Jarvis Cocker | Biography & History | AllMusic google+ Artist Biography by Stephen Thomas Erlewine Misfits have often been part of rock & roll, but of the many outsiders, few have been as clear-eyed, passionate, and savagely witty as Jarvis Cocker , a bookish, sex-obsessed English eccentric who became not just a star but a pop archetype as the leader of Pulp in the '90s. It's been impossible to separate Jarvis Cocker 's story from Pulp -- he was not only the founder, he was the creative force and the only constant member during the group's long, winding history. Winding down Pulp , as he did not long after the group's 2002 We Love Life , was not so much a breakup of a band as it was a closing of a chapter of Cocker 's life, as he moved from the U.K. to settle in Paris with his new wife and child. After a few quiet years he began recording again, first as a member of the barbed electro-pop duo Relaxed Muscle and then as a solo artist, releasing his debut solo album, Jarvis , at the end of 2006.

At the time of the release of his solo debut, Cocker had been pursuing a music career for nearly 30 years. At the age of 15 in 1978, he formed Arabacus Pulp , dropping the "Arabacus" before they went public -- and they went public in a big way, having their first Peel Session in November 1981 before they released an album. It was an auspicious beginning, but Pulp then settled in for a decade of struggle. They released the bedsit indie pop of It to little attention in 1984, then they morphed into murky goth rock a year later, signing to the British indie Fire in 1985, with Freaks following in 1986. Two years later, Cocker , along with Pulp bassist Steve Mackey , left his hometown of Sheffield to attend university at St. Martin's College in London.

Pulp were still an active, if irregular, proposition and they had once again shifted sound, incorporating elements of the burgeoning rave and acid house movements for their next album, Separations , a record recorded in 1989 but not released until 1991, when the single My Legendary Girlfriend began attracting attention, including being awarded Single of the Week by NME. My Legendary Girlfriend kicked off the classic years of Pulp . They signed to Gift in 1992, where they soon hit upon their signature sleek, sexy sound, equal parts glam and post-punk. Babies proved to be their breakthrough to the big leagues, leading to a contract with Island Records, which released the band's major-label debut, His 'n' Hers , in the spring of 1994. The album did well, garnering good reviews and earning a Mercury Award nomination, but they truly entered the big leagues in 1995, as the bracing Common People single became a smash hit -- the kind of hit that defined an era. Its accompanying album, Different Class , was equally successful, entering the charts at number one and going gold within its first week of release.

Pulp were now stars -- or, perhaps more accurately, Jarvis Cocker was now a genuine star, appearing on magazine covers constantly, popping up on television, even earning the honor of being parodied by TV comedians throughout 1995. All these heady times culminated at the 1996 Brit Awards when he interrupted Michael Jackson 's performance of "Earth Song" and was later arrested for his stunt. This prank only cemented Cocker 's position as a British pop hero, but his status soon weighed heavily on his shoulders, as evidenced by the band's gloomy 1998 follow-up to Different Class , This Is Hardcore , an ambitious, arty album that slowed Pulp 's commercial momentum. The hits might not have been arriving as quickly as they once did, but Cocker continued to work and not just in Pulp : he sang with Barry Adamson , wrote with the All Seeing I , and directed various music videos. One more Pulp album -- the elegiac Scott Walker -produced We Love Life -- followed before the band quietly became inactive.

Cocker moved to Paris with his new wife, Camille Bidault-Waddington, where they soon started a family, as she gave birth to a son. After a few quiet years, he and ex- Fat Trucker Jason Buckle , augmented by former Pulp touring guitarist Richard Hawley , embarked on the electro-pop project Relaxed Muscle , releasing one album -- A Heavy Nite With -- in 2003. It was a low-key project and Cocker continued to do low-key work, collaborating with pop queens Nancy Sinatra and Marianne Faithfull , and working with the Lovers in 2005. Later that year, he began to re-emerge in a more public fashion, notably as the leader of the Weird Sisters , the supergroup assembled for a Hogwarts school dance sequence in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire; it also featured Pulp 's Steve Mackey and Jonny Greenwood and Phil Selway from Radiohead .

But 2006 was the real kickoff of Cocker 's solo career, as he and Mackey put together an edition of the various-artists series The Trip , released the single "Running the World" on the Internet that summer, and then released his solo debut, Jarvis , at the end of the year. The next three years found Cocker 's trajectory steadily climbing. Collaborations with others in 2008 ( Marianne Faithfull 's album Easy Come Easy Go and a Heaven 17 cover duet with Beth Ditto ) as well as some guitar playing on David Byrne and Brian Eno 's Everything That Happens Will Happen Today set the stage for the release of his second solo effort, Further Complications , in May of 2009. Jarvis Cocker | Download Music, Tour Dates & Video | eMusic Biography All Music Guide All Music Guide: Misfits have often been part of rock & roll, but of the many outsiders, few have been as clear-eyed, passionate, and savagely witty as Jarvis Cocker, a bookish, sex-obsessed English eccentric who became not just a star but a pop archetype as the leader of Pulp in the '90s.

