A life of rhyme
Clarke talks about his love of Alex Turner & Co., Hanging out with Mark E Smith and explains why an early Irish tour ended in a visit to a convent.
Roisin Dwyer, 25 Jul 2008
Phil: “That cocksuckin’ piece of shit Tony Soprano’s cousin – I can’t even say his name. Murdered Billie. And what did I do about it? My weakness. Sometimes I think it’s in my DNA. My family took shit from the Madigan’s the minute we got off the boat.”
Butchie: “C’mon – what the fuck you talking about?”
Phil: “Leotardo! That’s my fuckin legacy. No more Butchie. No more a dis…”
Cue John Cooper Clarke’s ‘Evidently Chickentown’, playing over the closing sequence of Episode 79 of the The Sopranos, his musings on a vapid inconsequential existence in a crime-ridden working-class northern town providing a perfect parallel for the moral emptiness, claustrophobia and corruption of mob life.
Legend has it Sopranos creator David Chase only heard the song once before, while cleaning his garage in 1983, but made a mental note to use it in a show in the future.
The Bard Of Salford is currently enjoying a renaissance of sorts. Thirty years after he established himself as the bona fide punk poet, supporting The Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Fall, there has been a resurgence of interest in his work. He featured in Anton Corbijn’s Control and Julien Temple’s The Future Is Unwritten, has worked with Arctic Monkey Alex Turner and the Reverand Jon McClure, and is regularly namechecked by Lily Allen, Kate Nash and a host of other young artists.
“I know! What’s it all about? Why me?” he laughs over dinner before one of his recent Dublin shows.
All the Cooper Clarke elements are evident – anecdotes aplenty, razor-sharp wit, a rib tickling yarn for every occasion, self-deprecating manner and the dulcet laconic Mancunian drawl.
In addition to his work with current chart-toppers, he always makes time for old punk pals, guesting recently with Mick Jones’ Carbon/Silicon on some London dates.
“Jonesy was running some gigs at The Screen On The Green in Notting Hill,” he explains. “The last one was a Sopranos-themed evening. The Alabama 3 were doing a gig that night at The Academy and Zoe and Larry Love came and did the finale. It was the week after ‘Chickentown’ had been on The Sopranos. We were all up there for ‘Woke Up This Morning’: Pete Wylie, James Dean Bradfield, that guy out of Hard-Fi, Richard Archer, lots of star celebos, you know what I mean.”
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