Eric Cantona: “If I don’t have the opportunity to express myself, I die”
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Podcast: FACE Editor Matthew Whitehouse speaks to Eric Cantona (!): footballer, actor, and now musician, about his new EP, and finding transcendence through music.
Music
Words: Matthew Whitehouse
Photography: Sohrab Golsorkhi
A lot of interviews can feel fairly straightforward. You have your questions, the person opposite you has their answers. You work through them – you go home.
But with the most interesting people an interview can feel like a dance. A rhythm that you both slowly settle into.
That was my experience of meeting Eric Cantona; the footballer, turned actor, and now musician, at the offices of his record label in London last week.
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Cantona was in typically beguiling and enigmatic form. He kind of fixes you with a stare when he talks. It’s unhurried and esoteric, but not without a sense of humour.
Which is a lot like the music itself. His new EP, I’ll Make My Own Heaven, is a sort of crooner‑y, Cohen‑y, nostalgic offering. It’s very good.
And he’s taking it on the road this month – starting in Manchester, the city in which he’s still known as “king”, tonight, 26th October.
This is Eric Cantona for THE FACE podcast.
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