John Cooper Clarke

Speaker 20:00

This is the BBC.

Presenter0:02

Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. This is an extended version of the original Radio 4 broadcast and, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:44

My castaway this week is John Cooper Clark. Nicknamed the Bard of Salford, he first started writing poems at the age of 12. By 14, it was all he wanted to do. In the early 1970s, his dream came true, though the reality of being a professional poet wasn't exactly Wordsworth's emotion recollected in tranquility. Bernard Manning gave him his first paid club gig, and he went on to earn his stripes by surviving showers of phlegm and bottles to share stages with the likes of the Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, and Susie and the Banshees. He has been Punk's poet laureate ever since. He says poetry out of any art is the only one that everyone has a go at. You don't need a load of expensive equipment or a musical instrument or tap dancing lessons. All you need is imagination and a pen. John Cooper Clark, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Hello, Lauren. Thank you for having me. So if anyone can do it, what.

John Cooper Clarke1:36

What makes a good poem? A good poem.

John Cooper Clarke1:39

It's the kiss of death, isn't it, to overanalyse what you do. A good poem. For instance, here's here's one of the ones that got me interested. I'm going to quote a line from uh from a a number called Woodman Spare That Tree by a guy who I've found very inspiring as a lad, Phil Harris, and it was uh Woodman, Woodman, spare that tree, chop not a single bough Ten years it has protected me, And how protects it now. Go chop a birch, a elm, or a pine, But leave old slippery there, that's mine. That's the only tree my wife can't climb, Mr Woodman. Spare it for me.

Speaker 12:19

Yeah.

John Cooper Clarke2:20

So uh things like that, that's poetry. And what inspires you to unlikely subjects is a good one. You know, talking something up. The kind of things that people ignore, you know, when you talk'em up in a poem, suddenly, you know, you can uh like underline the importance of uh of just everyday uh you know things.

Presenter2:24

On my

Presenter2:41

Find in the Universal

John Cooper Clarke2:41

Universal in the particular. Yeah, you got it. Finding the universal in the particular.

Presenter2:47

You've said that you write in response to public anxiety, but your poems aren't political. Why not?

John Cooper Clarke2:53

Well, I think the poetry and the politics suffer for it, you know, anybody that can be converted to a particular world view because of a poem.

John Cooper Clarke3:07

I think they're looking in the wrong places for whatever it is they want.

John Cooper Clarke3:11

But to hitch your poetry to any particular political waggon is always a mistake.'Cause poetry is forever. You know, you write a poem and it's out there and it's you can't unwrite it. And politically, you know, well, one can change one's mind many times a day.

Presenter3:30

Now I understand that you've been compiling your Desert Island Discs music list for quite a few years now. Are you happy with today's selections?

John Cooper Clarke3:37

I I'll probably change my mind. I I have I've revised this list for you know 60 years. Uh I've been a fan of the show for that long. I'm not even joking.

Presenter3:49

Well, I'm glad you put the hours in because it's a really sensational list. Let's get stuck into it first. Tell me about this one: disc number one. Why did you choose it?

John Cooper Clarke3:53

It gives

John Cooper Clarke3:57

Ah, yes. By by the way, d if I might explain th how important I feel this show to be. I see it as uh like I say, you know, poetry is forever. So is Desert Island Discs, you know. Not not many people get a second bite of the apple. It has happened, I believe.

Presenter4:14

That's right, yes. Okay, so

John Cooper Clarke4:15

But uh it's too late for me to do that. Uh so it's my one chance. So for me, you know, Desert Island Discs has all the finality of a suicide note without the actual uh obligation of topping yourself. As you can see, I'm a coconut half-empty kinda guy.

John Cooper Clarke4:37

It's this all right, what

Presenter4:39

The music's not like that. Luckily that's it's an uplifting selection of tracks.

John Cooper Clarke4:39

Music's not

John Cooper Clarke4:43

I hope so. Well, with that in mind, the first choice, which is A Quiet Place by Garnet Mims, really what I've got on this desert island, terrifying though the prospect of this abject loneliness is for me, what I've got here is everything that Garnet Mims wants in this here poem. So it's a kind of reminder that it's not all beer and skittles living in the inner city.

John Cooper Clarke5:09

There's a man next door with a radio

Speaker 15:13

Yo

John Cooper Clarke5:14

Uh

Speaker 15:14

And he plays it all through the night.

Speaker 15:18

There's a couple in the apartment of my head that don't do nothing but business

Speaker 15:27

That

John Cooper Clarke5:27

I can't get no sleep in this noisy street I've got to move I've got to finally apply

Presenter5:40

Garnet Mims and A Quiet Place. We want to take you back to another unquiet place, John Cooper Clark. Growing up in your neighborhood in Salford back in the fifties, I think you once said that the best piece of advice you ever received was from your dad George. Can you remember what it was?

John Cooper Clarke5:56

Uh well, there were two pieces of advice that I've never forgotten. One was never work for nothing, even if it's a flaky job like I've got.

John Cooper Clarke6:05

And uh never leave a bookies with a smile on your face.

Presenter6:10

That's the one I

John Cooper Clarke6:11

The fact that once

Presenter6:11

Is that not one? So, yes, he was telling me a little bit more about him. What was your dad like?

John Cooper Clarke6:15

My dad was an engineer wiring up power stations, you know, he took electricity as far away as Inverness. Yeah, he was a funny guy and real good geezer.

Presenter6:25

And what about your mum, Hilda?

John Cooper Clarke6:26

My mum was a a living saint.

Presenter6:30

Yeah.

John Cooper Clarke6:30

Oh really? Yeah yeah, hyper literate, didn't go out much. I get my love of reading from her, no question. We'd be reading five books at a time from the uh public library, those great uh public libraries. And she was a film fan as well. Yeah, well uh you know, being as how my dad used to work away all the time, she was kind of at a loss. And uh I guess that was her movie date. We had an arrangement whereby for every two cowboy or gangster movies uh I'd have to go to see three what they call women's pictures. I mean movies like for instance The Best of Everything starring Hope Lang, Peyton Place. We'd go to see movies like that and I I could always find something to enjoy in them though. You know they were like American movies so I'd look at what the guys were wearing, you know, tab-collared shirts and uh shark skin ivy league suits, things like that that just didn't appear in any gents' outfitters outside of Cheetah Mill.

Presenter7:38

And what was

John Cooper Clarke7:39

Salford like in the fifties? Oh well well we lived uh'cause we always lived in apartments and our apartment gave out onto what was without a doubt the busiest crossroads in the north of England. Pre-motorway so it was all like commercial traffic, you know, real uh chocker. I loved it, you know, I didn't I didn't know any different. We had eight movie theatres within walking distance and when I say walking distance I hate walking.

John Cooper Clarke8:07

They were close.

Presenter8:08

You got TB when you were seven or eight, and you were sent away to convalesce with relatives in Ryl. How did that go?

John Cooper Clarke8:15

Well, I thought it was great because obviously I couldn't stay in the part of Salford where I was living, so it wasn't very far away from Trafford Park. Trafford Park then was probably the biggest industrial complex outside of the Soviet Union. So I had to get moved out, and the nearest place to move me out to, well, the most convenient because we weren't made of money. We had a relative in Ryal, North Wales, which then was a flourishing holiday resort, the equal of Blackpool. And I was more or less, you know, feral.

John Cooper Clarke8:46

I was kind of turfed out of the house at ten AM and wasn't expected back till tea time. So I used to sort of knock around the fair ground and, you know, I made myself useful.

Presenter8:56

What was the lure of that then? Was it the sound systems?

John Cooper Clarke8:59

Yeah, yeah, well that's right. They would be playing, you know, Music While You Work would be rock and roll, Gene Vincent, Elvis, you know, all the good stuff. The Everly brothers, Harmonies from Heaven.

Presenter9:10

It's time to hear your next disc. Did you hear this one at the fairground? This is

John Cooper Clarke9:14

Yes I did. Yeah, what a mover. Jerel Lee Lewis, the greatest piano player that ever lived. Whole lot of shaking going on.

John Cooper Clarke9:22

Whole lot of shit going on.

John Cooper Clarke9:27

Just as they come all over, baby, baby you can't go wrong.

John Cooper Clarke9:33

We ain't faking

Speaker 19:34

Uh

John Cooper Clarke9:34

Blah.

Speaker 19:35

Oh no.

Speaker 19:36

Uh

Speaker 19:38

Uh

John Cooper Clarke9:38

Yeah.

Speaker 19:38

BAAA! As I come up Leave it. Uh

John Cooper Clarke9:40

Yeah.

Speaker 19:40

We That chicken in the porter

Speaker 19:44

Baby got the bull by the horn on

Speaker 19:50

We baked it.

Speaker 19:52

Oh, I'm shaking all

Presenter9:58

Jerry Lee Lewis and a whole lot of shaking going on. John Cooper Clark, we've heard a little bit about life at home. How did you get on at school? You missed a little bit because of your tuberculosis.

John Cooper Clarke10:10

Yeah, I could have been a genius. I did miss out a lot on a lot of school, but I don't feel like I missed anything. I hated school, you know, and any anything that took me out of there was uh okay by me. But I'm glad I learnt to read. And I'm glad they ran those facts down my reluctant throat when they did. But I hated it.

Presenter10:30

Why?

John Cooper Clarke10:31

Uh I I don't know. I've never been really a a team player. That must have been on every school report I ever had was No team spirit. Yeah, you wouldn't get me in a gang.

Presenter10:43

You did have one teacher who inspired you though, your English teacher, John Maloney.

John Cooper Clarke10:45

I did John Malone. He was uh he was a rugged outdoor type. He would return from the summer holidays every September with uh some kind of injury that he'd incurred, indulging in some outdoor pursuit or other, mountaineering, water skiing, ab sailing. But he did have uh this uh weakness for uh the romantic poetry of the nineteenth century, which he conveyed to the the entire class. You know, and we weren't like it wasn't the kind of school where you'd expect them to be over receptive to poetry. You know, it was quite a tough school. Put it this way, we had our own coroner.

John Cooper Clarke11:26

But seriously, uh he imparted his love of romantic nineteenth century verse to the entire class till it became it became a hot house of poetic uh competition to the point where it was a badge of honour to use polysyllabic speech at all times. It was amazing how it caught on. But I was the best at it, so that's where I flourished.

Presenter11:51

So you said the romantic poets of the nineteenth century. Like who who connected with you first? What did you love?

John Cooper Clarke11:55

Well, the the one that that struck me was uh Edgar Allan Poe. We had to learn them off by heart, Michael Gobstyle. Really, it's the only way to do it. The way poetry works is it sneaks up on you thirty years later. You're not going to understand it. It was written by a forty-year-old guy, you're twelve. Just learn the words and then, you know, thirty years later, you know, wow, it's amazing how it makes its mark. I can't think of a better way of being introduced to poetry.

John Cooper Clarke12:23

And then I found upon reading up on Edgar Allan Poe, I found out that his entire body of work had been translated into French by Charles Baudelaire. So that was a name I remembered, and I resolved to read his poetry in translation. And ever since then, Charles Baudelaire has been, without a doubt, my number one guy, poetry-wise.

Presenter12:53

What were you writing? What were your early poems like?

John Cooper Clarke12:55

I got a commission to write a poem about the Ideal Holmes exhibition.

John Cooper Clarke13:02

I wish I still had it. It was an annual event at the City Hall in Manchester was you know all the latest mod cons, you know, the Prestige Minute Mop, Morphy Richards steam irons and all these things had a yearly update. So I was sent to sort of report back poetically. And how did it go? Oh, it was top-notch. I wish I could I can't remember any of it at all, but it was a it was a great piece of work.

Presenter13:30

A hymn to labor-saving devices.

John Cooper Clarke13:32

Yeah, we didn't have any of those things. My parents had an aversion to hire purchase, you know, I was always on at'em, you know, get a hoover.

John Cooper Clarke13:40

Like most uh working class people uh in the fifties, they were terrified of debt. So uh the uh Ideal Holmes exhibition to me was a wonderland of treasures.

Presenter13:53

It's time for some more music, John. Tell us about your third disc. Why did you select this one?

John Cooper Clarke13:57

Oh, Dion and the Belmonts. I love doo-wop music. I went to see Dion about nineteen sixty one and he was the best dressed, the most handsome man I'd ever seen. But this is Dion and the Belmonts, the Belmonts being Dion being Dion Francis DiMucci, Carlo Mastrangelo, Fred Milano, and Angelo DiAlio.

John Cooper Clarke14:22

Like I don't know.

John Cooper Clarke14:26

What do you do?

John Cooper Clarke14:29

That I don't know why I don't

Speaker 114:32

Don't know why

Speaker 114:34

Just walking.

John Cooper Clarke14:37

Share

John Cooper Clarke14:39

I wonder why I love you like I did.

Speaker 114:44

Yeah. Cause I think you love me too I wonder why I love you like I do, like I do

Presenter14:58

Dion and the Belmonts, I wonder why. John Cooper Clarke, after school you took early jobs as a printing compositor, a lab technician at Salford Tech and as a fire watcher on Plymouth Docks. You continued writing during all of this and were convinced that poetry as entertainment would work. Why were you so certain?

John Cooper Clarke15:17

I was convinced that if the poetry was entertaining enough, well, why why doesn't it belong in the entertainment business? And you can take this back to the days of the Edwardian music hall, you know, uh not even funny stuff, you know, sentimental nature boy stuff w would really fly in the uh music halls of Whitechapel and beyond, you know.

Presenter15:40

But what about saltford in the fifties?

John Cooper Clarke15:40

So, yeah.

John Cooper Clarke15:42

Well, again, you know, there was always evidence of it. You know, the ghost of poetry is there with Stanley Holloway. Stanley Holloway and the afore referenced Phil Harris. You'd get these singers that didn't actually sing. Rex Harrison. You know, there's a guy that spoke every song he was ever given. Why got a woman? Be more like a man.

John Cooper Clarke16:05

You know what I'm saying?

Presenter16:07

Yeah. And I read that you did used to watch Opportunity Knock.

John Cooper Clarke16:10

Yeah, that well that's it there again, that was validation. You know, when I used to say, you know, I wanna be a professional poet for a living, you know, uh,'cause that's what that's what I took from really about Baudelaire, you know, really about his life. He didn't do anything other than write poetry and schmy around aimlessly.

