Track of the Week: John Cooper Clarke: Beasley Street (1980)

These days, it seems that John Cooper Clarke was very much ahead of the curve. Tiring of dead-end jobs, he started writing and performing poetry in Manchester clubs in the mid 70s. As the preliminary tremors of punk rock began to make themselves felt, he found his lurid tales of everyday working class life and his fast, speed-fuelled delivery put him aesthetically in line with the emerging movement, and he became the original punk poet. Signing to a major label and teaming up with Manchester's resident genius producer/eccentric lunatic Martin Hannett, he started his recording career. Hannett got together a line up of post punk star guest musicians, including guitarists Pete Shelley from the Buzzcocks and Vini Reilly from the Durutti Column, and drummer Karl Burns from the Fall to form a backing group and play music written by Hannett to accompany Clarke's poems. The end result predated and inspired the Arctic Monkeys, for one, who have taken Clarke's subject matter and heavily accented, more-spoken-or-ranted-then-sung delivery but have failed to match his charm or striking lyricism.
'Beasley Street', from his classic 'Snap, Crackle & Bop' album, is perhaps John Cooper Clarke's most impressive piece, an epic tale of the life of poverty and squalor led on the titular street, infused with his trademark black humour yet oddly moving. In scope and impact, it is similar to Bob Dylan's 'Desolation Row'. For the residents, trying to survive in a harsh dog eat dog environment outside the law, 'Sleep is a luxury they don't need - A sneak preview of death.' Poverty is so rife that 'The rats have all got rickets / They spit through broken teeth'. The oppressive and sickly atmosphere is accentuated by the image of 'A light bulb bursts like a blister / The only form of heat'. The whole song is chock full of such memorable and vivid lines, including a scathing attack on a hipster parading about in 'Yellow socks and a pink cravat - nothing la-di-dah'. But my favourite couplet is

'People turn to poison quick as lager turns to piss
Sweathearts are physically sick every time they kiss'

Here Clarke is lamenting an environment in which it's impossible for love or happiness to thrive due to the extreme conditions that these people live in. In sentiment it's similar to the Arctic Monkeys' 'A Certain Romance', in which they lament the lack of just that, but where Alex Turner (chief Monkey) sees them as pig-headedly set in their ways ('We'll tell em if you like.. They'll never listen cause their minds are made up'), Clarke sees them as a product of their social environment, betrayed by their government ('Keith Joseph [Thatcherite Tory minister] smiles and a baby dies / In a box on Beasley Street') and left to fend for themselves. Ultimately, John Cooper Clarke empathises with their position, whilst Alex Turner appears not to care about anyone outside his circle of friends, who he views as somehow different, nor to care about the politics behind the situation.
Hannett's music backs Clarke's Salford-tinged delivery all the way, rising from a subdued beginning to a thundering climax whilst avoiding punk rock cliche, and all the guest musicians turn in excellent performances, but there is no doubt that John Cooper Clarke is the star of the show here, and quite rightly so. It is only recently that John Cooper Clarke has started to be given the recognition he deserves as both an engaging performer and a creative force to be reckoned with. Witty and literate yet grounded in reality, confrontational yet good humoured, would that there were more like him.