This week’s lead feature dives into the formative years of John Cooper Clarke, tracing how a noisy, post-war city of factories, bookies and back streets helped shape one of Britain’s most distinctive poetic voices. From Higher Broughton to global stages, it’s a story of grit, chaos and creative spark.
Elsewhere, we round up the week across the city as a poignant new appeal for information was issued by the families of two teenage girls killed in a deliberate house fire, candidates for a local council by-election were released, and a Salford dad who feared his life was over after an epilepsy diagnosis called for greater awareness about the condition.
John Cooper Clarke on industry, identity and inspiration in Salford’s past
Post-war Salford was turbulent, gritty and loud. Yet it’s that same place, where the future ‘Bard’ of Salford first discovered his talent, and found so much of his inspiration for poetry.
“That hyper-industrialised landscape was really our manor”, says Dr John Cooper Clarke, when remembering early memories of his home city.
Cooper Clarke was born in Higher Broughton in 1949. A revered poet and comedian, he played a major role in the punk and post-punk scenes of the 70s and 80s and continues to write and tour today. His poem ‘I Wanna Be Yours’ was famously adapted into a hit song by Sheffield band, The Arctic Monkeys, which currently sits with 3.68 billion streams worldwide.
His work featured in the landmark gangster drama The Sopranos, where his poem Evidently Chickentown underscored rising tension in the show, gaining cult status and introducing the poet to new audiences worldwide.
He has won awards like ‘The Freedom of the City of Salford’ and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Salford in 2013. Salford Mayor Paul Dennett has praised his “unique pin-sharp literary talent” alongside several others who hail him as an icon not just in Salford but throughout the country.
Looking back on his success – playing bills alongside bands like the Sex Pistols, Joy Division, The Happy Mondays and The Fall – Cooper Clarke expresses pride in his “rags to riches story.”
That story began growing up in a humble apartment above a pharmacy in a “dilapidated regency block.” It was “like something from the Addams family” or the sort where you wouldn’t be surprised to see “Gargoyles on the stairs.”
Salford, at the time, was in a transition away from the heavy-industrial chimneys which were blazoned across the skyline. Some were demolished, yet some, commonly at the time, were abandoned. “Kids didn’t really like the countryside back then”, he said, “We liked messing around in disused factories.”
The sound of the city never really stopped in his childhood home, which sat close to the busy crossroads between Great Cheetham Street and Bury New Road. “My Dad couldn’t sleep if he went to the countryside… he couldn’t sleep without the constant hum of traffic.”
Cooper Clarke’s first job in Salford and his first experience in the “miseries of redundancy” came as a bookies runner at the age of 12. In a time before betting was legalised nationwide, he was making great money for his age: “I was pissing pure gold - unbelievable money for a 12-year-old.” But this did not last long – “Thank you very much Harold Macmillan and your government. They legalised off-track betting,” he remarked. “No twelve-year-old should’ve had the money I had then.”
Horse-racing culture was a major part of Salford’s identity: “The first thing I think of when I think of Salford would be the horse racing, funnily enough.”
Cooper Clarke’s youth life was inevitably moulded by subcultures: “Me and my friends were all ‘muds’ in leather jackets. It was Greaser City.”
“We were always under the cosh… always avoiding getting pasted.”
Yet it’s this era of change and instability alongside a strong, tethered community which heavily influenced some of his most renowned pieces.
“There was this frisson between the faded grandeur of the place where I lived and the poverty of the general neighbourhood.”
Despite the “chaos” of the city, Cooper Clarke is undeniably proud of the place he grew up: “I’d be much more ashamed coming from a posh area than coming from Salford.”
Some of his most respected pieces, like Beasley Street, were written directly about Salford’s cobbles. His famous poem, which talks of the drink culture and concentrated poverty, was based on Camp Street, located between Higher and Lower Broughton.
He explained that whilst he used Salford as an inspiration, he wrote it for everybody: “I tried to make it international… everywhere has streets like that.”
Cooper Clarke believes the city’s cultural influence is often overlooked: “It’s punched above its weight really.” He cited some of his favourite notable figures across the landscape, such as Albert Finney, Sheila Delaney and Mike Leigh. He described the Rialto Cinema in Salford as a major inspiration, “Mike Leigh called it his ‘cinema school’”, he explained.
Although Cooper Clarke was amongst the changing landscape, surrounded by constant inspiration and changing tides, he was inspired to create poetry by a teacher at St Andrews RC Secondary Modern, Mr Malone. Although he only taught for a brief period of time, Clarke praised Malone’s ability to make poetry accessible and unpretentious: “Some of the tough guys you wouldn’t imagine liking poetry, he made them have it.”
“That’s when it all started, when I was thirteen… I quickly found I had the knack for it.”
Many voices cite John Cooper Clarke as one of the major figures in bringing poetry back to the working class – Langworthy-born Christopher Eccleston said that Cooper Clarke“changed his life” while Cllr John Warmisham said: "He brought poetry back to the working classes.” 70 years ago, however, it was unrealistic to believe one could make a living from writing poetry: even his dad said, as Clarke described, “You know, you’re never going to make any money out of that.”
But there’s something strange about Salford in that it seems to create some of the most important art worldwide again and again. Perhaps Salford is a poetic place, or perhaps, it’s just brutally confident.
John Cooper Clarke undoubtedly deserves to sit amongst his fellow Salford greats. John Warmisham described ‘Beasley Street’ as “A Lowry painting in words.”
And although Salford was only crowned a city 100 years ago, for many (including Cooper Clarke himself) it has had the prestige of a city for much longer: “Honestly, this is a school day for me… I had no idea it was such a young city… I would’ve said it was a city for centuries.”
In the words of Dr John Cooper Clarke, regarding Salford’s future: “The only way is up. It’s got a higher profile than it ever had.”
Top news of the week
Salford father who feared “life was over” after epilepsy diagnosis urges greater awareness
A man from Salford who thought his “life was over” after realising he had epilepsy says more needs to be done to challenge misconceptions about the hidden condition.
His call for greater understanding of epilepsy came on Purple Day on 26 March, an international day where people raise awareness of the condition. Read more here.
New appeal two decades on from Salford house fire that ‘broke’ two families
Police and the families of two teenage girls killed in a deliberate house fire in Salford have issued a poignant plea for information, two decades after their deaths left the community in shock.
Rhona Schofield and Vikki Preston, both 19, died on May 10 2005 after an intruder entered a terraced house on King Street in Higher Broughton. Once inside, the killer lit two fires in foam-filled furniture, creating an inferno that reached 1000°C within 20 minutes. Read more here.
Salford commuters urged to “plan ahead” as key tram line closes for upgrades
Commuters in Salford have been urged to plan their journeys ahead as key tram routes are set to close for essential upgrade work.
Services on the Eccles line will be suspended from Friday 3 April to Monday 6 April while workers replace more than 1km of track and prepare sections of the network for further track improvements in the future. Read more here.
Man accused in Malkinson miscarriage of justice case cannot explain DNA find
A man who denies a brutal rape in Salford for which an innocent man spent 17 years in jail has told a jury he does not know how his DNA got on the victim’s clothes.
Paul Quinn, 51, agreed it was his DNA on the woman’s vest top, which was only recovered years later after police were able to re-test a sample using better techniques, which came back as a billion-to-one match of his DNA profile. Read more here.
Full candidate list revealed for upcoming Salford council by-election
A full list of candidates standing in an upcoming Salford council by-election has been revealed.
Voters will head to the polls in the Barton and Winton ward on Wednesday, 22 April, to cast their votes for one of six candidates vying for a seat on the authority. Read more here.
Award-winning artisan market to set up shop in Eccles town centre
Eccles residents will be able to visit a pop-up artisan market setting up shop in the town centre on Sunday.
For one day only, 50 independent traders from across Salford and beyond will bring their stalls to Church Street as part of a long-awaited festival featuring performances, installations and live music in venues and public spaces across the town centre. Read more here.
What’s on in Salford this week
🎉 The eagerly awaited Get In! To Eccles festival takes over Eccles town centre this weekend, bringing two days of live music, art, performances, workshops, markets and installations into venues, streets and outdoor spaces across the area. Find out more here.
🚆 Salford commuters may have spotted something unusual on their journeys this week, as Lowri Evans’ live art installation ‘Train Dreaming’ transforms Eccles station. From slow-motion dancers with colourful umbrellas to an Elvis impersonator serenading passers-by. The installation runs each morning until the festival closes on 29 March.
🎻 Local organist Lizzie Bell will kick off Saturday’s programme with performances at St Mary’s Parish Church at 11:30am and 2pm, alongside sets from string trio Amba Strings at 12:30pm and 1:30pm, bringing live music into the heart of the town centre.
🎭 Sunday’s celebration starts at Eccles Town Hall Ballroom with the BBC Philharmonic presenting a CBeebies Musical Story of the Gingerbread Man at 10:15am and 11:15am, billed as a fun, interactive performance for families.
🛍️ Visitors can also explore a pop-up artisan market in Eccles town centre on Sunday, featuring a range of local traders and independent stalls.
🦖 Meanwhile, on Saturday at The Lowry Theatre, the National History Museum will bring a 60-minute theatre show packed with life-like dinosaur puppets, including the ferocious T. rex and stomping Triceratops.
Photo of the week
Renowned Salford artist Laurence Stephen Lowry led a costume drawing class at Salford Royal Technical College’s School of Art in 1928.
He regularly attended the art school from 1915 to 1925, studying there part-time in the evenings three days a week while working full-time as a rent collector for the Pall Mall Property Company.
Born into a fairly middle-class family from Stretford on November 1 1887. His mother, Elizabeth, was a talented pianist, and his father, Robert, worked in an estate agent’s office.
Due to the financial difficulties, the family moved to Pendlebury in 1909; it was against that backdrop of that gritty, working-class suburb of the city that Lowry developed his distinctive style.
He illustrated the Salford scenes around him through pencil sketches or through paintings in his five signature colours: vermilion, ivory black, Prussian blue, yellow ochre and flake white. His artworks regularly featured his iconic “matchstick men”, which are minuscule, stick-thin men, women and children often dressed in their long winter clothes and round hats.
While Lowry’s paintings regularly go under the hammer for millions at auction, he sold his first artwork, called ‘The Lodging House’, for £5.
Here, within the humble surroundings of a Salford Royal Technical College workshop, students had the chance to pick the mind of an artist now immortalised as one of Britain’s most iconic painters.
Thank you for reading
All our journalism is written by people working, studying and living in Salford – for the people of Salford. If you value local journalism, sign up: it’s free, easy, and we’ll never share your data.
