looked like scoring.
So Keegan comes in, he goes, "We're never going to score a goal,
"never going to score a goal".
Kevin was more of an attacking midfield player and he said
"Oh, do you think you can do better?"
And he said, "Yeah, I can," and we were all like that, "Wow."
And he said, "Right, you're playing up front."
Played up front, was different class. We won 2-0.
Before the season started we had a First Team vs Reserves game
and normally the Reserves beat the First Team, that was the way
it was, because everybody was more pumped up.
Keegan played in the First Team,
the First Team battered the Reserves.
He was in the team on the Saturday for the opening game of the season.
The first game, I'm not in the programme,
I had a struggle getting to the ground because the guy who
had the yellow jacket on, when I said, "I'm playing," he sort
of said to me, "Yeah, so am I, son," you know, and he turned me round.
So, I wasn't on the radar, so, for me, I can remember he just
said to me, "Just go out and drop hand grenades all over the place."
That was my pre-match instruction.
"Just go out there, son, and drop hand grenades all over the place."
In other words, just go wherever you want where you think you can
cause a problem and cause a problem then go somewhere else.
And, you know, I knew what he meant.
And the rest is history. He scored and became an icon.
Collective play, and playing as a team -
would that stifle individuals?
Now, the answer to this is that all the team of the '60s, all of them
were capped, played for their countries, by playing collectively.
All the 1970s team, all got capped,
again, by playing collectively.
So that was two teams, the '60s and the '70s team, ALL got
international caps by playing for each other.
You know, he created a real sense of "It's all about the team"
but the team went way beyond the 11 players on the football pitch.
He knew the name of everybody at the club, the tea lady,
the lady who cleaned the dressing rooms,
the guys as you came in, you know, he knew them all by first name.
He was very impressive as a person but in a very simple way.
He wasn't doing it to impress anybody, it was just the way he was.
Every sentence, every thought, everything was about football
and yet he had such a warm character as well and he was
interested in people and he made an effort to approach people and
a willingness to speak to people
about the things that mattered to them.
He used to mesmerize everyone, you know,
with his speeches after the game.
If we got beat, we might have been hammered, but he'd turn it round
to say, "We were very, very unlucky,"
and have everyone believing him.
So, after winning the FA Cup in '65,
the next time was 1971, obviously, and we got beat but he gave us
the greatest speech I have ever heard in my life
at St George's Hall.
I remember seeing it - I put it on sometimes now,
it's a great speech - and you think
"Yeah, this guy, he's more than a football manager."
I've drummed it into our players
time and again that they are privileged to play for you.
And if they didn't believe me, they believe me now.
Merseyside is very community-based.
You knock us, we come back harder,
we fight, and this guy tapped into that.
He'd had that, he'd had a difficult upbringing,
and he realised the difficulties of what these people go through
every week and he wanted to give them a team to be proud of.
He did a lot more than that.
Well, by the '60s, they'd won the FA Cup,
they'd won the league title a couple of times
and then in 1973. they win the league again...
COMMENTATOR: It's difficult to say who admires who most there.
..And they also win the UEFA Cup,
thanks mainly to a wonderful display by young Kevin Keegan.
Toshack... Keegan. 2-0!
This was the real start of the '70s, of the new era,
if you like, and they'd had a little bit of a barren patch, really,
and the Cup Final where they got beat,
but it was, he knew they were coming back.
You know, Emlyn Hughes,
they had people like Steve Heighway getting into the team now.
Why do you think that Liverpool has such fanatical fans?
Why do they follow the team so closely?
Well, I believe it's because they identify with the manager.
The character of the manager goes through to the players
and it goes through to the fans as well.
There'd been a lot of replacements in the side
and he knew this side was just starting again.
It was like his second wave.
# We're gonna win the cup We're gonna win the league
# And now you're gonna believe us And now you're gonna believe us... #
As I said before, I was 20 years of age and I'm playing at Wembley.
The old Wembley Stadium, 100,000 people.
Shanks had us believing, "These are not going to get a kick.
"Youse are going to dominate this game.
"We are the best team here and we're going to win."
And now the whole of Wembley is tense and ready to greet
the two teams who've fought their way to this 1974 Cup Final.
And now they see them.
But we were unbelievable.
We played the Liverpool way that day,
we kept possession of the ball, with progression.
And Newcastle at the moment looking just a little disorganized.
Here's Hall, and now a chance for Keegan! And that's it!
