Jarvis Cocker→ vocals, guitar
Russell Senior→ guitar, vocals, violin
Magnus Doyle→ drummer, occassional keyboards
Pete Mansell→ bass
Timothy Alkard→ keyboards & vocals
We interviewed Pulp at the Hallamshire Hotel, Sheffield, amidst the flag˗waving, noise making and beer swilling hordes of the NUM. Scargills Men. However this interview is not about the miners or what they called me comin into town.
Jarvis/PULP: Pulp were easy listening. For a while we were a bit fed up of playing loud, playing the garage band. Forty year old landlords started to like our sound. We haven’t done any Peel Sessions for a while now. Don’t like him as much.
Wonder Stories: Any Throbbing Gristle influence?
Not much. Not much influence from anyone. What do you write songs about? About people. it may seem a vague answer but its the only one I can say.
We are told off for not talking enough on stage which is quite good. People don’t get comfortable—they’re used to armchairs, blankets and ovalitine.
What about the music business.
We are told off for not talking enough on stage which is quite good. People don't get comfortable—they’re used to armchairs, blankets and ovalitine.
Our greatest achievement were the Peel sessions from there we’ve gone downhill [not really].
Are they’re [sic] any Sheffield bands worth looking out for?
Yeah. Dig Vis Drill [great name], who supported Carmel at the Crucible recently.
What about the Ya-Ya’s [in Wonder Stories no.2 of which I have a cupboard left.]
I don’t think they exist any more. Their singer is in Denmark.
Whats the Sheffield scene like?
The Sheffield Scene is quite dead. The Hallamshire Hotel, for ages one of the few places to play, couldn’t afford music license. To get round this, we sometimes do acoustic items. Elsewhere, the George IV is open, Sheff Poly, Attercliffe + pubs, working mens clubs put on bands and stippers. We like playing places like librarys and definitely not colleges. Colleges like to think they’re doing you a favour, so they underpay you.
Pulp has always seemed to be a laugh, put across as fun. D’yer still enjoy it.
We still enjoy it. I don’t walk around with a banana on my head. We don’t mess about all the time. Pulp is not a joke. There are a lot of joke bands. A lot who don’t mean to be jokes as well, who play... the same songs for 2 hours, rehearsing every day of the week. Rehearsing doesn’t help music that much, or perhaps I’m saying that coz of laziness.
What became of the record company (Red Rhino) on which you released 2 singles + a mini-album?
We parted company with the record company because of MUSICAL DIFFERENCES!
The problem with fanzines is they tell you who does what and usually nothing more. It’s like talking about cars, as they would a hobby. Whose got what kind of guitar etc... Fanzines ought to be more opiniated. It’s the style of writing what counts. The trend now is for information, and a lot of things are more interesting.
Have you had any local press coverage? We were in the Sheffield Star a while ago. Martin Lilleker [music editor] talked to us and then put a stupid headline. What happened was we played instead of Ivor Heftycock at the Brunel University in London, and the audience consisted of 1977 style drunks, one of whom showed us his backside. ‘Pulps barefaced cheek’ he called it. The reason we did the article was to get people to come and see us. It actually got them to come for the wrong reasons. He also made up the phrase ‘more relaxed approach’ about us. We never said that.
We hate the term wacky. We are not wacky. We are definitely unwacky.
Hotdamn! These chickens can PLAY!
Faceworkers in the great opencast mine of modern pop, Pulp find themselves in a lonely venue, one where there is a little too much space between members of the audience. Cats should be swung and they sure enough will be.
What matter if only a few witness the swinging? Those who do are spellbound. Jarivs Cocker, the undoubted lynchpin of the operation, is a commanding presence—the nervous dementia of a stand-up comic, bespectacled and angular, truly inspired. From time to time he steps back and the other members of the band set the pace. It's a ragged and strictly professional performance—a strange set of people with a strange set of instruments and each song an emotional marvel.
Russell Senior, guitarist, singer, and acting correspondent on Pulp’s behalf, says that the group was formed four years ago by gawky schoolchildren. 1984 and schoolchildren no more, but still gawky. Ungainly and brilliant.
In 1983 Pulp released an LP called It. It’s a topic they don’t seem fond of, not wanting to be judged on their past—but their past seems to stand up in spite of them. Johnny Waller warmly recommends the album. Dave MacCulloch said at the time that if it had had 10% less mistakes it would have been a flawed masterpiece. Mick Mercer wants a copy.
But Russell quietly denigrates their past: «It had innocence, naievety, romanticism, good tunes, and it was a fair document of puberty, but it doesn’t compare to what we do now.»
What do Pulp do now? Russell offers four pointers to what they don’t do.
—ONE: «We’d all liked punk but it had disappeared up its own arse. Jaded cynics peddling pessimism—violent hardcore, pretentious spikey Batcave, new age hippie punk. It was a multicoloured refraction of the white light.»
—TWO: «Outside the new wave all was happy happy bubblegum. Thrusting crotches in the race to become the Mike Yarwood of pop. New technocrats selling sex to teenagers, fiddling around with knobs and rooting around the past as if it were a jumble sale.»
— THREE: «Social conscience music had a nauseating effect. Nena makes a million out of nuclear war fears and takes the edge off people’s anger, diffusing any pressure for change.»
— FOUR: «We turned to hit the metal objects around us, but I feel an idiot when my dad’s going deaf because of working in a factory, and we pass drop˗forges on the way to the practice room that do it a damn sight better than us.»
In a nutshell: «Our chosen means of expression was populated by diluters and devaluers of music that once meant something» Jarvis announces, «We wanted truth and beauty.»
Before you raise your arms in anguish and cry, ‘God! Not more convicts of conviction! Not more youths spouting grandiose piffle fresh from the grammar school’, bear this in mind. Pulp are the real McCoy, not just going through the motions. They are chancing their gangly arms.
«Some songs, says Russell, are more ‘fragile’ than the rest—we can easily look stupid doing them. But they’re usually the most rewarding when they go right. We’d rather fail miserably than do all right.»
Sticking your scrawny necks out doesn’t always make you popular. Russell tells the tale of one night when the audience of oafish louts decided to lower their trousers to register their disapproval. Finding himself facing a bare backside, Jarvis did the natural thing. He kicked it. But, after molesting the obnoxious stag comic announcer, things got the better of him. Pulp made a hasty exit.
«Truth and beauty stayed in that night» comments Russell wryly. But truth will out. Like Russell says, «Things have been dead too long, but spring is in the air.»
It may only be October, and we’re only just planting our daffs, but this man is not wrong.