John Cooper Clarke on Johnny Green, road manager of The Clash

0:00Today's guest has one of the most distinctive voices in the UK today. John Cooper Clark, punk poet and bard of Salford, welcome to Great Lives. Whom are you nominating? Thank you very much, Matthew. I'm nominating Johnny Green. He lived nine lives in one. Many of them I don't know anything about, but I have been running into Johnny for 40 years or so before we even were a double act. I used to see him in the late 70s when he was looking after The Clash. they were on the road, I was on the road going to different cities and we'd meet up in sort of service areas and that would have been 1979-ish as I say our meetings were very fleeting that's the last rhyme you're getting out of me I'm told you brought something relevant with you but I haven't been told what, what is it?

0:56Well I was recently in Nashville and then took a trip to Elvis' house Graceland and Johnny and I had a mutual love of Elvis spoke about him every day for some reason or other you know What have you just got out of that tissue paper? A pair of socks from Graceland He was a great sock guy He was one for the statement hosiery Yes they're very striking these socks People have brought all kinds of things to this programme but no one has ever brought a pair of socks before TCB it says There's a streak of yellow lightning on a black background. TCB stands for taking care of business, which is what Johnny always did.

1:40It was never more apt. Was it his phrase? No, it was Elvis's phrase. You didn't just know Johnny. You didn't just bump into him from time to time. You worked with him, didn't you? Oh, yeah, he became my gentleman travelling companion was the official title. These are not sound effects, incidentally. We really are wrestling the socks. No, no, no, no. The listeners are going to enjoy this. Yes, you were saying. Yes, he became... The job description was gentleman travelling companion. We never signed any contracts or anything like this. We started seeing more of each other, really, on the literary circuit, because Johnny was also...

2:19After The Clash, he reinvented himself as a gifted scribbler. Anybody that's interested in The Clash, and there are many people who are, you know, the go-to book without question is A Riot of Our Own. Johnny Green, born John Broad in Chatham in 1949, was the road or perhaps tour manager of The Clash. His tasks initially included driving the van, booking hotels, dyeing Mick Jones's hair and taking care of business, as he used to say. Johnny was a raconteur, is that right? Absolutely. He also had a regular gig writing in a high-end cycling magazine called Ruler. He also appeared on radio stations like this one.

3:04Here he is in a programme called Off the Page, which I briefly presented many decades ago. I was on it. Yeah, talking and writing about being on the road. Here's Johnny. When I first went out on the road in 77 with punk rock terrors, The Clash, it was madly exciting beyond my considerable wildest dreams. An old hand, some bearded roadie, took me to one side and he gave me the sage advice. Be careful, Johnny. Just like going to sea, it'll get into your blood and it'll stay there for a lifetime. But even when I read Enie Blighton's stories, I like the bits where they went to strange islands off the Dorset coast and found treasure.

3:43That, you know, I mean, it's hardly wild, but I still thought, well, that's pretty good. And I hear from A Riot of Our Own, which he subtitled Night and Day with The Clash, is how it began. Perhaps you'd like to read it for us. Have you got it there or shall I hand it out to you? Yes, I do. No, no, it's... I've got to do it in his voice. It wouldn't make any sense otherwise. I was planning on going to the Middle East to explore the culture and make some money. Instead, I found myself in Belfast doing a bit of work for Clash manager Bernie Rhodes. Unpaid, of course. And I found myself loving it.

4:24Green had a degree in Arabic and Islamic studies and was actually older than the rest of the band. The Times obituary says he offered to help Bernie Rhodes, the manager, in return for getting a lift to Belfast, where he was given three boxes of Clash lapels to hand out, and this sparked a riot that caused the whole gig to be cancelled. Was it as chaotic when you were touring? Back in the days of Punt, yeah, all bets were off, absolutely, yeah. But, you know, he loved trouble. He was very fond of when it went off. Every time I look into a mirror, I hear his voice going, Hello, gorgeous! Which would happen every time he caught me in front of a mirror.

5:07I'm a very vain man, so it happened a lot. Did he want to be a celebrity in his own right? No way, no, not at all. No, he was adamant about being a backroom guy. You know, you'd have to bribe him to be in a wedding photograph. But he was one of the greatest road managers. He carried a big leather bag with anything you could possibly need in it. Spanners, cigarettes. And if you can hear, listeners, people laughing in the background, well, hooray. Also here are Johnny's daughters, Polly and Ruby Broad, two of his five children. First question I want to ask, what were family holidays like, Polly?

5:47Every summer we'd pack up and drive all the way down to the south of France and stay for weeks on end. We'd never have anything booked. We would just pack up the car, normally the morning after school broke up, and then you'd basically just drive until it was hot enough or someone spotted the sea, just found a nice place to put the tent. and then if it rained you'd just pick up the tent and move somewhere else. He just did that for weeks. Sort of anarchy about it. Yeah, but kind of nicely spontaneous, I guess. Did you mind, as his children, children are often one to a more structured organisation from their parents.

6:19It wasn't structure art. We used to beg to be able to stay in hotels and he'd say, no, we only wanted to camp in a tent. He could afford to stay in a hotel, he just loved to camp. So I think we were like, oh, we're really slumming it. And then he was like, no, I just love being under canvas. Was he a good father? Yeah, he was a really loving father and, like, very attentive. He'd been basically like a stay-at-home dad for our childhood because he'd had a big lull between jobs and careers. His life hadn't followed this very linear route. I think he really enjoyed that bit of his life. As you say, his life had lots of different phases, and that bit where he was kind of the suburban stay-at-home dad, he really enjoyed until probably our late teens when he started working with John again.

6:59John, do you recognise this description? Oh, absolutely, yeah. He was a very charming man. Good with kids. He had so many of them. And grandkids. So much practice. He was a dynastic producer of children. Family was important to him. Very real family guy, same as me. I thought that. I think to both of you, really, I think you sometimes maybe seem to people as these, like, punk, travelling, cool people at the road, but actually you're really both just family guys who like to get home to your wife and kids. That's absolutely just as much. We were different people out on the road, you know, irritable at some times and, you know, out in public.

7:39No, he was a very charming person. Here he is again on a clip pirated by his son Earl from an interview he gave his friend Craig Avery. I was born in the Medway Towns, yeah, All Saints Hospital, Chatham, yeah, but I grew up in Twiddle Estate, a brand-new house. My mum was so pleased. The other side of the street were old houses, 1930s houses. So my mum thought ours were better because it had an indoor bathroom. And your love of music, when did that kick in? Well, it was always there, really. I blame my dad on this. And it turned out my dad had been a musician, but he didn't tell me that for quite a few years.

8:16And he came home one day with a copy of Rock Round the Clock, Bill Haley. I must have been six. Even though I was a kid, really little kid, I got it straight away. I've read that he followed the hippie trail into a collective, worked in various mills, had two daughters with his first wife, Rachenda, and loved the music of Abba. Can anyone confirm any of this? Oh, yeah, he loved Abba. Biggest Abba fan. One of his most treasured possessions is a signed photo of Abba that we used to have on our wall. Did he talk much, Ruby, about his time with The Clash? He never really talked about The Clash when we were growing up.

8:53I think he just lived very in the present. He had too many interests and new things that excited him, that he wasn't a terribly nostalgic person. When we were little, he talked about cycling. And then when we were a bit older, he talked about working with John. So I think he was just really involved in what he was doing at that moment. He didn't spend a lot of time kind of looking back. What we know from his own book, A Riot of Our Own, is that he'd been running a club in Lancaster and he'd booked the Sex Pistols and The Clash to play at the university, which the student union, bizarrely, cancelled.

9:27And he was so determined to see The Clash that, after several false starts, he'd gone to Belfast, ended up in Dublin, and that's where he'd been asked to help out. Sounds right to me, yeah. At this point, we're going to bring in Chris Salovich, a former guest on this series on Joe Strummer. The producer spoke to him about Johnny's time with The Clash. The band really liked Johnny Green. He had a great sense of humour. And he was also highly intelligent. And that's a point that's worth understanding about The Clash. These guys are all really bright. And in fact, he's the only tour manager I've known of who had a degree in Arabic.

10:08What does he look like? Tall, he's about six foot two, thin, stylish, sharp, quiff, tight trousers. In fact, it's interesting that his look, when I first met him, I was 78. But his look is kind of what the clashes became when they made London Calling, when they had their kind of teddy boy look as well. And, of course, the green glasses, which is where he gets his name. His real name is John Broad. So we drove on down to Trinity College in Dublin. Guy said to me, what are you doing? I said, not a lot, just waiting to see the show. And he said, can you work a follow spot? I went, of course I can.

10:44I'd never touched one in my life. He said, the guy in the middle is called Joe Strummer. I said, I know. He said, just follow him with his follow spot. And that day, I'd never seen a band that good. Never. Johnny Green starts off in charge of a spotlight at their Dublin show. And it's interesting that I perceive him as definitely being a tour manager, not a road manager, which is really a bloke who humps equipment. And Johnny Green would do a bit of humping of equipment. And for example, when the Clash did their London club, calling video in Battersea Park. He humped it into the Thames because he didn't want to take it home.

11:23But he also had more of a senior management role. He would look after them, he'd go and pick Mick Jones up every day, he would involve himself in crises, with which there were many, and he would be a shoulder to cry on as well. His first book actually ends with him leaving The Clash, and here's what he wrote. For the first time, I was having doubts about why I was involved in all of this. I still liked the music. Live, the clash were magnificent. Every night, about halfway through a gig, I'd lean against the mixing desk, light a Rothmans and have a slug of brandy. This was the moment I'd fight to reach every day.

12:04But then he goes on to say that the balance was wrong. He says this, I had a vision of myself as a wizened rheumatic retainer, bowing to pampered, isolated, once-great recluses. He paints a vivid picture of the future there, but it never happened. He retained his stylish demeanour even when he was working with me, especially when he was working with me, I think. He wore a suit every day, and I thought it was normal to wear a suit on a campsite on your summer holidays, because that's what he would do. Yeah, he wore a suit every day, and he went on holiday to Oman and wore a suit every day in the desert, which is kind of amazing.

12:42And he would dress down on a Monday. On purpose. On purpose, and then he would wear a suit on a Friday because he didn't work an office job. To prove that he didn't. Sorry to cut in. Thanks for reminding me of that. But Ruby, he sounds a bit sad at this point about leaving the Clash because he doesn't want to be a wizened, rheumatic retainer. Did you know that it became sad for him, that it became dull for him? Did he talk about things like that? Not really. I'm probably not a good person to know about The Clash Days because he didn't talk about it that much. Not really. Polly? No, but it sounds familiar that, like you said, if something got boring, he would just leave and he would move on to his next project or his next interest.

13:24He was never a person to be bored of life, so maybe his next project was cycling and he would become obsessed with it and it would be all he would think about and do. The music obviously mattered to him enormously, so let's hear from him again. A show called On The Road. Don't forget the music. The music's very important. The euphoria of the show every night. And you have this huge adrenaline rush with the audience every night. And you pull into a town, it's a big night for the people in that town. They've waited weeks for your combo to arrive there. And you do the show and they're great and they want to party and you want to sleep, as a matter of fact, quite often.

13:59And they're still luxuriating in the afterglow of that show when you're packing up and you're moving on, knowing that's going to happen again in a new town the next night. What happened after The Clash? I've read that he briefly worked for Stiff Records. He'd married again by now to Lindy, with whom he had one son, Earl. Earl's been very helpful with the research for this show, and he told us he'd gone to work in Texas for a country singer, Joe Ely. Yes, Joe Ely had been on tour with The Clash. It was what they called one of the outlaws. There were certain country acts, I'm sure you know, that are referred to as the outlaws as opposed to the more conservative Nashville performers and they kind of sound bad boy sort of country.

14:46But at some point in this... What an adventure. I don't know when, during this story that we're tracing, his name changed from broad to green. Do any of you know how that happened? I think that was during the clash days. It was. He was Johnny Green glasses because of his green glasses and that's where it came from. It was still John Broad at home. Oh, really? Yeah, he was... I didn't know that. He was Johnny Green if he was writing or if he was, like, on tour, kind of with his family. But that green glasses thing, I thought it was kind of bestowed upon him. I think so, yeah. When checking into a holiday inn.

15:22Yes, I'd heard that. I think the story is they didn't have a room for him. But they found someone called Green who hadn't turned up, so he said his name was Green and that's how he got the room. So maybe the glasses followed the name rather than the name followed the glasses. He had an earring, an ear stood, that was actually a pair of green-framed glasses. Someone who often saw him during this time is Topper Heeden, the drummer with The Clash. He talked to us before we went on air. When I joined the band, although the music was exciting, it was kind of an austere atmosphere around the group until Johnny joined and another guy called Robin Banks and all of a sudden the band became great fun to be in.

16:06But Johnny changed things. I miss him dreadfully. We used to speak every week, at least once a week, unless he was on the road with John Cooper Clark, because we had so much in common. The Clash bonded us. Kent, living in Kent, bonded us. Recovery bonded us. I mean, he was very helpful to me in my early recovery. I remember coming back one day and saying, Oh, John, I said, I've just seen everyone at the pub and they're all drinking pints with condensation. I'd murder a pint. And he went, whenever you ever had a pint, Topps? I thought, oh, yeah, exactly. I've never had one drink in my life. So he was kind of like a mentor, a friend.

16:51I got very close to his family, Holly and Ruby and Earl and Jeanette. He was mad as a hatter. There's a time I don't know much about Topper, which is after he left the clash and he comes back to the UK, he's married to Lindy. Yeah. And Lindy and their son, Dirk, die of some horrible form of meningitis. Yeah, it broke Johnny. You know, not surprisingly. Lindy was a lovely person. She used to come on tour with us with Johnny. Yeah, he lost one of his sons and his wife. So he then spent many years, I suppose, in the wilderness because of that. And that particular time in his life, we'd lost contact because I was in the world of addiction as well.

17:36I just got back in touch with John when I moved back down to Kent. You know, we used to talk about missing Joe. He was in touch with Mick and Paul as well. I don't know. We're a kind of family. You know, he's left because he was a larger than life character. He's left a large hole in our lives. Polly, Ruby, did he ever talk about this rather dark period in his life? Yeah, I think, as Topper says, it did break him. He and Earl moved back in with his parents and he just had to kind of rebuild his life really from there. Yeah, we used to talk about addiction a lot because, you know, we both had habits.

18:17Johnny always written that booze was his main thing. What was yours? Well, heroin. we all seemed to quit about the same time touch wood, thank God almighty but we used to, you know, if we were driving anywhere in London we would go past areas where we used to cop we had a routine that sort of would involve recounting the horrors of buying dope off people and that would kind of put us back into reality it was a kind of therapeutic but very funny way of doing it, you know. But he was a tough guy and a very intelligent man. I think he's the most intelligent person I've ever known, frankly. And then he went on to teach, and I'm struggling to imagine him.

19:08I can't imagine that either. And more than that, he taught religious education, which is mind-boggling. According to his friend and colleague, Aubrey Harris, he passed off his years with The Clash on his job application as organising social events for young people. Yeah, he'd be good at that. I think his classes were pretty lawless. I think they were like mini riots in themselves. It was RE and also sex education and, like, PSHE. So... PSHE? PSHE, so, like, sex education, drugs. He'd always bang on about this sex bus he'd drive around the county teaching people about sex education. So maybe that's how he tied it up with his former life.

19:52You're listening to The Great Life of Johnny Green, who's about to be reborn in yet another career, this time as a writer. His book about the clash we've heard about. His next was about the Tour de France. I love the Tour de France.

20:13It's a buzz. Each stage takes all day to build up, slowly gathering intensity, excitement ratcheting up, six hours of foreplay, if you like, until the peloton zips by in an instant, ejaculation is achieved. Ah, le Tour de France.

20:40The hysterical contagion of the mob makes every spectator a player, a participant, no crowd control like Glastonbury. You want to slap the riders on the back? Go right ahead. Try and race them up the hill? I've seen a bloke in a full-size gorilla suit take on the leaders, alongside a pantomime horse, two nuns and an officer of the Waffen-SS. Well, it can be a long day, with no catering or toilet facilities. As I said, it ain't Glasto. Although the best part of a million people can be stuck on Alpe d 'Huez, half of them Dutchman in patriotic orange, looking like refugees from Guantanamo.

21:23He writes a very good script. He does. He took his son on this trip and wrote it up in a book called Push Yourself a Little Bit More, backstage at the Tour de France. And he got backstage by forging a press pass. Legend has it that Joe Strummer was going too. Did he get you into cycling, John Cooper Clark? Remind me, had you two met by this stage? I knew that he'd covered the Tour de France for Rouleur magazine and I consider the hours I spend on the saddle of a bicycle to be golden. So, yes, we talked about the bike a lot. Did Joe Strummer go too? I can't remember that. He never went. I can't remember the story of why he didn't go, though.

22:06But he was meant to go and he didn't. I think that would have been a whole other book. Well, I went with him, was that where they had it in Yorkshire? Harrogate. Was it Harrogate, was it? Earl was there, your dad and Phil Jupitus. You put on a special show when the Tour de France was in England. You all appeared on stage in the theatre that evening to perform Impressions of the Day. Do you remember that? That was it, yeah, that's right. Here's Chris Salovitz again. Push yourself just a little bit more. His second book is named after a line from a song by Dr. Feelgood called Take a Tip. The very first line of it is, take a little tip from Mr.

22:43Johnny Green, keep your rear view mirror clean. And the last line, push yourself just a little bit more. And Joe Strummer had fronted him£5 ,000. It's about France and it's a travel book, really. Both of his books are kind of travel books. But he was bringing his son Earl with him and he's bringing a character who he just calls The Brief, who's a lawyer, a lawyer friend, and they were staying in hotels for three weeks, etc., with a hired car, so it can't have been too cheap. And so, anyway, Strummer would give him an additional£5 ,000 for expenses. So there's a riot of our own, and push yourself just a little bit more.

23:23And what Johnny Green is doing is he's making the comparisons between going on the road with a rock band and going on the road in the Tour de France as a cyclist. You know, the mechanics who are fixing the bikes every night, they have a role that's very similar to that of the roadies. And he's ecstatic about Mario Cipollini's hair, the Italian cyclist, and his look. He really understands what they're up to, really through his understanding of rock and roll groups. By now, John Cooper Clark, he was regularly working with you, but he was also getting up on stage himself to read extracts from his books, and play the genial compere.

24:05How would you describe his presence on the stage? Did he have stage presence? Absolutely he did, yeah. Yeah, I don't worry, he didn't practise them with the clash or anything. You know, like I say, he was a resolute backroom guy, but he did step in as the MC for the evening because, you know, we'd been doing large theatres for an evening of poetry in places like, well, the London Palladium, for one, you know, and as far as I know, I don't think that had happened before in a showbiz setting, you know. No, he's a good writer, isn't he? Oh, he's really good. But he used to introduce me by saying, ladies and gentlemen, scumbags, maggots, you know who you are.

24:46They say that poetry can warm the cockles of the heart. Well, I don't know about that. I'm not a medical bloke, but I know a man who is. Here he is, the Admiral of the Fleet, Dr John Cooper. So, you know, he was a natch. He was very, very good at it, you know. And, yeah, a very commanding presence, no doubt about it. He also had the loudest voice. Plus, yes, absolutely. He probably didn't need the microphone. He really did have the loudest voice in the world. At home as well as on stage. Oh, God, yeah. You could hear him from any room in the house. A shouty man. Yes, a shouty man. Three streets away.

25:22Like I say, we used to joke about, in the early days, how we had this... Have you seen that movie Performance? Where we had this kind of James Fox Mick Jagger thing going on whereby we were kind of turning into each other. He became me and I became... He started writing poetry and I started shouting and swearing at people. I think that's what he liked about working with you so much was that obviously he could drive people around and be a tour manager in that sense, but I think he really liked that creative side of working on bits with you or spitballing ideas in the car and he'd come home full of ideas, even when he wasn't on tour.

26:02Yeah, and then he'd ring me up. And then he'd ring you up all the time. Yeah, I've got another one. Yeah, whenever you weren't on tour, you were on the phone. Yeah, yeah. Polly, if he were in the room listening to us making a programme about him, would he be pleased? Oh, I think he would. I think... Sorry. Polly. I think he would. There were only... You know, he had his favourite Radio 4 programmes and this was among them, I think. Yeah, he liked shows about death and people who died, so he would love this. Last word, Desert Island Discs. Johnny Green died in March 2025, aged 75. Out of time, sadly, to complete his book backstage at the Henley Regatta, which, if real, would have been a delight.