EP.228 - DR JOHN COOPER CLARKE

I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin.

Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening.

I took my microphone and found some human folk.

Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke.

My name is Adam Buxton, I'm a man.

I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan.

Hey, how you doing podcasts?

It's Adam Buxton here.

I'm reporting to you from a field out in East Anglia, UK, in the county of Norfolk.

It's the middle of October, 2024.

It's overcast out here, and earlier today, when I was on my bike, it was absolutely freezing.

Rosie is once again staying home today.

Just the sight of the dog walking harness was enough to set her flanks quaking.

She has still not forgiven me for taking her out on a walk a few weeks back and promising her that there wouldn't be any loud noises from the bird scaring gun.

And as I was promising her, the gun went off quite close to where we were walking.

And I think it's going to take a while for me to regain her trust.

She's been going out getting her exercise with her mum.

running in another part of the world around here.

But I really do miss her on my walks around these parts.

Anyway, hopefully, she'll be back before too long.

Otherwise, she's very well.

Oh, it's raining now.

Okay, that's probably an indication that I should get on with the introduction.

And we do have a lot to get through.

It's quite a long chat this week for podcast number 228, which features a very rambling conversation with poet, raconteur, and punk scion Dr.

John Cooper Clark.

Cooper Clark facts.

John was born in 1949 in the northwestern industrial city of Salford.

After a largely happy but far from cushy childhood, which included a bout of the old school killer lung disease tuberculosis, John parlayed his love of words, movies and TV to become a pioneer of the poetical stand-up comedy genre.

I think that's fair to say.

I mean he's a poet primarily, but there's a lot of comedy elements in what John does.

After serving his time in northern working men's clubs, having been given a break by comedian Bernard Manning, John connected with an increasingly appreciative audience in venues where punk music was taking hold in the second half of the 1970s.

And John's rapid fire delivery, idiosyncratic look, and street lexicon made him a good fit to appear alongside legendary acts that included Buzzcocks, The Fall, The Clash, Sex Pistols, Susie and the Banshees, The Ramones, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, and Joy Division, to name but a few.

It was Joy Division's producer Martin Hannett who set John's poetry to music played by The Invisible Girls, a band made up of members of Manchester stars Buzzcocks and the Deruti column, on a short run of albums that included 1980s Snap, Crackle and Bop.

That was the album that featured Cooper Clark Bangers, Beasley Street, and Evidently Chickentown, aka the one that got got used on the Sopranos on the penultimate episode of that show.

You remember this one.

The bloody cops are bloody king, bloody keep it bloody clean, bloody chiefs are bloody slime, bloody drones, a bloody lion, the bloody woman, bloody game, bloody kids in bloody blame, nowhere to be bloody found, anywhere in chicken town.

Yeah, that one.

My voice is different.

You might be able to hear.

I'm recording this the day after and cutting it into the intro.

Don't tell anyone.

Although the 80s began with John's career heading in the right direction, trouble was brewing in the form of an addiction to heroin that had taken hold a couple of years earlier.

Moving in rock and roll addict circles was what brought John into contact with Velvet Underground singer Nico, who was, for a few months in the early 80s, a housemate of John's when he was living in Brixton, South London.

And though he was still performing and bringing in money with impressively weird Sugar Puffs TV ads in the late 80s, he didn't write anything new for nearly a decade.

He finally got off the drug in the early 90s, thanks in large part to the support of his partner Evie, whom John eventually married in 2018.

Back to previously recorded intro with Different Voice.

But his elder statesman phase began perhaps in 2013 when he was awarded an honorary doctorate of arts by Salford University in acknowledgement of a career that has spanned five decades, bringing poetry to non-traditional audiences and influencing musicians and comedians.

That same year, Sheffield band the Arctic Monkeys released their album AM, which included the track I Wanna Be Yours, based on the John Cooper Clark poem of the same name, a poem that Monkeys lead singer Alex Turner had first encountered as part of his GCSE poetry syllabus in the early 2000s.

And the Arctic Monkeys song helped keep the poem and John's work in general alive for a whole new generation of fans.

Nowadays, as well as continuing to tour his live shows, most recently reading from his latest collection, What, John has become a familiar face on British TV comedy panel shows and on the airwaves via appearances on BBC Six Music and Radio 4, where in 2019 he made a memorable castaway on desert island discs.

My conversation with John was recorded back in early February of this year, 2024, not far from where he lives in Colchester in the county of Essex, England.

We met in a great little recording studio, Tom Donovan Studios, tucked away behind a garage and an office furniture shop in a pretty village on the banks of the River Cone, C-O-L-N-E, and studio owner Tom was on hand to make tea and record the session.

Both much appreciated.

Thanks, Tom.

When we met, I had been re-listening to John's memoir, also called I Want to Be Yours, published in 2020.

That was a crucial part of cheering me up in dark pandemic times towards the end of 2020.

and I wanted to ask him about some of the people he's encountered and the many moments of punk history he's been part of as well as other specific incidents in his madly eventful life all detailed in that brilliant book but as soon as he stepped into the studio in herringbone tweed jacket and giant paperboy cap looking like an ET elated Don Letz and greeted me warmly it was clear that this was going to be very much an old school ramble including from the start and throughout very strong language.

There are also references to drug taking and the purchase of illegal drugs from jazz legends, and to begin with, shocking disrespect for sci-fi classic The Matrix.

So, please be aware on all counts.

I'll be back at the end to say goodbye, but right now, with Dr.

John Cooper Clark, here we go.

Ramble chat, let's have a ramble chat.

We'll focus first on this, then concentrate on that.

Come on, let's chew the fat and have a ramble chat.

Put on your conversation coat and find your talking hat.

La la

la la la la la

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la la

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la la la la la la la la la la la la

I'll tell you what I really hated.

The Matrix.

Films like that I hate.

Why do you hate The Matrix?

Everything in it was fucking is it or isn't it?

And everybody was wearing black PVC.

Every surface was black and reflective.

There were lights going.

It was like being locked in an amusement arcade for longer than you planned.

You know what I mean?

It was horrible, horrible sensory onslaught, I thought.

Also, they did a weird colour grade on it so that everything looked green.

Black wasn't.

Because black and green was the colour palette because it was supposed to be like a computer display.

I hate films like that.

I can't stand it.

It didn't blow your mind.

You weren't thinking, oh my god, is this all a dream?

I've got a couple people on at me for fucking months before I finally capitulated.

All right, you know, somebody even brought it round.

No, no, you've got to see this.

You know, it was, it wasn't taking nine for an answer.

You've got you've got to see this.

I'm going to bring it round and I'm going to sit there and watch it with you.

I couldn't even bluff my way out of it and say, Yeah, I watched it for 20 minutes, not my thing.

Thanks, anyway.

You know, it no, he fucking made sure I sat through it.

That was the fucking awful.

And I mean, I've never seen anything where Canoe Reeves was believable anyway.

So, to put him in such a preposterous situation, I just thought I was wasting my time.

And I've never felt like that in a movie.

I've always thought, even if I don't like this, it's never a waste of time.

But that case I did, I thought, isn't there something?

Could my time not more profitably be spent in reading the works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, for example?

You know what I mean?

What the hell?

Can I have that 90 minutes back?

I'm approaching my deathbed.

It was longer than 90 minutes.