John Cooper Clarke16:27

you know, schlepping from one coffee house to another. You know what I mean? And I thought, wow, w the life of a useless flanneur can be yours by the s by virtue of poetry. That was the life for me the life of an idle Boulevardia.

Presenter16:48

And when you would tell people that you wanted to be a poet.

John Cooper Clarke16:51

Yeah, well they would all say nobody makes a living out of poetry and I'd mention a few poets that they might have heard of. What about Philip Larkin? He's a librarian. You know, CS Eliot, he was a bank clerk. You know, they all had these other jobs. You know, he received a generous stipend from Oxford University, you know. There there was always some reason why they could do it, but I can't. It was the only life that I would settle for, frankly. It's the only life I could imagine ever uh making any success at.

Presenter17:22

And Pam Airs was popular. She was a little bit more.

John Cooper Clarke17:23

Well I'm getting to that, yeah. Well then after opportunity not and she started g gathering in the votes every week for a year the British public were voting her back and so I was like there you are there you are why not me? She writes about her life I write about mine you know

Presenter17:44

Well, exactly. So your first paid gig came in the early 1970s, courtesy of Bernard Manning at his Embassy Club in Manchester. How did you persuade him to book you?

John Cooper Clarke17:53

Well, a judicious choice of poem, right. Obviously, when I said to Bernard, you know, he said, Well, what is it you do? So I said, Poetry, mister Manning, you know, he said he said oh, they don't like poetry half of em can't bleep in read.

John Cooper Clarke18:09

So what did you say? So I said, no, it's nothing too high-flown, Mr. Manning. I'll give you a demo. So I'd just written this number, Salome, set in the writs in Manchester, which I knew Bernard would have known very well. So I give him the line, I'm going to have to bleep myself here. It's about a punch-up that kicks off, and she gets dragged into it, this woman, Salome, Salome Maloney. And the line is, When the punch-up was over, she was lying on the deck. She fell off her stelet oils and broke her bleeping neck. So as soon as he read that, he said, Oh, yeah, that'll fly. All right, I'll give you a chance.

Speaker 218:10

Uh

Presenter18:10

Uh

Presenter18:47

Oh, a fly or a

John Cooper Clarke18:49

And you were off. Yeah, but I was met with the poet's worst enemy, indifference.

John Cooper Clarke18:55

They weren't there for me. All it takes is for everybody to start talking to each other, and that's you all over. One man, one mic, one mic ain't enough if the entire hall's in conversation with each other.

Presenter19:09

You did end up getting a residency at a club called Mr. Smith.

John Cooper Clarke19:12

Yeah, Mr. S. I did uh well after doing Bernard's, I thought, you know, I'm gonna take it into the centre of town. But it was pre-punk C, and I'd kind of modelled myself my sort of poetic uh showbiz persona. There's a movie called The Small World of Sammy Lee starring Anthony Newley, and what he does for a living is he's an MC in several uh strip joints in Soho. It's nineteen sixty one, it's kind of real proto-mod movie, you know, so so he kind of lives in a tuxedo, shorthair Ivy League suit look. You know, I thought that is the uniform of the nightclub entertainer. So when punk happened, I didn't look like a hippie, put it that way, which was a rare thing in those days. Narrow trousers.

John Cooper Clarke19:59

Narrow lapels, skinny tight, yeah.

Presenter20:00

Shape

Presenter20:02

Yeah.

Presenter20:03

So, I mean, punk shows pretty bracing back in those days. What was it like performing for that crowd once the scene really took off?

John Cooper Clarke20:11

Do you know, after uh once it took off, it was great. You know, it wasn't all dodging bottles and flim, that didn't last very long. Some of'em liked it and some of them didn't. I was playing it for laughs, and uh there was a guy called Howard DeVoto, who used who was then the singer with the Buzzcocks, who convinced me that I should be playing these punk venues. He said, you know, the he pointed out that the concerns that are dealt with in my poems were singing from the same hymn sheet as the punk rock world. For me, poetry is the shortest way of conveying something really big.

John Cooper Clarke20:45

And uh I think that's what my poems had in common with the lyrics of John Lydon and Joe Strummer and Mick Jones. Broadly social, abrasive at times, and yet with its own kind of feral uh attraction. The lyrical style of punk rock I found a great kinship with, specifically the Ramones, who I thought were sensational lyricists. How the hell am I gonna tell em I ain't got no cerebellum?

Presenter21:21

Yeah, that is poetry.

John Cooper Clarke21:22

That's poetry, man.

Presenter21:23

It's time to go with the music, John's your fourth disc. Tell me about this one.

John Cooper Clarke21:27

Ella Fitzgerald. Well, I should imagine this would be a nice piece of escapism on that desert island. And one thing that I think you would miss more than anything else would be the voice of a woman. And what a voice in this case. Well, that's what Ella Fitzgerald does. She sings beautiful songs. Beautifully.

