Craig Johnston interview...
Found this on YNWA....is from 442 mag.
What are you up at the moment?
I basically have all but divested everything I do including coaching kids and developing shoes and I am exclusively a photographer. That is all I do. I got quite upset. I've been living in England all this time. And I had a number of coaching programmes called Super Skills that took me a long time to put together and I got let down by the FA, the Premier League, potential sponsors and investors. I ended up spending a fortune on the programme and was let down by everyone so I lost most of what I had. And it upset me so much, I've totally walked away from football and coaching and now I am a photographer.
I don't do anything except that. I had an exhibition in Orlando in December. It went really well and was well received by the art crowd. I do a lot of photography for Sothebys, the auction house. I specialise in sculpture and still life. And I recently photographed Tiger Woods for Tag Heuer. That was my first real paying job as a photographer. I've been doing it for years for free. I'm hooked on it now as a career.
What happened to the Liverpool FC surfboard?
Oh yes, the Liverpool board. I don't have that anymore. When the Hillsborough disaster happened, I auctioned off all my Liverpool memorabilia to help raise money - my actual FA Cup final shirt, tracksuits that Shankly had given me, and the Liverpool surfboard. They raised $100,000 altogether.
Is it true that you wrote the Anfield Rap?
Absolutely. Conceived, written, directed the video. I went to London and sought out a guy called Derek B who was a rapper and he was Britain's first ever rapper. This is before rap had even come to Britain's shores and I was on it and I went to this guy and said: "Look it is a piss-take - let's write it". So I wrote the words and he got the Twist and Shout hook.
There wasn't a single English international in the team at the time. They were all Scots, Irish, Welsh, a Dane, a Zimbabwean, an Australian. So the whole thing was about the dressing room craic. It was about McMahon and Aldridge and accents and how the other lads didn't talk like them. The whole thing was about accents and how there was only two who had the proper Scouse accent. Now and again I get a royalty from Virgin Records and it's always a cheque for like £1.27 or 89p. I never bank it because it's not worth it. I should frame them though.
Then the minibars...
The minibar thing called The Butler is still going. I've spent a long time in hotel bedrooms in my career and as footballers we always used to get blamed for pinching stuff out of the minibar. Some of it was true but sometimes it wasn't. So I thought there's got to be a better way. Rather than reinvent the fridge I thought why don't we put some shelves in place with sensors that link to the phone. It's a simple idea and when I was living in Ireland I decided to make one and it went from there.
It was design and I've just got a design head. I love the way things are made. As a kid I didn't play with toys I used to pull them apart to see how they worked and then see if I could put them back together again. It was all about how it worked. If you're a designer and you like things that are 3D and are aesthetically pleasing, then you can get immense satisfaction out of good design.
Does that translate to football?
For me it's the same with football. I get a real buzz out of a great performance from a team if it crosses that line and becomes art. There's a wonderful joy in watching someone like Gianfranco Zola beat a man by using ballerina-type moves. Again it's art. I've always thought visually; I've always thought in 3D space. Hence the love of fine art photography which is what I am doing now. I'm photographing lovely stuff, you know. How does all this come about? Because it just comes naturally. I was made to be a designer. People say, "how does a footballer end up being an inventor and patenting this and that and that?" And I say, I was an inventor and then I became a footballer.
What was the intensity of living in Liverpool like, at a time when the two biggest clubs in the country were in the city?
It was when we won the FA Cup in 1986 and we went back to the Mountbatten Hotel and we were due to go to Stringfellows that night to celebrate. And there was the Cup full of champagne and we'd just won the double, don't forget.
Going back to the January, Everton had been way ahead of us in the league by about 8 points so we had to win every game home and away and in that final week we won away at Chelsea to win the league and they drew or something. They had a brilliant team: Lineker and Peter Reid and so on. So we were the first and second best teams in the country, both from the same city, and then we beat them in the FA Cup to win the double, which had only been done twice before.
It couldn't have got any tenser between the two teams and the two sets of supporters in the same city. It was so intense and so myopic and intrusive into your own life. I couldn't walk down the street without someone saying "ah, Craig, I love you, my wife loves you and my daughter loves you" and then a second later someone else would come up and say "You're a w*****. I f***ing hate you, you're a f***ing t***." They both really believed what they said. How do you live with that? It was so invasive, especially for a shy person like me. So for me the pressure was f***ing extraordinary.
