Pete Astor has been a staple of the British indie scene since the early ’80s, fronting a diverse number of outfits including the Loft, the Weather Prophets, the Wisdom Of Harry and Ellis Island Sound. He launched a solo career in 1990, as well, and is also a senior lecturer in music at the University of Westminster. Astor’s latest release is One For The Ghost (Tapete). He’ll be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week, writing about the origins of these songs and how they relate to the LP’s theme of past and future, complete with illustrations he created with Susanne Ballhausen.
Astor: I complied a record of my first solo albums a while ago and titled it Injury Time. I remember thinking, “That should be a song.” And I kept at it, and I got there in the end. I’m not sure that the phrase even exists outside of the U.K. In football, it’s the time added on for stoppages and injury. It’s also entirely at the discretion of the referee, so there is always a few extra minutes where everything can change.
Here’s the 1966 World Cup final with Geoff Hurst’s final goal in injury time:
As the commentator famously says when the goal goes in, “They think it’s all over—it is now.” This has become a phrase that everybody in the U.K. that likes football knows. I thought I’d have a bit of that, too.
More “Injury Time”:
