Evidently... John Cooper Clarke

This programme contains strong language

I think it's great that he's elusive, it adds to the mystique.

Is John Cooper Clarke actually alive? Does he exist? Is he real?

Or is he something we've created,

because we're sick of the poets of the past?

Who is John Cooper Clarke?

My hero.

Part freak, part poet, part singer, part comic.

If I'm talking to someone and I say, "Do you know John Cooper Clarke?"

And they say, "Oh, yes, he's a genius."

Then you go, "OK, you've saved me a lot of time."

In places where it wasn't necessarily wanted or appreciated,

a man took poetry to rock audiences,

and they discovered that they did like it.

You know, poets are usually wandering lonely as a cloud,

they're not speeding down Highway 61.

It was punk, so you didn't need a guitar

to be Bob Dylan, you could just do the words.

There's no-one quite like John, has been, or probably ever will be.

You've either never hear to him, or you love him.

For me, it was an inspiration.

He is a lifelong influence,

and a very thin man.

John Cooper Clarke is always going to be a relevant person.

People always going to be discovering him over and over.

What happened to him?

He had it all, it blew up in his face.

HE LAUGHS

Could you do something for us now,

maybe something that you've written recently?

Sure, sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lovely.

Well, I'm in an acrimonious frame of mind

because of the dreadful hotels these promoters have been putting me in,

I'll do this one.

I mean, you won't believe the hotels they're putting me in.

I went to see the manager, I says,

"I've come to see you about the roof."

He says, "What about it?"

I said, "I want one." HE LAUGHS

I said, "I'll have pneumonia in the morning."

He said, "You'll have cornflakes like every ... else.

THEY LAUGH

Right, this is called... Well, the title appears on the very last line.

"Like a nightclub in the morning You're the bitter end

"Like a recently disinfected shithouse

"You're clean round the bend

"You give me the horrors Too bad to be true

"All of my tomorrows are lousy cos of you

"You put the shat in shatter

"You put the pain in Spain

"Your germs are splattered about

"Your face is just a stain..."

You're certainly no raver Commonly known as a drag

Do us all a favour here Wear this polythene bag

You're like a dose of scabies I've got you under my skin

You make life a fairy tale - Grimm!

A sumo wrestler's armpits have nothing on your shoes

Show me any two halfwits And they are twice as smart as you

I think about thrombosis every time we touch

I say, "You can have acute halitosis"

You say, "Thank you very much "You're very pleasant"

I know it's just a fad

Your very presence makes me really mad

I hear your knock upon my door And I've got to get out of town

I hit the lights, I hit the floor I turn the TV down...

People mention murder the moment you arrive.

I'd consider killing you If I thought you were alive

You've got this slippery quality It makes me think of phlegm

A dual personality I hate both of them...

Your bad breath, vamps disease Destruction and decay

Please, please, please, please Take yourself away

Like a death at a birthday party You ruin all the fun

Like a sucked-and-spat-out Smartie You're no use to anyone...

Like a black widow spider In the recess of disgrace

Speaking as an outsider What do you think of the human race?

You went to a progressive psychiatrist

Who recommended suicide

Before scratching your bad name of his list

And pointing the way outside

Laughter from the playground Breaks your bleeding heart

You're heading for a breakdown Better pull yourself apart

Your dirty name is passed about when something goes amiss

Your attitudes are platitudes They make me want to piss

What kind of creature bore you? Was it some kind of bat?

They can't find a good word for you

but I can - twat!

THEY LAUGH

-Thank you very much.

-My pleasure.

I think John's poetry is from the heart of Salford.

It comes up from the gutters, and it rises up to the skies

and allows normal, everyday people to listen to poetry

and say, for the first time, that they can connect with a poem.

Whether he intended it or not,

I think he took poetry out of those middle-class venues,

and very middle-class mindset,

and actually gave poetry back to the working classes.

He is the people's poet, you know,

he speaks a language that they understand,

it's simple, it's straight to the point.

You don't need a codebook to work out what he's on about.

The centre of literary power, if you like,

never really took him seriously.

He had an accent, he rhymed relentlessly and loudly,

it's a recipe for people not really thinking there's anything of nuance,

or anything of value to be said,

and so he was roundly ignored by the literary establishment.

I can see how they wouldn't get it,

but I'm glad they don't get it, it was something for us,

something that set us apart from that.

You know, it was a reaction to the poetry shite

that they were putting down.

Look, poetry can be fun, it can be aggressive, it can be angry,

it can be beautiful, it can be whatever you want it to be.

It proves you don't have to go to Oxford or Cambridge

to be intelligent, thoughtful, incisive.

As a performer, whether it's a poet, or an actor, whatever you do,

all your instrument is, is this.

And that's his... you know, he marries that with that.

Ah, no, this is about nothing

Nothing is but nothing Something it is not

Nil plus nil makes nothing, And nothing is what I've got.

I've got that certain nothing no-one can do without

The Spanish call it nada

I'd call it nowt.

Sex and violence, eh?

I see we have a clergyman in the audience.

THEY LAUGH

First gig I ever did was a benefit for CND, or something,

you know, in some pub in Oldham Street, up there.

And my dad had a glancing interest in what I did,

even though his general attitude was,

you know, "Leave it up to the experts.

I said, "Hey, Dad, I've got a booking."

"What, reading your poetry, really?

"How much are you getting?"

"It's a benefit, Dad."

"What, you're not getting paid?

"Well, anybody will employ you on that basis."

I'm grateful I never had any encouragement, actually,

I'm really grateful.

You look at the poets that got encouraged by their parents,

and they're all shit.

Best advice I ever got, and I can't remember where I read it,

but it was at school, was, "Copy the style of somebody you like...

"..but write about what you know about."

Most of my stuff rhymes and is very strict.