You didn't get a kick out of them bending backwards in slow motion and the bullet time and all the crazy action sequences that had never been seen at that point.

Nope.

And there was no checks in it, was there?

Yeah, Carrie-Ann Moss, she was great.

She was kicking all sorts of ass

in her big leather boots.

I didn't remember it as having any checks in it.

Yeah.

No, she was good.

She was a good female lead.

I I was going to have a go at it for its lack of diversity.

I think it was relatively diverse.

But

everybody in it was a crunt.

What a review, what a review.

Are you getting all this or what?

We should sit down.

Yes, I didn't expect to be talking about the matrix quite so quickly.

But in my mind, the matrix was a pivotal moment in modern society.

That was the introduction of the whole red pill, blue pill concept.

You know, that really is now the backbone of a large part of the internet with people thinking that we're all living in some sort of simulation.

Is life real?

Is anything real?

Can you trust societal institutions?

Do you need to take the red pill and get woken up out of your reverie and face up to what life is really like?

For me, that all kicked off with the Matrix.

Did you not get any of that out of it?

I'm afraid not.

I'm afraid not.

Sometimes you steal yourself against things, don't you?

Yeah.

I just thought it was just that it was

an aesthetic judgment, really.

I kind of ascertained that this was really aimed at,

well, you said it was computer owners.

Yeah, it was very much.

Which I've never been.

So, you know, it's that's where I think that's one possibly the first

glimpse of the alienation I suffer from today.

Digital disenfranchisement.

Absolutely, I do.

I mean, you know, I'm aware every day, you know, I suffer the thousand punishments visited upon the analog community.

But

also, that's when the realization of this kicks in.

You're also basking in the rewards of being disconnected from that world that consumed so much of my life, going down YouTube rabbit holes and the like.

I mean, preparing for this conversation, I've actually had a wonderful time watching a lot of clips of you from back in the day.

Thanks a lot, Adam.

But that's the problem with computers, and that's why I never got involved in it, because I not from any Luddite point of view, really, although there is a little bit of that about it.

I don't like automatic checkouts in supermarkets, for instance, but that's another issue.

But

the reason I don't have a computer is because I know how good they are and I know how easily distracted and how I'm bad enough with the T V.

You know, I've never got over the magic of television.

I can't tear myself away.

And now with, you know, a thousand free, you know, free view and

one fabulous programme after the other.

Yeah.

So, you know, I mean, that's bad enough.

You know, if I just I couldn't slide a computer into the proceedings.

What's your TV regimen?

Oh, I love

Anseque's Road Trip.

And I like the non-celebrity one.

I think, like Gogglebox, I think the actual normal people version is much better.

You know, and the celebrity,

it's a bad idea.

I was on with Phil Jupiter's.

We did a celebrity Anseque Road trip together, and, you know, we're two funny guys.

I didn't think, you know, for a start I didn't realize how harsh the regime is doing that show.

I don't know how they keep a happy face on it.

Why is it harsh?

Well you're up at seven.

Have you seen the distances they cover?

You only spend one night out

away from home for it.

But the distances are outrageous.

You know they go from Cardiff to Berry Cup on Swede and then is this actually

a separate thing to road show?

Oh yeah yeah road trip this

This is experts buying stuff from various antique stores all around the British Isles.

And they've done it in Ireland even.

Are you interested in antiques?

Up to a point.

I'm not an avid collector of any kind.

I said to the wife the other week, you know, I'm going to start.

I've never seen a vase I don't like.

Therefore.

I'm going to start collecting vases.

You know,

that's no reason to go collect.

If you've never seen one, you did, can you imagine?

A house full of vases.

It's bad enough now with magazines.

But I tell you,

they're great.

The experts on that show are terrific.

Anita Manning, James Braxton, and especially

this one guy,

a Scottish guy called Paul Laidlaw, whose area of speciality is militaria.

But he's very good on everything else.

But he has a special knowledge of weaponry and swords.

Like Lemmy.

Yeah, yeah, very many.

Yeah,

they would have got on like a house on fire, yeah.

Yeah, he knows every little bit of insignia and its significance.

Yeah, you know.

Did you ever hang out with Lemmy?

Yeah, once or twice, yeah.

You would usually find him in ding walls at the bar at any time of the day or night, back in the 80s.

He seemed like pretty good company.

Yeah, great, yeah, talk about anything.

He would have talked about anything, Lemmy.

But he was an expert in so many things.

He was always reading several weighty tones at a time.

But

he was big on militaria, wasn't he?

Now, I want to ask you a couple of things.

In fact, somebody bought him a tank for his 50th birthday.

Oh, really?

Yeah, a Sherman tank.

What do you get, Lemmy, for his 50th?

A tank.

Before we go further.

I wanted to ask how you would feel if I gave you a couple of things to read out that weren't necessarily your own?

For example, the poem that has now gone out of my head.

The second coming, you know, W.B.

Yates.

Oh, that's great.

I love that poem.

How would you feel about reading that out later on?

Yeah, I'll give that a go.

All I know is the centre cannot hold.

That's the bit that sticks in your mind.

Yeah.

It would be great throughout our conversation if you could read a few poems if you wouldn't mind.

Yeah, that'd be doable, Adam.

I'd love that.

And

have you got one that you'd like to to start with?

What out of the new book?

Yeah, I've got a few that I particularly like that I was going to ask you to do, but if you'd like to start with.

Oh, go on, no, I'd be interested to know which ones you'd like.

Well, I'm not used to any of these, they're totally fresh.

Oh, yeah.

I've done them at gigs, really.

I really resonated with rolling news blues.

All right.

Yep.

Yeah,

we know too much.

Yeah, well, this is the thing.

If we're all not careful, the mafia will do us in.

That'll gag in it.

There is a theory that the mafia murdered Einstein.

He knew too much.

You're rolling news blues, is it?

Yeah.

Right, right.

BBC, the Daily Guardian, you choose.

This misery soup is on a loop.

Rolling news blues.

There's nice people doing nice things most of the time.

I can't prove it, but you gotta believe me.

You wouldn't hear it on the public dime.

BBC, the Daily Guardian, you choose.

Deep concern could only earn you the Rollin News Blues.

There's never been a better time to be alive.

Gratitude is derigor.

You used to be finished at sixty-five, now it's triple figures.

There's one thing fucks it up like gravel in your shoes.

The horror, the horror that makes the cut on the rolling news blues.

Thank you.

I love it, man.

I've had the same sort of thought many times, and it's nice to hear it expressed poetically.

We know too much.

We know too much.

We can't do anything about it.

Also, the fact that the media is totally governed by the,

you know, if it bleeds, it leads.

Yeah, that's it.

Ethos.

Well said, yeah, yeah.

I've never heard that one before, but very good.

And it can't get out of it.

Even in the modern age, when we're so clever and nuanced and aware of history, etc., people try to set up positive news story sites and they don't do well.

Like, people just gravitate towards

the bad stuff, and they can't help it.

Is it Schadenfreude?

Yeah, I suppose that's a part of it, isn't it?

God, I don't live there.

You know, David Byrne of Talking Heads?

Yeah.

He's got a website called Reasons to Be Cheerful, which is an attempt to

redress the balance a little bit.

And they publish stories that are somewhat hopeful.

You know, the idea is not to deny that there are terrible problems.