It's been impossible to separate Jarvis Cocker's story from Pulp -- he was not only the founder, he was the creative force and the only constant member during the group's long, winding history. Winding down Pulp, as he did not long after the group's 2002 We Love Life, was not so much a breakup of a band as it was a closing of a chapter of Cocker's life, as he moved from the U.K. to settle in Paris with his new wife and child. After a few quiet years he began recording again, first as a member of the barbed electro-pop duo Relaxed Muscle and then as a solo artist, releasing his debut solo album, Jarvis, at the end of 2006. At the time of the release of his solo debut, Cocker had been pursuing a music career for nearly 30 years. At the age of 15 in 1978, he formed Arabacus Pulp, dropping the "Arabacus" before they went public -- and they went public in a big way, having their first Peel Session in November 1981 before they released an album.

It was an auspicious beginning, but Pulp then settled in for a decade of struggle. They released the bedsit indie pop of It to little attention in 1984, then they morphed into murky goth rock a year later, signing to the British indie Fire in 1985, with Freaks following in 1986. Two years later, Cocker, along with Pulp bassist Steve Mackey, left his hometown of Sheffield to attend university at St. Martin's College in London. Pulp were still an active, if irregular, proposition and they had once again shifted sound, incorporating elements of the burgeoning rave and acid house movements for their next album, Separations, a record recorded in 1989 but not released until 1991, when the single My Legendary Girlfriend began attracting attention, including being awarded Single of the Week by NME. My Legendary Girlfriend kicked off the classic years of Pulp. They signed to Gift in 1992, where they soon hit upon their signature sleek, sexy sound, equal parts glam and post-punk.

Babies proved to be their breakthrough to the big leagues, leading to a contract with Island Records, which released the band's major-label debut, His 'n' Hers, in the spring of 1994. The album did well, garnering good reviews and earning a Mercury Award nomination, but they truly entered the big leagues in 1995, as the bracing Common People single became a smash hit -- the kind of hit that defined an era. Its accompanying album, Different Class, was equally successful, entering the charts at number one and going gold within its first week of release. Pulp were now stars -- or, perhaps more accurately, Jarvis Cocker was now a genuine star, appearing on magazine covers constantly, popping up on television, even earning the honor of being parodied by TV comedians throughout 1995. All these heady times culminated at the 1996 Brit Awards when he interrupted Michael Jackson's performance of "Earth Song" and was later arrested for his stunt.

This prank only cemented Cocker's position as a British pop hero, but his status soon weighed heavily on his shoulders, as evidenced by the band's gloomy 1998 follow-up to Different Class, This Is Hardcore, an ambitious, arty album that slowed Pulp's commercial momentum. The hits might not have been arriving as quickly as they once did, but Cocker continued to work and not just in Pulp: he sang with Barry Adamson, wrote with the All Seeing I, and directed various music videos. One more Pulp album -- the elegiac Scott Walker-produced We Love Life -- followed before the band quietly became inactive. Cocker moved to Paris with his new wife, Camille Bidault-Waddington, where they soon started a family, as she gave birth to a son. After a few quiet years, he and ex-Fat Trucker Jason Buckle, augmented by former Pulp touring guitarist Richard Hawley, embarked on the electro-pop project Relaxed Muscle, releasing one album -- A Heavy Nite With -- in 2003.

It was a low-key project and Cocker continued to do low-key work, collaborating with pop queens Nancy Sinatra and Marianne Faithfull, and working with the Lovers in 2005. Later that year, he began to re-emerge in a more public fashion, notably as the leader of the Weird Sisters, the supergroup assembled for a Hogwarts school dance sequence in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire; it also featured Pulp's Steve Mackey and Jonny Greenwood and Phil Selway from Radiohead. But 2006 was the real kickoff of Cocker's solo career, as he and Mackey put together an edition of the various-artists series The Trip, released the single "Running the World" on the Internet that summer, and then released his solo debut, Jarvis, at the end of the year. The next three years found Cocker's trajectory steadily climbing.