Kevin Keegan has scored for Liverpool.
Being a young lad, 20 years of age, winning the FA Cup with
Liverpool, I just thought was beyond my wildest dreams.
Here we are, boys, that's what it's all about.
Yeah, we got them done, yeah.
And I got a league title medal in '72, '73 got a UEFA Cup medal.
But that FA Cup was just...
And then the bombshell.
It is with great regret that Mr Shankly has intimated that he
wishes to retire from active participation in league football.
It was a big, big surprise to all of us when he left.
We certainly didn't see that one coming.
I think there comes a time when you're a little tired,
a little fed up, if that's the word,
that you feel as if,
"Goodness gracious, why should I carry on?"
I remember someone, one of the players saying to me,
"Shanks has finished."
I said, "What do you mean, he's finished?"
"He's finished, he's resigned."
I thought, "No.
"No, that can't be right," but, you know,
he used to do it pretty regularly at the end of the season,
he'd go to the board
and say, "Look, I've had enough now," and they always used to talk
him round and I think they thought they could that year, '74, and
he just said, "No, I'm finished,"
and it was incredible around the place.
It was like he'd died.
It was like the club had half died as well.
Because he used to go around saying, "The word retirement should be
"stricken from the dictionary," and yet there he was and retired.
It was a contradiction in everything he'd said.
How do you feel about the news today? What news?
That Shankly's retired.
Oh, yeah!
Retired? Are you being funny? Yeah. Kidding you up.
I'm not kidding you, Shankly has actually retired today,
he wants a rest.
He's leaving.
They didn't believe it because we had no warning.
You're having me on, aren't you?
No, I'm not having you on, I've just been to Anfield...
I was with a mate of mine from school who was actually
about six foot odd and I was about three foot two, and you just
see Sid's shoulder on the thing, you know, but then it just went viral.
Everyone all over, by the time you got home from town and everything,
everyone had seen it and that was the end of that one, you know.
That followed you for the rest of your life, that one.
And this young lad in this interview captured the feelings,
I think, of everybody.
"What? We've just won the FA Cup, Liverpool, and Shanks has retired?"
What do you think's going to happen to the club now?
They'll go on but it just won't be the same without them.
How do you feel then, sad?
Terrible.
That became for us Liverpool fans
an iconic moment,
of just Tony Wilson
explaining to the fans that he'd resigned.
You know, you just wondered where it would all go without him
because he was so central to everything that was going on
and everyone adored him so much that you just wondered what was next.
I think Shanks, in the following years,
had realised it was probably the biggest mistake
of his life because I don't actually think he was ready for retirement.
I think he had a lot more to give, a lot more to offer,
and I think it damaged him.
All the things he'd drummed into us
were getting passed on to the lads in the '70s team, and they were
up for it and they were going to win trophies and they did win trophies.
But the boss was then side-lined. He side-lined himself.
Sometimes I feel that I did make the wrong decision but,
having made it, I will myself not to say nothing.
What are the occasions that you feel that, that it
was the wrong decision?
When are those times?
Oh, they come at various times.
It may be Saturday morning, there's a match on and you,
if you're manager, you're involved, you're alive and alight
and you're all, you know, it's something, you know, the big match.
A feeling you can't really describe to people.
He was a king without a kingdom once he'd retired, and the added layered
problem was that Liverpool had said, "Look, Bill," - they went on bended
knee to try and keep him - but they said, "If you retire, it's got to
"be a clean break because you're such
"a powerful figure at this club."
Like Matt Busby was at Manchester United and sort of dwarfed
managers that followed Matt. They said,
"If you go, it's got to be a clean break."
This is a very, very sensitive subject
and a most difficult one, and it was for us players at the time.
Shanks made this decision to walk away but, when we got down there
the first day of pre-season, who's the first voice to greet you?
Bill Shankly.
And we'd all walk in, and what would our - which you would expect,
"Morning Boss. Morning Boss."
Everybody's walking past, "Morning Boss".
So, of course, Bob Paisley's got to come into that scenario
day after day, so, as much I'd loved Shanks, I think
Bob Paisley was put in an extremely difficult position.
Probably could have been handled a bit better.
How, I don't know,
but it started to create this bad feeling between the club and Shanks.
Particularly that first year, because Bob didn't win anything,
we didn't win anything that first year, so it was a most
difficult time for him, but Shanks had laid those foundations.
