This is a man whose work has been praised by, among others, Jack Kerouac's co-conspirator Gregory Corso, and Yevgeny Yevtushenko, both of whom he knew. It is things that he might eat if he ever did turn up to my show: which is to say various heavily flavoured, deep-fried, lavishly salted snack treats. There is little question that Cooper Clarke could, should he so wish, fill that historic Kensington venue single-handedly. Queues round the block, as you can imagine. The Bard of Salford John Cooper Clarke became a doctor today after receiving an honorary degree in his home city. Those lyrics hit me like poetry. I keep it simple: a dark suit with a pale shirt. Like his concert last October at the larger Royal Festival Hall, the event sold out many weeks ago. He was previously married to ?. The Veil over Society Got Removed for a Moment Jeff Buckley: Grace (SACD Version) *Hi-Res FLAC*, GREAT AMERICAN HOME IMPROVEMENT THE OLD SCHOOL BASEMENT BAR, Mike Brooks & The Roots Radics - One Love [Vista LP, 1983], Kellen303 interview 2022: "Life's Different Now". I had the last line. What could possibly go wrong? I visited him on one occasion with a view to suggesting that I help the poet manage his career, such as it then was; an offer I never quite brought myself to make, on the grounds that this world was not one that anyone with a fleeting acquaintance with the Mental Health Act would want any part of. No. He leaves, tired but happy. Shock-haired and irreverent, he's been shaking up the literary establishment with his wry wit and clever couplets for decades. Thats the gold standard, not just for me, but worldwide. Looking at one, I remember the poet once telling me that he had "never seen a work of art that would not be improved by the addition of tropical fish". She does the business. No. "I believe I was thinking you know that bit in On the Waterfront where they throw the informer off the roof, and the line is: "He could sing, but he couldn't fly". View agent, publicist, legal and company contact details on IMDbPro, Evie The sun has set. [20] On their 2020 eponymous debut album, English band Working Mens Club pays homage to the poet in the track John Cooper Clarke, referencing his poem "Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman" and book The Luckiest Guy Alive. Someone asked him, 'Why a lobster?' The poem is also the inspiration behind the single's video, in which clowns brawl. 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. "But where did you get the dead canary from?" I should say that all my characters are an amalgam or something, Craig, but Vince was the bloke in the downstairs apartment when I lived in Plymouth for a while, real name Frank. "I was sent to Rhyl, to live with my auntie Eileen; she died of tuberculosis." He arrived in traditional garb: pointed boots, strides clinging to stick-insect legs, dark jacket, buttoned-up white shirt, generous shades, Ronnie Wood hair beneath a tall grey felt hat. But mostly it is down to his brilliant rambling dramatic monologue of a stage show, which has become less staccato over the years. Budd Schulberg, Clarke adds, "what a writer. "Part of me dies under my overalls / I close my eyes and a woman calls / From a nightmare / Shave, shit, a shower and a shoeshine / That's it - sack time / Everybody looks like Ernest Borgnine.", He turned to Cooper Clarke. That glorious bank of french horns bleeding into a mess of cellos and strings. I tend to live by the dictum less is more, but that mono sound proved more can be more. It is a romantic picture, that idea of Cole Porter always writing lyrics on the back of cigarette packs and menus. His father George was a skilled engineer. There is no doubt that you can get a better cup of coffee since privatisation; youd have waited a long time for an espresso in 1975. Britain's best loved and most important performance poet. The second guy, a bit more kinky, says, 'beat me up.' [18], In July 2013, Clarke was awarded an honorary doctorate of arts by the University of Salford in "acknowledgement of a career which has spanned five decades, bringing poetry to non-traditional audiences and influencing musicians and comedians." People don't expect to sit down and read him.". [1] In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he released several albums. 