Collaborations with others in 2008 (Marianne Faithfull's album Easy Come Easy Go and a Heaven 17 cover duet with Beth Ditto) as well as some guitar playing on David Byrne and Brian Eno's Everything That Happens Will Happen Today set the stage for the release of his second solo effort, Further Complications, in May of 2009. Jarvis Cocker: Pop poet - BBC News BBC News Read more about sharing. Close share panel Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker has been writing songs since he was 15 years old. Now, at 48, a selection of his lyrics have been collected in a book. But how did a geeky misfit from Sheffield become a poet for the Britpop generation? Jarvis Cocker admits he is dangerously close to becoming a grumpy old man, so it comes as no surprise that he pines for a golden age of pop when, he says, music really mattered. "Before, pop stars invented themselves," he says, contrasting the likes of Scott Walker and David Bowie with the manufactured stars of the X Factor generation.

He harks back to the days when kids waited eagerly for Top of the Pops every Thursday night and talked about it for days after. A time when teenagers identified themselves by the music they listened to. "I don't know whether kids are using music in such a fundamental way any more," he says. "You can express yourself much more directly now by having a Facebook profile." The singer's childhood and upbringing in Sheffield has had an overwhelming influence on Pulp's lyrics. From the explicit scenes in Sheffield: Sex City to the fountain which plays a central role in Disco 2000, the city has coloured the band's music since they began performing there in 1978. Media captionPop and poetry: Listen to Jarvis Cocker on the BBC World Service It started with a lunchtime gig at their comprehensive, The City School, where a young Pulp - then known as Arabacus Pulp - charged classmates 20p to see them play. "We got a group together to play a show and I realised with horror that I had to write words," he recalls. His first attempt was a song called Shakespeare Rock, which contained the lyrical gem: "Got a baby, only one thing's wrong. She quotes Shakespeare all day long.

I said, 'baby why you ignoring me?'. She said, 'to be or not to be'." Perhaps unsurprisingly, the song does not feature in his current anthology. In fact, it wasn't until the mid-1990s that Pulp's blend of catchy melodies and Cocker's ability to capture the awkward, fumbling mundanity of life with irreverence and wit brought the band to fame. "It took me a long time to take my eyes down from the lofty peak and realise that the stuff that was strewn around me was the stuff I had to be writing about," he says. Image caption Pulp's full, original line-up played together for the first time since 1996 this summer "We have dreams of what we want our life to be and we always fall short don't we? So instead of editing those bits out and pretending that that incident didn't happen why don't we just embrace it?" At the same time he admits to romanticising the Sheffield of his childhood. "It's much easier to have a relationship with someone once you've split up with them and you can turn them into this saint who never did anything wrong. So I created a Sheffield of the mind," he says.

"All these details that maybe I overlooked when I lived there, had a tang of nostalgia but also exoticism." Reality has a way of undermining pop's romanticism, though. That "fountain down the road" was demolished in 1998. Anyone wanting to meet there in the year 2000 would have been sorely disappointed. "That was very mean," says Cocker. 'Clunky and obvious' On stage, Cocker cuts a distinctive figure, dressed in a jacket and tie, jerking his arms into familiar, angular poses, with his thick horn-rimmed glasses tied around his head with an elastic band. "Short of saving up for some corrective surgery you have to deal with the cards you're dealt with," he says. "If you exaggerate it enough it'll actually turn into a fashion feature." Anyone who attended Pulp's reunion shows this summer will know that the band's music is much more than just Cocker's words. There are catchy melodies, clever bass lines and enrapturing performances, as well as Cocker's unique voice. So how does it translate to the page? Is there a danger that the lyrics could seem neutered? "Yeah, but it's exciting.

It's like walking around the house naked," he says. "The thing was to try and arrange the book so they would come across in some way... but you are getting half the picture, I suppose." But he fundamentally disagrees with the idea that song lyrics are poetry and objects to the way some bands present their lyrics on record and CD sleeves. Image caption The singer has also directed music videos and played a role in Fantastic Mr Fox "Often the words are laid out [and] they're kind of typeset to resemble poetry. That's always rubbed me up the wrong way because it's just not poetry," he says. "The rhymes in lyrics tend to be very clunky and kind of obvious but it works in songs. I love the fact that songs rhyme, that's one of the real joys of writing for me. When you find a good rhyme you congratulate yourself. If you could high five yourself you would do." Still, he is proud that his work will stand on bookshelves alongside that of poets such as Philip Larkin and Seamus Heaney and impressed that the lyrics he wrote as a young man still resonate today.

