Just before Christmas I did an interview for a major Japanese newspaper who wanted to meet a West Ham fan. The paper had previously met West Ham managing director Angus Kinnear the day before and they were keen to meet a passionate West Ham to finish their article and the club had put them in touch with me.
I expected the interview to be about West Ham expanding their football brand to Asia and Japan, leaving the Boleyn ground and moving to the Olympic Stadium but instead the majority of the interview bizarrely concentrated on our famous Bubbles song and the bubbles machines used to create the tens of thousands of bubbles used at each home game.
The Japanese journalists were absolutely fascinated about the history of the Bubbles song, why the song has endured so long in West Ham hearts, what the lyrics mean to Hammers fans. In relation to our move to Olympic Stadium they wanted to know how many more Bubbles machines would be required to fill the 54,000 capacity with Bubbles to same density and the mechanics of doing that.
To be honest, I hadn’t thought very deeply about what Bubbles the song meant to me before the interview so I thought I would share my answers.
Hopefully most of us know the history of the Bubbles song but those who don’t I will summerise it below from Hammers Historian John Helliar.
The feelings and sentiments expressed in “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles” has for most supporters over the decades captured their feelings and aspirations in its words.
The song itself was originally written and composed around 1919 in America by Jaan Kenbrovin and John William Kellette. The tune was a major hit in the United States, before crossing the Atlantic to these shores, the song likewise also became a hit with the British public in the music halls and theatres that were the popular places of entertainment during the 1920s. One particular artist, a Miss Dorothy Ward, was especially known for making it a popular song at the time with her appearances on the stages around the country.
It was not until around the mid-1920s that the tune was probably adopted by West Ham supporters, but doubtless it had been heard at the Boleyn Ground in one form or another since the beginning of that decade. The circumstances of it being sung by the fans for the first time were somewhat unusual to say the least.
At the time, schoolboy soccer was extremely popular and there were often 1,000 or more fans around the touchlines of pitches in the West Ham area when matches took place on Saturday mornings between teams of 14-year-olds (the school leaving age at the time). In the local Park School team there was a fair-haired lad named W. (Billy) J. “Bubbles” Murray, so called because of his distinct and almost uncanny resemblance to the boy in the famous painting by Millais entitled “Bubbles”.
The painting had become well-known to the public as it was used to advertise Pears Soap which was popular at the time and for many years afterwards. Bubbles Murray never played for the West Ham first team.Pears Soap Works was based in Canning Town, there would have been a lot of Bubbles posters around the ground at the time the song was popular. Therefore, the fans would therefore have associated the song and the poster together.
The lyrics themselves discuss our dreams fading and dying and this is the painful of most living West Ham fans with most seasons on one way or another.
I understand that West Ham will be upscaling their Bubbles machines in the former Olympic Stadium and the song and the bubbles will follow us to our new stadium
The article will be published in Japan in the new year.