And it seems to me that it got to the stage where he didn't know
whether he was welcome or not back and that was very, very sad.
It was badly handled, is the answer to your question.
What the answer to it was, with a character like Bill Shankly,
with a personality like Bill Shankly, you know, the boss,
he wouldn't have accepted charity, but they should have given him
some position at that club forever, you know, and they didn't.
I've never understood it and I never will.
I remember one day Shanks turned up at Melwood and pulled me to one
side, then he said to me, "Don't be dribbling the ball up to defenders,
"just knock it past them because they're not going to catch you."
Needless to say again, I tried it on the Saturday and scored a hat-trick.
And the next time I seen him again, and I think it was the last
time we seen him at Melwood, and I just said to him, "Thank you very
"much for that advice, Mr Shankly, because it worked well for me."
He says, "Aye, son, I know a little bit about football."
And that was it.
Maybe he thought he could still be involved in some way
and he didn't think it was just going to be a complete break.
I don't think he thought it through very, very well.
I think probably there was some pressure as well
from my grandmother but I don't think, you know, because people
said he stopped for his family, I don't think that was 100% the case,
I think there were other factors and it was probably
like everything, you know,
there's more than one thing to consider when somebody
takes such a big decision, but I think he completely regretted it.
I really do believe that.
He realised, I think, that he couldn't live without it.
What about the offers you've received, the offers of jobs?
When I was manager we didn't do too bad but I'm wiser now
and I don't think you can buy the experience I've got.
And I don't think you can buy the inborn gift that I've got.
I can help people, I'm certain of that.
So he was going round other clubs, you know,
and trying to, you know,
"Can I help you sometimes?"
and they didn't want him.
So, I think... He regretted it, I think,
because he could have still gone on
but he might have thought, "I'll go out at the top."
Which I did.
Well, I'd been in the game a long time as a player and a manager.
As a manager, of course, it was a hard task.
I started at the bottom but I came to Liverpool where
the potential was tremendous, that was the only reason
because it was similar to Glasgow and the Scottish people.
But I got to a point when I'd fought the battles.
You see, in football, you fight on the field to win
but you've got battles to fight inside, political battles, to come
here and try and prove to the directors, try and make them think
along the same lines as me of the potential there was for Liverpool.
Because, candidly, it was a kind of shambles of a place.
I'd fought the battles
inside and outside, and was only interested in
one thing, success for the club and that meant success for the people.
I was only in the game for the love of the game, the results
for the club, make the people happy, because, at the end of the day
as I said, you asked me a question, "Why did you love Liverpool?"
I loved Liverpool because I was manager of Liverpool, I was
the manager, and that was the satisfaction I got.
Not that I was gloating about it, but I had won.
It couldn't have happened to a better man.
But, you know, unlike Leeds when Don Revie left, they promoted
from within and, of course, Bob was very close to Bill Shankly.
Not the same character, but with the same beliefs
and the same things and that was very clever
because Leeds brought in Clough, and he tried to change everything
and there was nothing much wrong at Leeds, Leeds were a great side.
Whereas Bob knew, being inside, that we were still a great side so he
just let the ship sail on and took it to new heights, if we're honest.
I was fortunate enough to be captain of the club at the time.
I'm walking up them steps
to pick the European Cup up, and I'm thinking to myself, "We've won it
"but Shanks really won it," because Shanks made Liverpool a club.
It must have been really difficult, I think, almost like he'd been
maybe shoved aside, but I think everything would have balanced
out maybe afterwards because of the love that people showed him,
because of the respect that the supporters showed him always.
And, even Everton, he went to Everton to watch matches
and he tried to keep it in his life as much as possible
because that was his life.
He was aware, I think he was well aware, of his place in history
and he's well aware of the love that the fans have for him.
The fans would never have treated him
the way that maybe the directors treated him
but, you know, Shankly had the connection with the fans and
the players,
didn't have that connection with the directors or the owners.
I feel that the family owe the Liverpool supporters a lot
because I think he was very unhappy when he left Liverpool
and they made things better for him.
There's a picture of him where it's the Kop, it's
a very atmospheric kind of photo but for him it was like he standing
with the people he would have chosen to stand with
all the time, you know.
Well, I went in the Kop because I promised I would go in
and I went in and I enjoyed it.
I didn't go in for bravado or anything like that.
No, I went in amongst them because I played for them and I was their man.
Not only the Kop, Anfield Road and the Paddock
and the Kemlyn Road Stand and all the stands.