"I'm not a person who would sit at home listening to his own music, but I found myself having listened to them because we were about to do some concerts and I wanted to remember what the words were," he says. "I was pleased, because it's not a given that you spend your adolescence doing something that stands the test of time. It could have been absolute twaddle." But now that he is in his middle age, and apparently taking a pause from song writing, is the well of creativity drying up? "I think that's a horrible way to think of life, as material. You're playing at it then and I think that's rubbish. At the moment I'm doing the living bit and maybe I'll start commenting about it in a while," he says. "I don't really like happy songs, and I'm going through a relatively happy time right now. I don't want to spoil it by commenting on it." Mother, Brother, Lover: Selected Lyrics, by Jarvis Cocker, is published by Faber and is out now. Listen to Jarvis Cocker speaking to Sarfraz Manzoor on The Strand from the BBC World Service .

Artist Profile - Pulp - Bio Mansun Pulp are an English alternative rock band formed in Sheffield in 1978. Their lineup consists of Jarvis Cocker (vocals, guitar), Candida Doyle (keyboards), Mark Webber (guitar), Steve Mackey (bass) and Nick Banks (drums). Throughout the 1980s, the band struggled to find success, but gained prominence in the UK in the mid-1990s with the release of the albums His 'n' Hers in 1994 and particularly Different Class in 1995, which reached the number one spot in the UK Albums Chart. Different Class spawned four top ten singles, including "Common People" and "Sorted for E's & Wizz", both of which reached number two in the UK Singles Chart. Pulp's musical style during this period consisted of disco influenced pop-rock coupled with "kitchen sink drama"-style lyrics. Jarvis Cocker and the band became major figures in the Britpop movement, and were nominated for the Mercury Music Prize in 1994 for His 'n' Hers; they won the prize in 1996 for Different Class.

They headlined the Pyramid Stage of the Glastonbury Festival twice. The band would release two further albums, This is Hardcore (1998) and We Love Life (2001), after which they entered an extended hiatus, having sold more than 10 million records. On 8 November 2010, it was announced that Pulp would return to playing live in 2011, with dates at the Isle of Wight Festival, Reading and Leeds Festivals, Sziget Festival, Primavera Sound, the Exit festival, and the Wireless Festival. A number of additional concert dates have since been added to their schedule. History Early years: 1978-83: A 15-year-old Jarvis Cocker and his friend Peter Dalton, who was 14, conceived the band at The City School in Sheffield. Cocker's original preference was to name the band after the film Pulp starring Michael Caine, though it was decided that this was too short. Instead, the two took inspiration from a copy of the Financial Times which listed the Arabicas coffee bean in its commodity index.

Cocker and Dalton used this, with a slight spelling change, and the band became "Arabicus". Early rehearsals took place in Cocker's house and featured Cocker, Dalton and Dalton's younger brother Ian. After finally deciding on "Arabicus Pulp", a fixed line-up was then established: Cocker, Dalton and two friends of theirs, David Lockwood and Mark Swift. The band played their first public gig at Rotherham Arts Centre in July 1980. Later that year, Cocker met future member, Russell Senior who recognised Cocker from his charismatic sales techniques in his part-time job at the local fish market. Their musical style at this time was varied, approximately described as "a cross between Abba and The Fall". A local fanzine also noted this eclecticism, describing them as sounding "as if they listen to the John Peel show every night in an endless quest for influences". Indeed, in October 1981, they gave a demo tape to Peel, who granted them a Peel Session. The session was a giant leap forward for the young band, who became well-known on the local music scene as a result. The tracks recorded were in the typical Sheffield sound of the time (cf.

The Human League and Comsat Angels): electronic New Wave and post-punk. These tracks were released in 2006 on The Peel Sessions compilation. Despite their exposure on national radio, success was not forthcoming and, apart from Cocker, most of the core line-up left for university. Soon, a new set of musicians was gathered: Simon Hinkler (who later joined The Mission and produced All About Eve), David Hinkler, Wayne Furniss, Peter Boam, Gary Wilson, and Cocker's sister, Saskia. They managed to get enough local backing to record a mini-album in late 1982, entitled It (the title was a pun on pulp-it, as if the band were preaching to the audience), which was released in April 1983 by Red Rhino Records. This largely consisted of folkish, romantic pop songs influenced by Leonard Cohen and was a change of direction from the Peel Sessions a few years earlier. The album was later released by Cherry Red records. Though It failed commercially and fame was still elusive, the band continued to seek commercial success even to the point of recording a single, "Everybody's Problem"/"There Was".

