"They married you off in the music press, didn't they?" My answer back then would be, as they say, to be hopped up on goof balls. I hate the word itself. He used to have to fight his audiences to be heard; now they hang on his every inflection. [16][17], Clarke was the subject of a BBC Four documentary, Evidently John Cooper Clarke, in May 2012, screened as part of the BBC's Punk Britannia season. "They all had this desire to exclude the world." To enjoy a renaissance, Cooper Clarke concedes, you must have been dead for a period. Was Jon the Postman the real voice of Manchester?Id obviously argue not, Jason. 20.00 gbp. Mine is arbitrary I keep meaning to get a favourite word. In January 2018 Clarke appeared as a contestant on an academic version of BBC One's Pointless Celebrities partnered with historian Suzannah Lipscomb; they reached the head-to-head round. Elvis and Frank, though, was the first glimpse of an eternal conflict I could never resolve. A live performance of the same poem appears in the film Control, with Clarke portraying himself in a re-creation of a 1977 concert in which he supported Joy Division, despite being 30 years older than the events depicted in the film. To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories, John Cooper Clarke, who has suffered and survived the troubles that traditionally distract a poet - tuberculosis, poverty, and opiate addiction - stands on a corner in central London pondering a new and unexpected challenge: adulation. - "All I can say is that I love what I do now. The way poetry works is this: you learn the sound of the words first. So I had lines like: 'The choice Iranian on my foil / It runs like virgin olive oil / I'm living the life of a decadent royal / It could spoil, it could spoil, it could spoil you / Rotten here in jail. I have to confess that jeggings were one solution. /, The library's bound to fail / since the sudden departure of Jeffrey Archer / It's rotten here in jail.'". I was in Salford when I saw that. Shakespeare wrote for actors. "Because you know what the Japanese are like. Der Geschmack von Rost und Knochen (Orginal Motion Rust og bein (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack). Its the same with trouser pockets in my experience. "I remember that Manchester air was officially declared the worst on the planet back then," he says. To bloody keep it bloody clean. What is it that mono can do that stereo cant?Hi Lauren. It plays over the closing credits of 'Stage 5', from the final series, in which Christopher Moltisanti relapses into opiate addiction. ', 'Anything wrong?' Thats more or less the way Ive dressed since 1965. I thought very carefully before I embarked on mine," he explains. You would persuade yourself that they could be Franciscan monks. Why? Now, Im no expert, but I think when it comes to guys, the less said about the hips the better. Seven young guys are approaching us, wearing hoods. If you went to see a band, the Beatles, the Stones, they were up there on the stage; you would naturally expect all the sound to come from their general direction. Across the road, outside London's Shepherd's Bush Empire, fans are gathering to watch the poet. My influences are people like Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis that kind of American, smart, preppy look. Arriving late, he is unsure as to whether he has found the right venue. "People tell me I shouldn't. Sexy Little Swine They have one daughter, Stella. The only stereo I like is a jukebox: two speakers but both on the same piece of furniture. Partly that was because ever since I was a teenager I had been taking what you might call pep pills, so I was invariably a little bit artificially jazzed up when I walked out on stage. Tickets available here, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, Poetry in motion: John Cooper Clarke photographed in London earlier this month by Antonio Olmos for the Observer, TheSpecials: Respect people. Explorers," he adds, "actively annoy me. 'Oh, you poor thing, I'll put your electric blanket on. "Keats, Baudelaire, Poe," I suggest to Cooper Clarke. He came into the office pulling a suitcase and immediately he sat down he was unzipping it to reveal his latest pride and joy, a handsome hardback collection of his poetry, entitled The Luckiest Guy Alive. (i married a) monster from outer space(i've got a brand new) track suit23rd36 hoursa distant relationaction manapart from the revolutionare you the businessarts n' craftsbeasley streetbelladonnabronze adonisbunch of twigsburnleyconcussionconditional dischargecycle accidentday my pad went madday the world stood stilldrive she saiddumb row This is "an advert," as he explains, "that I wrote for the Martini people, on the understanding that I would receive a year's supply, or a lifetime's supply, whichever was the greater, of their enervating beverage." I've got an STI.' "Even then, I remember wondering how on earth you'd come to be there." I remember one, a kind of agonised paean to opiates, that had the line "She's my best friend and enemy / Give me what I need. 271 people have seen John Cooper Clarke live. The sun has set. British Rail, like any monopoly, had undoubtedly got complacent. I am sure some of my classmates felt their time could have