In the final part of our full career interview with Tippa Irie, he recalls how he was able to diversify into the worlds of football, hip hop and theatre, the challenges of surviving as an independent artist, and why, despite this, he is still Living the Dream…
Tell me a bit about how you recorded the 1993 Arsenal song Shouting For The Gunners with Peter Hunnigale? That was the year the Arsenal won the double wasn’t it?
Yeah that was the double year! There was a guy, a friend of mine, I can’t remember his name because it was a while back now and he was in that circle, the football circle. I think his name was Fred. He said “Tip, you know I’ve got an idea. I think the Gunners are going to do the double“. He came to me with the idea and I went to Peter with the idea because I thought that Peter could do the music. I just came up with “I know and you know we’re shouting for the Gunners“. Then of course I’m an Arsenal supporter so it was easy for me to write the lyrics. Peters is a supporter too.
We just got together and we did the song and we sent it to all of the radio DJs that we knew supported Arsenal. Like George Kay and Jigs in all these guys from Choice. They all supported Arsenal so they started to play on the radio. Then London Records, Pete Tong and these guys, they heard it so they signed it. It started to blow up from there and it got to number 33 in the charts. We nearly made it on Top Of The Pops but George Graham wouldn’t let the team come on Top Of The Pops at the time. If they did that it would have shot up the charts but because they didn’t it stayed in the 30s. But was still an achievement. We all did a video together.