The single demonstrated a style shift advised by Red Rhino's Tony Perrin who had convinced Cocker that he "could write commercial songs like Wham!". This approach also failed and Cocker was becoming unhappy with his chosen musical direction. He was set to break up the band and go to university himself before a practice with Russell Senior (violin, guitar, vocals) and Magnus Doyle (drums) led to the establishment of a new, more experimental, artier and noisier direction for Pulp. They were subsequently augmented by Peter Mansell (bass) and Tim Allcard (keyboards, saxophone, poetry). Independent days: 1984-91: The new incarnation of Pulp survived a number of ill-fated gigs (including one at a rugby club at Brunel University which ended in a riot) before Allcard left to be replaced on keyboards by Magnus Doyle's sister Candida. Following her first performance with the band, they were signed to Fire Records. Soon after signing to Fire, in November 1985, Cocker fell out of a window while trying to impress a girl with a Spider-Man impression and ended up in hospital, temporarily requiring the use of a wheelchair in which he appeared during concerts.

Pulp's relationship with Fire Records was tempestuous and Cocker admitted later that the band only accepted the deal as it "was the only offer on the table". During this period, the singles "Little Girl (With Blue Eyes)" and "Dogs Are Everywhere" were released. Pulp's next major release was Freaks (1987), an album recorded in one week due to record label pressure. Cocker was irritated, and remarked that "the songs could've been done a lot better if we'd have had a bit more time...". The release of Freaks ended up being delayed for a year, and the record was not well received. The album's darker style may be considered the antithesis of the happy and optimistic It. When Freaks failed to be a success, Pulp recorded tracks with FON, a Sheffield-based label. A single called "Death Comes To Town" was due to be released by FON in early 1988, but this relationship disintegrated and the release was cancelled. It was during this time that Cocker was taking a part-time foundation course at Sheffield Polytechnic.

This led to him leaving for London to study film at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, effectively folding the band. The fold was short-lived however. Steve Mackey, a regular at their Sheffield and London gigs, was also studying in London and was asked to join the band as a bass player. The line-up now consisted of Cocker, Mackey, Senior, Candida Doyle, Nick Banks (drums). In mid-1989, they began recording another album for Fire, this time with a bigger budget and production from Alan Smyth, called Separations. This was a progression of the style of Freaks, with Leonard Cohen-esque ballads on side one and an Acid House infused track-listing on side two. The disparate styles can be attributed to Cocker and Mackey's different and changing tastes; Mackey introduced Cocker to house music which led to them both going to raves, while Cocker introduced Mackey to "Scott Walker and Serge Gainsbourg". Like Freaks, the release of Separations was delayed, to an extent lessening the potential impact.

In the meantime, however, in 1991, a 12" recording - "My Legendary Girlfriend" became music periodical NME's single of the week. Stuart Maconie described it in his review as "a throbbing ferment of nightclub soul and teen opera". Furthermore, "Countdown" began to be mentioned in the mainstream press, heralding a turning point in Pulp's quest for fame. Commercial height: 1992-96: Pulp's repertoire was growing rapidly. Tracks such as "Babies", "Space" and "She's a Lady" were being played live throughout 1991 and in October of that year, they played their first overseas gig, a concert organised by French magazine Les Inrockuptibles. However, the band were still frustrated that Separations still had not seen a release and so Pulp left Fire and signed to Warp Records imprint Gift Records in 1992. Buoyed by a changing musical current, in June 1992 Pulp released "O.U. (Gone, Gone)" on Gift while Fire finally released Separations in the same month.

Melody Maker made "O.U" a single of the week alongside "The Drowners" by Suede, another prominent new band. Pulp then signed to Island Records, who jointly released (with Gift) the singles "Babies" and "Razzmatazz" to increasing chart success. Next were the singles "Lipgloss" and their first top 40 hit on the UK Singles Chart, "Do You Remember the First Time?", which were put out as full Island releases. These singles were followed by the Ed Buller-produced album, His 'n' Hers (1994), which reached number nine on the UK Albums Chart and was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize. This sudden increase in popularity was helped by the massive media interest in Britpop alongside acts such as Suede, Oasis and Blur, with Pulp supporting the latter in a 1994 tour of the United States. 1995 saw the peak of Pulp's fame, with the release of their number two single on the UK Singles Chart, "Common People", in May 1995 and their performance in June at the Glastonbury Festival (standing in for The Stone Roses at the last minute).