It has a very strict metre, you know.

And it's from Palgrave's Golden Treasury,

a school textbook of poetry, you know.

I hated school, but they taught you how to read, that's the main thing.

A love of poetry was instilled,

thanks to Mr John Malone.

He was this rugged, outdoor type.

Every September, after the summer holiday,

he would come back with a new injury.

I remember he fell 300 feet once from a ledge in Snowdonia one year,

he had a limp for the rest of the term.

He had a glass eye that he got skiing somehow,

you know, he was an Ernest Hemingway type.

Mr Malone made it live.

He started off with a few action things

like Vitae Lampada by Sir Henry Newbolt,

you know that one, don't you?

The sand of the desert is sodden red

Red with the wreck of a square that broke

The Gatling's jammed And the colonel's dead

And the regiment blind with dust and smoke

The river of death has brimmed its banks

England's far, and Honour, a name

But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks

Play up, play up, and play the game.

Stuff like that he'd start us off with,

stuff that a class full of teddy boys would like.

I don't think there was anybody in our class

that actually was left without a love of poetry, actually,

that was a golden year.

First guy that ever gave me money for doing what I do

was the late Mr Bernard Manning, ladies and gentlemen,

so, he has a very special place in my heart, if only for that reason.

But he was a funny guy

and a typical introduction then would have been, at the Embassy Club,

was something like this.

"Here he is, all the way from Salford.

"He's not my cup of tea, but you might like him, John Cooper Clarke."

LAUGHING

Poetry was something I did for a hobby, you know.

A couple of close pals, they knew I did it,

but there wasn't no big thing about it.

So, I just, sort of, punted it around,

went round all these clubs, and a couple of times in jazz clubs.

Then I got a job at this place called

Mr Smith's Cabaret Club for Young Adults.

I got a gig, like, doing 20 minutes of stuff

and then bringing on the main acts on a Sunday night.

The next stop would have been the Embassy,

but there were millions of clubs like the Embassy Club in Manchester.

Millions of them.

The way I see it, you know, I get suited up for it.

You know what I mean?

I'll be a nightclub entertainer,

fucking glamour, isn't it, all the way?

So, I had myself figured as that kind of guy, you know what I mean,

and I'll do a few poems, I'll slip a couple of poems in.

They'll think, "Not only is he a gifted entertainer,

"he's a fucking deep guy."

I was about 13 when I came across John Cooper Clarke.

I think I saw him on Granada Reports, a gig he did,

and he blew everything out of the water, tore the roof of the place.

Ex-students, reformed hippies, and lovers of drink,

clapping and shouting for poetry,

strange, but so is John Cooper Clarke.

Holding down a day job in the tool room of Salford Tech,

he also happens to be just about the brightest performing poet

this side of Cassius Clay.

His first appearances were on regional television,

if I'm not mistaken,

in Manchester - I think Tony Wilson was probably involved in that.

-Are you embarrassed about being a poet?

-Not really,

but people can get entirely the wrong impression, can't they?

Poet, you know, it's a fellow that skips around with a butterfly net.

To me, at school, he was exciting, because he's different,

he spoke to my generation, unlike a lot of the other comedians,

sort of, working men's club comics.

He did something that was both funny, accessible,

but smart, it had an intellect behind it too.

This paper is boring, mindless, and mean

It's full of pornography The kind that's clean

Where William Hickey meets Michael Caine

Again and again and again and again

You learn all kinds of ugliness in hideous excess

But you'll never find the nipple In the Daily Express.

APPLAUSE

I'm grateful that I saw John Cooper Clarke on television

when I was a child/teenager

because, from my point of view as a performing artist,

he fostered that thought

that there's a different way of doing things.

You don't have to do things the way everybody else does it.

Of course, as he was featured on the telly,

he started to touch a wider consciousness in the North West,

but I think, you know, initially,

those of us who were going to the gigs on the punk circuit

were the only ones who really knew.

'76, '77, this explosion of life and possibility,

imagination and ambition,

and John Cooper Clarke was a poet who fitted in to that.

And even though he maybe took the baton on from Johnny Rotten,

when he came up to Manchester in 1976,

it was almost John Cooper Clarke that was the first to snatch it.

All those clubs that opened up because of punk,

because of the Sex Pistols, you know what I mean,

I thought I'd jump in at the deep end,

it was a make-or-break situation.

Well, I already looked like a sort of a punk,

three buttoned suit, short hair.

At first it was quite a broad church.

You weren't allowed to wear flared trousers,

that was about the only rule.

The whole punk movement was quite serious, you know,

the spirit of rebellion and anarchy, questioning your parents,

it was quite a dark movement.

You know, the punk crowds were known for being raucous,

and for spitting, and for pogoing and all that.

It wasn't a respectful crowd.

They let you know what they thought.

Poetry, in a way, couldn't have been less punk.

I sometimes look back to those early gigs and they were dangerous,

they were chaotic, dare I say, anarchic?

Which is why somebody like Johnny Clarke fits in perfectly,

cos he could ride that, he wasn't precious, he didn't pull strokes.

So, if someone said, "Pop out there

"and give a bit of verbals, will you?"

He would fit in perfectly.

He could also dodge the bottles.

People used to ask me, you know,

about, "Aren't you scared reading poetry to punk rockers, and that?"

But, like I say, it's not as bad as the nightclub circuit,

which I what I was working on

in the period immediately before the punk rock.

Who were you supporting there, what sort of acts?

Uh, ventriloquists, strippers, comedians, fire eaters.

That's one hell of a show.

Yeah.

The audience I was getting just before the punk days,

there was one thing you could take for granted,

none of them were particularly interested in poetry.

Those places were really... I mean, very, very hostile.

You know, unbelievably hostile places.

Punch-up places, you know, I mean, the punks just fucking...

you know, as I say, it was like a doddle to me.

It was like, "Thank God I don't have to play there again."

# ..rock and roll radio, let's go...#

The first punk band I remember hearing was, without a doubt,

the Ramones, the greatest rock and roll band ever.

They just made everybody else look like a waste of time,

and that's the first time punk hit me, you know, I thought...

..yeah, that's punk rock.

Right, John, a clip of the Ramones.

John, how many of the brothers can you name?

Uh, Joey, Dee Dee...

um...

..Johnny, is there a Johnny?

Johnny, yes, Johnny, Joey, Dee Dee and...?

And Marky.

Yes, Marky was an original member,

and was eventually replaced by Tommy, so you have two points.

No, no, I think Marky replaced Tommy.

The other way round, you're quite right.

At the end of that round,

BA's team, 21, Paul Jones' team, 23.

The Ramones used to brag about their set getting shorter.

I remember they said, "Last time we were here, we were on for 40 minutes,

"this time, we got it finished in 25,

"we're getting better all the time."

That was the template for me then, it really had a big impression.

Oh, that's what you do, you crank it up a few gears.

I listen to it now, it don't make no fucking sense,

but then it was just the house style.

Gaberdine Angus at the magazine rack

Views the situation from the front to the back

Nobody's looking for the man with the mac

Stick it right back on the stack, Jack.

First time I saw him, he was supporting Elvis Costello.

John really didn't, sort of, figure much in the pre-match analysis.

We were talking about Richard Hell and the Voidoids. "This is amazing!

"What's Blank Generation...?"

We were very excited about that,

and, obviously, Costello was Costello.

John shuffles on and is the most amazing thing.

He wanders on with his barnet up and his shades on, stick thin,

and is cool as fuck.

And then reading poems at this breakneck speed.

You pogo'd to it in your head, you didn't dance because of the music.

It was exciting to listen to him talk.

And he looks so strange, you know, he looks so odd,

like a punk Bob Dylan.

Which, in a sense, you know, you could say he, sort of, was.

He was, he was our Dylan, really, he was not scared people laugh,

not scared to make people cry.

No-one was doing that, no-one was doing poetry at a punk gig.

It wasn't like a poetry reading that you'd ever seen before,

you know, somebody with a tweed jacket on,

going, "Here's one of my later works..."

It's, sort of, right there in your face.

He out-punked punk, in a way,

you know, it was, three chords, form a band and away you go.

He didn't even need the three chords.

Any band that picked him up, he would have been the best lyricist

in any of those bands ever, you know.

And all of us just... That's the thing that we were talking about.

To us, who were fans of punk, he was the spearhead of this thing.

And this influx that the Pistols gave to pop culture,

that it could be intelligent and smart, that it was about protest,

and it was about telling people who you were, and where you were.

Cooper Clarke, he understood that,

and he saw the surrealism in it, he saw the Dadaism,

he saw the futurism in it, and he saw the rock and roll in it.

Through him, somehow, we saw it too.

I wasn't welcome everywhere I went,

especially, as the roadies kept reminding me

constantly throughout the tour,

"I can't wait till we do Glasgow Apollo."

That was the one time I was thinking of bottling out.

Cos I was, like, very much associated with punk rock right now,

and they were very polarised times,

when people were very tribal about music.

So, any heavy metal people, they didn't really like punks.

Two weeks before the event, I was already shitting myself,

you know what I mean?

I'd heard about their razor gangs, and how they hated English people.

Cavemen in RAF overcoats,

banging their heads on the seats in front,

you know, they hated me, they hated me.

It's a very extreme experience to have 4,500 people hating you

all at the same time.

So, I lasted, I think four minutes,

then I said to them, "I think it's gone down in history,"

when I managed to get a word in edgeways,

I just sort of said, "Let's call it a draw."

And fucked off.

Outside the takeaway Saturday night

A bald adolescent asked me out for a fight

He was no bigger than a two bob fart

He was a deft exponent of the martial arts

He gave me three warnings Trod on me toes

Stuck his fingers in my eyes And kicked me in the nose

A rabbit punch made my eyes explode

My head went dead I fell in the road

I pleaded for mercy I wriggled on the ground

He kicked me in the balls And said something profound

Gave my face the millimetre tread

Stole my chop suey and left me for dead

Through rivers of blood On fractured bones

Crawled half a mile to a public telephone

Pulled the corpse out the call box Held back the bile

Broken index finger I proceeded to dial

Couldn't get an ambulance The phone was screwed

The receiver fell in half It had been kung fu'd

A black belt karate cop opened up the door

Demanding information about the stiff on the floor

He looked like an extra from Yang Shang Po

He said, "What's all this then? Ah so, ah so, ah so"

He wore a bamboo mask Genned on zen

He finished his devotions And he beat me up again

Thanks to that embryonic Bruce Lee

I'm a shadow of the person that I used to be

I can't go back to Salford The cops have got me marked

Enter the dragon Exit Johnny Clarke.

APPLAUSE

When you realise that he was

doing these poems before alternative comedy,

you realise that his brain

and his mindset were ahead of the game.

1979, '80, you become aware of this alternative comedy thing happening.

Alexei Sale, the Comic Strip, Rik Mayall, all those people.

People do tend to forget

that there were people ahead of the curve there in the '70s.

First and foremost, there's John Cooper Clarke,

who was on stage, doing a form of cabaret,

that wasn't working men's club comedy,

and it wasn't, sort of, satirical monologues either.

It was something else that we didn't really have here.

I think, we comedians looked at him as a man who had, kind of,

been there and done that.

If he'd never written a poem in his life,

he could still be a star as a stand-up.

Andrew Motion, you wouldn't want to see him down The Comedy Store.

I almost don't want to denigrate him by describing him as a comedian,

because he does more than that, he transcends that.

Um, it's about something, he had an attitude,

a spirit of dissent...

..that he captured, rather than a spirit of compliance.

Right, this next one is a political parable,

in which every other words begins with the letter P,

it's an exercise in what we call alliteration.

And it's called The Pest.

Watch out, the first 16 rows.

LAUGHING

The pest, pulled up Propped his pushbike at a pillar box

Pulled his 'peen paused at a post and pissed

"Piss in the proper place" Pronounced a perturbed pedestrian

And presently, this particular part of the planet

Was plunged into a panorama of public pressure and pleasure through pain

The pandemonium prompted the police

Who patrolled the precinct in panda cars

To pull up and peruse the problem

While pickpockets picked pockets in pairs

"Arrest the pest who so pointedly pissed in that public place"

Pleaded the peeved people practically palpitating

The powerful police picked up the pest

Pronounced him a pansy, a pinko A punk rocker and a poof

They punched him, poked him up Pummelled his pelvis

Punctured his pipes

Played ping-pong with his pubic parts

And packed him in a place of penal putrefaction

He pondered upon progressive politics, put pen to paper

And provocatively and persuasively

Propagated his personal, political premise

Pity, a police provocateur put poison pellets in the pest's porridge

The police provocateur was promoted

And the pest was presented with the Pulitzer Peace Prize, posthumously.

APPLAUSE

John Cooper Clarke here, this is a pre-recorded show here,

in lieu of Jarvis Cocker,

who is still away on holiday.

He did very well, I was a bit worried, actually,

cos he seemed to get a very good reaction from the listeners,

and so I thought, "Oh, I might be out of a job."

Staying with the poetry,

this is a guy called Al Hutchings from Birmingham,

the capital of all failed seaside towns.

# Put down their needles and their knitting

# At the doorway to our dismal, daily lives... #

Rabid Records signed John up,

and he was very much the leader of the field, of one.

He was doing something that no-one else was doing and therefore,

Maurice Oberstein,

what was then CBS, thought they should have somebody like that.

It was important, in a way, that John Cooper Clarke

did exactly the opposite

to what Tony Wilson would have said was the thing you did,

and signed to a major label.

He did the Clash thing, and he signed to CBS.

At the time, it was spectacular, and part of the whole myth,

that John Cooper Clarke would be on the same label

as Meatloaf and Judas Priest.

# The windows are frigid They're icebergs

# Frozen in prickly heat

# The vanishing cream victims are drip-fed amnesia neat... #

I don't think that John would have achieved,

in becoming popular,

without the music aspect of it,

without making him, sort of, a recording artist

with some music in the background.

Did the music really need to be so complicated?

No, I think Martin Hannett over-complicated everything

that he ever got involved in recording.

Martin Hannett, who Tony Wilson would rightly say

was the greatest producer

of his generation on the planet, not just Manchester,

he would use John Cooper Clarke

as a, sort of, source of research and development.

Through Martin Hannett, who I was a mate of,

he got me to play with John on The Old Grey Whistle Test,

twice, I think.

Martin had this concept of the Invisible Girls,

which, I think, was going to be some kind of super group.

A group of very disparate, strange musicians

who hadn't really worked with each other ever before.

And this music, which was kind of a nebulous, to say the least.

It all came together under Martin's guidance.

The idea was collect a load of people together, um,

control them in the studio.

Anarchic times, musically, because, at the time,

electronic music was still a burgeoning idea.

# In the Latin quarter of the ideal home,

# Fucks all day and sleeps alone. #

# Just a tiger rug and a telephone

# Says a post-war glamour girl's never alone.

# In the seventh heaven on the 13th floor

# Sweethearts, counterparts kiss

# Limbo dancers under the door where the human dynamo's pissed

# Adults only over her pubes

# Debutantes they give her... #

I came in as an Invisible Girl on one or two sessions,

but that was the nature of working with Martin Hannett.

You'd record stuff,

and whether or not it ended up in the mix was anybody's guess.

Martin Hannett fucked about with it for days and weeks and months on end,

and made something, I don't know what he did, I've no idea.

What did I do?

I just said, "Yeah, see what happens," you know what I mean?

I didn't have any big ideas about poetry and music, you know.

Music and poetry, music, music, poetry, music,

all blended in like that, and I think it's inescapable.

It's inescapable.

I always liked that thing of putting spoken word to music,

and I think those records that he did really stand the test of time,

I really like the, you know...

..there's something, I don't know, the backing's not obvious on them.

The good thing about it, in many ways,

it kind of slowed his delivery of the poem down,

which meant that you could actually hear

some of the words sometimes, you know.

And I quite like that.

But I thought Chickentown was brilliant to music,

that, kind of, drumming thing.

# The bloody cops are bloody keen To bloody keep it bloody clean

# The bloody chief's a bloody swine who bloody draws a bloody line

# At bloody fun and bloody games the bloody kids he bloody blames

# Are nowhere to be bloody found Anywhere in Chickentown. #

My personal belief is that he didn't need to do it.

It's that his words are musical enough.

Do you see yourself as a singer, or do you see yourself as a poet?

As a poet really.

With, uh, that certain...

..melodic, uh...

content.

It makes explicit the rhythms that are implicit in the poems,

which seems a shame, because it's nice to let the listener work it out

for themselves, I think.

And also, there's just something about the drum sound

and the production on some of those records

that really fixes it in time.

# I fell in love with an alien being

# Whose skin was jelly, Whose teeth were green... #

I wouldn't like to think of the world without

I Married a Monster From Outer Space.

It's my favourite record, I used to play it at parties all the time.

Not only the sound,

but the fact that it was bright orange and triangular,

so it was a pain in the arse,

cos you couldn't keep it with your singles,

and it was too small, used to end up lost between your LPs.

