'You'll Never Walk Alone': Gerry Marsden gets beautiful Liverpool FC memorial

26 April 2022, 10:58

Paul McCartney Returns to Play Intimate Gig at Liverpool’s Cavern Club

Gerry Marsden was a hero of Liverpool Football Club who made 'You'll Never Walk Alone' an anthem.

Liverpool Football Club has unveiled a beautiful new memorial in honour of Gerry Marsden.

The frontman of pop legends Gerry and the Pacemakers died in January 2021 at the age of 78 after suffering a heart infection.

• The Story of... 'You'll Never Walk Alone', Liverpool FC's anthem
• Gerry and the Pacemakers singer Gerry Marsden has died, aged 78

The plaque was unveiled by Marsden's wife Pauline on Sunday (April 24), just before Liverpool beat local rivals Everton 2-0.

The understated memorial features a bronze Liverpool Football Club scarf reading "YOU'LL NEVER WALK ALONE", accompanied by a musical stave featuring a clutch of notes from the song.

Above the scarf is a photograph of Marsden wearing a Liverpool tie given to him by Bill Shankly.

It features the words: "With Gerry's unique interpretation and soulful rendition, those simple words and notes on the page acquired extraordinary meaning, becoming not just a message for our times... but an anthem for the world. YNWA."

The memorial is placed between the Kop and the stadium's Sir Kenny Dalglish Stand.

'You'll Never Walk Alone' originally featured in Rodgers & Hammerstein musical Carousel, which opened on Broadway in 1945 before coming to the West End five years later.

A movie adaptation gave the song a bigger audience in 1956, and it was covered many times before Gerry and the Pacemakers took it to number one in 1963.

Anfield Stadium had an in-house DJ who played the top 10 at the time, and the song became a favourite of Liverpool fans.

Apparently, then-Liverpool manager Bill Shankly had already Gerry's version of the song that summer and the club is said to have adopted it as their song even before it was released.

Gerry & The Pacemakers - You'll Never Walk Alone [Official Video]

Marsden invited Shankly and the team on to The Ed Sullivan Show where the group performed the song for US TV audiences.

"When we finished it, Bill came up to me," Marsden said years later. "He said, ‘Gerry my son, I have given you a football team and you have given us a song’."

'You'll Never Walk Alone' has become a mantra for Liverpool fans, and is used on shirts, scarves and other merchandise, as well as above the Shankly Gates entrance of Anfield Stadium.