A double-a side single, "Sorted for E's & Wizz/Mis-Shapes", was to precede the release of their next album, Different Class (1995). Upon the release of "Sorted for E's and Wizz", the Daily Mirror printed a front-page story headed "BAN THIS SICK STUNT" alongside a story by Kate Thornton which said the song was "pro-drugs" and called for the single to be banned. The single had an inlay which showed how to conceal amphetamines in a DIY 'wrap'. Cocker released a statement two days later saying: "...'Sorted' is not a pro-drugs song. Nowhere on the sleeve does it say you are supposed to put drugs in here but I understand the confusion. I don't think anyone who listens to 'Sorted' would come away thinking it had a pro-drugs message." The single reached number two on the UK Single Charts. Released in October 1995, Different Class garnered significant critical praise and debuted at the top of the UK Album Chart. This was the first album featuring Pulp fan-club president Mark Webber, who became a permanent member of the band on guitar and keyboards.

The album followed similar themes to their previous work with observances of life expressed through Cocker's sexualised, sometimes dark and witty lyrics. Other singles released from Different Class were "Disco 2000" and "Something Changed", which reached numbers seven and ten respectively in the UK. In September 1996, Different Class won the Mercury Music Prize. It was at this time that Cocker gained significant media exposure due to a notorious prank at the 1996 BRIT Awards, where he invaded the stage in protest during pop singer Michael Jackson's performance of "Earth Song" and "wiggled his backside" at the audience. After complaints by Jackson and his entourage, Cocker spent the night in Kensington Police Station charged with actual bodily harm and assaulting the child performers. However, with British comedian and former solicitor Bob Mortimer acting as legal representation, he was released without charge. This incident propelled Cocker into great controversy in the UK and elsewhere, and Pulp's record sales soared as a result.

The event also coincided with the beginning of their first arena tour and the Daily Mirror, who had attacked the band months earlier, set up a "Justice for Jarvis" campaign backing his actions and carried out a stunt at Pulp's Sheffield Arena gig on 29 February, handing out free T-shirts. The NME described Cocker's actions as a "great publicity stunt" which was "creative, subversive and very, very funny", while Melody Maker described Cocker as, "arguably the Fifth Most Famous Man In Britain" and suggested he should be knighted. In March 1996, a compilation of Pulp's early recordings on Fire Records entitled Countdown 1992-1983 was released on the Nectar Masters label. It received largely negative reviews, but due to the band's popularity at the time it reached the top 10 of the UK charts. Cocker, whose permission was not sought before release, urged fans not to purchase the album, comparing it to "a garish old family photograph album". Later in 1996, Pulp gained minor international recognition on the back of the inclusion of the track "Mile End" on the Trainspotting soundtrack.

In August, the band played their last public performance for almost two years as headliners of the 1996 V Festival. The band also played a gig in the Shetland Islands, as arguably the most high profile band to do so. ( Till break-up: 1997-2002: It was during this period of intense fame and tabloid scrutiny that long time member and major innovator in the band's sound Russell Senior decided to leave the band saying "it wasn't creatively rewarding to be in Pulp anymore". The band were due to begin working on a new album in late 1996. However, Cocker was having difficulty with the celebrity lifestyle, battling cocaine addiction and a breakup of a long-term relationship. When the band came to begin work on the next album, they had only one song - "Help The Aged". This creative inertia meant the band took over a year to finish the next record. Indeed, it was Cocker's disillusionment with his long-desired wish for fame that made up much of the subject matter of the This Is Hardcore, which was released in March 1998.

The album took a darker and more challenging tone than that of Different Class and lyrical topics - pornography (the title track), fame ("Glory Days") and the after effects of drugs ("The Fear") - were dealt with more earnestly than on previous records. This shift in style meant This Is Hardcore received mixed critical and commercial reactions. Also in 1998, Pulp collaborated with Patrick Doyle on the song "Like A Friend" for the soundtrack to the film Great Expectations. The song was also used in the Adult Swim cartoon The Venture Bros. season 4 finale Operation P.R.O.M. Pulp then spent a few years "in the wilderness" before reappearing in 2001 with a new album, We Love Life. The extended period between the release of This is Hardcore and We Love Life is partly attributed to having initially recorded the songs which comprise the album and being dissatisfied with the results. Subsequent interviews also suggested interpersonal and artistic differences, including managing the fallout of the Britpop/Different Class era. Singer/songwriter Scott Walker agreed to produce the record and this symbolised a new phase in Pulp's development. The record was lighter in tone to This is Hardcore, with a more pastoral tone.

Pulp subsequently undertook a tour of the National Parks in the UK, even playing a show as far North as Elgin in Scotland. Richard Hawley, the Sheffield-based singer/songwriter, was also present on various dates on this tour. In 2002 the band announced that they were leaving their label, Island. A greatest hits package was released: Hits, with one new track. It is unclear whether this was the band's decision or released to satisfy contractual agreements. A music festival, Auto, was organised (held at Rotherham's Magna centre) where they played their last gig before embarking on a 9-year hiatus. After break-up: 2003-10: Cocker was involved in a number of one-offs and side projects, including the group Relaxed Muscle with Jason Buckle and the film Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire where he fronted a group which included Steve Mackey and members of Radiohead. Also in 2007, Cocker appeared on Air's album Pocket Symphony giving vocals to the two tracks "One Hell Of A Party" and "The Duelist".