Lots of kids in places

like Liverpool and Manchester and Newcastle

had this beat poet artefact on the shelves of a walnut radiogram,

their mum's and dad's walnut radiogram,

it's just a fantastic clash.

It's taken something from the avant garde

right into the living rooms of the late '70s.

We took them for granted, a little bit, at the time, I think.

The greatest pieces of English poetry put out on record,

alongside the ones by John Betjeman and TS Eliot.

You know, they are these amazing documents of a poetic mind.

Clarke, he was lucky because he was at that period

where record companies would, like,

"I'll tell you what we'll do, we'll give you an advance,

"we'll put you in a studio, we'll give you money for publishing,

"and, you know, you just go away and do something

"and come back with the result."

I think the party atmosphere, as a sort of...

the money continued to roll in...

..um, I think it was just spent,

and no-one really thought about tomorrow.

There were lots of other people at the party,

but really, the party cost John the most money, didn't it?

I suppose, if he'd have had that money,

considering what he'd been up to at the time,

he might have just been dead like Martin, mightn't he?

I mean, I was taking drugs by then,

and I was either preoccupied with getting them or I was unwell,

or, you know, I was never really, always, entirely in the room.

Yeah, I mean, when we went to Australia with John,

he was in the grips of, shall we say, a rather destructive addiction.

And he'd got in with some skinheads that were dealing them up,

and they owed the skinheads more than they had,

and I remember being told that we were leaving John in New Zealand,

because he had to carry on working,

and that was literally one of the last times I saw him,

it was quite a sad affair, actually.

All through the '80s, which were lean years for me,

I was living a very sort of...

Well, it was a very feral existence at the time. Sort of...

Just hand to mouth, really.

I always needed money for drugs, so I always had to do the gig.

He came on stage and he was clearly out of it,

and he kind of grabbed the microphone and he sort of

rocked backwards and forwards and you could see he was struggling

to try and find the words, like the first word of the first poem.

Minutes were sort of ticking by.

I was thinking, "My God, is he actually going to be able to start?"

And then he just suddenly, something clicked,

and he was off and he went into Chickentown and it was, you know,

full force intense performance, but just that moment before it,

I thought, "He doesn't know where he is or what the first word is."

What was it? First, it's fun, then it isn't, then it's hell.

I can't really think of anything to add to that story.

It seems to be the time-worn trajectory.

I was doing it for a long, long time. Seemed like a lifetime of it.

When I talked to him

about what we might call the Lost Years, he did regret that.

What he said to me was there are plenty of people

who had a heroin habit who carried on producing work.

For him, that didn't happen.

There were times when he wasn't producing work

and I think maybe he regrets that now.

And I thought... I felt sorry about that.

It's a tedious life. It's a tedious and narrow life.

But while you're in it,

it's not tedious cos you've always got something to do.

Get the money.

Get the... Find out where it is. Wasn't always around.

God, bloody hell, you know. No wonder I didn't write nowt.

# Quite a party we have found... #

I would next come across Johnny Clarke at that point,

living in a flat with Nico.

He had this long relationship with Nico,

from the Velvet Underground, whose life ended very sadly

and fanboys and journalists would want to know about that

and he never says anything about it because he's a gentleman.

John didn't have a relationship with Nico at all.

It was made up by me, just to be mischievous.

I planted a few stories. That's all it was. There was nothing in it.

Nico was my friend, originally. I met her in Manchester.

She met John through me, but she got on with John and, of course,

they had something in common, hiding heroin from each other.

And she liked John. He was funny to her.

She had no sense of humour, but she thought John was funny.

She moved into my flat for a while.

I'd already known her a bit when she lived in Manchester, in Sedgley Park.

That was purely, you know, just a cohabitational deal.

We had John Cale living in the gaff at Brixton for a while as well,

yeah, when he was producing one of Nico's albums.

So that was quite...

Imagine that, having two-fifths of the Velvet Underground in your gaff.

I don't think there's any pictures. There might be.

I found one the other day. It was me, Nick King

and Tom Waits with Billy Connolly in the background.

You're asking me to remember things.

Everybody's been asking for years, "Have you ever met Tom Waits?" No.

For years I've been saying I never met Tom. I'm a massive fan.

I don't remember meeting him.

God, drugs, eh? That's the trouble, they're indiscriminate.

The good memories go with the fucking shit you're trying to block out!

Well, it was chaos. Everyone came round to visit everyone.

Nico had a fanbase who used to come and visit her.

Some famous, some not famous. John was there. He had a fanbase.

Used to come round.

The kids were in paradise, they came round and they got John

and they got Nico.

We were trying to live there. There were people visiting day and night.

John was up to all sorts of foul tricks at that time.

Things can only get worse.

That's all you can really say about that shit...

about serious dope use, is that things can only get worse.

I mean, he did probably take his life to the limits, but I think

he's got through it all now and we're all very happy about that.

It was with great joy that I gradually

watched his re-emergence, not only as some kind of greatest hits

retro act, but as a working poet, observing the world around him

and bringing it into play in his work.

I was writing as I was thinking about it. Dignified, you know.

You're at the bottom of Lake Zurich in a fucking vase.

Fucking...! I'd rather dribble out the corners of me mouth.

In fact, if you see me going into a vegetative state, right,

I've been there before.

It's not that bad. Don't go making assumptions.

"Oh, he's dribbling out the corner of his mouth.

"We'd better kill him. He was a very proud man."

Things Are Gonna Get Worse.

