Sheffield’s favourite musicians left to sing the blues as Wednesday face the drop

Like thousands of Sheffield Wednesday fans, Richard Hawley knew where he had to be. On the last Friday of October, the club he had first watched as a child, walking to Hillsborough with his father and grandfather, had been placed into administration. It came, in a sense, as a relief: it marked, at long last, the end of Dejphon Chansiri’s damaging, debt-addled ownership.

More immediately, it brought intense, existential fear: Wednesday needed money to pay that month’s salaries, to get through the season. That weekend, the fans provided it. They swarmed to the stadium, filling Hillsborough for the first time in a long time and spending more than £200,000 in the club shop.

Hawley, singer and songwriter and one of the city’s most beloved sons, wanted to do his bit, too; so did Nick Banks, Pulp’s long-serving drummer. “I choke up thinking about it,” said Hawley. “There were so many fans that we couldn’t get in the shop. There was this sense of union and unity. That’s what football is to me: the last bastion of union, the one place Thatcher couldn’t smash it. It was evidence of its existence.”

The shop was so busy that Hawley and Banks, eventually, had to admit defeat. Jarvis Cocker, Pulp’s frontman, had planned to join them; Hawley texted him and told him there was no point. Still, he and Banks were not the only famous faces in that crowd: two members of Arctic Monkeys made their way down to the shop at one point, too.

The preponderance of internationally acclaimed musicians among their fanbase has always been one of the curiosities of Wednesday. In Manchester and Liverpool, loyalties have always been divided: the Roses were red, Oasis were blue; Liverpool have Ian McCulloch and John Power; Everton have Circa Waves and Bill Ryder-Jones. Everyone claims various Beatles; they have always remained distinctly circumspect on the matter.

Sheffield, though, is different. It is not only that Wednesday seem to have close to a monopoly on everyone who became anyone in the city, but that those artists are wholeheartedly, publicly committed to the cause. The rule is not hard and fast: Sean Bean, a good portion of Def Leppard and Paul Heaton all favour Sheffield United. Pretty much everyone else leans to Wednesday: The Human League’s Martyn Ware, Heaven 17’s Glenn Gregory, most of Pulp and all of Arctic Monkeys. Rebecca Lucy Taylor, who performs as Self Esteem, wore a Wednesday top on stage at Glastonbury.

Jon McClure, frontman for Reverend and the Makers, follows them home and away, along with his brother Chris, who has the twin claims to fame of playing Steve Bracknall, the gravel-voiced pub team coach, and being depicted on the front cover of Arctic Monkeys’ debut album. Most of Warp Films, the producers of Adolescence, are Wednesday fans. Hawley, in his own words, “often” goes to bed wearing a 1950s-era Wednesday shirt.

Explanations for this phenomenon vary. “It shouldn’t be a surprise that people with refined musical sensibilities also have more refined football sensibilities,” Banks said. McClure believes it is conclusive proof that “we are just better human beings”. Hawley wonders if the “fatalism bordering on masochism” that supporting Wednesday requires plays a role.

The more likely rationale is historical. “The prevailing wind used to blow the smoke from the factories toward the north of the city,” said James O’Hara, a co-owner of Fagan’s, an Irish pub that has long been a haunt of Sheffield’s musicians, artists and footballers. “It’s not really a city that has a posh bit but the north of the city was always the working-class part. That’s where Jarvis is from, where Hawley’s from, where the Arctics are from. And it’s the working-class areas that create culture.”

Banks agrees. “It’s pretty gritty in the north of Sheffield, and grit gives you the best music,” he said.

Many of the club’s better-known followers, McClure said, share a WhatsApp group; over the last couple of years, as Chansiri’s tenure has unravelled, it has most likely not been a happy place. Wednesday still do not have an owner; the points deduction incurred for entering administration means the club may not even finish this season with a positive points haul.

Life as a Wednesday fan, Banks said, has always required a “grim stoicism”; he, like everyone else, expects nothing more than “unending misery, with the occasional spark of ecstasy”. Even by those low standards, the club’s hardship has been “utterly heartbreaking” to watch.

The worst may still lie ahead. Wednesday could be relegated to League One before February has even finished, a feat that must surely be a record. “It’s so bad that the United fans I know aren’t gloating,” said O’Hara. “Even they can see how grim it is.”

There is a sadness for the city, there, an awareness that Sheffield – like Manchester, like Liverpool – speaks to the world through music and football; one cultural form is currently pulling rather more weight than the other. It is something Hawley, Banks and the rest feel keenly. Wednesday’s fall has a civic impact, McClure said, a bruise on the place’s pride.

They would like it to be different, to have something to celebrate just once in a while, but perhaps there is a silver lining for those Wednesday fans who carry the club with them out in the world. “It grounds you,” said O’Hara. “No matter how much you achieve in life, no matter how well things are going, you always have that voice in the back of your head: you still support Sheffield Wednesday.”

Photography by Joseph Okpako/WireImage