John Cooper Clarke

The soundtrack of your life often reflects the time when you were a teenager, when everything sears into the memory, embeds itself deep in the psyche and remains with you. Come my old age, my nursing home will have a very different soundtrack to the Hits of the Blitz that the grandparents favoured. For me it will be The Clash, The Slits, The Sex Pistols, The Ramones, Blondie, Siouxsie and the Banshees and of course, The Saints. Interspersed with the most unlikely offerings that came with the show more disco era. What can I say, the 70's and 80's were a weird, weird, gloriously outrageous, wonderfully fun, utterly ridiculous era.

In the middle of all that music there is, and has always been, the sound of John Cooper Clarke, whose rapid fire delivery of pointed, observational lines of simple gloriousness instilled in me a love of edgy performance poets. I do, however, credit 8 Out of Ten Cats Does Countdown with a renewed interest in Clarke's work, his performances on my favourite gameshow an instant audio reminder of the times of my youth. (Health Fanatic - look it up, the final stanza has always been in my head ...).

I WANNA BE YOURS is a memoir, covering his extraordinary life, from childhood through to parenthood, with people from his own family (so close to being a Beatles tribute group), to the time that 2-fifths of the Velvet Underground were living under his roof. There's the story behind the fashion, the stories behind the music, and the hard living, sex and drugs and rock'n'roll lifestyle, although to be honest the sex seemed somewhat less than the other two in this case.

Listening to this as an audio book was an excellent choice on my part, Clarke has the sort of voice stylings that are mandatory for the story of his own life. There's so much downplay and side cracking, and an audible honesty to the mistakes, the byways and the bad (and good) decisions he made. He's made lifelong friends, he's garnered legions of fans and he's made one hell of a life for himself, and I absolutely loved listening to I WANNA BE YOURS.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/i-wanna-be-yours-john-cooper-clarke show less

Somewhat disappointing, I'm afraid. Would certainly be better as an audiobook, or better yet a live performance, however, on the page, the Bard of Salford failed to maintain interest. There were a couple of verbal flourishes which hit the mark, but also, if I'm not mistaken, there was a whiff of both homophobia ("Your Metrosexual Ex") and transphobia ("Crossing the Floor"). I'd hope to be mistaken about Clarke's intent in those poems, but the others didn't take away the bad taste of those two.

I'm a late comer to the work of John Cooper Clarke, first becoming acquainted with him on the radio 6 music show he has a weekly feature on. In this collection of 2018 there are a variety of poems in his inimitable style. I listened to this, as read by the author and it was an engaging way to spend a commute home. And short enough that I finished it in one journey.
Some of the ideas in here are fabulously inventive, The Hanging Gardens of Basildon and Trouble in't Mall being two that tickled show more my funny bone. But the one that made me laugh out loud was the last of the collection of 6 haiku in no particular order.
Some of the repetition gets a bit tedious when listening to the collection in one go, you don't notice it so much when it it just a single piece. the inventive rhyming and rhythm of the text is certainly worth listening to by the author - I know some of the words wouldn't rhyme if I said them in my distinctly non-Salfordian accent! show less

This is a great memoir, full of the atmosphere of Manchester and obviously written with an excellent ear for comedy. It's non stop entertainment, and played for laughs all the way through, along with a healthy amount of name dropping. I especially enjoyed the chapter about John Cale having his pillows stolen. It's very easy to imagine the whole book being narrated by John Cooper Clarke and I bet the audio book is excellent.