What me worry, what me care? Shit for brains, wire for hair

I've seen the future and I ain't there, things are gonna get worse

Velcro slippers and a spandex waistband

Washed up on planet wasteland Zips up like a nylon spaceman

Things are gonna get worse

Things are gonna get worse, nurse Things are going to get rotten

Make that hearse reverse, nurse

I'm trying to remember everything I've forgotten

A menace in the box I was good in the air

Now I can't get up from an easy chair

The doctor told me "Oh, yeah, things are gonna get worse"

Things are gonna get worse, nurse Things are gonna get crappy

Colour me perverse, nurse Bad news always makes me happy

The money's gone There's just the muck

Social Services pass the buck

How bad does it have to suck? Things are going to get worse

Things are gonna get worse, nurse Things are gonna get dismal

Smite me with a curse, nurse Make it something real abysmal

All that's left is the taste of soup

Afternoon reruns of Betty Boop and painful frame with a built in stoop

Things are gonna get worse Things are gonna get worse, nurse

I ain't optimistic

I got a mouth like a purse, nurse

And a bungalow smelling of piss and biscuits

Life's a bitch, it's a bit rich Doubled up with a permanent stitch

Any kind of effort Will be so last ditch

Things are gonna get worse

Young people make me swear You can't take me anywhere

I've like a breath of stale air A walking one-man medical scare

Things are gonna get worse Things are gonna get worse, nurse

Murder by statistics Take us back to the first verse

The last one's just too pessimistic Euthanasia, that sounds good

An Alpine neutral neighbourhood

Then back to Britain all dressed in wood

Things were gonna get worse.

Thank you very much.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

That's a newish one. Thank you very much.

He tells that story himself, where he kind of kicked the smack

and he was paper thin and walking through Manchester

and someone shouted,

"Oi, Clarkey! Get back on the smack, you fat bastard!"

I don't know what...

I didn't sort of say, "I'm going to quit using and start writing again!"

It was nothing like that.

I quit using, then I still didn't write for fucking ages.

I just lost the knack. Just atrophied inside of me.

The ability to think poetically about fucking anything, you know.

Years after I cleaned up, I had to force myself to write shit.

And I'd come up with something that was half good,

on top of a pile of rubbish.

It'd be like, "No, I've fucking lost it!"

It was feeding into this loser idea of myself.

I thought, "Yeah, you can lose it."

And now I know, yeah, you can lose it.

That's why I don't analyse it now.

If I analyse it, I think I'd lose it and then I'd never get it back again.

I don't want to lose it ever again.

Now, I'm just all the time, writing shit down.

I won't let a line pass me by.

Where does a poem come from? Why do it at all? I never think about it.

It's a superstition, I'm sure -

the idea that if you analyse something, it will disintegrate.

So now, I'm very superstitious about even thinking about...

I mean, why poetry? Why any of it? Like all art, it's utterly useless.

It is fucking useless. That's the beauty of it. It's a luxury.

It's a luxury.

Sometimes, it's like I've got this line

but I can't find anything to do with it.

I've got to get it in somewhere.

So you write a poem, just to justify the use of one good line.

This line's great.

It'll just get forgotten about, if I don't write something around it.

I've books full of...one lines. Like one there.

Stacks of books with just lines that are out of movies.

Old lines that I've absolutely made up.

Lines that I've paraphrased from cartoons or something.

Cos I rhyme things, my preoccupation is with technique. The craft of it.

How best to put this, so that it supplies this rhyme.

In between those two rhyming words,

that's your imagination coming in to play.

It's never like how you feel.

I get people come up to me all the time,

"I only write when I'm depressed."

Well, good luck to you then, you know what I mean?

I hope you never get a career in writing then, really!

It's the only reaction you can give, you know what I mean?

Stay away from it!

'Ladies and gentlemen,

please welcome to the stage, John Cooper Clarke.'

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

Hello there.

# We're not too young, young to get married

# Not too young, young to get married. #

I hadn't thought about Johnny Clarke for a very long time

until one day, my son brought home a copy of Beasley Street

which had been given to him by his English teacher in Year 11.

When I first started teaching, the National Curriculum didn't exist,

so for a whole generation of English teachers, it was really unsavoury

to have anybody telling us what we ought to teach.

So really, the biggest compromise was trying to find some writers

that we wanted to teach

who fitted in with what we were being told we had to teach.

So we chose him because we thought it was very rhythmically strong,

it was quite hard edged,

it was very witty and we knew that kids would enjoy it.

Let me be your vacuum cleaner Breathing in your dust

Let me be your Ford Cortina I will never rust

If you like your coffee hot Let me be your coffee pot

You call the shots I wanna be yours.

I was sort of your typical teenager, like not...

Sort of trying to be cool and not interested.

Our teacher proceeded to read I Wanna Be Yours,

doing an impression of Johnny.

That was what made me ears prick up in the classroom

cos it was nothing like anything I'd heard,

especially like on this syllabus.

Let me be your raincoat For those frequent rainy days

Let me be your dreamboat When you want to sail away

Let me be your teddy bear Take me with you anywhere

I don't care, I wanna be yours.

Those two emotions are incredibly important

when you're that age, love and hate. that's how you live your life,

swinging from one to the other.

To have John Cooper Clarke define those for you,

what else do you want? I think that's great.

Let me be your electric meter I will not run out

Let me be the electric heater You'd get pneumonia without

Let me be your setting lotion Hold your hair with deep devotion

Deep as the deep Atlantic Ocean

I don't wanna be hers, I wanna be yours.

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

I think John's one of those people that does tell young writers,

you can do it.

If you work hard, if you're original,

if you've got something to say, you can do it.

# You said I must eat so many lemons, cos I am so bitter... #

Before, I'd always been kind of scared of songwriting

and it was bands like The Buzzcocks and people like John Cooper Clarke,

those kind of writers that are super smart, really intelligent,

but so gritty and down to earth and real

and there's nothing that's telling you

that you can't do the same thing.

You feel like once you've heard it,

you can go and try and write something and try

and do your own interpretation of that same kind of movement.

