He’s the performance poet who was synonymous with punk.
John Cooper Clarke was present to witness one of music’s most important-ever gigs when The Sex Pistols played Manchester’s Lesser Trade Hall in June 1976, and went on to become a huge part of the massively influential scene that grew up in his home city in its immediate aftermath.
He performed on the same bill as such Manchester-based legends of that era as Magazine, The Buzzcocks, Joy Division and The Fall, as well as the Pistols themselves and a host of other late-70s luminaries including Siouxsie And The Banshees, Elvis Costello and Rockpile.
Now aged 74, Clarke’s popped up in recent years in such varied contexts as a participant alongside Fife-based stand-up Phill Jupitus in BBC’s Celebrity Antiques Road Trip, as an unlikely lead singer foil for ex-Stranglers frontman Hugh Cornwell on the pair’s collaborative covers album This Time It’s Personal, and playing a ghost in a Christmas episode of the TV comedy Mandy.
The Salford lad’s immediate pre and post-pandemic touring antics were mostly tied in with his 2018 poetry collection The Luckiest Guy Alive and his subsequent autobiography I Wanna Be Yours.
Wilderness years
Following a lengthy spell in the wilderness due to heroin addiction, Clarke became a regular on TV screens as the sideman to Quaker Oats’ Honey Monster in the late 80s – years before John Lydon’s infamous stint punting butter.
Praise from superfan Alex Turner ensured he later enjoyed a lengthy renaissance following the rise of the Sheffield songsmith’s band The Arctic Monkeys, but now as he approaches the twilight of his career, some observers wonder if JCC’s legendary ability to tap into the working-class consciousness at its most irreverent might finally be on the wane.
Never one to be concerned with political correctness, John Cooper Clarke has stayed true to his working class origins.
Asked recently how he feels about being seen as a living legend, the Dundee-bound Evidently Chickentown scribe replied: “Oh, it’s terrific. How could you complain? It’s taken me 45 years to become an overnight success.
“The 80s weren’t too kind to me, partly my own fault with the drug habit – it really p***ed on my chips – but other than that being labelled the punk poet was the last thing you wanted to be associated with in the early 80s.
“You know, let’s face it, punk rock only lasted two years and after that anything that was tainted with the word ‘punk’ was surplus to requirement. It went off to the other extreme, didn’t it?
“I’m not moaning about it, that’s the nature of pop music but, you know, it went in the opposite direction of conspicuous consumption and throwing money at everything. Duran Duran, the New Romantics, it was all spend, spend, spend, and two-minute videos with Hollywood production values.
“Punk was so last week. That ‘so last week’ lasted for a decade really. But I’ve always worked – I didn’t have to get a real job.”
Writing proper
Reflecting on his most recent books, Clarke told ex-Joy Division and New Order bassist Peter Hook in a radio interview late last year: “I have always done gigs, but it’s only in the last four years that I’ve really started writing proper again in any kind of conscientious way.”
John Cooper Clarke plays Dundee’s Gardyne Theatre tonight, May 12.
Tickets dundeebox.co.uk
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