The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
The luckiest man alive
John Cooper Clarke gained cult status in the late 1970s for his inimitable punk poetry. Murray Chalmers talks to the living legend ahead of his forthcoming gigs in Courier Country
If John Cooper Clarke didn’t exist it’s highly unlikely that anyone would have thought to invent him. Born in Salford 70 years ago, he became interested in poetry at school but it was while working as a lab technician that he got his first break, moving from folk clubs to reading his own compositions in a club owned by the famously recalcitrant Bernard Manning.
However, it was the burgeoning punk movement of 1976 that pogoed Cooper Clarke into its centre and helped to define his voice. It was a voice that fitted those combative and brutal times; his scattergun delivery was informed by his love of the Ramones, whose short songs were played at increasing breakneck speed and who used this sense of apocalyptic urgency to attempt to make each show shorter than the last.
Cooper Clarke’s early work still resonates hugely and his first anthology “Ten Years In An Open-necked Shirt” has been reprinted many times. Over the years he has gained a wide and vociferous following that now includes a new and younger audience drawn in by his work with admirers Plan B and the Arctic Monkeys; they joined a list of devotees including Steve Coogan, Peter Hook, Phill Jupitus and Kate Moss, who said of him: “John Cooper Clarke uses words like Chuck Berry uses guitar riffs – melody and anger, humour and disdain in equal measure. He’s the real deal, really funny and really caustic, the velvet voice of discontent.”
A second volume of poetry – “The Luckiest Man Alive” – was published in 2016, the title reflecting the fact that Cooper Clarke has survived some tough times including an addiction to heroin that effectively halted his muse for years.
I caught up with the Bard of Salford – now Dr Clarke, after receiving an honorary doctorate from Salford University in 2013 – on his landline (he resolutely still has no mobile or computer) at his home in Essex where he lives with his French wife Evie and their daughter Stella.
As befits the luckiest man alive, our conversation was studded with great bouts of laughter among other moments of poignancy, incisive revelation and huge wisdom. He is the only man who has ever used the word “Terpsichorean” to me, all the more noteworthy as he was talking about dancing to Northern Soul at the time.
MC: On your recent Desert Island Discs you seemed like a man who is genuinely happy.
JCC: I would say I am, hence the title of my latest book The Luckiest Man Alive. It ain’t ironic.
MC: Why do you feel lucky?
JCC: Well, why does anybody feel lucky? They’re in a good space – they’ve found happiness; people who have found happiness are very lucky. Saying that, though, happiness really is a fleeting thing that can’t be sustained… but contentment, yeah; I’ve got a good life, a wife, beautiful kid, nice house, a car.
John Cooper Clarke uses words like Chuck Berry uses guitar riffs – melody and anger, humour and disdain. He’s the real deal... the velvet voice of discontent.
At this point he laughs, perhaps realising the irony of defining happiness in such mainstream terms. It’s an endearing quality of Cooper Clarke’s, that sense of honesty combined with harsh pragmatism and an innate ability to cut through pomposity. It makes speaking to him a treat, but one which often relies on picking up the nuances from the rich, still intensely northern timbre of his speech. He pronounces words like no one else I have met.
MC: You’ve also got really interesting people saying how great you are: you’ve got that lovely eulogy from Kate Moss on your website, for example.
I then proceed to read it to him.
JCC: I like that. Smashing! It sort of puts me in the same league as the late Mel Torme – remember him? That was his nickname – The Velvet Fog. Yeah, it’s nice (having people say great things). The alternative has limited appeal.
MC: And you’re writing your autobiography? What’s a typical day right now? MC: What drew you to punk?
JCC: I was an early convert. I saw it as being a return to the core values of rock ‘n’ roll after all these bands like Yes, Genesis and Emerson Huntley and Palmer. I hated all that. But I was a soul boy before. We invented the Northern Soul phenomenon; we started that whole craze off in Manchester at a club called The Twisted Wheel, me and about 27 other people. This was 10 years before Wigan.
MC: Can you do Northern Soul dancing?
JCC: I can’t do that Wigan Casino stuff. It’s very exhibitionist, but I love to watch them. But my rule number one when dancing is “don’t move your feet”.
We invented the Northern Soul phenomenon; we started that whole craze off in Manchester at a club called the Twisted Wheel, me and about 27 other people. That was 10 years before Wigan.