Exactly.

Of course, there are.

There's all these problems that do need to be dealt with and taken seriously, not ignored.

But you've got to also remind yourself that there are some positive things happening.

That's right, exactly.

And it's compiled on this website, Reasons to Be Cheerful, which I recommend.

Oh, I'm a complete escapist, I mean, who knows what the ostrich sees in the sand?

You know, we've got ostrich wallpaper

for exactly that reason, because

my mum was a bit like that.

She was very much like

she had a sort of escapist philosophy, I think.

And so we got the ostrich wallpaper in her honour.

In her honour.

Yeah.

Wonderful.

Where do you go for your injections of joy then?

The television, I think, is

the honest answer to that.

But I like riding around on the bike.

Yeah.

You know I've got the bookies a lot on the bike.

That's the only exercise I get really.

But I still read newspapers as well.

So there's

my daily trip to the news agent.

Yeah.

Reach myself with the neighbourhood.

But that's what I'm always saying.

Speaking of rolling news, you know, never mind what's happening in Nairobi.

Keep your eye on the council.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Fill a few fucking potholes in.

That's right.

You bone idle cunts.

No, you know,

you really do have to

keep your eye on what's on your neighbourhood.

After all, isn't that what the environment is?

Yeah.

It's not the whole world.

It's where you are.

That means your neighbourhood.

It's true, but it's hard for people, you know, if people are sensitive and empathetic and they read this stuff and they are encouraged to consider their own good fortune and you know living in the west and having a

comparatively cushy life and then you read you read about how people are suffering across the other end of the world or or even not the other end what you're saying is that the people in heaven they can hear the screams of the tormented souls in hell

and that's part of the payoff

Do you think they can in heaven?

Yeah, yeah, they've got it on a tannoy system.

There's a big sign that says, check your privilege in heaven.

Everyone's wandering around, feeling a little guilty.

Eternity isn't forever, you know.

The staff won't tolerate any abuse.

Please treat us with respect.

The angels.

Hello, my friend, it's good to see you again.

I've got to say, you're looking great.

I love what you've done with your nipples and your knees and your shiny ball pate.

Can you describe how you look today?

I mean, I'll take a picture of us at the end if you're okay with that.

Yeah, sure, yeah.

But what's your look today?

What's your look currently?

Same as it is every day, actually.

I don't know.

I'm not very adventurous in the insiderial department.

Three-button

jacket and a button-down shirt.

Well, there's more variety to your look than I imagined when I was looking at clips online.

Oh, yeah.

Like the classic John Cooper Clark look is the white shirt, black tie, black suit jacket, skinny black trousers,

Chelsea boots, and then your hair teased up and shades.

If you typed John Cooper Clark into chat GPT and asked to be shown an image, that's what would pop up.

Oh, that's great, yeah.

I mean, that would do me.

But actually, there's a lot more variety, and you're obviously into your fashion, right?

I wouldn't say I was into fashion.

You know,

I'm not at all touched by it

in a way because i think my

i've worn the same kind of clothes since 1965 and i've got to say here you know for many years in in the 80s in the wilderness years i was often uh asked for my autograph and i and i deep down i knew that they they wouldn't know who i am you know and uh so i used to say you know i'm not ronwood you know

you know

i was dead right you know that's exactly who they thought i was and and that's uh that's great because there's no such thing as a coincidence.

It just shows you firing on all cylinders.

William Burroughs said that.

But it was Ron really that dictated my luck when I saw him at this club in 1965.

There was this seller club I used to go to called the Oasis.

And you would get all the top bands on there, including many times I saw Wayne Frontana and Mindbenders there.

And this group called The Birds was on.

And of course, I don't know.

Not the Roger McGuinness.

You don't mean Roger McGuinness and the rest, and Mr.

Tamarinman, etc.

No, no, there was an English group called The Birds, you know, spelt right, B-I-R-D-S.

And I'd heard the record, but I'd never seen them.

You know, they had a single out called Leaving Here that I think got played on Jukebox Jewelry or something.

So it was a good number, great riff.

So I thought, yeah, that kind of thing.

So we went to see him, and out came the birds, and there's Ron, you know, and you could immediately could see why they were called the Birds, you know,

with that black crow hairstyle, you you know, and he's a bit beaky like me, isn't he?

You know, so I looked at him, you know, there were similarities.

I thought, you know, he's got a big nose and skinny legs, you know, and uncontrollable hair, you know.

I'll go in that direction.

But you went a lot further in that direction than he ever went.

I mean, you went a lot further in that direction than he ever went.

From a modern vantage point, it looks as if you more or less prefigured a look that was then popularized by people like the Jesus and Mary chain, or more recently, the horrors, or pre-conspiracy era Russell brand, and you know, Jack Skellington in Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas,

Edward Scissorhands.

Yeah, there you go.

I feel as if they all owe you a debt.

I'm definitely, Johnny Depp owes me a favor there.

Edward Scissorhands, I saw the trailer.

We were in a movie house, me and my wife, when it came out, you know, and the trailer came up.

I'm what the

nobody told me I'd made a movie.

And he had the same clubber and everything, didn't he?

Black suit, white shirt.

Apart from the cutlery, he was a fucking dead ringer.

Did you ever meet Tim Burton?

No.

I bet he's not.

But you know, I want

people to talk about doing a biopic of me at the moment.

I mean, what are they always saying, you know?

So I always say the same thing.

Johnny Deppy owes me one.

Lose a bit of weight, weight johnny yeah

there's a drink in it well this ai now can can shave off a few pounds probably

but no i think it was definitely wrong that uh there was the template for my look you know it's about

it's i was talking about this the other day you know when i was at school you know you were a bit you were better off being a bit on the chunky side you know every bit all the pop idols were you know worked out a little bit of course i was a malnourished anemic right off you'd had tuberculosis yeah that's right yeah beef

so but when george harrison came along

bloody helmet it things changed overnight right there yeah you know you just had to have like skinny legs after that that's right and he was he was very sort of saturnine and yeah yeah he was the handsome beetle let's face it he was pretty good he was the handsome

and you still have all your hair right that's not a weave i'm not wearing this hat

to disguise male pattern baldness.

And

I thank God every day for this.

Yeah.

That's pretty good going.

You can only go to the cruise ships if that happens to you.

So what is that down to?

I guess that's genes

plus a upbeat disposition.

Do you reckon that's got anything to do with its psychology?

I think it's more genetic.

But if people who are in horribly stressful situations can have their hair.

Oh, you're talking about nervous alopecia here yeah yeah i think that's a thing isn't it

yeah yeah i suppose that is a psychological input there your nerves yeah things like that but having said this you know that there's uh there's never been a better time for anybody to go bald glad you say never been a better time as they you know it's looks like a style a style option

yeah you know so many people go for that clean look and you know that's true yeah you can just shave go for the buzz you've got cojack yule brinner Yeah, yeah.

Stanley Tucci.

No one's going to.

Billy Zane.

Yeah.

You know, it doesn't get in your way.

I was asked recently if I would take on a sponsor that was a hair, like they sell sort of hair restoring ungents.

Oh, yeah.

Because I'm getting a little thin on top.

Never been a better time.

I agree with you.

One of the reasons I didn't take on this sponsor was because I googled the possible side effects of one of the key ingredients in there.

Oh, this is the hair restoring one.

