The Tommy Carruthers Interview
Conducted by Paul Bax

When and how did you first start your training in martial arts?
TC: I started doing martial arts roughly when I was ten years old when my father first trained me. He was in the British army during WWII. The stuff he taught me was what the British forces were taught. Years later I realized it was a combination of jujitsu and karate. So I grew up learning most grappling, arm locks, chokes and pressure points, etc.

How did you first hear about Bruce Lee and his art of Jeet Kune Do?
TC: I first heard about Bruce Lee when he died. I remember a friend telling me Lee had died. I asked, “Who is Bruce Lee,” and he went on to tell me he was a guy from China who did karate. Naturally, later I found out he didn't do karate but at that time everybody called any martial art they saw karate. From then on Lee's films began to be shown in every cinema in the city. We would go and watch them for hours at a time. I would watch every move he made and go and try it out with my friends. We were probably only about 14 at the time. Sometimes we would go to the cinema and sit through the whole night and watch him. This is how I learned JKD at the start from watching Bruce in his movies. We always tried it out on each other to see if we could pull it off. I think from an early age I must have had a bit of a talent because I could do some of the stuff I saw in the movies and my friends got a bit mad with me. After a few years they kind of a gave up and I went on and that was over 30 yrs ago. It feels like yesterday.

JKD has gone through a lot of phases over the years due to different theories on how the art should be taught. Were you ever a student of “JKD Concepts”?
TC: I went to a few JKD concept seminars but it was advertised as JKD so we kind of a got sucked into it thinking it was something Bruce did but once we attended a few of us soon came to the realization that it wasn't what we were looking for. What was being taught didn't represent JKD at all. There was no mention of directness, simplicity, or efficiency. Considering they called it concepts, we thought surely they would follow some of Lee’s principals. This question is becoming too political for my liking.
Guys who I have been taught by: Jesse Glover - I have known Jesse for probably 11 years. He has done quite a few seminars at my school and has given me some great help on sticking hands and trapping. On this side of things he is definitely the best. Ted Wong, I have known for maybe 10 years. Ted has fine tuned my footwork and showed me more efficient ways to punch and kick. Ted also helped me with half-beats and broken rhythm and how to apply it. This is only brief since there is a lot more that Ted has shown me but time doesn't permit me to go into all of it. Howard Williams has done a few seminars at my school and I thought what he taught was excellent and very compact. I liked the overlapping punching and rolling aspect of his teachings also the counter fighting which is my favorite and the use of 360 kicking drills and the three attitudes: natural, ready and on guard. Gary Dill was another guy who I trained with. I thought for a big guy he was pretty fast and could pack a hard shot. From him I got some Oakland stuff, i.e. some trapping, the four corners and kicking drills. Leo Fong is another of my teachers. He is such a nice person and extremely helpful and happy guy and the supplementary training he has shared with me has helped me immensely and his recollections of training sessions with Bruce are very interesting. He was one of he few who actually sparred with Bruce. Tim Tackett invited me to come over to train with his group. He has some good guys their and a few I already knew from other seminars that I had attended in the past. I enjoyed my time there and came away with some nice things that they were so kind enough to share with me. Tim also did a seminar at my school. He was amazed with the standard of students that I had which just boils down to how you train them and having patience. When I was at Tim’s place I met Bob Bremer I really did like this guy. He was so funny and told me some very interesting stories about Bruce but I cant go into that here its well… He showed me the leg obstruction, the body hook, the lap sao and a few other things but these are he things I liked the most because he did them slightly different from the way I had saw them done before. There is a few other guys that I have met or attended seminars with but it would take too much time to go into it all here and to be honest some of them didn't do anything for me in terms of impressing me or just their overall knowledge of JKD or even how to apply it for real which is my only concern.

What do you think is the biggest misconception that people have about Jeet Kune Do as Bruce Lee taught it?