{"id":791806,"date":"2026-10-04T15:52:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T15:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/791806\/"},"modified":"2026-10-04T15:52:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T15:52:11","slug":"john-cooper-clarke-looks-back-getting-older-sucks-its-marginally-better-than-being-dead-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/791806\/","title":{"rendered":"John Cooper Clarke looks back: \u2018Getting older sucks \u2013 it\u2019s marginally better than being dead\u2019 | Family"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Cooper Clarke in 1957, wearing a cowboy hat and shirt, and holding a toy gun, and recreating the picture in 2026,<\/a>John Cooper Clarke in 1957 and 2026. Later photograph: P\u00e5l Hansen. Styling: Andie Redman. Grooming: Alice Theobald at Arlington Artists. Archive photograph: courtesy of John Cooper Clarke<\/p>\n

Born in Salford in 1949, John Cooper Clarke<\/a> is\u00a0a\u00a0poet and author. He\u00a0cut his teeth in the clubs of Manchester before signing to Epic Records in 1978. He performed alongside the Sex Pistols, Joy Division, the Buzzcocks and Elvis Costello, scoring a UK Top 40 hit with Gimmix! Play Loud in 1979. His poem Evidently Chickentown was later used in The\u00a0Sopranos, introducing him to a whole new generation, and his work is now on the GCSE English syllabus. As well as three poetry collections he published a memoir, I Wanna Be Yours, in 2020. His new poetry collection, Have It, is out now and he is touring the UK until 27 November.<\/p>\n

This is me dressed up as a cowboy with a hat and six-shooter. Not the full schmear with the chaps and all the rest, but the best I could do. I was crazy about westerns. Still am, actually. My\u00a0uncle Dennis was the only camera-owning relative at the time, so he would have taken the photo in our apartment above a chemist\u2019s shop in Salford, located on a busy traffic intersection.<\/p>\n

My childhood is an ever-fading mystery to me, but somewhere around this time I know I got diagnosed with\u00a0tuberculosis. Something serious like that takes you out of the world, but\u00a0once I stopped coughing up arterial blood and scar tissue it wasn\u2019t\u00a0a problem. I stopped going to school, which was great, and not before I\u2019d learned the rudiments of\u00a0literacy. Really it happened at an\u00a0opportune moment in that all that\u00a0I\u00a0had any energy to do was read.<\/p>\n

Once I had recovered, life went back to normal, and I went back to hating every minute of school. Apart from when I was in the company of my teacher, Mr Malone. He was the one who introduced me to poetry as a phonetic medium. He didn\u2019t single me out as a boy genius or anything like that, but he did convey to the entire class a love of poetry. He read it out loud and we had to learn it off by heart. I would have to stand up and reiterate whatever verse he requested.<\/p>\n

I was a mod in my teenage years \u2013 dissatisfied with everything all the time, aside from music, girls and clothes. Poetry<\/a>, too. One day we had these career officers in, asking us what we wanted to do. I didn\u2019t get any encouragement when I said that I\u00a0wanted to be a professional poet. They said: \u201cYou can\u2019t make a living out of poetry, blah, blah, blah.\u201d When I\u00a0told my dad, he replied: \u201cName one poet that\u2019s ever made a living.\u201d The way he saw it, every poet was just swinging the lead. \u201cGet a job,\u201d was his\u00a0advice. \u201cKeep poetry as a hobby.\u201d But I was determined I could somehow\u00a0make a living in the entertainment industry.<\/p>\n

I knew I had to apply for grants from governmental bodies, but as someone who isn\u2019t very good at filling in forms, close to phobic, I didn\u2019t fancy that route. In any case, I didn\u2019t think I would be very successful, as I had already sent my stuff to publishers, with a view to them putting my poems in some kind of anthology of modern verse. Of course, it didn\u2019t happen, because who was I? I realised the best way was to declaim my poetry in public at various places of entertainment. That\u2019s been my MO ever since. For most of my career, I\u2019ve\u00a0been a club act.<\/p>\n

double quotation markThe boy in the picture would be thrilled to know he was making a living while not actually having a job\u00a0<\/p>\n