They use something called minoxidil.

And I mean, to be fair to them, they very much own all the side effects.

You go on their website and they're totally straight.

They've got to put everything in.

Yeah, but they're very front foot forward with it.

And they're like, hey, listen, this stuff doesn't always work, but it works a lot.

You'd be surprised how good the results are.

Are there side effects?

Yeah, there are.

And here are some of them.

Not everyone will get them, but just so you know, it says, maybe I'll get you to read them out.

Do you mind?

This might be...

Okay, okay, yeah.

Well, I'm a doctor.

People will take notice of me.

Yeah.

Adam.

Yes, exactly.

On matters of toxicity.

It says, stop using monoxidol if.

If blood pressure changes, rapid heartbeat.

New or worsening pain in the chest, dizziness, lightheadedness or fainting.

Unexplained rapid weight gain of more than two kilograms or five pounds,

swelling or puffiness of the hands or feet, persistent redness or irritation of the scalp.

Minoxidil can cause skin irritation, e.g., local redness, itching, dryness, scalp flaking.

Although this might only be a temporary effect, stop using the product if it persists.

I mean,

that was enough to put me off personally because I was looking at the.

I'm glad if it saves one life.

How about music?

Is music a reliable source of uplift?

I guess it is.

I tell you, it was a big,

you know, music and poetry who did it best, I think.

The Velvet Underground.

Oh, yeah.

You know, because they do have that equal qualities of art and punk

about them.

You know, you can't say they're not punks.

You know, they were junky scumbags

from a bad side of New York.

They were, and they were.

Well, that was

what they pushed.

They were actually all quite well-qualified and very intelligent people.

aren't they?

Each one of them had interests in other areas other than music, didn't they?

Actually, speaking of which.

Did you see them play like the reformed version?

I did, and I wish I had.

I certainly wanted to.

Something got in the way of it.

Maybe it was work.

It must have been work or I would have gone.

But I went to see them in Manchester when they brought out the album Loaded.

Yeah.

And it was that great album.

But they've got this guy standing in for Lou Reed, haven't they?

Billy Ewell.

Doug Ewell.

Doug Ewell, yeah.

And his brother Billy was in the band as well.

Yes, he did something something else, yeah, yeah.

But Doug Ewell, yeah, was uh

I went to see about I can't remember the venue in Manchester, but uh I was right at the back in the cheap seats, and uh I didn't know it, I didn't even know Lou Reed had left the group, you know.

I thought it was, I thought that was him.

Yeah,

but that's why they picked him, obviously.

He looks a bit similar and because Bowie went to see The Velvet Underground with Doug Ewell.

Oh, did he?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And thought

I thought that it was Lou Reed, like afterwards, spent about half an hour chatting to Doug Ewell and thought that he'd been

hanging out with Lou Reed and was absolutely thrilled.

That would have been me.

I'd have been doing

it.

And then someone said, oh, you know, he's not in the band anymore.

Yeah, everybody.

I've got it.

I've got it.

It was Doug Ewell.

Everybody was telling me what a schmuck I was.

You know what I mean?

But then Bowie said he didn't mind because in his mind, he'd spent half an hour with Lou Reed, and that's all that mattered.

It was still a sort of electrifying experience feeling that excited.

Well, I did that.

I love a circular conversation.

I did that when I was in,

you know, when I had the Ron Wood look, and I was in Ireland.

And I always expected to be mistaken for Ron Wood in Ireland because I knew for a fact that Ron had a couple, you know, had a gaff out there.

Didn't he have a few race horses?

Plus,

he liked the stout.

This is going back a bit, you know, so 90s.

So I was expecting for somebody to say, you know,

Ron Wood, but I was in this eatery there.

So I went out for a smoke there.

I went outside for a cigarette.

And this guy, I could see this guy, family of them, one guy, they looked sort of Nordic.

So one guy

kept looking at him.

So I went outside for a cigarette.

He followed me out anyway and he comes up to me, this

Norwegian he was.

He came up to me, he said, hey, I want to see your concher de la Jolo.

You were great, you know, and all this.

So I thought, it's going to break his heart if I

tell him,

I thought, what can it hurt?

You know, so I played along with it, you know, I thought, I couldn't stand to see the look of disappointment on his face you know what i mean by uh telling him who i really was some guy this he'd never heard of some chump you know so i played along with it yeah so i'm like oh yeah i was like that was a that was a rocking gig man i'll never forget it

what something signed so i got given the old uh autograph uh i don't even know what ronnie wood's autograph looks like you know

scrolling

The choice was, you know, the look of disappointment on his face or send him back to Norway with tales of having had the crack with Ron Wood.

You know what I mean?

What would you choose?

If I can help somebody

as I go on my way,

then my living will not be in vain.

I think I did the right thing there.

I thought you were going to say he looked at the scroll and he was like, but this does not say John Cooper Clark.

yeah it could have happened couldn't it no he was made he was made up with it i made somebody happy at last i made somebody happy

um were you a velvets fan from like right from year zero there was about me and six other people

that liked him everybody hated him whatever anybody says now anybody at the time all those hippies they fucking hated them they pissed all over their nice little drug party didn't they you know it's like it's, you know, they come up with the bad side of shit from the East Coast, you know, while all them

Laurel Canyon motherfuckers were all, you know what I mean, giving it loads.

I think they were the kind of distaff voice, you know.

Fantastic, great band.

You know, the songs are terrific.

For years, I avoided Sister Ray.

You know, I'd play a couple of minutes of it and I'd go, so it's like this for the whole side of the album, right?

You know, and yeah, I get it.

I I did that for years.

Yeah, good, that, but, you know, let's say what.

But, you know, quite late on, I played it all the way through, Sister Ray.

And I thought, well, at the end of it, I didn't feel the same about anything

I did before I played.

It's such a great party record for a start.

If you put that on at a house party,

I mean it's one of them great, you know, those go-go dances.

So

I mean, think of the strict rhythm in it.

You know, it's just like relentless, isn't it?

So, once you've got into that group, you're there for 20 minutes.

And the story underneath it, you know, you keep saying, What did he say?

What's that?

He said there.

This doesn't sound, it sounds like an unpleasant situation of one kind or another, doesn't it?

You know what I mean?

And it

draws you, pulls you into it.

Is that after John Cale left?

No, I think no, he's in it.

You can hear all the there's a lot of very baroque organ

stuff going on, but that riff just keeps everything together.

So it's a great number.

I love sister.

Now, that's my favorite Velvet number.

Okay, I'm going to go and revisit that because I don't know if I think I've made it right the way through Sister Ray only a couple of times, but I'm going to go back and reassess.

And I love New Age.

Uh-huh, yeah.

I love that one.

In the fade-out, you can hear what the bass line is doing, and it's and it's sort of

it's really frustrating.

You could listen to it for ages, you know, it's stentorian

When you met fantastic band.

When you met Nico, though, that must have been quite extraordinary.

Were you just asking her for anecdotes the whole time?

Oh, everybody did, you couldn't help it, yeah.

But she'd give them you whether you asked for them or not, you know.

But she not just about the velvets, I mean, Nico, and the people she could name among her social circle, you know,

you couldn't get in there.

You know, Federico Fellini, for instance.

Yes.

Do you know what I mean?

Oh, like Chet Baker, Bob Dylan, yeah, oh, you name it.