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But if I'd have been around in Bavaria in 1935, I could have told them. "People tell me I shouldn't. That's half an hour of my life you've saved me, having to explain it to you. [10], Clarke appeared in a 1982 music documentary compilation Urgh! He worked in the fairground cafe in Rhyl, "and then in the laboratory stores at Salford Tech". Writing is the prism through which you see the world. Launcelot This video is unavailable. Why? I operate on a capsule wardrobe because I spend a lot of time on the road, so I aint got the whole rainbow spectrum of colours in my luggage. Neither marriage nor routine employment suited him at the time. When you first started out, did you get stage fright? Clarke was born in Salford, Lancashire, in 1949. Im obsessed with clothes and I find it very easy to write about them. The first lyrics I became aware of would have been in the pre-rocknroll 1950s, when my Uncle Dennis was demobbed from the RAF and he lived at our house for a bit. I like to say I did it in two ways: gradually, and suddenly. Cooper Clarke is largely indifferent to them. I figure any town in the whole world has an equivalent of the fictional neighbourhood I describe. "The hotel roof is decided on," Thomas wrote, "but the parcel needs a warning message. The theme of the big estate is the great British automotive industry: Wolseley Drive and Morris Road and Austin Crescent. Where will it end? Your germs are splattered about. British Rail, like any monopoly, had undoubtedly got complacent. He is married to Evie. DaveM66 Everyone seems to have one. But theoretically, on planet Bizarro, where Superman is bad and Lex Luther is good, that is what I would do. It will be Murder on the Bus Replacement Service. I used to think trees were dirty, because when I was a kid in Salford you'd climb them and come off filthy, it was like you'd been up a chimney and even if you got a stretch of park you just had to scrape the grass and there were, like, cinders underneath it was horrible[5], His first job was a laboratory technician at Salford Tech. And I thought: Wow, imagine being young and living in a mod town like Stevenage! And then I did for a couple of years. "It's like any addiction. 'Yes mother, I had to go to the doctor. And I thought I would do that, but with a lousy street. There were events hosted by beat poets at the Royal Albert Hall in the Sixties, but they were ensemble shows and they didn't always sell out. You wrote [in the refrain in Chickentown] the fucking train is fucking late, you fucking wait, you fucking wait back in the late 1970s. Wright, 31, has clearly modelled himself on Cooper Clarke, but has developed his own distinctive voice, and humour. "I did," is all he will say, "all of those things that you have to do. I operate on a capsule wardrobe because I spend a lot of time on the road, so I aint got the whole rainbow spectrum of colours in my luggage. "I do it myself," he says. I really do. "Remember that poem you wrote about Lowry?" "But once I got in there," he tells the audience, "I knew I was in the right place when the clock struck twelve and a cake jumped out of a girl. Simpo John Cooper Clarke was born on January 25, 1949 in Salford, Greater Manchester, England, UK. The performer, who is still occasionally stopped in the street and asked how much he charges to haunt a house ("That," he replies, "would depend how many rooms you have") is the sort of figure that cab drivers don't stop for. Apart from the one collection [Ten Years in An Open-Necked Shirt, which originally appeared in 1981, superbly illustrated by Steve Maguire] he has never been published. You deserve not the reward of freedom from your slavery. He brought his collection of records and a record player, which was new to us. Keep it quiet, but I plan to make a movie in Jaywick some day. The Nationwide adverts, along with collateral backlash, have been sparking debates among poets on social media for several weeks now. "You," he quoted from memory, sitting in the half light, "who like a dagger thrust, entered my complaining soul; sweet and potent as a host of demons, came wild, beautiful wretch infamous to whom I'm bound, like the convict to the chain, a stubborn gambler to his dice, the drunkard to his revelry. poetry quote black t-shirt. You couldnt have asked me at a better juncture. But lets rack our brains. Occasionally it would appear out of the mist, just for a day, like some demonic equivalent of Brigadoon." What are your feelings about Jaywick?Dont get me started on Jaywick. Of all the inventive choices of music in that series, it was the least predictable and, many consider, the most brilliantly inspired. He'll intersperse