What are you up at the moment?
I basically have all but divested everything I do including coaching kids and developing shoes and I am exclusively a photographer. That is all I do. I got quite upset. I've been living in England all this time. And I had a number of coaching programmes called Super Skills that took me a long time to put together and I got let down by the FA, the Premier League, potential sponsors and investors. I ended up spending a fortune on the programme and was let down by everyone so I lost most of what I had. And it upset me so much, I've totally walked away from football and coaching and now I am a photographer.
I don't do anything except that. I had an exhibition in Orlando in December. It went really well and was well received by the art crowd. I do a lot of photography for Sothebys, the auction house. I specialise in sculpture and still life. And I recently photographed Tiger Woods for Tag Heuer. That was my first real paying job as a photographer. I've been doing it for years for free. I'm hooked on it now as a career.
What happened to the Liverpool FC surfboard?
Oh yes, the Liverpool board. I don't have that anymore. When the Hillsborough disaster happened, I auctioned off all my Liverpool memorabilia to help raise money - my actual FA Cup final shirt, tracksuits that Shankly had given me, and the Liverpool surfboard. They raised $100,000 altogether.
Is it true that you wrote the Anfield Rap?
Absolutely. Conceived, written, directed the video. I went to London and sought out a guy called Derek B who was a rapper and he was Britain's first ever rapper. This is before rap had even come to Britain's shores and I was on it and I went to this guy and said: "Look it is a piss-take - let's write it". So I wrote the words and he got the Twist and Shout hook.
There wasn't a single English international in the team at the time. They were all Scots, Irish, Welsh, a Dane, a Zimbabwean, an Australian. So the whole thing was about the dressing room craic. It was about McMahon and Aldridge and accents and how the other lads didn't talk like them. The whole thing was about accents and how there was only two who had the proper Scouse accent. Now and again I get a royalty from Virgin Records and it's always a cheque for like £1.27 or 89p. I never bank it because it's not worth it. I should frame them though.
Then the minibars...
The minibar thing called The Butler is still going. I've spent a long time in hotel bedrooms in my career and as footballers we always used to get blamed for pinching stuff out of the minibar. Some of it was true but sometimes it wasn't. So I thought there's got to be a better way. Rather than reinvent the fridge I thought why don't we put some shelves in place with sensors that link to the phone. It's a simple idea and when I was living in Ireland I decided to make one and it went from there.
It was design and I've just got a design head. I love the way things are made. As a kid I didn't play with toys I used to pull them apart to see how they worked and then see if I could put them back together again. It was all about how it worked. If you're a designer and you like things that are 3D and are aesthetically pleasing, then you can get immense satisfaction out of good design.
Does that translate to football?
For me it's the same with football. I get a real buzz out of a great performance from a team if it crosses that line and becomes art. There's a wonderful joy in watching someone like Gianfranco Zola beat a man by using ballerina-type moves. Again it's art. I've always thought visually; I've always thought in 3D space. Hence the love of fine art photography which is what I am doing now. I'm photographing lovely stuff, you know. How does all this come about? Because it just comes naturally. I was made to be a designer. People say, "how does a footballer end up being an inventor and patenting this and that and that?" And I say, I was an inventor and then I became a footballer.
What was the intensity of living in Liverpool like, at a time when the two biggest clubs in the country were in the city?
It was when we won the FA Cup in 1986 and we went back to the Mountbatten Hotel and we were due to go to Stringfellows that night to celebrate. And there was the Cup full of champagne and we'd just won the double, don't forget.
Going back to the January, Everton had been way ahead of us in the league by about 8 points so we had to win every game home and away and in that final week we won away at Chelsea to win the league and they drew or something. They had a brilliant team: Lineker and Peter Reid and so on. So we were the first and second best teams in the country, both from the same city, and then we beat them in the FA Cup to win the double, which had only been done twice before.
It couldn't have got any tenser between the two teams and the two sets of supporters in the same city. It was so intense and so myopic and intrusive into your own life. I couldn't walk down the street without someone saying "ah, Craig, I love you, my wife loves you and my daughter loves you" and then a second later someone else would come up and say "You're a w*****. I f***ing hate you, you're a f***ing t***." They both really believed what they said. How do you live with that? It was so invasive, especially for a shy person like me. So for me the pressure was f***ing extraordinary.
- really good read that interview - not like the FA to let anyone down
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