', 'Anything wrong?' The parents of Lydia, John & Ann Cooper are not known. Here [at the Contains Strong Language spoken word festival in 2017] Ive also got a bolo tie, which chimes in with the snakeskin boots by Jeffery West. 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'. Let's say you and me were in Peckham. The outfit was another form of fighting talk, one he has stuck with in a journey that has seen some extremes. He was previously married to ?. 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. It is a romantic picture, that idea of Cole Porter always writing lyrics on the back of cigarette packs and menus. I remember thinking, this must be what Stalingrad was like. [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. I think," Costello continues, "this might be why he is not greatly regarded by literary snobs. Having said that, every incarnation of the Fall had something different, but the one thing they all had in common was the sensational live act that was Mark Smith. And it caught on. -In Conversation withTim Wellsabout his Ranting Project- I did a separate couple of interviews last year for creative writing students, -Reviewed by Dana Bubulj Published by Stewed Rhubarb Press, Treasure in the History of Things by Katherine McMahon (of, reviewed by Charlotte Henson Towards the end of last year Apples and Snakes put on a number of, They dragged him from the podium the mic fell slack and squealed and back inside his hotel room his tortured, -Reviewed by Claire Trvien Now in its third year, Stoke Newingtons Literary Festival already has the reputation of an established. You put the Shat in Shatter. [22], 2015 saw Clarke present a documentary on Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater in the BBC's second series of The Secret Life of Books. It included the lines: "Rotten here in jail / The communal TV has gone, / Everyone knows that one of us has got it / But we don't know which one / And he's too scared to turn it on. It is the work of my long-term manager, Phil Jones. "John?" I like a high waist if anything, like a flamenco dancer that rakish, swashbuckling look. You're late home.' I think of it more like Tin Pan Alley work. [15] That same year, Clarke featured in rapper Plan B's feature film Ill Manors and subsequently the Ill Manors album. 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. I pray that you are successful. max_stenner The Luckiest Guy Alive? It's a level of popularity that is unprecedented in the history of performance poetry. In 1988, he made an appearance in two UK adverts for Sugar Puffs, taking second billing to the Honey Monster. The second guy, a bit more kinky, says, 'beat me up.' Really, really badly. 'near enough'. Dr John Cooper Clarke at the Firestation Arts Centre - 21/06/17. As the great Bill Withers once said, the writing of songs involves a kind of magic I dont mess with. [2] Rabid also released his debut LP O est la maison de fromage'? No way do I ever approach my work as a way of working out my own problems. poetry quote black t-shirt. But the ritual suicide; that's not really my cup of tea. Shards. 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. The third punter - Jewish guy - hands over his fiver and says, 'paint my house. "I have two heroes in my life," he says. Well, that's a harsh judgement in my book. Apart from the one collection [Ten Years in An Open . 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. Some questions have been submitted by famous admirers of his, others by Observer readers. ", Clarke looks uncomfortable. Thirty Six Hours John Cooper Clarke was born on January 25, 1949 in Salford, Greater Manchester, England, UK. Ganges It's his reluctance to discuss narcotics - "and it always, always comes up" - that mean that he will very rarely subject himself to interviews of any length. John Cooper Clarke - What's In My Bag? DJ JetSet - Fifty minutes of Marko Frstenberg (th How Psychedelic Drugs Can Help Patients Face Death. There is little question that Cooper Clarke could, should he so wish, fill that historic Kensington venue single-handedly. Erstwhile louts trying to out-verbal each other, in a flamboyant, slightly foppish way. /, The library's bound to fail / since the sudden departure of Jeffrey Archer / It's rotten here in jail.'". Erik_Debonair And at 66, the original punk poet is not about to stop any time soon, Netflixs endless cancellations signal the end of the prestige streaming TV era, Jeff Beck had a phenomenal car collection, How to wear men's jewellery beyond that one single chain, Ten coolest things to do in London this week, Joe Locke and Kit Connor cant believe any of this is real, The best classic hairstyles for men that just won't quit, All the must-read books to look forward to in 2023, A quick call about tracksuits and Kendrick with Kano, No More Red, Arsenal's campaign for a safer London, wants you to join the team, Print copies & Digital access for only 1. A screen projector showing him in close up would have helped a lot-for those of us in the gallery he was a bit of a speck in the distance. John Cooper Clarke concert schedule will typically have 25-50 tour dates. ijmanchester Are you a soothsayer? "All I can say is that I love what I do now. He stayed with me occasionally in London in those years and he was not an ideal guest: getting up around 4pm, then sitting up past dawn, working through my library of low-budget horror films. 