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The Argotist Online |
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John Cooper Clarke
Interview Interviewed by Ian Burns (Originally
published in The Argotist magazine in August 1996)
John Cooper
Clarke, the
bard of Salford, is knackered. He's spent the last four days hauling his skinny
arse, pillar to post clickety clack, from Colchester to Greenwich to Darlington
and finally down to Soho, where he's perfecting his slump in the dressing room
at Madam JoJo's, a grotty red velvet nite spot where the boys dress as girls,
down by the seamy side. The shades and
birds-nest hairdo are present and correct, as are the beautifully worn-in spit
and polished black chelsea boots. To complete the effect, this most stylish of
our poets is squeezed into a pair of black bollock-tweaking drainpipes ("I
know what yer thinkin'", he'll say, " 'ow can such a rich baritone
emanate from such a frail androgynous figure?"), a striped "mod"
jacket two sizes too small, and a stupendously colared seventies shirt. If
Jarvis Cocker had made Blonde on Blonde, he'd have looked very much like this.
He is nervously self-effacing about his appearance after four days of living out
of a holdall - “I look a right mess...sorry about that,” but oh how
disappointed his public would be if he presented himself in jeans and T-shirt.
The hair and shades are all, his very own iconography...hell, he can even wear
sunglasses in a dark nightclub without looking like someone you'd like to punch,
and that's style. John Cooper Clarke has looked the same, give or take the odd
striped jacket, for 20 years. As he's fond of saying, "If it ain't broke,
don't fix it." Some might say that this
sartorial, and indeed tonsorial, attitude extends also to his poetry readings.
He's been peddling the same poems for years. He's a seventies poet of no modern
relevance (whatever the hell that means). As the coup de grace, some would point
to the lack of published work as ultimate proof that the man is in a state of
poetic stagnation. I ask him whether there'll be any new material in tonight's
show. “When did you last see
me?” About five years ago. “Oh, there will be.” A collection of his
poems, 1981's Ten Years In An Open Necked Shirt, is his only
published work, and despite a number of reprints, it is now unavailable. This is
a strange situation for one of our better known poets to be in, yet John Cooper
Clarke carries with him such an air of comically resigned helplessness that you
get the impression that he just can't be arsed with that end of the
"business". “'Well, my stuff ain't
in the shops right now because...er...er...well, it's my fault, really! I've not
done anything about it. I mean it's gonna happen, but...not with me in charge! I
admit, I am well overdue for a new product.” “Sardonic” is a word
that you come across a great deal when John Cooper Clarke is mentioned. I looked
it up in my Little Oxford: “Adj. grimly jocular; full of bitter mockery;
cynical.” That's the man, officer. He speaks in slow measured tones, rolling
his words around and fishing for ambiguities that are ever present in his
poetry, and occassionally giving in to a dark chuckle. He is telling me about a
book of poems that he is hoping to get published, called Blue
Picnic. “They're poems that have a kind of lugubriousness about them,
almost to a Morrissey-esque extent...so miserable that they're funny. I mean, I
hope people get it, because not everybody gets it with Morrissey, do they? That
kind of misery can be incredibly humorous...it's meant to be funny... you don't
write that kind of doleful stuff so that people'll come up to you and pat you on
the head and say “there there”...you can write about it and make it
incredibly enjoyable, you know? “I'm also writing a
novel...my first one...the “selected memoirs” of a Fleet Street hot shot,
called One Drink at a Time. The main character is a hard boiled tabloid
journalist who writes a column in a drinking establishment called the Pussycat
Lounge. It's a well-ploughed furrow, I know, but I think I can bring something
new to it...otherwise I wouldn't bother.” And yet, with a new
collection of poems and a novel in the pipeline, as well as a forthcoming role
in The Changeling (based on the Jacobean tragedy by Thomas
Middleton) and a diary that finds space for around 200 gigs a year, John Cooper
Clarke will later tell his audience, “I've made a religion of indolence...I
eat a third of a Mars bar a day to help me rest.” But then the truth ain't
half as entertaining as the persona, and John Cooper Clarke does love a larf.
His performance onstage is often drowned out with the stuff, and it is telling
that the poetry he chooses to recite usually comes with a punch line. It is as
though he lacks the confidence in his poetry to entertain on its own terms. “Well, I've got loads
of stuff that ain't good enough for performance... well, I s'pose I consider my
ones that are good enough. The ones that I write that look OK on the page I just
think, well what's the point? I've got millions of 'em. I guess someone else
would put them in a book, but I think if they're not good enough to read aloud
then what's the point of putting them in a book? I dunno...mebbe I'm wrong,”
says the man Time Out calls a "near genius". "I mean, I road test
new material all the time. That's the ultimate test, to see how a new poem goes
over...and I do get nervous when a new poem is declaimed publicly for the first
time.” His art is a hybrid of
poetry and stand-up comedy. “Well, people say it's a cop-out, but I like to
keep the audience laughing, you know...if they're laughing then I can tell that
they're still interested. I do have the odd poems that ain't a hundred laughs
but I feel like I have to ask 'em, ”Did you like that one?" With some of
the older stuff maybe the crowd laughs out of recognition, but I doubt that
humour has a shelf-life. I don't think that humour is the only thing in my
poetry, but then I do tend to concentrate more on that side for performance.” outside the take-away
Saturday night (from
'Kung fu International') “I've always told
jokes on stage anyway, while I'm looking for the next number, like. You don't
want to leave them in silence. I always feel it incumbent upon meself, cos even
if I'm not on stage for very long, I like to keep every second occupied...it's
ENTERTAINMENT...there's now't worse than fumbling about while you look for the
next poem, you know- "Sorry about this folks". So I tell a joke. And I
know so many jokes that I can just tell them on automatic while I'm busy doing
something else.” I interrupt him to
mention a memory I have of him offering a pound to anybody who could tell him a
joke that he didn't know the punch line to. “Well, I don't
remember that...” (he pauses - timing is everything) “but I've never paid
for a joke in my life! I've never wanted to be a stand-up comedian, though.