People like that.

You know, so she didn't run out of stuff to talk about when you've worn the velvet under, you know, yeah, yeah, she had lots of

was she chatty, though?

I mean, she seems like

I wouldn't say she was chatty.

No,

she seems like such an intense presence.

But nor was she aloof or, you know, antisocial either.

But her life experience is very extremely unique, isn't it?

You know, she when she went to school, Hitler was still around, just about, you know, clinging on.

That's right.

And I've always wondered about what an evening in with Nico would have been like in those days.

I mean, because you were both addicts, so you were sort of keeping yourself well, as you say.

Well,

yeah, there was that.

But on one occasion, we were trying to explain what...

Because we were working together a lot as well in those days, doing double headers all over Europe.

And she just,

this is in the James Young book, actually, about when we're trying to explain to her how to deliver a gag.

Because it's one thing she never did.

Well, she didn't really do gags, you know.

So I'll give it a simple one to be going on with.

Like, you know, a guy goes to a psychiatrist.

Is it possible for a guy to be in love with an elephant?

No, of course not.

Well, where can I get rid of an engagement ring that big?

John is holding his hands up to describe a large hoop.

A very large hoop.

Anyway, she couldn't understand the subtext of it.

She thought she overcomplicated the subtext of it.

Was it an ugly elephant?

Well, maybe, I don't know, that's not important right now.

We spent a night with different gags, but she would always have some irrelevant question about

the delivery of gags.

But I'm not holding that against her.

You know, it's not given to everybody.

Sure.

Would you sit around, watch TV, play with you?

Yeah, yeah, that's right, yeah.

But TV finished early in those days as well.

So

no, mainly we used to, you know, why deny it, shoot up junk and

veg out somehow.

Yeah, when you were on in the comforts of our own home.

But we did, we did mean to

we had a a a vague plan to do an album of uh boy-girl duet songs.

Right.

You know, for instance, uh Love is Strange by Mickey and Sylvie.

Yeah.

Uh I Just Wanna Stay Here by Steve Lawrence and Edie Gourmet.

Uh you know these sort of things.

How High the Moon by Les Paul and Mary Ford.

Deep Purple by Nino Tempo and April Stevens.

I'm still thinking of Love is Strange with Nico saying, Will you be my lover boy?

Then I say, Yeah, yeah, it would have been a winner, wouldn't it?

Would have been a strong contender for the hit parade.

I like to think so

in the playground of my imagination.

You are going to read us another poem.

Okey-doke.

And this is available within the covers of What,

My latest collection of poetry.

Got any ideas at all?

Yeah, sure.

Do you like to set them up when you're reading them out live or do you just hammer into them?

Well, no, I set them up usually, but because all this stuff is so fresh, you know, it hasn't been performed in public before.

So,

you know, I'm.

I like Time Gentleman Time.

Oh, yeah, I like that one.

Okay, Time, Gentleman, Time it is.

I quite like the marital miseries of the modern misogynist male.

Oh, do that one as well later on.

Or the rhyme of the ancient marrier.

It's a a disgruntled from the point of view of a disgruntled divorcee.

That sounds good, too.

So we're looking for Time Gentleman Time, right?

Yeah, I mean, w you know what, we could finish with Time Gentleman Time.

Okay, then.

And not that I want to finish just yet, but

so so go for whichever one you fancy from those ones you just mentioned.

So with that in mind, so so when I say that, you know, it's not about any part of my psychology that's coming to the front.

You know, I suppose if it does, you can't help it.

And that's one of those things that happens.

It's a byproduct of poetry, I suppose.

It invites that sort of speculation.

But I would say at the outset that

if you're a poet, what you are is an adopter of positions, which means that you have to inhabit the mind of a citizen that you might not have anything in common with at all.

You know, that's part of

an exercise in insight

supposition.

But I have to inhabit that character for the purpose of just for the duration of a particular poem here.

So I'm not, you know, I'm not the, I hope I'm not the,

you know, this one's called The Marital Miseries of the Modern Misogynist Male or The Rhyme of the Ancient Marrier.

And but don't go looking for, I'll tell you, there's only two poems that I can think of where that's actually me talking.

And that's one of them's I've Fallen in Love with My Wife, and the other one is Pies.

Both of them come directly from my heart to the public.

But

do you remember those all off by heart?

I can remember them, I think.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Maybe you could do I've Fallen In Love with My Wife after this one.

All right, then, just to

add a bit of reality.

Okay, so here's the bad side of the story then: the marital miseries of the modern misogynist male, or the rhyme of the ancient marrier.

From the dog house to the cat flap, and back again without a map.

He could be heading for a slap.

His fractured fairy tale gone zap.

Just like I said was gonna happen.

She hoovers up when he tries to take a nap in the manner of Andy Cap.

She sold his frog-eyed sprite for scrap.

Step lively, mind the gap.

Some day he's gonna snap.

Who would be a chap?

She fucks up, he takes the rap like any penis owning sap.

He fell into her sugary trap.

Now he's taking all that crap that drops in daily right on tap.

He's got a lock-down dog going yap, yap, yap.

You don't believe me?

Consult the app.

Who would be?

Who would be?

I ask you two times, make that three.

Some day he's gonna snap.

Who would be a chap?

There you are, you see.

To anybody who's thinking of making the transition, I'm just saying it's not all beer and skittles.

and then the antidote to that the antidote to that would be

yeah I love this one I'm glad I wrote it got me out of the doghouse more than once

okay

the doorbell used to say ding dong but now it boasts out into song if I'm forlorn it ain't for long could I be wrong or have I fallen in love with my wife?

Fair thee well, my fairy fae.

We cared so slightly anyway.

Call me crazy with a capital K, but I've fallen in love with my wife.

I've fallen in love with my wife.

She populates my days with marital breakdown running rife.

I have to keep her under my gaze.

You love somebody, set them free.

That don't make no sense to me.

I'm keeping her under lock and key.

I've fallen in love with my wife.

Rainbows and butterflies occupy the summer skies.

Imagine my surprise, I've fallen in love with my wife.

I've fallen in love with my wife, she populates my days.

It's keeping me awake at night, my head stuck in this funky smaze.

Every time I talk, I mumble.

Every time I walk, I stumble.

I'm dancing like a drunken uncle.

I've fallen in love with my wife.

I've fallen in love with my wife.

She populates my days.

She's not that far from a carving knife.

I have to keep her in my gaze.

I don't swear, but what the hay.

I'm alright and she's okay.

Get out of her fucking way.

I've fallen in love with my wife.

I'm her fella, she's my mate.

She steals the chips right off my plate.

No wonder I'm losing weight.

I've fallen in love with my wife.

I steal a kiss, she takes the piss.

We lived a life of ignorant bliss.

All that and now this.

I've fallen in love with my wife.

When you were on Desert Island Discs, your object that you wanted to take to the island, your special object, was a big lump of drugs.

It was like a boulder of opium, twice the size of my own head.

And Lauren Laverne obviously sounded a little dubious about that.

I don't think, you know, I don't think the BBC would obviously be keen, nor would I, to promote the use of illegal drugs and potentially harmful substances.

But.

Horses for courses, though, if you're on your own on a desert island

by the law.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And I would be very

relaxed about that, given the situation.

Yeah.