And all of Anfield.
So I went in the Kop
because I had promised a man I would go into the Kop.
He was a Kopite.
We stand behind the goal, and someone was shouting,
"Shankly's over there," and we're going, "No, no chance."
But he was, he was over there.
He absolutely got hounded to death, people were jumping all over him.
He couldn't have enjoyed the match because people were just
dancing all around him and he
mustn't have been able to see anything.
But I think he was making a statement,
he was making a statement saying, "I'm one of you.
"And I always will be one of you.
"Even though I've retired
"and I'm no longer employed by Liverpool, I'm one of you."
# He was born in bonnie Scotland
# And he played the football game
# He came to Liverpool in '59
# To help us win again
# And with his mighty red army
# He marched to victory
# He was a legend in his time
# Our hero Bill Shankly
# So, all say thanks to the Shanks
# He'll never walk alone
# They'll sing a song for all the world
# In this his Liverpool home. #
Well, the day he died was so poignant and tragic and sad,
the flag on the Town Hall flew at half mast.
It really was, the whole city mourned,
red and blue disappeared, it was Merseyside united
and not just Merseyside, I think the whole country.
I think it was a symbol of what Bill had achieved that he
transcended football so, first, when Bill Shankly quit people
couldn't believe it, but when he died, it was like a national loss.
It felt like a member of your family had passed away.
He died, I don't know, presumably early in the week
and we played Swansea at home on the Saturday and
we kicked off about 11.00, 11.30 in the morning, and Swansea in those
days were managed by John Toshack, who obviously had played for Shanks,
and everything like that. And it was...
Before the game, we all went out and we had the minute's silence,
which was almost unheard of, and it was unbelievably respectful,
it was fantastic.
And it was just the fact that, you know, I'd only met him
a couple of times but I got the fact that, "Oh, my goodness me,
"this fella was Mr Liverpool."
I was away in Norway and we came home for the funeral,
and I always remember getting in my car, driving into town
and putting the radio on and there was an interview with Bill Shankly.
And, as soon as I put it on, my name was mentioned.
You know, he was talking about me
and he was saying I was an honest boy and all that.
A moment like that, you wouldn't realise, you know,
it was very emotional.
But he was the best thing that ever happened to Liverpool.
Well, I got asked... I won this award and it was in London and,
to my amazement, I didn't know Bill Shankly was coming,
he came out and presented me with it.
And I just gave it him back and said, "Thank you, it's yours,
"because I wouldn't have had it without you."
And he was...
But he took it, and when we went to his funeral,
we were in the front room and the first thing
when we came to his house, Nessie came up to me and said
"This is yours, he said I've got to give it you back the day he died."
It just creased me, you know.
Pretty tough when she gave it me back.
I still remember absolutely every moment of it, really,
from the time we left the house it was like a sea of people.
Red scarves and blue scarves, as well, Everton supporters.
I mean, when I saw the Everton supporters who'd come out to
pay their last respects, that is when I just fell apart, really,
because it was nothing to do with football, it was people,
you know, coming to pay their last respects.
Well, I just felt I had to. Oh, I'm sorry I can't...
Yeah, he was so loved.
It was wonderful,
it was one of those things that you were glad you could go to it.
I was a youth worker at the time and I was based
just by the Jolly Miller,
and the church wasn't very far away but I couldn't bring myself to go.
Don't know whether it was because I thought I'd be too upset there,
I don't know, but I just couldn't bring myself to go to the funeral.
You know, I wanted to... For me, as a religious thing,
I wanted him to live forever, to be resurrected.
They got a huge turnout. Huge, huge, huge.
Just everybody wanted to be there, you know.
We didn't want to be there.
It was a sad, sad day, football's great loss
when a man like Bill Shankly leaves the pitch.
BAGPIPES PLAY AMAZING GRACE
Bill Shankly didnae live for himself,
Bill Shankly lived for the team, the extended family and the city.
TO THE TUNE OF AMAZING GRACE:
# Shankly, Shankly, Shankly
# Shankly, Shankly, Shankly, Shankly
# Shankly, Shankly, Shankly. #
I think something gets lost when we cease to think that
the attitudes that Bill Shankly had and the enthusiasm he had,
the humanity that he brought to his involvement with football -
if that goes, if we cease to believe in that, I think something is lost.
It's like people say now, you know, you love football
but you hate the industry, and I kind of do.
