As part of the In The City music conference in Manchester, former footballer Pat Nevin appeared in conversation with friend and head of Bella Union Records Simon Raymonde. We grabbed the famously forthright former Everton, Chelsea and Scotland star for a quick chat afterwards to discuss all things football and music…

Hi Pat. Can you tell us a little about how you became a footballer?

‘I didn’t want to be a footballer! I loved playing football but the draw wasn’t making money out of it – the draw was the joy of football. I did it for the fun of it, and because I was okay at it, I was asked to turn professional. I didn’t want to at first, but then I went semi-professional at Clyde, and then Chelsea came in and in the end I thought I’d give it a go and just enjoy it. And twenty years later I was still enjoying it.’

Was there ever a point when you wanted to give it up?

‘No, because I loved playing, and it gave me an opportunity to do the other stuff that I enjoyed. I was down in London playing for Chelsea, and it was the place to go for theatre, for gigs, for art. Football also gave me an opportunity to travel, I loved travelling and the people you meet. I was extremely dedicated to football; I was one of the only players who’d go back in the afternoon for extra training to improve my technique. I loved football, but I only loved one aspect – the playing. Every other part – the social side of it, swish parties and getting in magazines, I wasn’t interested.’

What was watching football like when you started playing?

‘I think that era has been misunderstood, particularly by newspapers. I’m a fan of football as well, I sit in the rough end down at Hibs, and if you go and sit amongst the fans at any club, they’re not all right wing neo-Nazis. There’s a perfectly normal cross section of society that goes to watch football. There was some groups that tried to hijack it, and there’s always been a laddish element to football, but there’s nothing wrong with that. I would argue that that’s the element that the media choose to focus on, but football fans are a much broader group of people.’

How was football culture different then?

‘There was a lot of what I would call fanzine culture. That grew out of music fanzines, which I used to write for. I was involved in that culture as well as being a player, and I found that whole thing really interesting. They were interested in football and music, which I thought was great. For me, I could see a direct line from punk – which was producing your own music – to fanzines – which was writing and producing it yourself – to football fanzines – which took it away from the corporate side of the game and kept it with the fans.

You’ve always been a big music fan. Have you ever been tempted to make a record?

‘No no no! I’ve always had that awe of musicians – I’m amazed by my daughter, because she can sit down at a piano and just pick out any tune. I never wanted to see it from the inside, as it might lose that magic. I saw football from the inside, and some of that magic was missing because of that, so there was no way I could do that with music.’

Is the stereotype about footballer’s music tastes – it’s all George Michael and Lionel Ritchie – actually true?

‘That’s absolutely true. I was fighting a losing battle a lot of the time. Footballers grow up in such an enclosed culture from the age of 14 or 15, which is the age when a lot of people really become interested in music and that kind of thing, so they’re missing out on that. So they just listen to whatever they can find on Radio 1. I didn’t have that, so I was able to become passionate about that culture and that’s stuck with me for life. Footballer’s lives are like a bubble, and I think that bubble is getting bigger and bigger.’

You’re from Glasgow, which has a great history of producing indie bands, just like Manchester. But which is better?

‘I remember having an argument with Tony Wilson about this once, because he said Manchester and grudgingly Liverpool was the area that had produced the best bands over a long period of time, and I would argue that Glasgow and the central belt of Scotland over to Edinburgh had produced just as many. I think it’s a close call between the two, I don’t think there’s anywhere else in the world that’s done it consistently.’

Why did you switch allegiances from Celtic to Hibernian?

‘I used to be a Celtic fan, but I stopped watching them under Martin O’Neil. I love Martin, but I stopped watching them because of the style of play. It’s unthinkable to stop after 30 odd years, but for me I wanted to be entertained and I wasn’t. If we lose a game 3-2, as long as we’ve played the right way, that’s ok with me. If we were winning every week but lumping the ball up in the air like Wimbledon, I wouldn’t watch it.’

And with that, Pat had to fly off to Moscow to cover Manchester United’s game against CSKA Moscow. There was plenty of interesting things said by Pat in the ITC talk, here’s a few highlights…

‘I used to play music on the team coach to away games whilst at Chelsea…getting the songs played for 40 seconds before someone turned it off was a result. Strangely, the one thing the other players didn’t mind was Frankie Goes To Hollywood.’

‘People think football and music are very different, but I think they’re very similar…they can both be very creative if you do it the right way.’

‘In my first year at Chelsea, I was in the first team and won player of the year. I now write a column for the Chelsea website and I get paid more for that than I did back when I was playing – that’s how much the money in football has changed.’

‘Once we played Man City on a Friday night. I slept on Piccadilly Station that night, because I had to go to this new club called the Hacienda here in Manchester. It was one of the first nights it was open, and everyone there enjoyed it -  all four of us.’

‘I never really fitted in with the whole culture around footballers at the time. When I was at Everton, the team went out for a drink whilst on a trip to Ireland so I sneaked off to watch a film. When I got back to the hotel, I was caught and fined £100 for not being drunk.’