And obviously, it's not something that I would want to promote to anyone.

I would be upset if my children ever decided to take up heroin.

Oh, quite rightly so.

Yeah, yeah.

But

I'm interested to know, as someone who's never taken it, I'm interested to know what the kind of best aspect of it is.

Well, I don't want to advertise it either.

In a way, you can't say the right thing about it, especially if you've got some.

So that's why I never talk about it, really.

I always regret what I've said.

You know, open that door, you'll never close it again.

Do you wish that you had never opened that door?

Sometimes, yeah, yeah.

There are many regrets about it.

Yes, of course.

Yeah, yeah.

Because of the

life would have been far easier and I would have been successful far earlier had I never got involved with the shit.

I'm a great believer in manifest destiny.

Here I am.

Yes, I did the wrong thing, but here we are.

You've got a good line in your book.

You talk about moral relativism, and you say if you want to...

get a lesson in moral relativism, look at the universe of an addict whose every move, no matter how heinous, is informed by the phrase, who wouldn't.

Yeah, that's right.

It's the death of the soul, you say.

Yeah, I've got along with that, certainly.

Yeah.

Yeah, but nobody sort of sets out to kill their soul.

You know what I mean?

You don't take it for that, you know, but it is the bipe, it's the side effect.

Put it on that list of side effects for Ganism or Phinoxidil.

I don't want to get all lecturing because that's the thing as well about it,

about this, you know.

It's

I'm no wiser.

You'd think it would bring you some wisdom about it or something.

But

not at all, nothing.

I haven't

learned anything from it.

You know, it teaches you nothing.

Nothing.

One day you got served up some stuff by Chet Baker.

Speaking of Chet Baker.

Yeah, but I didn't know it was Chet Baker.

I didn't know it was Chet Baker at the time.

I wish I did.

I found out when I watched Let's Get Lost, you know, the film Bruce Weber.

Bruce Weber.

Yeah, it's a great picture.

And I love his music.

Particularly his singing.

I'm a big fan of that.

You know, I'm not really a jazz expert or anything.

I like what he does on the trumpet, but when he started singing, I thought, well, that's just fabulous.

That's beautiful.

We were out there with Nico at the Paradiso, and she said,

give me all your music.

What a cop.

Give me your money.

There's somebody somebody I know.

He's very reliable.

We won't have to wait for him.

He'll be waiting for us.

You know,

so we have no reason to disbelieve it.

You know, was this in Amsterdam?

Yeah, in Amsterdam, yeah, at the Paradiso.

And he wasn't actually waiting for us.

Of course, I was on it like a rash, you know.

Thought you said he'd be waiting for us,

you know.

But like a minute and a half later, a guy shuffles in in a bandana, you know, with missing teeth at the front.

And so I figured he was one of the many

draft dodging American hippies that had gone there because of the dope

you know you know the cannabis end of things you know in the 70s I thought

you know I heard his accent but and then

he kind of fished out a few packages you know and he sort of he didn't raise his voice above a murmur you know what I mean and I thought who is this guy you know he looks like he looked like Geronimo's kid brother

so

he gives him what we want, we give him the money and that.

But at no point did she say,

that was Chet Baker.

She said, at no point.

So, and then 30 years later, 30, because as far as I was concerned, Chet Baker was like the James Dean of modern jazz.

He was such a glamour.

Beautiful.

Cheekbones you could have hung your coat on.

And he even had a gig advertising arrow shirts.

You know, that's how group, that's how great he looks.

He's like fantastic, like a

terrific looking guy, wasn't it?

And he lost his look spectacular.

So, you know, I mean, the last person I thought it was was Chet.

And then 30 years later, I see this film and the fact that he he I didn't even know he lived in Amsterdam and it became

obvious in the film'cause he died there, didn't he?

Fell out of a window, defenestration.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

So but 30 years it took me, I would have dined out'cause I'm a right name dropper or what's the point?

I would have been back in.

You ever guess who I just bought dope off?

Only my mate Chet.

Oh, my goodness.

But

it was great.

Yeah, fantastic film.

I can't recommend that enough.

Let's get lost.

Yeah, let's get lost.

Were you in 24-hour party, people?

I wasn't in it.

I talked myself out of that.

That's the worst day's work I ever did.

You know, I said before, when I get offered films, I always ask, well, who else is in it?

You know, who's the star?

Who else is in it?

Just to give it some perspective.

Like I say, for the reason is, you know, if I'm the only person I've heard of in it, it's going straight into the bargain bin at Blockbusters.

So with that in mind,

they got me a house phone, you know,

we're doing this thing about the factory records and the hacienda and that.

and that whole Madchester thing, which, you know, I'd left home by then, you know, I wasn't involved in any of that Madchester baggie stuff at all, all, actually.

But I was there at the beginning of the Hacienda, you know, I did a couple of shows there.

So did Bernard Manning, as it happens.

Did he at the Hacienda?

He was at the opening night, yeah, he did.

He did a bit of the opening night of the Hacienda, yeah.

But we all know that that became an international destination for hip kids around the world.

Yeah.

But Howard Devoto was in 24 Hour Party People.

Well, that's right, they didn't tell me that.

They didn't tell me Smith, he was in it, Mark smith was in it but i know them two were in it you know and they weren't you know playing themselves

you know because i when i asked who i said who else in it they said well we've got so-and-so playing uh tony wilson and so-and-so playing and blah blah blah peter k playing don tony so i said hold on here so everybody's being played by somebody else but i've got to play myself i thought well no you know i'm going to look like some kind of gate crasher or something here you know but they should have said well smith is in it and i would have agreed to it Yeah, but believe me, you know, this is how this is the level I operate on.

Visceral.

No technology, you know.

Who else is anyway?

I taught myself out of it.

I thought, now I'm going to come out of that looking like a fucking dweeb.

You know, so

turn it down.

So I turned it down and it was a smash hit all over the world, wasn't it?

I do like that film.

Palm Dura Warning,

the fucking Legion Doner there.

That was a bad day's work turning that one down.

When I think of some of the turkeys I've been involved with

for a movie nut,

you know what I mean?

I can't apply it to myself, unfortunately.

If they go ahead with the biopic about you, will you have a cameo in that?

I suppose so.

I'm not going to jinx it by even talking about it, to be honest, because I've met so many people with film treatments.

But, you know,

I mean, I've got one.

I'm only going to give you the title here, and I'm going to establish that it's my title.

It's Copyright John Cooper Clark.

I've had this idea for Asia.

Do you know what?

There's more to this than meets the eye, but

when I finally got the DVD out of

Snakes on a Plane, so I thought about, you know, they say, what are you going to do?

You're in a plane.

All they can do is sit still.

You know, that's how you come out there.

Don't move, whatever you do.

You know,

it's a movie, you know, the clue is in the title.

A movie where nobody moves.

What's that all about?

You know, I mean, so all it is, it's just people white-knuckling it, isn't it?

You know, there's snakes on the

bag full of snakes.

Motherfucking snakes on the motherfucking plane.

And also, they didn't even look real.

The snakes were moving in a kind of forward fashion like that.

Everybody knows snakes, they go sideways, don't they?

You know,

they didn't even look real.

They sort of jump around, don't they?

Like, they launch themselves.

Yeah, they launch themselves themselves and things like that.

