Culture That Made Me: Liam Brady on Dylan, Pavarotti and The Godfather
Liam Brady, footballer
Liam Brady, 67, grew up in Whitehall on Dublin’s northside. One of the Republic of Ireland’s greatest-ever footballers, he broke through with Arsenal, and after his move to Italy in 1980, won back-to-back Scudettos with Juventus. When his playing career ended, he managed Arsenal’s youth academy for almost 20 years during the Arsène Wenger era, and became an insightful TV pundit on RTÉ, among other football adventures. Born to be a Footballer: My Autobiography by Liam Brady is published by Eriu.
My brother worked in the Irish Merchant Navy. He brought home a record player one time and some LPs. One of the first records I remember was a Rolling Stones single, The Last Time. I started listening properly to music. That was probably around 1965. When I was around 15, I saved up and I got my first album – Sticky Fingers by The Rolling Stones. I really liked their sound.
When I went to England, as a 15- or 16-year-old, I earned enough money to get maybe an album a week. My tastes began to spread. I got to into Bob Dylan big time. This was around the time he was bringing out albums like Blood on the Tracks and Desire, which had the song 'Hurricane' on it. I started buying all this stuff, going back to when his first records came out around 1962. I started my collection of Dylan then; that's carried on till now. He's 82 and still bringing records out. He's such a unique person, a musical genius.
My wife and I bought a lot of Bob Dylan’s art. We didn't have enough money to get originals, but we've got a lot of prints. He does landscapes and places he’s been, restaurants, cafés, scenes on the road, highways and railroads. He's very good. His paintings sell for huge amounts now.
Rod Stewart’s Every Picture Tells a Story was a huge album when that came out in 1971. He went solo when I was probably about 18, 19. I remember going to see him a few times. I remember a concert he did, in the mid-’70s, that was absolutely brilliant. It was a couple of days before Christmas at the Wembley Arena. He’s feelgood music. Get out there and rock. He isn’t as deep as the Dylans and the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Youngs and the James Taylors, but he’s a rocker. He’s out there. Some great songs, a great artist and an amazing performer.
I remember seeing The Eagles at the Wembley Arena. It was 1979, around the time they brought out Hotel California. That was a memorable concert. They’re absolutely brilliant live – great singers, musicians, guitar players. They had Joe Walsh on lead guitar that night. He could go off on a guitar that would enhance every Eagles song. The screen opened up at the back, and there was a full philharmonic orchestra behind them. I'd never seen that done before.
When I was in Turin playing with Juventus I foolishly passed up a chance to meet Luciano Pavarotti at a club reception. I met him eventually in Glasgow when I was managing Celtic. He did a charity concert. They were publicising it and asked some Celtic and Rangers people to say hello to him. I knew him by then. Back in 1981, I didn't know who he was. “Luciano who?” The NME was my paper of choice back then. Classical music was a no-go area. He's a Juventus man. He knew his football. He said, “I remember you when you played for us.” He was rehearsing in a church, which was unbelievable because we were allowed to stay for 15 minutes while he sang with a cellist.
I like spy books. John Le Carré is my man. Unfortunately, he’s gone now so we won’t get any more novels from him. He brought everything into them – the Middle East, Russia, the Iron Curtain, all the stuff that goes on behind the scenes. They're fascinating. They're obviously fiction, but he was in the game himself when he was young; he had contacts. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a classic.
The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War by a guy called Stephen Kinzer is a good book. It’s about the Dulles brothers from the United States, one was Secretary of State, the other was head of the CIA. One brother was upfront, talking publicly about international relations. He wanted to stop socialism/communism from taking over the world. The other brother did covert stuff, overthrowing governments in Africa, South America and the Middle East, organising coups d’état. The Americans were behind Pinochet overthrowing Allende and a democratically elected government in Chile. They ran the world, getting up to things we never knew anything about.
My all-time favourite film is The Godfather by Francis Ford Coppola. It’s so dramatic. I was probably about 15, 16 when I watched it. I didn't know too much about the Italian-American mafia when it came out, apart from reading about Al Capone and gangsters as kids. They ruled lots of things behind the behind the scenes. Good films about the mafia are always fascinating.
One of my other favourite films would be One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with Jack Nicholson. It was a comedy to begin with, but it wasn't, was it? It was dark in the end. The story was something else. Jack Nicholson is one of the greatest actors that we've seen.
Michael Jordan’s documentary, The Last Dance, was brilliant. It showed how you've different types of characters in a dressing room. You’ve a huge ego like Michael Jordan, then you’ve Dennis Rodman, who was a bit wild. The coach seemed able to handle them all. It’s the same in any sport. Special players can make a team successful. If a coach in football has a special player like Ronaldo, Messi or Maradona on the team, he knows he’s probably gonna win things. A coach has to give them their head. Obviously there's a line where they can't take over completely, but you’ve gotta go along with them.
I've liked Graeme Souness as a football pundit. He has the experience of being a very top player and he was also a very fine manager. He brings it all to the table. A lot of pundits have never coached or managed, and yet they're calling the shots when they're speaking, but they haven’t had that experience. Souness brings that. Also he has kept up with what’s going on in football. It goes without saying, but he always calls it, which doesn’t always happen on British TV.