been more profitably spent. The poem, he says, has had to be retitled "Bi-Polar Inmate Diary". I rest my case. Stereo, my ass. Look whos played there: Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, you name them. He set a very high bar. Call for Applications: Saboteur Awards and Festival 2023, Ludd Gang, edited by Alex Marsh, Dom Hale and Tom Crompton. While there's nothing affected about his accent, the poet luxuriates in its extremes much in the way that fellow poet Linton Kwesi Johnson savours the cadences of Jamaican patois, or George Sanders revelled in the languid elegance of old-school English. louisdj Cooper Clarke met the Cologne-born icon in Manchester in about 1980. There are many subjects he does not enjoy broaching on the record, and heroin is chief among them. "The bottles were bad. '", The emaciated figure, the shades, and the obsessive attention to the minutest detail of his wardrobe ("the only casual item I own," he tells me, "is a Levi's jacket") mean that he is occasionally mistaken for the Rolling Stones' Ron Wood. There also can be a performance at music festivals across the country that include Coachella, Lollapalooza and Bonnaroo Music Festival. Steve2505 The template was the 1933 Busby Berkeley movie 42nd Street. At bloody fun and bloody games . 1980 O est la maison de fromage ? windymiller Because he was confident that in whatever borscht-belt dive he found himself theyd immediately get the reference: Hey, thats the place the Queen of England goes. What a thrill walking out there. Dr Clarke, as he styles himself, wearing his honorary doctorate from Salford University with pride, has always had that effect; to the many devotees of his live performances over five decades, he is both much imitated and inimitable. When Lenny Bruce was reduced to doing little 100-seat nightclubs he had this whole brilliant routine about a washed-up comedian whos given one last bite of the apple. There have been some landmark events to prompt this: Arctic Monkeys dreamy 2013 cover of I Wanna Be Yours; the use of Evidently Chickentown as the backing in one of the most memorable sequences in box-set TV, at the end of an episode of the final season of The Sopranos; the fact that his poems have made it on to the GCSE syllabus. For a while, though, I have had some problems with the craze for the low-rise pant, the hipster. (Play Loud)". I was on drugs. Gradually, and very quietly, John Cooper Clarke has become one of the finest stand-up acts in the history of the art. ("This paper's boring, mindless and mean / Full of pornography, the kind that's clean / Where William Hickey meets Michael Caine / Again and again and again and again / You see all kinds of ugliness and hideous excess / But you never see a nipple in The Daily Express."). He got married at 21, to Christine, four years his junior, then became an apprentice type compositor, based in Dorset. ", As a teenager at secondary modern school, he was a mod. I remember sitting backstage one night with Cooper Clarke and the late Chris Sievey, alias Frank Sidebottom, another former cult hero who has been propelled to mass fame, in his case posthumously, through Lenny Abrahamson's film, Frank, released earlier this year. Mention of the people who queued to pay him homage in that documentary - from Stewart Lee to Bill Bailey and Arthur Smith - causes Cooper Clarke, a naturally modest man, visible discomfort. ", The definitive poem about drug addiction, Cooper Clarke told me back then, '"is 'The Vampire' by Charles Baudelaire. And you will live with those items for years, halfway up the lounge wall. I learned a long time ago that if you wear trousers where you can put something in the pockets, you will put stuff in those pockets and before you know it you are clad in jodhpurs. So: thanks, Linton! I cant talk that guy up enough. The first guy goes in, 'screw me stupid.' Those English periods were a happy time. Because I'm prejudiced. In his case there were more than 15 years of struggling, moribund times where he was writing little and barely going out. ", He seemed to have arrived fully formed, performing brilliantly incisive poems such as 'You Never See a Nipple In The Daily Express'. Was there ever any talk of you joining the Fall?Are you kidding? He is often referred to as a punk poet, having initially achieved recognition in the late 1970s amidst the flourishing punk movement. 2, The Trip: Curated by Jarvis Cocker & Steve Mackey, Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984, Short Circuit: Live at the Electric Circus, Streets: Select Highlights From Independent British Labels. Clarke's poem "Out of Control Fairground" was printed inside the Arctic Monkeys' 2007 single "Fluorescent Adolescent" CD. Nick Cohen, our columnist, broke off from columnising to recite extended passages of Clarkes verse first committed to memory when the poet was sharing spittle-flecked stages with Buzzcocks and the Sex Pistols back in the day. Get it wrong by even half a syllable, and you are condemned to an eternity of spitting on your ancestors, after committing ritual suicide in a public place. "That was great for a while," he tells me, "Until Ron was in the news for having that fight with his wife. 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