9.50 gbp. Ive interviewed him once before, that time on the telephone, and was struck how just as on stage there appeared no subject under the sun which he could not bend to his comic will. But all poetry - all writing - is aural. Neither marriage nor routine employment suited him at the time. I will never resolve. Much the same is true of Clarke, from the other side of the Pennines. The sad truth is I never get to pick. John Cooper Clarke SUB89 22.06.12 Lydia The Girl With the Itch through to Rotten Here In Gaol AboutPressCopyrightContact usCreatorsAdvertiseDevelopersTermsPrivacyPolicy & SafetyHow. Upon receipt, Clarke commented: "Now I'm a doctor, finally my dream of opening a cosmetic surgery business can become a reality. | It runs every teatime on television in the States. He toured with Bill Nelson's band Be-Bop Deluxe in 1978 and was signed by Epic Records, who issued the studio album Disguise In Love, produced by Hannett, in 1978. English punk poet John Cooper-Clarke first began performing his verse backed by a local folk group called the Ferrets, but with his rapid-fire verbal delivery and stinging social commentary, he quickly emerged as the poet laureate of the punk movement. Him and Grard de Nerval: the guy that wore the powder blue cape and walked a lobster on a leash. About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features Press Copyright Contact us Creators . Around this time, he performed on stage with several punk and post-punk bands and continues to perform regularly. "They married you off in the music press, didn't they?" Those English periods were a happy time. When I moved to Essex, among the first things everyone said was Dont ever go to Jaywick, its a toilet. No one can be that busy. You wrote [in the refrain in Chickentown] the fucking train is fucking late, you fucking wait, you fucking wait back in the late 1970s. The poet and performer on keeping his clothes simple, stapling them back together, and being fashionable once every 15 years for about three months. There are good reasons, he argues, for judging by appearances. A Music War, in which he performed his poem "Health Fanatic". Is the father of a daughter, named Stella. Movement: BBC Radio 1 Peel Sessions 19771979, Greatest Ever: Punk & New Wave: The Definitive Collection, De rouille et d'os (Bande originale du film), Rust and Bone (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack). He had fixed on his sartorial style in the unlikely arena of Bernard Mannings Embassy Club, where he acted as compere in the early 1970s, warming up an audience united by their shared antipathy to performance poetry. If you read the lyrics to Its Magic, that very sexy Doris Day song, for example, you are already singing the song they leave you no other way to go. [21] In October 2020 Clarke published an autobiography which took its title from his poem I Wanna Be Yours. Dont ever do it. l33wilko Why is the drug addict spat upon, and the climber of Everest revered? "You can't pretend that it never happened." ", The poet laughed. Now, Im no expert, but I think when it comes to guys, the less said about the hips the better. Others include the use of his anthem 'Evidently Chickentown' to close a final-season episode of The Sopranos; his memorable appearance in, Ill Manors, the 2012 film by Plan B, and the tireless support of other younger artists, notably Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys. In an hour long conversation, Wise emphasises the foolishness of underestimating Cooper Clarke. This is a poem of rigidly defined structure: five syllables, seven syllables, five syllables. 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. Even though quite often you literally couldn't see it for the smoke. How much has privatisation bettered or worsened things? Other Works For a period of months, Cooper Clarke was also host to John Cale, meaning that, "I'm no name-dropper, but for a while I had two-fifths of the Velvet Underground living at my place." To bloody keep it bloody clean. For that reason, perhaps I am not best placed to objectively gauge the enigmatic appeal of Jon the Postman. ", 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.