Don't get me wrong though, I love comedians...well, I s'pose I am a
comedian...slightly...certainly when I play comedy clubs I do concentrate on the
funny poems, but then last week I did a gig at the Birmingham Readers and
Writers Association which was a literary event, so I did the slower,
leisurely-walking-pace, observational stuff, some prose... “When I work on the
comedy circuit the onus isn't on me to be a comedian...a comedian has got to be
funny or it ain't comedy, but poetry can still be poetry even if it ain't funny,
can't it? In a way, I'm lucky that I can keep that sort of balance. When I first
started doing readings - this is in the mid seventies - there weren't really any
poetry venues, there wasn't a poetry scene, so I useta hafta perform at places
like Mr Smith's, a club in Manchester where I did a Sunday night residency for a
few years, for an audience that probably didn't even read books. But poetry has
always been and always will be a very different way of writing, a minority
interest. It's language with its best suit on, innit?” He does love a
rhetorical question, does John Cooper Clarke, sitting there in what is probably
not his best suit, amidst the tat of a transvestite's dressing-room. “Places
in decline inspire me. I like that. Places with a lugubrious air, like 'oliday
places out o' season...Morecambe, Blackpool...Essex is full o' places like
that...Southend, Clacton...Southend 'as the sort o' thing where you go to 'oliday
resorts and you look at 'em and you think, “Faded Grandeur,” you know...in
fact, Southend has the unusual distinction in that you can look around and, even
considering the fact that it has declined, you can see that it was never any
good anyway. You look at what's there along the promenade...why is the pet shop
that's been there since 1958, still standing? Why is the fortune teller no
longer there? The Italian ice-cream parlour- 'ow did it end up like that? I
never answer these questions meself of course, but you 'ave to ask 'em! “But I get my
inspiration from a lot of places, not necessarily geographical. I mean, say,
Beezley Street could be in any town. With a poem like “Love Story in
Reverse.” I just thought, “Right! Endless stream of vituperative
language!” It's a form, innit? There's a great song by
Louis Armstrong, called “I'll be glad when you're dead, you rascal, you”
which is affectionate, but the things he says are unforgivable. So usually when
I write it's because I've been inspired by things like that. You think, “Oh,
that's a good idea...an endless stream of abuse" and if it rhymes, so much
the better. But such poems aren't based on any one person- I'm not that
misanthropic - but more a composite. When I was writing that poem, my main
concern was keeping to the rhythm, keeping the rhyme scheme rigid, and condensing
it, making it relentless and unforgettable. The stylistic end is always the most
important.” Like a dose of scabies (from Love Story in
Reverse) (or Twat as it was released) John Cooper Clarke has
never been afraid of incorporating the widest number of styles into his work. He
is perhaps the only poet to successfully join poetry with rock, and his ascent
in the mid seventies coincided with the DIY music boom that gave a voice to
urgent young talent. “Well, I started off
writing in a band, The Vendettas, in the late sixties... but, yeah, punk helped
because there was a lot 'appening, new places were opening up and getting lumped
in with that scene opened up a lot of gigs and opportunities for me. It got me
out of Manchester and around the world, really...but I've never felt meself to
be part of any movement.” It was around this time,
facing crowds of speed-crazed punk rockaaahs, that he developed his on - stage
declaiming voice that one writer has likened to “an auctioneer with a grudge
against the world and a sneer as permanently attached as a scar.” “Yeah, I do read some
of my poetry very fast...that did start with punk, really...the high energy side
of it. I thought, “Right. I'll read 'em fast.”...and it draws the audience
in if they can't get all the words. It's like if you whisper into a microphone
then they'll stop talking and listen, cos they feel excluded. If you shout
“Shut up!” then they'll just carry on. Like with Chuck Berry in “Too Much
Monkey Business” you can't get a lot of the words. I reckon Bob Dylan was
influenced by that song when he wrote “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” cos you
can never work out the words. Incomprehensibility has its own dynamic, there's
no question about it.” As showtime
approaches, the manager of Madam JoJo's enters the room to explain that he can't
be sure he'll be in a position to pay in advance, due to so-far sluggish box
office action on this quiet Sunday night. I ask John Cooper Clarke if he still
enjoys his role as a performance poet, and all the travelling, the living out of
a holdall, all the dressing-rooms, all...THIS! “Yeah, I do...I mean, In really
enjoy performing. I hate the travelling though, cos I don't drive, but...yeah, I
do.” Later that night, having
entertained around a hundred of the faithful with a non-stop stream of poetry,
jokes, banter and non sequiturs, John Cooper Clarke bounds offstage with laughter
ringing in his ears. copyright © John Cooper
Clarke & Ian Burns |