John Cooper Clarke: The Bard of Salford

John Cooper Clarke has, unbelievably, not released a record since 1982 but this has not stopped him appearing on popular culture’s radar numerous times in recent years.

Alex Turner, lead singer of the Arctic Monkeys, has identified Clarke’s poems as a massive influence on his own brand of acerbic, quick-fire lyrics. When Mojo magazine gave Turner carte blanche to choose an interviewee, there was only one choice on the Monkey’s mind. Clarke has even penned an original ode for the sleeve notes of Arctic Monkeys single Fluorescent Adolescent. The poem Out Of Control Fairground inspired the single’s chaotic video with lines about a “homicidal clown shacked up in the mirror maze”.

Does this kind of publicity from popular artists have an effect on his popularity? “I’m sure it’s had a massive effect that I can’t even begin to know the extent of, you know what I mean. Someone with a high profile like Alex. Great songwriter, fabulous guitar player, they are a terrific band, end of. Just sensational. He did my stuff at school for his GCSE’s,” Clarke explains matter-of-factly.

If that wasn’t enough, his expletive-laden epic, Evidently Chickentown, adorned the end credits of one of the last episodes of television’s magnum opus, The Sopranos. “It can’t do any harm. I’m well chuffed being a massive fan. Mega-fan. That’s as good as it gets. After The Simpsons. The two Ss. Simpsons and Sopranos,” he says beaming.

Often described as the Bard of Salford, after his home town in Manchester, he found a modicum of fame in the late-70’s as a punk poet. He supported numerous artists who flourished in the new-wave scene including the Sex Pistols, Joy Division, Buzzcocks and The Fall.

His sense of style is much the same now as then, feathered bouffant, polka-dot shirts, sharp suits with drainpipe trousers finished off with Chelsea boots and ever-present dark sunglasses. Not your average punk then?“Well they [the safety-pin clad audiences] were a bit hairy at first. But me, I was doing this before punk and when punk came I just speeded everything up. Hit and run really. By the time they find out they hate it I’m out of town,” he quips.

He released four albums on Columbia’s label, CBS, in the late 70s and 80s full of inventive wordplay and scabrous humour about the degeneration of small-town England. The magnificently-titled Twat features a series of bilious insults. “Like a death at a birthday party, you ruin all the fun. Like a sucked and spat our Smartie, you’re no use to anyone.”

The Day My Pad Went Mad even manages to get in a curry-related rhyme. “The kitchen has been ransacked, ski trails in the hall. A chicken has been dansacked, and thrown against the wall.”
Touring the country with, now, legendary punk bands, Joy Division and Sex Pistols, was a long way from his early profession of gravedigger.

“I was never a gravedigger. It was a Rod Stewart line. I thought that sounds like a fascinating previous occupation, I’ll have that. But it’s bullshit. Gravedigger me? It’d kill me. If I dug a six-foot hole I’d fall into and someone would shovel it back on top of me,” he says shaking his head.

He found inspiration, and a love of the spoken word, while at school in Salford. “We had a good English teacher. We used to do all that old school stuff. Charge of the Light Brigade, Dick Turpin’s Last Ride. Real boy’s own stuff you know what I mean. Epic, adventure poems. He managed to instil a love of poetry to everybody in our class and it was only a secondary modern but teachers were great then”, he explains before adding the caveat, “… well some of them were anyway.”

During gigs he makes a point that the more he finds out the less he knows. Does he have a philosophy he lives his life by? “No, not that I can think of. Things change, politics change. It’s a whole new set of values now”, he explains. “Do to others what others do to you, only do it first. How about that? Elvis said that in Jailhouse Rock. Elvis wasn’t wrong about very much,” he asserts laughing, his gold teeth glittering under the fluorescent eco-friendly lighting.

He does have a philosophical question of his own, though. “If a man does something and there aren’t any women around, is he still wrong,” he asks.

Even at 60 years of age he still looks every inch the rakish dandy of his youth, give or take a wrinkle or five. And he still has his fingers on the pulse of modern music. “I like Kate Perry. ‘I kissed a girl and I liked it’. I can relate to that. In fact I can relate to most lesbians.”