It's something that you feel that's been taken away from people
and been sold back to them at an exorbitant price
and the era that he comes out of, the era that he was
a successful manager in, it was a more optimistic time for Britain.
We look back on that era now as a sort of almost like a lost
paradise in a way, you know, and I think anybody that had their
personal ascendancy in that time is very valued, is very valued in
the working class community as something
that we've lost in some way.
If I had a business and I wanted a workforce,
I would pick my workforce from Merseyside.
It's a kind of distressed area, there's a lot of unemployment
and people have a hard time but they've got a big spirit.
All they need is handling like human beings,
not bullied and pushed around, I'll tell you.
So I'll take my workforce from Merseyside, and anybody
can take theirs from anywhere else they like and I'll win.
Fans in general across the country now,
they get treated like second class citizens but we get charged
first class prices, basically, and he would be mortified, I know
he would, and it's a shame that he's not around because he'd be the
voice that would be fighting on our behalf, there's no danger of that.
He wouldn't like it now, it's not his idea of football.
I think he'd be looking down and thinking, "Oh, it's changed
"and I'm not sure it's for the better here."
You know, he wouldn't like the players putting on earphones
and walking off a bus without acknowledging the fans
and signing a few autographs. He'd hate that.
He wouldn't like the corporate, he didn't see football as
somewhere where you go and sit in a privileged seat and you have a meal.
He probably wouldn't even like the advertising on the front,
I think he just liked the badge.
So, it's changed a lot, but that was the best era,
there's no doubt about it.
The Shankly days at Liverpool,
despite Bob Paisley doing a lot better and other times
and maybe Klopp even now might take the club and do all the same
things again...
You know, the first time it happens
is always the best.
I was a lucky, lucky boy because in the '70s
when we were winning everything, you know, I was about 25,
it couldn't have happened at a better time of my life.
I was really lucky.
The timing was perfect, going right through to see all those games.
I was a lucky boy and all those memories I'll treasure till
the day I die.
Really, really good.
You see, this is the story, that Liverpool's not only a club,
it's an institution where my aim was to bring the people
close to the team, to the club.
So much so that men died, and the women, their wives,
brought their ashes to scatter them in the Anfield ground
and they said a little prayer, then they went away.
I mean, football's a matter of life and death.
I said, "Look, it's more important than that,"
and it's more important to them than that, you see.
And that's why there was no hypocrisy, it was sheer honesty.
These people support Liverpool, and I accepted them then.
Got them in, I said, "Come in, in you come."
Liverpool, Liverpool, Liverpool...
The people of Liverpool, Liverpool supporters,
looked up to Shankly, like, top man, wasn't he?
He was just the person that they could trust. With anything.
Yeah. Very difficult thing, he was just such a great man.
Oh, yeah, people still talk about him.
Somebody will say, you know, "What about that Bill Shankly?"
They want to know a bit about him.
What was he like?
Well, I think in life all good things, all incredible things,
start from people and beliefs and values, and I think Bill Shankly
is the iconic figure in terms of Liverpool Football Club.
You know, if he'd have made mistakes and put the wrong ideas
and the wrong philosophies in place, who knows,
we might not be been sitting here doing
an interview at one of the biggest football clubs in the world.
I said before that time moves on, things change, but I think a figure
like that and the values he had, I think that's still the same today.
And he's a man, I think, who we'd all look for and think...
you'd like your dad, yourself, your grandad to have that look on life.
Always trying to help people.
I think that's what Bill Shankly did, it wasn't
just about football, it was helping his fellow man.
I suppose my abiding
memory of Bill is...
just the delight I felt when I
saw him coming towards me, and
the certainty that
there would be a lot of laughing along the way, and a lot of warmth.
He was a great Ayrshireman, and we've had a few great
Ayrshiremen, but Bill would be up there with the higher ranks.
But he was a very unique man.
They always said there'll never be another,
and the statue we've got here, it's so apt.
The inscription on it says, "He made the people happy."
You couldn't have thought up a better line for him,
could you? "He made the people happy."
Everybody who'd come here, he made the people happy.
And if you can do that, as a manager,
you deserve to have the job, don't you?
# Walk on through the wind
# Walk on through the rain
# Though your dreams be tossed
# And blown
# Walk on, walk on
# With hope in your heart
# And you'll never walk alone
# You'll never walk alone
# Walk on, walk on
# With hope in your heart
# And you'll never walk alone
# You'll never walk alone. #