He's got that thick sort of accent,

but with him, it seems like that knob's turned right up.

Oh, right, yeah. He's doing that and getting away with it.

I can start singing in my accent.

Took me a few more years to get into the drainpipes, though.

# Last night, these two bouncers and one of them's all right

# The other one's the scary and his way or no way, totalitarian

# He's got no time for ya... #

There's this song From The Ritz To The Rubble on our first record,

which is like a Johnny Clarke poem, I suppose.

My best shot at it, at least.

Had I not seen him to do his thing,

you wouldn't have started writing like that

and just the amount of words

that I think are in some of those early songs.

# He's got a hoodie, give him a hug,

# On second thoughts You don't want to get mugged

# Oh, shit, too late, that was kinda dumb, who's idea was that? #

I was watching Sopranos and Chickentown came on at the end.

I was like, "Wow! That's some fucked up flow, my man's got there!"

I had to google the lyrics, Evidently Chickentown,

and then John Cooper Clarke came up and then found a video on YouTube.

So I was a fan since then.

I love to do this number

because it was on the penultimate episode of the Sopranos.

And so who's the Don? Da capo di tutti capi of the written word!

That's me! Oh, yeah. I'm very proud of that, ladies and gentlemen.

Also, the reason I like to do it in public

is because I can't do on the telly.

The last time I attempted to do this one on TV,

the beep operators sued for repetitive strain injury!

Evidently Chickentown.

The fucking cops are fucking keen to fucking keep it fucking clean

The fucking chief's a fucking swine who fucking draws the fucking line

At fucking fun and fucking games

The fucking kids he fucking blames are nowhere to be fucking found

Anywhere in Chickentown

The fucking train is fucking late You fucking wait and fucking wait

Fucking lost, fucking found stuck in fucking Chickentown

The fucking scene is fucking sad The fucking news is fucking bad

The fucking weed is fucking turf The fucking speed is fucking surf

The fucking jokes are fucking daft Don't make me fucking laugh

It fucking hurts to look around Anywhere in Chickentown

Fucking train, fucking late

Fucking wait, fucking wait Fucking lost, fucking found

Stuck in fucking Chickentown

The fucking view is fucking vile For fucking miles and fucking miles

The fucking babies fucking cry The fucking flowers fucking die

The fucking food is fucking muck The fucking drains are fucking fucked

The colour scheme is fucking brown Everywhere in Chickentown

Fucking train, fucking late

Fucking wait, fucking wait Fucking lost, fucking found

Stuck in fucking Chickentown

The fucking pubs are fucking dull The fucking clubs are fucking full

The fucking girls with fucking guys With fucking murder in their eyes

A fucking bloke gets fucking stabbed Waiting for a fucking kebab

You fucking stay at fucking home The fucking neighbours fucking moan

Keep the fucking racket down

Fucking Chickentown, fucking train

Fucking late, fucking wait and wait Fucking lost, fucking found

Stuck in fucking Chickentown

The fucking fish are fucking old The fucking chips are fucking cold

The fucking beer is fucking flat The fucking flat's had fucking rats

The fucking clocks are fucking wrong The fucking days are fucking long

It fucking gets you fucking down Evidently Chickentown.

Thanks for listening. Good night, God bless. Thank you.

I asked John to appear in my film and write something

especially for my film.

Pity the plight of young fellows Too long a bed with no sleep

With their complex romantic attachments

Look on their sorrows and weep

They don't get a moment's reflection There's always a crowd in their eye

Pity the plight of young fellows Regard all their worries and cry.

Where people get it wrong,

where rappers get it wrong is they try and sound American,

or they try and sound like they're form London when they're not.

I just heard him and he was just pure Northern dialect.

It was great cos it had humour and wordplay and everything.

And for me, all I've got hear is one song from someone

or one piece of work and if I like it enough, I'm hooked.

I've been a fan of John's since I heard Chickentown

and it was just great to meet him and even better to know

that he'd heard of me and that he had mutual respect for me.

Children are the future, unless we stop 'em now!

'You know, I sort of thought I was very much part of a period

'and anybody that was interested in my stuff'

was about the same age as me.

Imagine the depression of looking out

and seeing people your own age out there when you're my age.

Good Christ! It would be like a Saga holiday or something!

But now I've got this whole new wave of young fans, which is...

It's great, fabulous.

Yeah, I'm glad they're interested.

'I've just received nine questions from Snicky.

'Can I recall the very first piece I wrote? No. At what age? No.

'Subject matter? No. State of mind? No.

'Time of day? No. The location? No.

'The season and if I had a pet at the time and what its name was?

'I could make up answers to these questions, Snicky,

'but if I did, what do I get?'

RAUCOUS MUSIC PLAYS

Slick!

# I just wanna a lover like any other, what do I get? #

Favourite John Cooper Clarke poem?

It's hard to think of one that isn't good,

but Kung Fu International definitely springs to mind.

-I really like Twat.

-There's also I Married A Monster From Outer Space.

Fuck me, A Monster From Outer Space!

The poem that first really made me stand up and pay attention

was Beasley Street.

-My all time favourite's Beasley Street.

-Beasley Street.

-Beasley Street.

-I love Beasley Street.

-Beasley Street.

-Everyone likes Beasley Street.

-Just pictures of life in Salford

and working class towns and they were so epic...

and descriptive and powerful and it really touched me and moved me.

It's almost kind of like a poetic Lowry painting of those times.

It has as much atmosphere as that.

John Cooper Clarke nailed it by talking about what was going wrong

in these small forgotten working class northern communities.

In the late '70s, early '80s, Liverpool, Manchester,

we were devastated. Thatcher had ripped the heart out of everywhere.

The south was doing very well and we were all living on Beasley Street.

John didn't wait for the miners' strike

to be told something wrong has happened here.