Speaker 121:50

Uh

Speaker 121:52

Have you anything to say to me?

Speaker 121:58

Want to

Presenter21:58

To tell me where my love can be

Presenter22:04

Is there a meadow in the midst?

Speaker 122:09

Where someone's waiting to be kissed

Presenter22:17

Uh

Speaker 122:17

Uh

Presenter22:17

Have you seen a valley green with spring? Where am I. Ella Fitzgerald and Skylark. So John Cooper Clark, you were making albums of your poetry around this time as well. You had a top 40 hit with gimmicks and your first published collection, Ten Years in an Open Necked Shirt, was published in 1983. How did you feel about your life at that point?

John Cooper Clarke22:41

Well, it was all in the uh upward trajectory, but it got a bit out of my hands, to be honest. Once it became a kind of ensemble piece with musicians, you know, none of whom I really knew very well. And uh I mean they were all excellent musicians as well, not many of them punks. When I hear it now, I hear my poems with music, it it sounds to me like I've had one of my feet has been nailed to the floor. You know what I mean?'Cause, you know, I vary the speed of it even through one poem, you know. Some of it's fast, some of it's dragged out. You know what I mean? And only I can know how to do that, you know, and that's the sort of uh edgy part of it, really. Like I say, you know, when poetry and music go together, it's called a song.

John Cooper Clarke23:26

And I don't have anything against I love singing. That's why I drink.

Presenter23:29

That's why

Presenter23:34

You once said that the taint of punk was the kiss of death once the 1980s arrived, so wasn't there a place for you in the age of the music video?

John Cooper Clarke23:40

Oh yeah, it was all over by nineteen eighty and it became c conspicuous consumption and so anything that was like tarred with the punk brush was uh surplus to requirements. That's rock and roll for you, you know.

Presenter23:54

But personally it must have been tough.

John Cooper Clarke23:57

Uh

John Cooper Clarke23:58

Well, I always worked, you know, I never stopped working, but I was doing smaller joints, and I wasn't writing as much as I should have been.

Presenter24:06

By this time you'd developed a heroin addiction that lasted seventeen years.

Presenter24:11

How bad did it get during that period?

John Cooper Clarke24:14

Well, everything g was great after that.

John Cooper Clarke24:19

No, but seriously, obviously, I'm being sarcastic with myself. That is the centre of your universe, and there was always something better to do than write a poem.

John Cooper Clarke24:33

You're gonna get the sa I mean, you know, every drug addict is virtually the same person, you know, th th there's not really much point in dwelling on it, but I needed money more than ever, so I had to work. The the glamour was flaking off with every

John Cooper Clarke24:51

every new job I really felt like I was sort of selling my sorry ass at times. It was a tedious saying among hippies uh if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

John Cooper Clarke25:07

And that's why I'm no expert in these questions that you're asking me, because I was very much part of the problem.

Speaker 125:12

Uh

Presenter25:12

Uh

John Cooper Clarke25:13

Yellow and uh

John Cooper Clarke25:15

How did I quit? I did it in two ways gradually and suddenly.

Presenter25:21

Were you scared for yourself at any point?

John Cooper Clarke25:23

Uh

John Cooper Clarke25:25

No, no, I don't remember. Fear.

John Cooper Clarke25:30

Being one of the factors now, if I'm honest.

John Cooper Clarke25:36

I mean, I've been in scary situations around it.

John Cooper Clarke25:40

But uh

John Cooper Clarke25:43

No, no, uh I think uh

John Cooper Clarke25:47

When I quit I felt real, really badly done to.

John Cooper Clarke25:53

Like, you know, I didn't want to quit.

Presenter25:56

Really? So so why explain that the

John Cooper Clarke25:58

No, I don't think anybody does. I I think, you know, um it's a long time since I uh cleaned up.

Presenter26:03

Yeah, but it's interesting that you say you felt really badly done too, and I'm just wondering, like.

John Cooper Clarke26:08

What quitting?

Presenter26:09

Yeah.

John Cooper Clarke26:10

Yeah, you know, it's just y you feel you're doing it for uh society or something, I don't know.

John Cooper Clarke26:18

Do you know what I mean? I thought I was doing everybody a favor. Everybody was worried about me, what can I say? Who wants to be a source of anxiety to everybody they know? You know, y you're just trouble.

Presenter26:31

It's time to go to the music. This is your fifth. Tell me about it.

John Cooper Clarke26:35

Yeah, Nico th this brings us to Nico, I guess, yeah. Well, this is a very mysterious tune. Enigmatic wouldn't be too big a word for it. And that is a poetic connection.

John Cooper Clarke26:48

If something has a mysterious value where the allure never wears off, no matter how many times you hear it, most people would describe that as poetic.

John Cooper Clarke26:59

And uh here's a a great example of a poetic song sung by a very poetic person, the late Christopher Pafkin, Nico. I'll keep it win mine.

