John Cooper Clarke
John is the poet laureate of Punk. No one else comes close. The Salford Mouth, the Bard of Salford or Johnny Clarke the name behind the hairstyle, it matters little. The poems do the talking. But it’s not all about the poems; it’s the delivery as well that counts. No one rants, alliterates, heckles back, ad libs or bites like Johnny Clarke. The humour is wicked and barbed. You can’t heckle safely. If you’re a target you’d better duck.
He started off as a ‘Performance Poet’ but then it got out of hand. At the time of Punk there was an interest in the spoken word – poems shouted or recited, sometimes over a backing. It was usually highly political and called Ranting. Johnny was king of the Ranters. It seemed to go hand in hand with Hip-Hop and the birth of Rap with people like the Last Poets and Gil Scott Heron and with the Reggae Dub Poets and Toasters like Linton Kwesi Johnson and Michael Smith. Johnny toured with Punk Bands like the Sex Pistols, Fall and Elvis Costello and he also toured with Linton Kwesi Johnson.
At the beginning it was just him and his mouth (and hair of course) but then it was a set of backing tapes and then a band. Who knows where it might have gone if heroin hadn’t got in the way. We’re looking at a lost decade or two.
The good news is that he has finally re-emerged with mouth intact. Some people haven’t got a good word for him but I have and it’s not Twat.