Eric Cantona hails his music career "the closest thing" to his time playing football
Eric Cantona has described his recently launched music career as "the closest thing" that comes to the time he spent on the football pitch.
“If you have a dream it should be a big dream. I’ve done sport, cinema, but I think after sport the closest thing is singing live on stage,” he is quoted as saying by the Daily Star’s Wired column (via Music News). “I did the live shows first. After people came they were like, ‘You should release one or two pieces’.
“When I was young, all the albums I bought were live albums. There is an energy and imperfection, there are accidents that can be beautiful – hopefully not too many accidents.”
The Manchester United legend launched his singing career back in June with the release of his debut single. Cantona has also launched his own website, where fans can create their own membership card and receive access to meet and greet opportunities and “privileged access” to live events.
Later this month, Cantona will play his first run of live shows. Kicking off in Manchester on October 26, the first show of the ‘Cantona Sings Eric’ tour will take place at Stoller Hall, while the second will take place in London’s Bloomsbury Theatre two days later (October 28).
Check out the Cantona Sings Eric website here.
Elsewhere in the interview, the football icon also shared his disdain for social media, and described how he hopes people will keep their phones in their pockets at his forthcoming live dates.
“There are drugs, there are alcohol and today, there are social networks. We need to realise that… Maybe I come across as an old fool, but I don’t care,” he said, giving an example of when he saw a couple not look up from their phones once during a train journey from Paris to Avignon.
“They didn’t see one village they passed, not one prairie or animal running in the fields, not one bird, not one person who was working. These guys were on Instagram looking at rubbish,” he explained. “The more we advance, the less room for silence in the media. It’s very important to be bored. Boredom is important to feed the imagination.”
Read next: Liam Gallagher takes over Manchester's tram network by voicing stop announcements