Presenter27:10

Some people are very kind.

Speaker 127:18

But if I

Speaker 127:21

Save you any time

Speaker 127:27

Come on.

John Cooper Clarke27:29

Give it to me, I keep it with.

Presenter27:41

Nico and I'll keep it with mine. John Cooper Clark, you lived with Nico for a while.

John Cooper Clarke27:46

Yes, I had an apartment in Brixton and uh she'd gone on a short tour of Italy and had neglected to pay her rent. So yeah, we uh shared an apartment. The people she knew was uh unbelievable, you know, Federico Fellini. I don't know too many people that can drop names like that.

Speaker 127:55

Uh

Presenter28:05

John, I've heard you say that you had to force yourself to work to write during your recovery. Tell me about that. Why did you have to make yourself sit down and put pen to paper?

John Cooper Clarke28:16

When I quit using

John Cooper Clarke28:19

It took a long time to get back into it. I'd kind of...

John Cooper Clarke28:24

You know, I I'd got out of the the habit of writing poetry.

John Cooper Clarke28:29

I think it was a good thing. I I kind of the poetry I write now is so markedly different and superior to everything that was around before that. I truly uh feel this to be the case, and uh there's something about the writing of poetry

John Cooper Clarke28:47

That involves a particular kind of magic that I don't care to really look at.

Presenter28:54

But how did it feel to get that back? To know that you still had the touch, you could still do it.

John Cooper Clarke28:59

Well marvellous because I really did think that you can lose this and I re and I I now I know that you can.

John Cooper Clarke29:07

No, I don't let anything escape now. And uh I love the stuff that I write now.

Presenter29:12

You met your second wife Evie in the late eighties. I heard that you bonded over a copy of uh Le Fleur de Mal.

John Cooper Clarke29:18

Yes, I had recently acquired a new translation of Les Fleurs du Mal by the afore referenced Charles Baudelaire, and I was anxious to find out if this was an uh a good translation. And who better to ask than uh Miss Evelyn Plouce, who was then uh a language teacher, and whose favourite poet was Charles Baudelaire.

Presenter29:41

You became a dad to Stella in the early 90s. What was and what is parenthood like?

John Cooper Clarke29:47

Oh, if I'd have known how much fun it is having a kid, I would have had seventeen of them.

John Cooper Clarke29:54

I was very, very late to it, forty five. And uh, you know, all my life, you know, all my mates have had kids, and they'd be say, Don't ever have kids.

John Cooper Clarke30:04

I was always there, Adva, you know what I mean? But I I I wish I hadn't listened to those miserable people because, you know, if I'd have known how much fun it was, as I say, I would have had seventeen of'em.

John Cooper Clarke30:17

Although, you know, my daughter is, as as anybody would say, special.

John Cooper Clarke30:22

Ha ha ha ha ha.

Presenter30:24

Let's have some more music. This is your sixth disc. Wave

John Cooper Clarke30:27

This is Moonlight in Vermont. Again, a nice switch into another landscape altogether. Vermont, New England, ski resort. Deciduous trees. What's life without Sinatra?

John Cooper Clarke30:43

Nothing.

John Cooper Clarke30:45

Moonlight in Vermont, ski trails on a mountain side. That's the sort of thing you want to be musing over on a sweltering island.

John Cooper Clarke30:55

Pennies in a stream

John Cooper Clarke31:03

Falling leaves a sycamore

John Cooper Clarke31:10

Moonlight in Vermont

John Cooper Clarke31:17

I see finger wave

John Cooper Clarke31:24

Ski trails on a mountainside

John Cooper Clarke31:32

Snow Light in Vermont

Presenter31:37

Frank Sinarcha and Moonlight in Vermont conjuring up another beautiful musical vista, John Cooper Clark.

John Cooper Clarke31:43

Yes, indeed. Thanks for bringing that up. I I think these geographical um reveries that I've included here, it seems to me that not all of your guests take the context into account. So I think the safe way to go is geography, landscapes, as vistas, as you so beautifully put it.

Presenter32:08

We appreciate you going to all that effort, John. Um your poem Evidently Chicken Town was used over the end credits of an episode

John Cooper Clarke32:14

Actually, can I just say I'm sorry for cutting in here?

Presenter32:17

Really?

John Cooper Clarke32:18

While we're on the subjects of other guests.

Presenter32:18

Get power.

Presenter32:21

Yeah.

John Cooper Clarke32:21

Here's something I've found.

Presenter32:23

Go on.

John Cooper Clarke32:23

Nobody's ever picked the theme music. A sleepy lagoon, it's called. It's got lyrics on it. They have?

Presenter32:30

They have, they have.

John Cooper Clarke32:31

With or without lyrics? Without. You know the lyrics. It's called a sleepy lagoon and A sleepy lagoon, a tropical moon, and you on an island.

John Cooper Clarke32:44

I do know what you mean. But somebody's done that. Somebody did that.

