Peter Hooton says Hillsborough charity single was 'fate'

Long-time Hillsborough campaigner and The Farm frontman Peter Hooton has told Absolute Radio’s Rock ‘N’ Roll Football that ‘fate’ was behind The Justice Collective’s Hillsborough charity single ‘He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother”.

“A year ago, nothing like this was planned, it’s all been done like fate, as if some other force was guiding it.

And it was all done within 6 weeks from the initial idea to maybe do the song and do a re-record within 6 weeks. You don’t plan like that, if someone had a business plan like that in the music industry “Nah, no chance…that’s never going to happen”. So it’s all been, it’s happened by serendipity almost.”

The single’s on target to beat The X Factor to the coveted Christmas number one, but Peter says they don’t want to get ahead of themselves, saying: “The bookies were saying in the last few days that it’s the shortest odds ever, it’s even shorter odds than Band Aid, but we don’t want to get too complacent about it because people have still got to go out and download it and buy it so it’s looking good.”

Peter also revealed that producer Guy Chambers was very keen to be involved, saying: “Keith Mullin, The Farm’s guitarist had had Guy Chambers, the producer in to Lipa, which is the performing arts school in Liverpool, they’d had him in to do a master class and he had said to Keith “If you ever hear of anything to do with Hillsborough, I’d love to get involved”. So he made the phone call.”