His first solo album Jarvis, with the participation of Mackey, was released to critical acclaim in November 2006. Also, Candida Doyle has performed live with Cocker on his solo tours. Mackey has produced tracks on the debut album by M.I.A., Arular and on Someone To Drive You Home by The Long Blondes, both of which were critically well-received. He has also produced tracks for Bromheads Jacket and Florence + The Machine. On 11 September 2006 the band re-released three of their albums (His 'n' Hers, Different Class, and This Is Hardcore), each with a bonus disc of B-sides, demos and rarities. On 23 October 2006 a 2CD set compiling all of Pulp's John Peel Sessions from 1982 to 2001 was released. Reunion: 2011-2: In November 2010 it was announced that the Different Class line-up would be playing at the Wireless festival in London's Hyde Park and a Saturday slot at the Isle of Wight festival in 2011.

In a message sent to the band's official mailing list on 1 January 2011, Cocker said the large amount of interest in the band's reunion had been "an inspiration," and that he was pleased with how rehearsals were going. The band announced 22 concerts between May and September 2011, taking place in Europe and Australia. Pulp were one of the surprise special guests at Glastonbury Festival 2011 in June where they played on The Park stage on Saturday evening. They performed at the Way Out West Festival in Sweden on 13 August, and played as co-headliners to The Strokes at the Reading Festival and the Leeds Festival during the final weekend of August 2011 . They headlined the Electric Picnic on the 4 September, their last festival of the year. On 9 January 2012, the Coachella festival lineup was released, with Pulp listed as part of the lineup. In April, in an interview with Shortlist Magazine Cocker revealed that he's working on ideas for new Pulp songs. Jarvis Cocker: information Jarvis Cocker Information Jarvis Cocker has been making music for two-thirds of his life.

Two dozen of these years (1978 – 2002) were spent in Pulp, a group with whom he enjoyed most of the experiences you can have as the singer in a band. First feted by John Peel and then ignored during the long Dole Years, the group eventually became the country’s slowest overnight sensation during a heady period book-ended by ‘Common People’ becoming a touchstone anthem at their Glastonbury headline slot in 1995, and Jarvis invading the stage during Michael Jackson’s performance at the Brit Awards eight months later. With hindsight, most things that happened to Pulp before or after can be defined in their relation to these twin events, as emblems of sought-after success and its darker cousin, over-bearing fame. The early, striving under-achiever albums (‘It’, ‘Separations’, ‘Freaks’); the gradual pop awakening (‘Intro’, ‘His’n’Hers’); the commercial culmination (‘Different Class’); the comedown (‘This Is Hardcore’) and the final, bittersweet swansong (‘We Love Life’).

Over this time, Jarvis went from being the quintessential outsider to being one of the most recognised and cherished figures in Britain. He brought a rare, bookish wit to the pop charts, and cut an original dash in a rock’n’roll world of dominated by reductive cliché. After Pulp, Jarvis consoled himself with semi-retirement, moving to Paris, making occasional media appearances to talk about Outsider Art, Scott Walker or other personal crusades, and sometimes writing songs for others (Marianne Faithfull, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Nancy Sinatra and Air). No longer identifying with the “Jarvis Cocker” of the public imagination, he tried an alter-ego band (the electro-Goth Relaxed Muscle), in an effort to try and rid himself of some of the un-parental thoughts coursing through his ever febrile imagination. He wrote three songs for, and briefly appeared in, ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’, and took part in the ‘I’m Your Man’ tribute to Leonard Cohen around the globe, as well as appearing on an album of Serge Gainsbourg songs.

Sooner or later – as he himself recently observed (in another song written for Lee Hazlewood) - the big stuff comes around, however. And Jarvis was forced to confront the fact that he was, in fact, ill equipped for life outside the performance arena. And so, he started writing songs to be sung by himself again. One of the first to emerge was the sensational ‘Cunts Are Still Running The World’, written in response to the rock-cum-politics love-in of the G8 summit in Glasgow. The song enjoyed a protracted life as a firm download favourite, given its unsuitability for the delicate sensibilities of radio. The appearance of his debut solo album ‘Jarvis’ at the end of 2006 was greeted with an open-armed goodwill it is hard to imagine being reserved for many other singers. After picking up these raving reviews, he toured with his band around Europe, USA and Australia in 2007. Jarvis also guest-edited the Observer Music Monthly, curated the Southbank Centre’s Meltdown Festival and performed a duet with The Gossip’s Beth Ditto for the NME Awards.