But they were all the passengers that told right at the start, you know, you'll be all right if you don't move.

So I thought, well, what kind of a fucking film is this going to be?

Watching people sweat

on a plane when they're threatened by something they can't do anything about.

You know, what are they going to do?

Jump out the plane.

I thought, well, what would be more, you know, can you do better in a dialogue?

Yeah, I can do better than that.

Parrot in a car.

Now that's a fucking emergency.

Flying in your face while you're heading down a six-lane highway on some intersection.

Because it's got to be American.

I tell you, it's a road movie, it's a white-knuckle thriller and a rom-com.

I'm not going to tell you any more about it.

I've even got the script down.

Parrot in a car.

You've got to do something about that.

What are you going to do if you're going a thousand miles an hour and some parrots flying in your face, fucking squawking?

And

the reason it gets out of the cage, it's in a cage on the back seat at the beginning of the journey.

Yeah.

And it hits a bump in the road, a dead skunk or something, and it jerks the cage open.

The parrot gets out loose in the car,

doesn't like it

and

makes a nuisance of itself at night.

But it's I could give you some isolated scenes, but I'm not confident somebody ain't going to swipe it.

Because the character that's driving the car is a Tri-Becker

so-called artist.

He's just a dope-smoking loser.

But he's teamed up with this chick who's quite the egghead.

My God, she actually has.

This is the back story.

She's sick of this life with his fucking whacked-out buddies,

you know, and all that, getting nowhere.

She's a qualified reflexologist.

But, you know, she never meets any clients because of this no-good Nick

boyfriend.

You know, and

the thing about the parrot is this, the significance of the parrot is this.

Her dad, who she don't son, she's a real daddy's girl.

Her dad, who recently died, he's from Nantucket and was a seafaring gentleman.

So he had a parrot.

He had a parrot.

The only thing he left her is the parrot.

And the parrot is sort of her dad.

It's like a living memory of her dad because

it copied everything her dad said, including a load of seafairy slang and, you know, and that.

But mainly it's all the stuff that he used to say about him.

when he was courting his daughter.

So it's all ditch that loser.

The guy's a moocher.

Get rid of that jerk.

You know, and it's all

reiterating all those things that her dad used to say and driving him mad.

She's left him.

She's left him in the loft conversion, which he can't even pay the rent on anymore.

And she's moved on to Berkeley, where she's the head of the reflexology faculty.

It was an opportunity.

She couldn't pass up.

This guy's dragged her down for long enough.

And he's on the opens up, the film opens up, he's on the phone.

But come back, baby, please.

The place ain't the same without you, you know.

And she's, I'm never coming back, you know, you know.

And she, well, at least take your stuff.

You know, it's all in books.

All her stuff's in books.

At least take your stuff away.

It's a constant reminder.

It's breaking my heart on a daily basis.

I'm staying in the halls of residence until I find an apartment.

I haven't got enough room for all that stuff.

Well, at least take, you know, Angus the parrot, whatever it's down.

I'll think of a better name.

You haven't thought of the name for the parrot yet?

You've thought of everything?

Everything but the narrator.

That story.

The name of the motherfucker parrot.

But he's saying, at least take Albert the parrot.

You know, every day

he's on at me all the time.

Ditch the loser, get rid of him, you know, and all this.

And I can't stand it anymore, you know.

And she's all like, don't you let anything happen to that parrot, you know, and all that.

It's the closest thing to her heart.

It's the death of her dad.

he says if you don't come and get the parrot i'm coming to berkeley to drop it off no don't do that you know that pets aren't allowed in the halls of residence

and he's all like yeah well never mind that i'm dropping him off so then it gets like the fucking graduate

you know yeah he's in the car he borrows a fucking muscle car dodge challenger off a rich kid mate of his and uh sets off, you know, with the parrot in the back seat, like you know, and determined to drop it off at the Berkeley University.

But the parrot, as I say, escapes from the fucking cage.

He can't let anything happen to it, otherwise, he'll never get back together with the girl.

Yeah.

You know, which he's still got some hopes of doing.

Sure.

But obviously, the theme tune's going to be

surfing burg by the trash man.

Trash men, yeah, yeah.

I've got to play that.

But I've been thinking about the soundtrack, you know, because it's a road movie.

I've even got bits of Vanishing Point in there.

Okay.

Whereby, you know, when he does that amphetamine deal with that biker, where he's doing a thousand miles an hour in a Dodge Challenger, he's run out of pet pills.

And he sees this hippie on a hog with a naked blonde on the back.

And they're going on a picnic.

There's a basket on the back of his hog.

So they're just going out for a picnic in the desert.

And he's driving through there, you know, on the Kowalski.

Primal Scream's done a number about it.

oh yeah yeah

vanishing but it's a great classic film and anyway he does a deal where he draws level with the the guy on the hog and he says got any ups you know goofballs so he says yeah sure you know and he does this deal you know he gives him the dosh through the window you know they're both doing a thousand miles an hour they do this drug deal you know a thousand miles an hour next a couple of these goofballs carried on thanks buddy you know what i mean yeah anytime man and all that but i'm gonna pinch that scene but instead of pet pills, I noticed they're going on, and they've got the picnic basket.

So I'm like, got any saltines?

You know, well, the picnic ain't a picnic without some saltines, you know, like Ritz crackers.

All right, got any Ritz crackers?

Sure, we're going on a picnic.

What do you think?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

If I give you a dollar, will you give me a handful of them?

You know, anything to distract the fucking.

Because what does a parrot want?

A cracker

just to keep it out of your face face for five minutes.

So, will you?

But he's got to do it through a minute gap in the window.

Otherwise, the parrot will fucking fly out.

Of course.

He'll lose the parrot and then kiss goodbye to your loved one.

Yeah.

You know.

All right, so this is the.

I'm the film executive.

See how what a tense movie.

I mean, I think we're all

going to be rich.

I'm the film executive, and I'm saying, John, this is very exciting, this project.

What do you think about doing it as a short initially?

What, Parrot in the Car?

Yeah.

Like, rather than committing to a full feature film, what about doing getting a hot director in?

We could do it as a sort of 15-minute short, take it around the festival circuit.

Oh, no, I'm looking for the big, big books, blockbuster of the year.

So, you want to go the full three and a half hours on Parrot in the Car?

Not three and a half, no, I mean, that's the standard length.

90 minutes, no.

90 minutes, old school.

Because it's, you know, this distinct shit happens on that journey.

Yeah.

I've only given you the briefest of outlines.

And do you think real parrot, or are we going to use CRP?

Real parrot, yeah, real parrot.

Yeah, yeah.

But he's flying in his face and things like that, and calling him a cunt.

While he's trying to drive the motherfucker car,

I love it.

The pressure's on all the way.

Sign here.

It's a Go project.

Green light for parrot in a car.

Now, I was going to ask you to read this.

Oh, right, what, though?

I didn't comment.

Yeah.

I'll give it a go.

Just to make things a little...

I'll give it a go, Adam.

Less trivial for a second.

when would you have first come across this poem

it was uh one of the episodes of civilization by uh sir kenneth clark remember that series yeah sure award-winning quite rightly so great series i've got it i've got them all on vhs

but uh yeah he recites this uh number and it's w b yates w b yeats yes william butler yeats Turning and turning in the widening gaia, the falcon cannot hear the falconer.

Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand.

Surely the second coming is at hand.

The second coming, hardly are those words out when a vast image out of spiritous mundi troubles my sight.

Somewhere in the sands of the desert, a shape with lion body and the head of a man, a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, is moving its slow thighs, while all about it reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again, but now I know that twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, and what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.

It's a great number, isn't it?

There are very modern applications for some of these lines, obviously, aren't they?

The cancel culture is

alluded to, which didn't even exist then.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

I'm always suspicious of the elevation of passion above all else.

How do you mean?

Why should I be share

You know, these people that have a passionate vision, you know, why should that impress me?

A sort of righteous conviction.

Passion itself, you know,

is that preferable to

cool rationality.

It's not cool rationality, is it, really?

You know, I could name you a few passionate people that fucked up the world at one time or another.

No war was ever started by anybody who couldn't give a fuck one way or the other.

That was written after the First World War.

That's right, yeah, yeah.

When he felt that, well, I guess everyone must have felt that things were coming to an end.

Well, that modernity itself was under question.

Yeah.

Any rational person that would enter their head at that time, wouldn't it?

1919,

it was written.

And that was even before things were about to get worse.

Yeah.

And they would be plunged into the Second World War and then unimaginable horrors in there.

And it's been downhill ever since.

War, it has its downsides.

Oh, man.

It's too violent for a start.

You wrote a poem called

Doomed.

Oh, yeah, right.

I'm glad you picked that one out.

Yeah, that's a that is sort of uh tangentially related.

Yeah, yeah, tangentially related.

Yeah, doomed.

Well, again, I'm inhabiting.

This is a great example of me inhabiting

the mind

of somebody other than myself.

You know, I'm not one of the worried will.

I'm more worried, sick.

I should have called it that, actually, random doomed.

I thought of that the other day.

I should have called this worried, sick.

Here it is, doomed.

In long pants, I feel overstyled.

I look at a dog, I see a blind child.

I look at a car, I see a planet defiled, where the summer time is a burning hell, in the wound-up, webbed-up whereabouts, where the worried well dwell do tell.

We dwell on whether stress could lead to suicidal thoughts.

We dwell on the blatant judgmentalism that still persists in the courts.

Everybody I know agrees with me.

The worried well are worried.

Well, we would be, wouldn't we?

Sugar-free sugar, that's up my street.

The real stuff is just too sweet.

And do we really need to eat the poisons that they sell from this tainted and ungrateful soil where the worried well dwell?

We dwell on that long litigious procession about to bill us all.

We dwell on the so-called medical profession who are trying to kill us all.

Everybody I know agrees with me.

The worried well are worried, well we would be, wouldn't we?

I'll show you Skid row in a can of beer, and a future that holds only doubt and fear with any luck we'll be dead next year before the boiling oceans swell.

This is the grim consensus where the worried well dwell.

We dwell upon the problems caused by living for so long.

We like to put things right before they're wrong.

Everybody I know agrees with me.

The worried well are worried well we would be, wouldn't we?

Storms of protest, floods of tears, a tidal wave of social engineers for years and years and years and years ye gods and bloody hell poetry falls on deafened ears where the worried well dwell

before i ask you to read time gentlemen time

how do you feel time is treating you well it's been kinder than i ever expected actually although i can't who can imagine being dead

you know i can't imagine it's ever going to happen to me but you know the years are rolling on,

and mortality dogs my every other thought.

But I tell you this:

up front, anybody shows up to my funeral expecting to celebrate my life can fuck the fuck right the fuck off.

If I see it from the heavens, anybody smiling at my funeral, they were never my friend.

I want wall-to-wall teardrops.

Five miles of weeping women, the rending of the garments and the gnashing of the teeth.

Why him?

So young.

What song do you want?

It was only 89.

What song are you having?

Oh, that's a good question.

Peace in the Valley, Elvis.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah,

how great thou art.

Peace in the Valley, I think, is more appropriate for a funeral.

But keep it solemn, I say.

The last serious funeral I went to, and I've said it before, I'll say it again, I could go to six funerals a week if I wanted at my age.

And I know a lot of people, they're all very ill.

But

no man can live on Volivants alone, Adam.

So we're looking for

time gentleman time.

Number nine.

Nature ain't your friend.

It's round the fucking bend.

It tries to show you constantly still you don't comprehend.

Time, gentlemen, time.

We'll wreck your neck and rip your hip, break your face and split your lip, give your spinal column jip, help you lose your tenuous grip on time, gentlemen, time.

Time, gentlemen, time will turn your clara into alligator wine, put the state of your health on a deadline, make the seat of your trousers shine, time, gentlemen, time.

Time, gentlemen, time will fade your gaze when you go online, will fade you out on the public dime.

When it's time, gentlemen, time.

Time, gentlemen, time will tell you, nature ain't your friend.

Nature made a mess.

Nature tries to kill you from day one with increasing degrees of success.

I like a happy ending.

So you are editing it.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're great.

Don't make me look like a cum.

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Continue.

Mother Nature ain't your friend.

She'll lend a hand to your very end.

You're not safe.

Why pretend?

You need insurance.

Hey, how are you doing, podcasts?

That was John Cooper Clark.

Sorry, Dr.

John Cooper Clark.

And I am extremely grateful to him for his time.

And once again, I would like to thank Tom Donovan, whose studio we were recording in.

Thanks very much indeed for your help that day, Tom.

And I don't know, did you find a cap?

I left one of my green docker caps there.

It was one of the good ones.

If you still have it, give me a a shout, Tom.

There's a few links in the description of today's podcast to some other bits and pieces you might find interesting.

John's website where you can see his tour dates and five copies of his poetry collections.

As I said, his latest is called What?

There's a really good documentary about John that was made in 2012, evidently John Cooper Clark.

There's that appearance on Desert Island Discs in 2019.

A few performances, including a performance of one of my favorite John Cooper Clark tracks, Reader's Wives.

That's from his first album I think with Martin Hannett, although I noticed that it's not acknowledged as a Martin Hannett production because the sound was very different to where Martin Hannett ended up.

It's credited to Martin Zero as producer.

I think I'm right in saying.

Anyway, I really like that track, Reader's Wives.

Make a date with the brassy brides of Britain.

And they did a good performance of that with Martin Hannett and the Invisible Girls on the Old Grey Whistle Test in 1978.

There's a link to that.

And a few other bits and pieces.

What's in my bag at Amoeba Records with John?

There's Arctic Monkeys playing I Want to Be Yours live.

There's the Sugar Puffs ad.

There's a really good Mavis Nicholson Afternoon Plus interview in 1979.

I really recommend that one.

And there's a link to the Reasons to Be Cheerful website to get an additional perspective on some of the things going on in the world today.

And there's a link to my website where you can see John resplendent in his herringbone tweed and giant paperboy cap.

Okay,

that's it for this week.

Thank you very much indeed once again to Dr.

John Cooper Clark.

Thanks to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his production support and conversation editing.

Thanks to Helen Green, she does the artwork for the podcast.

Thanks to all at ACAST, and thanks very much indeed to you.

I really appreciate you coming back.

I've just been rained on, so it's going to be a slightly damp hug.

But I do think it's important that we keep on hugging.

Come on.

Hey,

how are you doing?

All right,

till next time.

Take care.

I love you.

Bye.

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