Photo: Press
There are few living legends left with us but surely John Cooper Clarke is just that. His uncompromising Salfordian accent and is ever impeccable dress have assisted towards his iconic status, along with a career spanning nearly forty years.
His repertoire is diverse and impressive. Performance poet, GCSE syllabus contributor, punk and DJ personality to name a few. These many roles are unified by John’s unique use of language. Himself an enormous fan of Baudelaire and The Ramones in equal measure, JCC has help shaped British culture, as we know it. Occasionally bad-mouthed, sometimes side-splitting always John Cooper Clarke.
I Wanna Be Yours
Deep as the deep Atlantic ocean
that’s how deep is my emotion
Deep deep deep deep de deep deep
I don't wanna be hers
I wanna be yours
Well before the Artic Monkeys' cover, JCP released’ I Wanna Be Yours’ in 1982 on his Zip Style Method album. Clarke rhythmically recites the word deep almost breaking into a bebop scat momentarily.
The It Man
Take the sugar. Dump the crumbs.
It’s a mugs game.
Take some bugger for a lump sum,
and bugger off to Spain.
First of all there is a three sentence metaphor about tea which only the likes of John Cooper Clarke could pull of. Then a rhyming couplet that would be at on a gossip magazine.
TWAT
You went to a progressive psychiatrist.
He recommended suicide...
before scratching your bad name off his list,
and pointing the way outside.
This one really tickles me. It's witty, brutal and hilarious.
Majorca
they packed us into the white hotel
you could still smell the polycell
wet white paint in the air-conditioned cells
the waiter smelled of fake Chanel
Really precise observations . A hilarious immediate use of images and smell.
I Don't Want To Be Nice
I don't want to be nice
I think it's clever to swear
Better seek some sound advice
Better look elsewhere
Both obnoxious and tongue in cheek. This verse perfectly sums up the poem, 'I don't want to be nice'