Presenter32:49

Somebody did that.

Presenter32:51

So listen, John, I've got to ask you about The Sopranos. Um your poem Evidently Chicken Town was used over the end credits of an episode of The Sopranos in two thousand seven, and that would prove a big turning point for you.

John Cooper Clarke32:51

It's a great tune.

John Cooper Clarke33:03

Oh, absolutely. I was coming to the end of the wilderness years. I wasn't consulted. I didn't have any representation of any kind, so how would nobody nobody even knew where I lived?

John Cooper Clarke33:14

But I'm so glad they uh took the law into their own hands and used it. My God, that opens doors. Television wise it's the three S''s The Simpsons, Seinfeld, and the Sopranos. T V's finest three hours.

Presenter33:30

The Sopranos also introduced you to Plan B, who asked you to collaborate on the album Ill Manners, and then, in twenty thirteen, an adaptation of another of your poems, I Wanna Be Yours. Was on Arctic Monkeys album AM. How did that come about with the Arctic Monkeys?

John Cooper Clarke33:45

Okay.

Presenter33:45

This

John Cooper Clarke33:45

I was doing a show at the boardwalk in Sheffield and the proprietor said, would you just have a word with these lads? Big fans of your work. They've done my stuff at school, you know. At GCSEs. Yeah, that was great, having my stuff rammed down the reluctant throats of school children and there was nothing they could do about it.

Speaker 233:57

That's GC

Speaker 134:04

It was

John Cooper Clarke34:07

Anyway, I'm on my way out of the boardwalk. I have a word with these lads. They're in a band. We think they're going to be really big. So I says, oh, yeah, what are they called? The Arctic Monkeys. I thought, oh, that's a terrific name. There's no monkeys in the Arctic. You know, immediately you've got a dichotomy. It's going to stick it in your head forever. So, yeah, sure, and there they were. Shy schoolboys, very polite, nice kids. But I knew they had something, you know. But it did me yeah, fantastic. I couldn't be happier with their cover of I Wanna Be Yours.

Presenter34:39

Your second collection, The Luckiest Guy Alive, was published in 2018. People call it a comeback. What are your thoughts on that?

John Cooper Clarke34:45

Well, I my thing is I've never been away.

John Cooper Clarke34:50

So I I mean, actually, I'm more high profile now than I ever was, is the truth of it, you know. I was a kind of uh elusive, sort of semi glamorous, shadowy figure in the punk rock years, but now, you know

John Cooper Clarke35:06

Pretty kind of mainstream, you know. You'd have to have lived in a cave for the last three years to not know who to to not know the name of Doctor John Cooper

John Cooper Clarke35:18

Oh, that's great. I wouldn't have it any other way.

Presenter35:18

Oh, that's

Presenter35:20

All right, then, time for your seventh disc. Why have you chosen this one?

John Cooper Clarke35:23

Doris Day, and this is the first woman I fell in love with at a very early age. Again with the geographical travelogue. Picture her in that buggy driving through a blizzard.

John Cooper Clarke35:36

Finally dressed as a woman, Calamity Jane with this one, the Black Hills of Dakota. She was the first golden vision of womanhood that registered as 100% adorable. The late, sadly, Doris Day, Black Hills of Dakota.

Presenter35:57

Take me back to the Black Hills, the Black Hills of Dakota.

Presenter36:07

To the beautiful Indian country that I love Lost my heart in the black hills, The Black Hills of Dakota

Presenter36:28

Where the pines are so high That they kiss the sky above Doris Day and the Black Hills of Dakota. John Cooper Clark, I wonder what your parents made of your success, the fact that you made it as a poet.

John Cooper Clarke36:45

Oh, they did see some of it yeah, yeah, without a doubt. But not at this high octane level that I'm enjoying to day. But I mean, this one, this would have impressed the hell out of'em, you know, the well, my mum, anyway, she was a big uh radio person. Yeah, I'm sure she would have been as thrilled as I.

Presenter37:04

You're cited as an influence by artists from several disciplines, poets, comics, musicians. Where do you see your influence today?

John Cooper Clarke37:11

I don't know about influence, but I think I've created a platform. You know, it's a legitimate thing to do now, write poetry and read it in public.

John Cooper Clarke37:22

This Baudelairean idea of having an idle life and yet contributing somehow to the quality of everybody's life is just the best that I could ever have hoped for, really.

Presenter37:36

And what would you say to a young poet who's listening to this and is looking for advice?

John Cooper Clarke37:41

My advice to any poet you have to be idle to write it. A pen, a note book, and idleness those are the three requisites for the manufacture of poetry.

Presenter37:56

It's time for your final Desert Island Disc selection, John Cooper Clark. What's it gonna be?

John Cooper Clarke38:02

Well, this is uh the greatest singer that ever lived. If any guy changed the nature of our world, it's this fellow, the zenith of male beauty.

