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Arts & Entertainment

Steelers Unofficial Fight Song Still Fires Up Fans 16 Years Later

Roger Wood's catchy Steelers fight song is still a big hit among Steelers fans everywhere.

Tune into the radio any time this week, and chances are that somewhere along the dial, you’ll hear Roger Wood’s beloved and infectious Steelers’ fight song, “Here We Go.” 

It’s been 16 years since Wood, a real estate investor, recorded the catchy tune but it still resonates with Steelers fans as it did the first time many of them heard it in the early 1990s. 

“It’s like a Christmas carol,” says Wood, a lifelong Steelers fan and a Richland resident since 1994. “If you have to listen to 'Silent Night' year-round, it wouldn’t have the same impact it does at Christmas.”

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In December 1994, Wood was performing with a local band and writing songs when the inspiration came over him to write a new Steelers fight song. 

“The Steelers struggled throughout the 1980s but in the 1990s they started to get better,” Wood says. “They hadn’t had a good Steelers fight song since the 'Steelers Polka.' So I sat down and started writing it. The lyrics just popped in my head and it kind of wrote itself.”

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It took Wood only 20 minutes to write it. That evening, he and his wife, Wendy, and their two friends went to a studio to record it. They sang the “Here We Go” refrain in different voices to make it sound as though it was a large crowd chanting it. Wood said he never thought it would become the hit that it did. 

 “I thought that I would get some airtime on a radio station and just hear it once or twice, and that’s it,” he recalls. “I would have been fine with it. I remember driving back from the studio thinking it was an OK song; I never expected it to be a big hit.”

Wood sent it to several radio stations, and almost immediately, they began calling him for interviews. One particular radio station suggested that Wood sell his song because the station was getting calls from people who wanted to know where they could buy it.

That year, he produced 2,000 cassettes -- 1,000 for now-defunct National Record Mart and 1,000 for PharMor. He got them to the stores on the Friday night before the AFC Championship game against the San Diego Chargers, and by Saturday at noon, they were sold out.

Ask why his song has remained a big hit among Steelers fans, and Wood offers this explanation.

“It’s more like a cheer than a song, so it’s easy to sing along with it,” he says. “It’s memorable and catchy, much like the cheers you remember in high school. But you don’t know why certain songs are hits or why certain people like them.

"It just has that 'it' factor. There’s something about it. It’s just catchy, plus you hear it every year.” 

Wood refreshed the song in November, as he does nearly every year, to replace the names of players who are no longer on the team. 

“This year, we made the updated version with Jeff Reed, but then he got cut two weeks later, so I had to add Shaun Suisham,” says Wood.  “It’s easy to do -- we just punch in the new names.” 

Wood enjoys listening to other Steelers fight songs. One particular favorite: “It’s Polamalu,” the song parody of “Mah Na Mah Na” from "The Muppet Show."

“It’s hard to say what makes a song a hit,” he says. “If there was a formula, everybody would do it. My advice is to just write and record what you think is good. You don’t know what will catch on and become popular.”

Want to purchase a copy of "Here We Go"? Go to www.SteelersFightSong.com. You can also purchase it at local party stores like Hometowne Sports, Party Mart, Feinberg’s, and department stores such as Kmart.

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