such knockabout material with classic writing like 'Beasley Street', a stunning evocation of the trials of the underclass, which sounds like Engels' prose accounts of the Mancunian slums crossed with Bob Dylan's 'Desolation Row'. He closed the show at Shepherds Bush with his signature piece, 'Evidently Chickentown'. | The Kray family had a bolthole there. Ever! Who ever asked for that? My answer back then would be, as they say, to be hopped up on goof balls. It wasnt easy: it is an unnatural act to get out there and draw that much attention to yourself. I know for many people our departure from the EU is the worst thing thats ever happened. ", I've kept a copy of this piece, which he gave me in the late Eighties; a poem he knocked out in 20 minutes for a commission. Mr_Jones He will turn 70 next year. I didnt understand those lyrics, but they gave me an idea of an adult world. drew1992 I hate the word itself. If memory serves, you are marginally safer in the Three Jays. I really like the idea of being a poetic hack. John Cooper Clarke (born 25 January 1949) is an English performance poet, who first became famous as a " punk poet" in the late 1970s. And it seems hilarious now, when you read biographies about Wordsworth striding out on the fells, whingeing on about Coleridge lying zonked out on the couch on laudanum. The phlegm could be equally intimidating in its own way. To order a copy for 12.89 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. He set a very high bar. I've got VD.' 'Haiku #1' I call it: 'To convey one's mood / In seventeen syllables / Is very diffic.'". ", I spent three months, off and on, on the road with Cooper Clarke for this article, and this monologue has found its way into his act. But now, finally" He pauses, not wishing to appear immodest. How long, I'd asked him, had he known this by heart? Of course he does share certain qualities with other performers: things like a sharp wit, fearlessness in the spotlight, and a peculiar and restless imagination. John Cooper Clarke was born on 25 January 1949 in Salford, Greater Manchester, England, UK. Some questions have been submitted by famous admirers of his, others by Observer readers. And if so, how did you combat it?I didnt get it too bad. John Cooper Clarke: 'I've dressed the same way since 1965' The poet and performer on keeping his clothes simple, stapling them back together, and being fashionable once every 15 years for. It was just terrible.". The truth is Im not just a practitioner of poetry when I am on stage I am like the police: never off-duty. One of Clarke's newer poems has the title 'Bed Blocker Blues'. It's often asserted that he wrote nothing in his lost years; this isn't quite true. Very good-John Cooper Clarke was on form and did some of his new poems as well as some old favourites. "Evidently Chickentown" (recited by Christopher Eccleston) is featured in the made-for-television film Strumpet. I occasionally ask him about it: In all my years on the road, Phil, have you ever seen me eat a cheese and chutney sandwich, or a single Dorito? Im no snacker. He moved back to Manchester, focussed on his art and was eventually spotted by the head of CBS, the late Maurice Oberstein. jrn1elvis But not me. I didnt get into show business to be pushed around by the likes of Mark E Smith. "Those gigs could be tricky," Cooper Clarke says, referring to the punk era, "but at least broken glass and saliva are an acknowledgment that you are actually in the room. I can't remember what happens next" and his list of "songs I wrote where I made one mistake in the title, that later became big hits for other artists." "I remember that Manchester air was officially declared the worst on the planet back then," he says. This is a poem of rigidly defined structure: five syllables, seven syllables, five syllables. He is married to Evie. New Avalanches Mixtape? 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. As the great Bill Withers once said, the writing of songs involves a kind of magic I dont mess with. [2], Clarke has attributed his early success in part to the influence of the English poet Pam Ayres. Like Ranulph Fiennes. "I went to get the Buzzcocks," Oberstein once told me. His last original solo album was released 32 years ago, which is all the more irritating because the four collections he did record for CBS, especially Snap Crackle & Bop (1980) and Zip Style Method (1982) remain remarkable testaments to his gifts as a writer. 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