John Cooper Clarke38:15

And you're on your own a desert island. Sooner or later you're gonna have to wanna contemplate the nature of eternity. There is only one guy with the vocal equipment to do this.

John Cooper Clarke38:28

And that's Elvis Presley with his wonderful reading of How Great Thou Art.

John Cooper Clarke38:36

Then sing tonight

Speaker 138:38

So my Savior God.

Presenter38:50

Have a great time

Presenter39:10

Elvis, and how great thou art. John Cooper Clark, I'm about to cast you away then to a very solitary existence on your island. How do you think you'll cope?

John Cooper Clarke39:20

Well, uh I'm not the most practical guy in the world, but I don't have a suicidal bone in my body, so uh I would first of all attempt to construct an antebellum mansion out of palm fronds and shells.

Presenter39:38

Well, that'll keep you busy for a while.

John Cooper Clarke39:39

For a while I've got all the time in the world.

Presenter39:42

Of course, I'll also give you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare to read while you're there. You can take another book of your own. What would you like?

John Cooper Clarke39:46

And take

John Cooper Clarke39:49

I would like Against Nature by JK Huisman. The way he talks you through a painting it's uh it's better than going to an art gallery. It's so rich that you can actually only read it three pages at a time.

John Cooper Clarke40:04

You can also have a luxury item. What would you like? Uh a boulder of opium twice the size of my own head.

Presenter40:12

Well, listeners will make up their own mind about your choice, but I can't refuse you, as illegal substances have been allowed as luxuries previously.

John Cooper Clarke40:21

Well, whose law am I breaking? And I'm not going to be worrying anybody.

Presenter40:25

There's a precedent there, John, so that is yours.

John Cooper Clarke40:28

Thanks.

Presenter40:29

And finally, which of these eight tracks that you've so carefully chosen would you rush to save if you could only keep one?

John Cooper Clarke40:36

No hesitation, Elvith.

Presenter40:38

John Cooper Clark, thank you very much for

John Cooper Clarke40:41

For sharing your desert island discs with us. Thank you so much, Lauren. It's been a pleasure.

Presenter40:55

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with John Cooper Clark. Given that he's been compiling his music list for 60 years, I think he did rather well to finally settle on just eight tracks, and all of them such excellent choices. As I hope you know, Desert Island Disc's back catalogue boasts an impressive array of poets: Lem Sissé, Wendy Cope, Roger McGough, Rita Dove, Philip Larkin, and Les Murray. John mentioned how he was inspired by Pam Ayres, who appeared on the TV talent show Opportunity Knox in the 1970s. Last year, Pam was cast away by Kirstie Young. I never set out to be a poet. I didn't really listen to poetry. I wasn't from that sort of a home. Nobody stood around declaiming poetry at each other. And certainly, from my point of view, in our home, I'm the youngest child of six children. We were brought up in a council house, and there's nothing wrong with that. But poetry was roundly ridiculed in our house. We didn't have any book-filled libraries or anything like that. Everybody was concerned with making a living. I liked writing. I liked the idea of making people laugh, and I loved performing. And I just knit them all together.

Speaker 142:02

I hinted in the or more than hinted in the introduction there that you're unusual as a poet in that you've made your live you've actually managed to make a living at it. And very few poets do that. Often they'll be sort of professors of English or they'll have a different writing career that runs in conjunction. What would you say has been fundamental to your success?

Presenter42:22

Well, I'm clearly not in that category, am I? I'm not a scholarly poet at all. I think I've got the common touch. I write about things that I hope people will identify with. Some of my most successful poems, for instance, They Should Have Asked My Husband is about the husband who knows it all and it doesn't matter. What you talk about, he's going to come in and monopolise the conversation. And I'm not saying my husband's like that because he's not, but everybody knows somebody like that. And I search for those subjects. There's always the temptation to think that because something looks simple and it goes to tum ta-tum ta-tum, ta-tum, ta-tum, ta-tum, that it's easy, but actually it isn't, because you've got to find the right word that says exactly what you want to convey and you've got to get the stress on the right syllable. And I find it like a fascinating jigsaw to put it together. And the best thing is to get a big laugh at the end. And that's the most difficult thing, because you don't want it to peter out. You want it to have a, you know, finish with a big bang at the end.

Speaker 143:00

To

John Cooper Clarke43:01

Yeah.

Speaker 143:01

Oh.

Presenter43:24

The Marvelous Palmares. You can listen to the whole of that programme and many more on BBC Sounds and on the Desert Island Disc's website. Next week, my guest will be Dame Sally Davis. I do hope you'll join us.

Speaker 243:51

Is the daily grind getting you down? Fancy taking a break and going out into nature this summer? Then look for Go Wild in BBC Sounds, a place for some of the best nature programmes from Radio 4. Get some inspiration for your next adventure, no matter how big or small.

Speaker 244:13

Just search for Go Wild in BBC Sounds and set out on your next adventure today.