Beasley Street

Time for a bit of nostalgia from the late 70's when a friend at work told me that the Bard of Salford John Cooper Clark, was still performing. I have reproduced the the lyrics of my favourite JCC work Beasley street below since the text of the song at the JCC site is almost unreadable. I don't know if the image below is the actual Beasley street in Manchester, but it was the only one I could find.


Far from the crazy pavements
...the taste of silver spoons
A clinical arrangement
...on a dirty afternoon
Where the fecal germs of Mr Freud
...are rendered obsolete
The legal term is null and void
in the case of ... Beasley street

In the cheap seats where murder breeds
somebody is out of breath
Sleep is a luxury they don't need
... a sneak preview of death
Belladonna is your flower
Manslaughter is your meat
Spend a year in a couple of hours
on the edge of Beasley street

Where the action isn't
That's where it is
State your position
Vacancies exist
In an X-certificate exercise
Ex-servicemen excrete
Keith Joseph smiles and a baby dies
in a box on Beasley street

From the boarding houses and bedsits full of
...accidents and fleas
Somebody gets it
Where the missing persons freeze
wearing dead men's overcoats
You can't see their feet
A Riff joint shuts - opens up
right down on Beasley street

Cars collide, colours clash
Disaster movie stuff
For the man with the Fu Manchu moustache
revenge is not enough
There's a dead canery on a swivel seat
there's a rainbow on the road
Meanwhile on Beasley Street
silence is the code

Hot beneath the collar
...an inspector call
Where the perishing stink of squalor
...impregnates the walls
The rats have all got rickets
They spit through broken teeth
The name of the game is not cricket
Caught out on ...Beasley Street

The hipster and his hired hat
drive a borrowed car
yellow socks and a pink crevat
nothing la-di-dah
O-A-P
Mother-to-be
Watch the three-piece suite
When shitstopper drains
and crocodile skis
are seen on ...Beasley Street

The kingdom of the blind
...a one-eyed man is king
Beauty problems are redefined
...The doorbells do not ring
A light bulb bursts like a blister
the only form of heat
Where a fellow sells his sister
...down the river on Beasley Street

The boys are on the wagon
The girls are on the shelf
Their commom problem is
...that they're not someone else
The dirt blows out
The dust blows in
You can't keep it neat
It's a fully furnished dustbin
...sixteen Beasley Street

Vince the ageing savage
Betrays no kind of life
...but the smell of yesterday's cabbage
and the ghost of last year's wife
Through a constant haze
of deodorant sprays
He says ...retreat
Alsatians dog the dirty days
Down the middle of Beasley street

People turn to poison
Quick as lager turns to piss
Sweethearts are physically sick
Every time they kiss
It's a sociologist's paradise
Each day repeats
Uneasy, cheasy, greasy, queasy
...beastly, Beasley Street

Eyes dead as vicious fish
Look around for laughs
If I could have just one wish
I would be a photograph
On a permanent monday morning
Get lost or fall asleep
When the yellow cats are yawning
Around the back of Beasley Street

LYRICS © JOHN COOPER CLARKE

A lot of the old housing in Salford has probably gone now but these photos by Barry Blitz capture a feel of the old streetlife and its demolition.