“Without a doubt, it was punk that changed my life,” reckons punk’s very own poet laureate, John Cooper Clarke. “Admittedly, I was writing poetry before it all happened, but then I heard those early songs by the Pistols, the Clash and Squeeze... even the colloquial language of ordinary kids from Queens on the Ramones’ first album. It opened the door to a completely new style. I could deliver my poems at 1,000 miles per hour!”
The Sex Pistols arrived at Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall in June 1976 to play what is regarded as one of the most important gigs in the history of British music. Hanging around in the small crowd of about 40 people were half of the Buzzcocks, most of Joy Division, Morrissey, Mark E. Smith, Mick Hucknall and a mid-20s lab technician from Salford Tech, John Cooper Clarke.
