Joseph Anthony Barton. Twenty-nine years of age, and already an icon – a symbol of everything that’s right and wrong with the world today.
Having risen from the Everton academy to make his name at Manchester City, before voyaging north to become a Newcastle United stalwart, his career has never witnessed a dull moment.
Whilst to some he is yet another mid-ranking name in the league table of over-paid, over-hyped Premiership footballers, others would go much further. Even whilst earning a five-figure weekly wage, he paid the price for a string of offences on and off the pitch – not to mention serving a stint at Her Majesty’s pleasure for assault.
He has been vilified in the press as a thug, a criminal, even a neo-Nazi. Long after serving his time in jail, he remained the key target man whenever the media was on the prowl for a scandal.
I was working at Sky News last summer when Joey scored his first goal of the new season in a storming 6-0 win against Aston Villa. When the campaign began a month before, he had pledged not to shave until his Newcastle team won a match, and so was sporting a thickening dark moustache that put you in mind of a young Ian Rush. As he celebrated his goal, he raised his fingers to his upper lip and saluted the Geordie faithful.
Immediately, the newsroom journalists pounced upon the footage. They mistakenly thought, or expected – perhaps even hoped – he’d gestured the Nazi salute.
But for all his trials and self-inflicted traumas, he is still admired far and wide – on his native Merseyside, up in Newcastle where he wore the black and white stripes with pride, and beyond.
He’s a battler, a hard-worker, an honest and passionate man who says what he believes. When the England national team fell to pieces – as is now standard form – in the 2006 World Cup, he spoke out and criticised them for releasing autobiographies and cashing in on their own failure. “Why were they bringing books out?” he begged. “‘We got beat in the quarter-finals. I played like shit. Here’s my book.’ Who wants to read that?!”
Joey himself has only one England cap to his name – he is of course an outcast. Most of that England squad had no time for his remarks. Except, tellingly perhaps, fellow Scouser Steven Gerrard who praised him for that very honesty.
He had a tough upbringing in the notorious Huyton suburb, but his family kept him on the straight and narrow. He knows better than anyone that his life could have turned out so very differently.
Now, having moved club just weeks ago to join Queens Park Rangers, he has begun to remodel himself as a latter-day Eric Cantona. His most recent interviewers have marvelled as he waxes lyrical about everything and everyone from Nietzsche to The Smiths.
He remains outspoken. Just last weekend, Joey took the time to call a radio phone-in show and have a go at a star team-mate for sulking and taking the bus straight home from the stadium after being substituted – as well as launching another broadside at the “elitist, southern-based” national set-up.
When the equally bolshie Sheffield-born Neil Warnock brought him to Q.P.R. this season, he knew he was taking on seriously volatile goods. But rather than tighten the reins and keep him under lock and key, Warnock immediately made him team captain.
A character; a maverick – and now even an artistic icon, thanks to the work of a Manchester creative collective which has come to Leeds this week.
Jermyn from One69a arrived for a week-long residency at Test Space Leeds, setting up and working towards his exhibition this Friday evening almost entirely from scratch.
One69a specialises in screen printing, working on all manner of creative products for commercial clients – including in recent weeks producing bespoke t-shirts for Umbro.
I met Jermyn as he was getting on with his prints, all of which will be on show at Test Space in the exciting exhibition event. He has taken one powerful shot of Barton – fist on heart, gaze fixed and darkly intense – and reproduced that on canvases with contrasting colours: the baby blue in which Man City play, evoking the early years; the navy hue of Q.P.R.; even a startling combination of black and orange, violent unforgiving colours which perhaps capture the mental state of an angry man in the thick of rage, like the Joey written about on the front as well as the back pages.
“Why Joey?” I asked. Sheepishly – for I knew even before I arrived and saw Jermyn’s work what a daft question that was. He’s a powerful figure, of course. Not the standard-spec airbrushed celeb footballer who drives his fast car and has it off with any half-willing soccerette. An icon, no doubt.
But all of this – from idea to execution – has been the product of mere days of work. When Jermyn arrived in Leeds, the crises came one after the other – not least of which, his iPhone succumbing to the terror of “liquid damage” (tequila… we’ve all been there…), leaving him to rely on traditional methods of sourcing his working materials. Toiling all through the day in the bare TestSpace studio – and sleeping at night behind the makeshift bar – his residency itself is a creative process.
It will be fascinating to see how his labour of love emerges at the exciting showcase this Friday evening. I wonder what Joey would make of it…
You can follow both One69a and TestSpaceLeeds on Twitter to find out more. (And why not follow Joey7Barton whilst you’re at it?)