Originally Posted by
57vintage
You don’t need to go to Manchester to dig John Cooper Clarke’s biog I Wanna Be Yours though. Audiobook, with the boy himself reading it, is very highly regarded.
“I didn’t want the 15+ hours of this to end, and had I the time, I’d listen to it again right away. The bits of the book I’d previously dipped into were superbly written, but hearing the Bargain Basement Baudelaire read his own life story lifts it to another level altogether. Toppermost of the poppermost.
All human life is here, an authentically-informed whistle-stop tour of western culture and Clarke’s engagement with it for 60-odd years. In the section where he describes his 1965 life, taking in the YCL, a near-addiction to Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Jimmy Reed, Buddy Guy, Elmore James and Sugar Pie de Santo, I thought he was quoting from my imaginary diaries of a decade later.
It’s an unimpeachable talent who can honestly describe his narcotics habit, come out of it alive and triumphant, whilst finding humour in its squalid pathos.
Thanks to the local Library, still sentient despite the unremitting attacks by Gradgrindian opponents of literacy, (JCC is a stout defender of this basic educational right) ✊🏼 for lending me this.
Luxury. Pure, unashamed luxury…”