He was in before a lot of us were in.

# Far from crazy pavements

# The taste of silver spoons

# A clinical arrangement

# On a dirty afternoon

# The faecal germs of Mr Freud

# Are rendered obsolete

# The legal term is null and void in the case of Beasley Street

The cheap seats, where murder breeds Somebody is out of breath

Sleep is a luxury they don't need A sneak preview of death

Deadly nightshade is your flower Manslaughter your meat

Spend a year in a couple of hours On the edge of Beasley Street.

# Where the action isn't

# That's where it is

# State your position

# No vacancies exist

# In an X certificate exercise

# Ex-servicemen excrete

# Keith Joseph smiles and a baby dies

# In a box on Beasley Street. #

In the boarding houses and the bedsits, full of accidents and fleas

Somebody gets it where the missing persons freeze

Wearing dead men's overcoats You can't see their feet

This riff joint shuts, opens up Right down on Beasley Street...

Cars collide, colours clash Disaster movie stuff

For a man with a Fu Manchu moustache Revenge is not enough

There's a dead canary on a swivel seat

There's a rainbow in the road

Meanwhile, on Beasley Street Silence is the mode

It's hot beneath the collar An inspector calls

The perishing stink of squalor impregnates the walls

The rats have all got rickets They spit through broken teeth

A blood stain is your ticket One way down Beasley Street...

The hipster and his haircut drive a borrowed car

He looks like the Duke of Edinburgh but not so la-di-dah

OAP, mother to be, watch that three piece suite

When shite catcher drains and crocodile skis

Are seen on Beasley Street...

The kingdom of the blind A one-eyed man is king.

Beauty problems are redefined The doorbells do not ring

Light bulbs burst like blisters

The only form of heat Where a fellow sells his sister

Down the middle of Beasley Street...

The boys are on the wagon The girls are on the shelf.

Their common problem is that they're not someone else

The dirt blows out The dust blows in

You can't keep it neat

It's a fully furnished dustbin 16 Beasley Street.

# People turn to poison

# Quick as lager turns to piss

# Sweethearts are physically sick

# Every time they kiss

It's a sociologist's paradise Each day repeats

Uneasy, cheesy, breezy, queasy Beastly Beasley Street.

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

Thank you very much.

I was dying to ask the question

I'm sure a lot of people are dying to ask him,

"Where is Beasley Street?" He says, "It don't exist, Henry.

"It just rhymes with cheesy and greasy!"

'People who make a distinction between written poetry

'and recited poetry

'make a mistake, I think, because all poetry should be read aloud.

'Our greatest poet wrote for actors. Shakespeare.

'If you'd have said that people would be sitting in a room,

'reading his stuff,

'he would have been...amazed at that.

'It was written for the mouths of actors.

'It was meant to be heard.'

Sounds all right to me.

I guess that's it then.

Here's the instructions for the sound guy.

Turn on microphone, walk away.

Think you can remember that?

The fact he's now clean and still performing is fantastic.

It's heart-warming to hear that.

What's 'appenin'? It's gone off!

-I switched it off.

-You switched it off?

Don't forget the instructions later. Switch on mic.

Walk away.

One of the things that goes before

him is his inability to contact him.

He's never had a phone.

And before the days when mobile phones were popular,

you had to phone his mam.

I'm talking about in the early '90s, you had to call his mother.

And she'd go round to his house and pass him a message.

Not only have I not got a mobile phone, I haven't got a computer.

I don't employ any artificial intelligence of any kind.

People say to me, "You should have a computer."

I said, "I know how fucking great they are.

"That's the very reason I can't have one -

"I'll just watch a bit of Dion & The Belmonts,

"then I'll go out. Oh, no.

"What was that Elvis film? Ooh, that reminds me, that Grace Kelly movie.

"I'll just download this Marx Brothers clip."

I'd never get out of the fucking house! I'd fucking die!

You'd find me fucking dead with a pizza box,

with me arse in the air and me pants round me ankles

in front of a flickering fucking computer screen.

"We bought him that computer and he never went out.

"Never went through the fucking door.

"The milk stopped being delivered and he fucking died."

Something about John Cooper Clarke

makes you realise he might survive the longest of all of us, actually.

He might still be around the latter part of the 21st century.

I get the feeling he was around in the 19th century.

He's just a one-off, really.

I've never seen or heard anything like that.

You aren't going to get another one of them.

He bridged a gap between poetry, comedy and punk music.

He was a kind of unique figure in all of them.

Inspiration to a generation of stand-up comics.

Single-handedly invented an art form.

No-one else was doing anything like what he was.

He was on his own.

Starting to look like Spinal Tap now! Rock n roll!

He's a poet that I would like kids to realise is there for them

because I think they're going to find him incredibly accessible.

He's really funny, he's really witty, he's really memorable.

-He's a national treasure.

-An alternative national treasure.

National treasure.

I've always said, "John, if someone ever calls you a national treasure,

"I'll want to smack them on the fucking nose!"

-Five minutes.

-Oh, right.

"National treasure" sort of means you've been around long enough

for people to have grown accustomed to you.

And actually...

John's better than a national treasure.

He's part of the national furniture.

In France, a sort of legendary arts figure like John Cooper Clarke

would be awarded some kind of medal by the president

and live somewhere and do whatever they want.

The guy really was born to do it.

What you see on stage, this guy coming out with this thing

and you think - that is him!

You know... And if it's not him, it's a damn good imitation!

Should you require any further answers, consult your doctor.

Go to bed, keep the room warm, but well ventilated.

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

# Make a date with the brassy brides of Britain

# The altogether ruder readers' wives

# Who put down their needles and their knitting

# At the doorway to our dismal daily lives

# The fablon top scenarios of passion

# Nipples peep through holes in leatherette... #

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd