And 24 years later, Pulp’s new album: ‘If you try to lie to yourself or lie to the audience, you’ll never make anything good’

Jarvis Cocker and Nick Banks met when they were just kids growing up in Sheffield, an English city of half a million people with a notable musical tradition: its streets have produced Def Leppard, Joe Cocker (no relation to Jarvis), and, more recently, Arctic Monkeys. When they formed Pulp, in the final throes of the 1970s, music was merely a pastime, “an excuse to dream and meet people,” they both note, sitting in the sun on a Madrid terrace. “Back then, you could stop studying, sign up for fringe benefits, and get paid. It wasn’t much, very little, but it allowed you to have a band that didn’t have any income,” Cocker notes, adjusting his thick-framed glasses and smiling. “Then Margaret Thatcher put an end to that too,” he concludes.

Well into their sixties, Nick and Jarvis look fit, elegant, and with an air that would suit them equally well for giving a talk on English Baroque poetry as for playing a festival gig in front of thousands of ecstatic fans. They’ve recovered the excitement of talking about new songs again. Their farewell, We Love Life, arrived in 2001 and left them exhausted. So much so that even Cocker left England for France, fleeing it all. Over the past 24 years, the group had reunited for several tremendously successful tours, but until now they had never been in the studio. “We didn’t realize it had been so many years since we last recorded an album. The idea of making new songs came because at some point we thought it might be fun to try it.” The result, More, is a collection of songs chosen by popular vote among the musicians. “We presented several ideas, played them, then gave them scores and kept the highest-scoring ones,” explains Banks, the band’s drummer. “Bands are bands when they’re together. Those are the moments when creative things happen, and at their best, you make that creativity worthwhile and worth listening to,” Cocker adds.

A very different situation from when the group launched with It (1983), an album “recorded with a single microphone and heavily influenced by Leonard Cohen.” On the back of that debut, the band thought they’d made it, that they were a real band. They didn’t know then that their next album would take four years to reach stores, nor that their third would be delayed another five autumns. An outcome that tore the group apart and led Cocker to study film in London. “At that time, I don’t think we played more than a couple of gigs in two years.” The combination of an uninterested label, songs that were far from mainstream appeal, and an unclear direction left the group struggling until a single snuck in as song of the week for New Musical Express magazine. “Things changed a bit then, and we looked for another label, but ours wouldn’t let us go. It was a complex situation,” Banks recalls.

Dark times for a band who witnessed Britpop taking off and dozens of groups arriving after them passing them on the outside. But their next album — the critically acclaimed His ‘n’ Hers — finally connected with people and introduced them to society. “That album really changed things,” the drummer notes. “Suddenly, we saw that we were there and that we could make it.”

The moment when everything changed has a time, date, and place, and like all great things in life, it was the result of chance. “And being in the right place at the right time,” Banks notes. In 1995, Pulp were chosen to replace The Stone Roses, a band cursed by the rock gods, as headliners at the Glastonbury Festival. A unique opportunity. Common People had just hit the charts as a hit single, and suddenly the festival went wild. That performance is listed among the most notable in Glastonbury history by several UK media outlets. Jarvis still smiles when he remembers it. “I don’t know how many thousands of people were in the crowd, but they started singing along with us, and that’s one of the memories I’ll take to my grave. It was the first time that had happened to us. Then the album came out and it was very popular, and I guess that’s where our problems began.”

Different Class, released after the festival success, reached number one in the golden age of Britpop in the 1990s, placing Pulp on a par with Blur, Oasis, and Suede. Those songs, which portrayed life on the streets, in the pub, or in the supermarkets of pre-New Labour England, turned the Sheffield boys into rock stars, with Cocker’s face appearing in magazines alongside those of the era’s celebrities. It didn’t take long for Jarvis to discover how quickly dreams can mutate into nightmares.

After being ignored for a decade, Pulp were at the top of their game, selling millions of records and taking home the prestigious Mercury Prize in 1996. “We were convinced that award was jinxed,” jokes Banks. “Every band that won it ended badly.” This belief led the group to take the stage and wait an eternity to accept the award. A stunt that came to nothing when, at the 1996 Brit Awards, Cocker stormed the stage during Michael Jackson’s performance, revealing his backside in protest at the spotlight the American musician was receiving. That night, he ended up in jail. “That brought me to a level of fame that was very strange,” Cocker recalls, unprompted. “Fame was something I’d fantasized about my whole life, but suddenly everyone recognizes you when you walk down the street. Suddenly, I was famous for things unrelated to my music. That didn’t sit well with me mentally.” The band’s solution was to start working on, or at least immerse themselves in, their next album. “I thought I could hide from my problems in the studio because I couldn’t go anywhere and no one would bother me there, but it was a very expensive idea and it didn’t work at all. It was a strange way to approach the album and it cost us a fortune,” the two explain with a laugh.

The succession of events and musical success placed Cocker in an awkward position, but he also earned a reputation as a stylish man and an honest lyricist. While the great rockers of the 1990s boasted of their virility, Cocker portrayed romantic failures, regrettable sexual encounters, and chronicled unsympathetic characters who rarely succeeded, a unique style that set him apart from other contemporary composers. “I think there’s been one constant, and that’s that we’ve never wanted to be a normal band. We’ve always tried to be creative above all else,” Cocker notes.

They emerged from the studio where they hid with This Is Hardcore (1998), a brilliant work marked by classic themes such as sex, fame, and excess, but portrayed through the singular vision of a Cocker who, by then, was having to deal with his own ghosts and addictions. “It was a difficult time, and we made something that reflected what was happening to us at the time, and many of the things that were happening to us weren’t pleasant,” explains the singer. “If you try to lie to yourself or lie to the audience, you’ll never make anything good,” he adds. Three years later, the group produced the final chapter of their story, a tale to which they’ve now added an epilogue that perfectly captures its essence.

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