Acerbic verse with breakneck kindness
Dr John Cooper Clarke + Mike Garry
30th October 2024 at Huntingdon Hall, Worcester
Hallowe’en Eve. Creaking, centuries-old, lapsed church with gothically-styled and proudly skeletal Dr John Cooper Clarke.
It’s his first gig back after a coast-to-coast US tour. Johnny Clarke (as he sometimes calls himself) is on a Dylan-esque perpetual tour, heading toward a March 2025 show at Manchester’s new, albeit stuttering, Co-op Live, where he’ll perform for the largest poetry audience ever seen on this island.
Cooling down in night air with herbal remedy, Johnny looking forward to Coop Live at least as much as he evidently just enjoyed Huntingdon Hall.
“Mebbe I can help them sort out their problems,” he intones
This from the poet who had just made a tactical decision “not to milk the encore”, as completely exiting this Worcester stage “would have involved a flight of steps”.
You see, the doctors have diagnosed the Doctor with Alzheimer’s. About three years ago. But you wouldn’t know it. Elephantine recall. Sabre-sharp wit. Acerbic poetry delivery at breakneck. Edge finely honed. Barely a pause.
A living, thriving advert for writing and reciting poetry as therapy perhaps? Certainly better than Sugar puffs. or McCain’s oven chips.
Six decades the senior of this audience’s sole teenager, John Cooper Clarke’s going to be 76 years of age before you know it. He hasn’t always been bloody old. Keeping that same look, just seems like it.
Almost forty years ago, booked with ‘angry’ performance poets such as Craig Charles, Benjamin Zephaniah, Patti Smith, Attila the Stockbroker, Phill Jupitus, Linton Kwesi Johnson.
Punk and immediate post-punk, gigs with Buzzcocks, The Sex Pistols, The Fall, Joy Division / New Order among many, many others.
1978-1982 was a highly productive spell with – “Snap, Crackle & Bop” LP, the high watermark.
This, storied years after his first paid-gig courtesy of Bernard Manning (latter disowning Johnny before he even stepped on stage).
And that after being inspired by DIY poetic ethos of Opportunity Knocks winner Pam Ayres.
Yes. Bernard Manning.
Yes. Pam Ayres.
Then sub-optimal years – decades even – lost to addiction. John Cooper Clarke, since 2010 or so, returns. Now again nimbly scaling live-act range peaks – even if not though managing to negotiate vertiginous stairs off the Huntingdon Hall stage.
His œuvre ever snarky, compelling, full of dark humour and darker anger, laden with instantly relatable images and truths; sometimes cruel, yet always strangely kind. Then veering sometimes so close to de nos jours cancellation limits, suggesting this extant existentialist flirting with nihilism.
Above all, there’s honesty. Honesty that ensures Johnny’s long-maintained counter-cultural relevance.
He’s embraced by the Arctic Monkeys, appears as his 30-years-younger self in 24 Hour Party People, and has his most consumed work, Evidently Chickentown, re-toned to play over the closing credits of The Sopranos (penultimate episode).
The Worcester set is a skittish mix of à capella musical riffs, gags, one-liners, brief audience parleys and sharp (that word again) observational asides. For much of it, he delivers in his familiar Mancunian nasal drawl, balanced with jokily-observed American TV cop-show twang and vernacular. “Just back from the US,” he explains.
Oh yes. And there’s poetry.
Poetry, at times delivered directly from memory, at times from page. at times from a book waved about in one hand, seemingly serving as some sub-conscious iron-lung reassurance.
JCC is about poetry, poetry, poetry: as stream of – no, torrent of – images and ideas, all relatable in some form or shape, composed into total accessibility if you “listen to the music”, as pleads his dove-tailing, long-time touring support poet Mike Garry (equally Doctor).
Beyond Evidently Chickentown, faves delivered adroitly, deftly but always passionately. I Wanna Be Yours, Bachelor’s Life, I’ve Fallen In Love With My Wife, Beasley Street – neatly then parsed as Beasley Boulevard, Are You The Business, Twat, and more …
Look In Any Junkyard, a very recent release showing ability to convert workaday pictures into beautiful words, not dulled by complacency.
Dr John Cooper Clarke’s poetry – and Dr Mike Garry’s equally accessible, equally acute work, is to be read aloud.
Buy their books. Yes. But go and see them recite. Go hear them recite.
Maybe in Coop Live. Or a creaky, lapsed church somewhere. At Hallowe’en.
By: Dai M