The Steve Johnson Interview

Few people can say they studied with Bruce Lee in the sixties. Even fewer can actually say they studied at two of his schools! Steve Johnson was a student of both, James Lee and Bruce Lee. To even further his knowledge in Lee’s “style of no style”, he also trained in Seattle with Lee’s first assistant instructor,Taky Kimura and his assistant Roy Hollingsworth. After becoming friends with James, and joining the Oakland class, Johnson caught the eye of Bruce who selected him to train with him at his Los Angeles Chinatown school. In his first interview ever for a martial arts publication, Johnson talks about the training at each of the schools, his involvement with Bruce Lee’s senior student in Seattle, Taky Kimura; and his Wing Chun training under Yip Man’s son, Yip Chun.

HOW DID YOU FIRST FIND OUT ABOUT JAMES LEE’S SCHOOL?
STEVE JOHNSON: I was looking in a publication when I was teaching in Pennsylvania and there was a advertisement for Bruce Lee’s first book. James Lee’s phone number was in there, so I called that number, and James answered the phone. That’s how I met him. We started talking, and I used to call him at least twice a week. We became really good friends over the phone, and that’s how I found out about the Oakland school.

WHAT WERE SOME OF THE MAJOR DIFFERENCES BETWEEN JEET KUNE DO, AND YOUR PREVIOUS MARTIAL ARTS TRAINING?
SJ: Well my previous training was all the traditional training; Karate and so forth. Now back at that time James was still doing a lot of the Jun Fan applications. One of the differences was that there was movement, where as in the traditional you really didn’t have real footwork to speak of. They had the traditional shifting, going from one forward posture into the other, but nothing as flexible that offered the maneuverability that JKD did.

JAMES LEE WAS A LOT LIKE BRUCE LEE IN SOME WAYS. WHAT WERE SOME OF THE CHARACTERISTICS THEY DIDN’T HAVE IN COMMON?
SJ: James was still into the Jun Fan area, where Bruce’s footwork for example was a lot different. There was even more mobility In L.A. as opposed to what we were doing at the Oakland school. We were using a some-what traditional bi-jong, which had been modified for the Jun Fan stage, but it wasn’t like the bi-jong that we used in Los Angeles.

WERE THERE ANY DIFFERENT TRAINING FORMATS AT THE OAKLAND SCHOOL THAT DIFFERED FROM THE LOS ANGELES SCHOOL?
SJ: Well the drills of course were different, but they were all intense. I remember some of the training in L.A. when Bruce would turn the lights on and off, and we would respond to the different drills. We would respond to the drills according to the lights being on, or off.

WHAT WAS IT LIKE TO SPAR WITH BRUCE LEE?