Eric Cantona has had one heck of a life. Not only is he heralded as one of France's best-ever football players, but he has enjoyed a reputable acting career on stage and on screen, and is now, aged 57 years, launching a career in music.
And he seems to be approaching it with the same bullish confidence as he has his other careers, given who, in a BBC interview published today, Cantona suggested support him on his first-ever UK and Ireland tour.
"I am a headliner. It's why I cannot understand you," he said. "Maybe The [Rolling] Stones can support me."
The Marseille-born sportsman who is the progenitor of the chant "Ooh ahh Cantona", will be kicking off his five-stop tour in Manchester on Thursday. He will be recording the live gigs, which will feature music from his new EP and presumably some covers, and they will become his debut full-length album.
"I always had this dream to go on stage and to be in front of people, because the show is something that we make together," he said. "The audience, if they are in a good mood, a bad mood, we all use the energy of each other. These 20 tracks were built to be on stage. It's why I wanted to do a live album first. It will be finished like the last touch on a painting."
The ex-footballer, who won the league four times with Manchester United and once with Leeds, has been releasing music since May last year.
"Take Nick Cave, add a splash of Leonard Cohen, sprinkle with Serge Gainsbourg and you might have something approximating Eric Cantona’s first single. Yes, you read that right: The Friends We Lost is seriously good," said The Guardian in its June 2023 review with the polymath.
Cantona released a four-track EP titled I'll Make My Own Heaven this morning in anticipation of the live shows.
Running at 14 minutes, the record includes his debut single. He sings with a rich, gravelly voice in both French and English against a slow guitar riff. Cantona started playing the guitar relatively recently, learning in lockdown. Unbelievably perhaps, he described himself as "a very, very, very bad guitarist" to the BBC.
So while the music offshoot might seem to have come out of nowhere, for Cantona it was a natural progression in his life: "When I was a kid, I had two passions: for art and sport. So I started with football, better I think," he explained. "Now I can sing until the end of my life. I have a deep need of expressing myself."