From the very start I\u2019ve known that presentation is important \u2013 especially because I\u2019m taking poetry into the world of showbusiness. A place where people don\u2019t think it should exist. I\u00a0went to see the Birds in 1965. Ronnie Wood had spiky, unruly hair, and a big beak nose like me. I figured: he looks good, I\u2019ll go for that. I\u2019ve been dressing vaguely like him ever since.<\/p>\n

Bernard Manning gave me my first ever paid gig. He tried to put me off at first, though. I went into the Embassy Club in Manchester in the afternoon knowing that he\u2019d be free. He said, \u201cWhat is it you do?\u201d I told him it was poetry. He said, \u201cThey don\u2019t like poetry here, kid. Half of them can\u2019t fucking read.\u201d Still, he gave me 15 minutes, and I was met with the poet\u2019s worst enemy: indifference. Nobody shouted anything rude out, nobody threw anything. I was faced with an audience of people who were not interested and conversed with each other instead. That\u2019s about as bad as it gets.<\/p>\n

By the time I went to the cabaret joints in the centre of Manchester in the mid-70s I was prepared for anything. It wasn\u2019t until I met Howard Devoto, who was then the singer with the Buzzcocks, who said, \u201cWhat are you doing pottering around in these cheesy cabaret joints, Jonny? You should be working with us in the world of punk rock.\u201d After that, I\u00a0started moving around with the Buzzcocks and the\u00a0Fall, and went from strength to\u00a0strength. The punk world held\u00a0no\u00a0terrors after the Embassy Club.<\/p>\n

The 80s were my wilderness years. Punk rock only lasted for two years, then it lost its fun and style. The 80s was about conspicuous consumption, expensive promotional videos and new romanticism. Nothing wrong with any of those things, but when it got sleek, I\u00a0realised anything punk was a non-starter. I suffered for that, but I never stopped working. I had to work to get money, to get dope. Most people avoided heroin because they didn\u2019t like the idea of injecting themselves. But I was straight in with the hypodermic. I\u00a0preferred the sterility of the intravenous. Looking back, it is almost as though somebody else did all that \u2013 and I\u2019ve got nothing but regrets. Heroin was a stupid thing to do.<\/p>\n

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Everything changed in the 1990s. I\u00a0met Evie, the woman who would go on to be my wife, but I was still using junk, so it was the longest engagement ever. Eventually I went to rehab, and then we had our daughter Stella. I was used to erratic hours anyway, so having a baby didn\u2019t bother me, and it\u00a0was a lot of fun having a kid. The next thing was my poem Evidently Chickentown being used for the credits of The Sopranos. The new wave of people discovering my poems felt sensational. Later on Arctic Monkeys adapted my poem I Wanna Be Yours. I\u00a0also started going to America again, which I hadn\u2019t done for 30 years, due\u00a0to convictions of one kind or another. All of which improved my life\u00a0completely.<\/p>\n

I still love writing poetry, but getting older sucks. It\u2019s marginally better than being dead. I\u2019m totally computer illiterate. I\u2019m not a modern\u00a0guy, in any sense of the word.\u00a0But I remain quite a careful dresser. I\u2019ve got standards. I don\u2019t know why people sit down at a particular age and think: \u201cI\u2019d better stop looking like that.\u201d Not me. I\u2019ve got to maintain my front so I\u00a0can keep making my game.<\/p>\n

On the plus side, I get to perform at large theatres now. And TV\u2019s never been better. Bangers and Cash, Wheeler Dealers. Portillo\u2019s Railway Journeys is what I like. He takes us to those places too distant for the bike.<\/p>\n

The boy in the picture would be thrilled to know he was making a living while not actually having to have a job. That was always my ambition: remunerative idleness. Idleness where people pay you for the results of your idle hours. So I got what I wanted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John Cooper Clarke in 1957, wearing a cowboy hat and shirt, and holding a toy gun, and recreating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":791807,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-791806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/791807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}