A member of Australian band Mental as Anything claims that he was in disbelief when told that Rangers fans had helped one of their signature tracks to number one in the UK.
Rangers fans have adopted 80s classic Live It Up as their unofficial anthem for the club’s charge to a legendary 55th league title and its since skyrocketed to the top of the iTunes charts.
First released in 1985, former Mentals vocalist and bassist Peter O’Doherty discussed the track topping the UK charts 30 years on from its release and almost exactly one year on from the passing of the group’s frontman Greedy Smith.
“I still think I’m having my leg pulled,” O’Doherty told ABC Radio.
“It’s almost a year to the day that Greedy died at the end of last year, and we had a memorial lunch for him on Sunday afternoon in Sydney.
“It was a nice day and a good gathering and a lot of combing over the history of the Mentals and talking about Greedy.
“The next morning my brother rings me up and he says have you seen the email, Jeremy our old manager had sent out an email saying Live It Up is number one on the UK charts.
“And I thought no its not, that’s just a lie, that’s just ridiculous, I thought he was having a lend.
“I had seen screenshots of the top eight of the iTunes downloads and I thought what does that even mean, Live It Up was number one and I thought it must’ve been something from the past.
“I didn’t really pay much attention to it and thought that’s just an old memory, not realising we never had a number one in the UK, we were number two in 1986 I think it was.
“Then we got texts and emails coming through from all over saying have you seen this?
“We were all going that can’t be right, then we got the story, the story came through about the Glasgow Rangers and their ardent supporters having used that song to goad Celtic.
“I do know Rangers are having a great season so they sort of co-opted the song and are using it back against the Celtic fans and are now saying let’s make it number one to really tease them.”
What a genuinely incredible story this is turning out to be – it’s remarkably poignant that on the year anniversary of the frontman’s passing this song should go top of the UK charts.
Rangers fans adopted the song in the aftermath of the 2-0 win over Celtic in October after it was used in a video of the Union Bears pasting images of Connor Goldson’s goals around Glasgow.
It’s since sent off a shockwave around the world with the comments of disbelief from old members of Mental as Anything a wonderful insight into the impact this has had on them.
Rangers fans are desperate for the track to be Christmas number one this year – but there has been some disagreement about who started the campaign in the first place.
