"The Eagles' Victory Song" (popularly known as "Fly, Eagles Fly") is the

fight song A fight song is a rousing short song associated with a sports team. The term is most common in the United States and Canada. In Australia, Mexico, and New Zealand these songs are called the team anthem, team song, or games song. First associated ...

of the

Philadelphia Eagles The Philadelphia Eagles are a professional American football team based in Philadelphia. The Eagles compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East division. The team play ...

of the

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. The song is played following each Eagles

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at home and as part of pre-game festivities before the playing of the

national anthem A national anthem is a patriotic musical composition symbolizing and evoking eulogies of the history and traditions of a country or nation. The majority of national anthems are marches or hymns in style. American, Central Asian, and Europea ...

History

"The Eagles' Victory Song" was the creation of Charles Borrelli and Richard Courtland Harrison, a Washington, D.C. music teacher and arranger for jazz guitarist Charlie Byrd. The song was mistakenly credited to "R. Courtland" by the Copyright office and in various editions of Eagles programs from the late 1950s through the 1960s. In 1963, Jerry Wolman purchased the Eagles' football team. Wolman was a sports fan growing up and loved hearing the Redskins' fight song "

Hail to the Redskins "Hail to the Commanders" (HTTC) is the fight song of the Washington Commanders, an American football team belonging to the National Football League (NFL). At home games, the song is performed by the Washington Commanders Marching Band when the tea ...

" at games. Spawning from his admiration for the Redskins' song, Wolman searched for musicians to implement a team song for the Eagles, and founded The Philadelphia Eagles' Sound of Brass band in 1964. The group included 200 musicians and dancers, and was led by Arlen Saylor, who was appointed as the Eagles' entertainment director in 1966 and is credited with penning an arrangement of the fight song that the band played at home games during halftime in the 1960s. Wolman's push to popularize the fight song flew under the radar, however, and in 1969 the Sound of Brass band was discontinued. The song came back into light in 1997, when Bobby Mansure, founder of an unofficial Eagles

pep band A pep band is an ensemble of instrumentalists who play at events, usually athletic, with the purpose of entertaining and creating enthusiasm in a crowd. Often members of a pep band are a subset of people from a larger ensemble such as a marchi ...

, asked team management to allow the band to play in the parking lot during home games. Management gave Mansure's pep band an audition, allowing them to play at 2 preseason games to gauge fan reaction. The song went over so well that Mansure and the band retained a permanent position as the official Philadelphia Eagles Pep Band. In 1998, following Mansure's reintroduction of the song, Eagles management attempted to rebuild its popularity among fans by changing some aspects of the song: they modified the key, changed the opening lyric from "Fight, Eagles Fight" to "Fly, Eagles Fly", and re-marketed the song with that as the title. In addition, they appended the popular "E-A-G-L-E-S" chant—which had emerged in the 1980s—to the end of the song. While management planned to play the song throughout the 1998 season, the Eagles' poor performance that year caused them to hold off reintroducing the song until the following year. The Eagles fared better during their 1999 season, and subsequently, the fight song was played after every score. The song is still sung/chanted today at games, and Billboard has recognized it as one of the best NFL fight songs of all time. A modern arrangement by the current Eagles Pep Band is featured on the official Eagles website. The song is also played in Philadelphia International Airport during the NFL season once every hour. In 2022,

Coldplay Coldplay are a British rock band formed in London in 1997. They consist of vocalist and pianist Chris Martin, guitarist Jonny Buckland, bassist Guy Berryman, drummer Will Champion and creative director Phil Harvey. They met at University ...

performed the song during a concert at

Lincoln Financial Field Lincoln Financial Field is an American football stadium located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It serves as the home stadium of the Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League (NFL) and the Temple Owls football team of Temple University. ...

Lyrics

References

External links

Official Eagles Pep Band Version
{{authority control National Football League fight songs Philadelphia Eagles 1960 songs