After selling out Leeds Town Hall last time the Punk Poet was in the city, John Cooper Clarke is returning with a special, intimate show in 2016.
Punk music and poetry are perhaps not the bedfellows you might expect, but one man managed to fuse the two like no other to become a counter culture icon. That man, is John Cooper Clarke, and the impeccably coiffured Mancunian is coming to Leeds for an intimate show in February 2016.
He’ll take over Leeds City Varieties for an evening that promises to show off some of the highlights of the career of the Bard of Salford, as he’s become affectionately known.
After being involved in a number of bands and projects at the dawn of the punk movement, John Cooper Clarke broke out as a spoken word artist in 1977, releasing his first collection of work a year later, as ‘Ou Est La Maison de Fromage?’
Since then, he’s become an integral and huge influential figure within music, with poems like ‘Beasley Street’, ‘Evidently Chickentown’ and ‘Out of Control Fairground’, while the collection of his poetry, ’10 Years in an Open Necked Shirt’ has become a part of the National Curriculum.
In recent years, his work has been opened up to a wider audience – which you might spot at Leeds City Varieties – thanks to Arctic Monkeys’ rendition of ‘I Wanna Be Yours’, as one of the highlights of their 2013 record ‘AM’.
His career of nearly 40 years continues to this day, in his own inimitable way. Considering last time he was in the city he sold out the cavernous Leeds Town Hall, a chance to see John Cooper Clarke in the intimate surroundings of Leeds City Varieties really shouldn’t be missed.
John Cooper Clarke plays Leeds City Varieties on Friday 5th February 2016. Tickets are available.
