One of the Eric Cantona stories that sums up his unique place in pop culture came when he first arrived in England as a Leeds United player in 1992. He was asked in an interview who his hero was, and he said, “Rimbaud,” which was written up in the press as ‘Rambo’, leading to idiot Leeds fans (full disclosure, I’m a Hull City fan) holding up pictures of Sly Stallone gunning down Vietcong and chanting ‘Rambo, Rambo’ at matches.
Cantona subsequently signed for Alex Ferguson at Manchester United where he achieved great success as well as notoriety for kung-fu kicking an idiot Crystal Palace fan (no qualifier here, he just was). At a press conference following an appeal hearing about the kung-fu kick at a magistrates court, he said only this: “When the seagulls follow the trawler, it’s because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea.” Cue days of sport sections forgoing tactical analysis for dissections of imagery in surrealist poetry.
Yes, Cantona has always been an odd fit for football, at least English football, which of course is what made him such a memorable footballer. He was an oddity, mercurial, individual, his own man, who got away with his eccentricities in the pie-eating footie world because he was French. That explained everything as far as most English people were concerned, say no more.
As such, him moving into music is no great surprise – he's already built a decent career in the arts in TV and films – it’s not as if Wayne Rooney has decided to bare his soul on a country-blues album. And indeed Cantona’s music is exactly as you’d expect it to be: sentimental Serge Gainsbourg-style chanteur-spoken ballads, with a bit of terrace rock thrown in.
Your tolerance for it will depend on your tolerance for both; personally, I have a fair bit of tolerance in these areas thanks to years of alcoholism, and found the four tracks on I’ll Make My Own Heaven perfectly acceptable. While it’s all terribly self-indulgent, there’s just a sense of giving people what they want, which is him doing him.
The Friends We Lost is a Piaf-style piano ballad on regret and the march of time, which contains lyrics like “Watch yourself in the mirror/someone you hate someone you love” with some brooding atmospherics which is pretty decent. The title track is an Oasis-style rabble rouser which is firmly about himself too, and his kung-fu kick: “I’ve been heroic, I’ve been criminal, I’ve been angelic, I’ve been inferno, you hate me, you love me, I’m only judged by myself.” He actually ends it by going, “C’est la vie.”
The final two tracks are in French, but you don’t have to speak the language to get the vibe, as he brings his mouth a little too close to the mic for my liking, to sing, on Tu me diras, about “Le soleil noir” and “Les solitudes.” He whistles well on it though, giving it a surprisingly elegiac bit of Morricone-style expansiveness. The last track, Je veux is a straight-up rip of his beloved Doors. Again, I have a high tolerance for The Doors due to self-esteem issues and liked it.
This is Cantona world. You’re either in or you’re out. A certain large section of nostalgic football fans will be in, and indeed Cantona has already sold out a UK and European tour, which kicks off in Manchester, and his first full album will actually be a live album put together from these shows.
Presumably he’ll be doing cover songs to fill out the set, and there’s a sense with the EP that he’s testing the water. Not that he’d admit it. Pleasingly, he’s already told the BBC: “The Rolling Stones should support me.”
Cocky French sod. Well, why not? Pretension is nothing to be scared of. If he delivers some musings on life and reflection on regret and a bit of Rimbaud into the lives of 5Live folk, what’s the problem with that? I know I’ll be down the front, wearing my headband and combat paint.