They covered fellow Sheffield band Heaven 17’s ‘Temptation’, which was later released to profit Shelter, a charity which battles homelessness. In 2008, Jarvis premiered his lecturing skills with ‘Saying The Unsayable’, a talk about lyrics at the Brighton Festival. He repeated it at In The City later that year, just after returning from a two week long trip to the North Pole with Cape Farewell, an organization which takes a few select artists and scientists on a journey through the Arctic each year to see the affects of climate change firsthand. He also celebrated Rough Trade Records’ 30th anniversary with the ‘Looking Rough at 30’ tour and guest-edited BBC Radio 4’s prestigious ‘Today’ programme. All this between recording his anticipated follow-up album, ‘Further Complications’, with Steve Albini in Chicago, which Rough Trade will release on May 18th (UK)/ May 19th (US). BBC News - Jarvis Cocker: Pop poet Jarvis Cocker: Pop poet 25 October 11 09:42 Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker has been writing songs since he was 15 years old.

Now, at 48, a selection of his lyrics have been collected in a book. But how did a geeky misfit from Sheffield become a poet for the Britpop generation? Jarvis Cocker admits he is dangerously close to becoming a grumpy old man, so it comes as no surprise that he pines for a golden age of pop when, he says, music really mattered. "Before, pop stars invented themselves," he says, contrasting the likes of Scott Walker and David Bowie with the manufactured stars of the X Factor generation. He harks back to the days when kids waited eagerly for Top of the Pops every Thursday night and talked about it for days after. A time when teenagers identified themselves by the music they listened to. "I don't know whether kids are using music in such a fundamental way any more," he says. "You can express yourself much more directly now by having a Facebook profile." The singer's childhood and upbringing in Sheffield has had an overwhelming influence on Pulp's lyrics. From the explicit scenes in Sheffield: Sex City to the fountain which plays a central role in Disco 2000, the city has coloured the band's music since they began performing there in 1978.

It started with a lunchtime gig at their comprehensive, The City School, where a young Pulp - then known as Arabacus Pulp - charged classmates 20p to see them play. "We got a group together to play a show and I realised with horror that I had to write words," he recalls. His first attempt was a song called Shakespeare Rock, which contained the lyrical gem: "Got a baby, only one thing's wrong. She quotes Shakespeare all day long. I said, 'baby why you ignoring me?'. She said, 'to be or not to be'." Perhaps unsurprisingly, the song does not feature in his current anthology. In fact, it wasn't until the mid-1990s that Pulp's blend of catchy melodies and Cocker's ability to capture the awkward, fumbling mundanity of life with irreverence and wit brought the band to fame. "It took me a long time to take my eyes down from the lofty peak and realise that the stuff that was strewn around me was the stuff I had to be writing about," he says. "We have dreams of what we want our life to be and we always fall short don't we?

So instead of editing those bits out and pretending that that incident didn't happen why don't we just embrace it?" At the same time he admits to romanticising the Sheffield of his childhood. "It's much easier to have a relationship with someone once you've split up with them and you can turn them into this saint who never did anything wrong. So I created a Sheffield of the mind," he says. "All these details that maybe I overlooked when I lived there, had a tang of nostalgia but also exoticism." Reality has a way of undermining pop's romanticism, though. That "fountain down the road" was demolished in 1998. Anyone wanting to meet there in the year 2000 would have been sorely disappointed. "That was very mean," says Cocker. 'Clunky and obvious' On stage, Cocker cuts a distinctive figure, dressed in a jacket and tie, jerking his arms into familiar, angular poses, with his thick horn-rimmed glasses tied around his head with an elastic band. "Short of saving up for some corrective surgery you have to deal with the cards you're dealt with," he says.

"If you exaggerate it enough it'll actually turn into a fashion feature." Anyone who attended Pulp's reunion shows this summer will know that the band's music is much more than just Cocker's words. There are catchy melodies, clever bass lines and enrapturing performances, as well as Cocker's unique voice. So how does it translate to the page? Is there a danger that the lyrics could seem neutered? "Yeah, but it's exciting. It's like walking around the house naked," he says. "The thing was to try and arrange the book so they would come across in some way... but you are getting half the picture, I suppose." But he fundamentally disagrees with the idea that song lyrics are poetry and objects to the way some bands present their lyrics on record and CD sleeves. "Often the words are laid out [and] they're kind of typeset to resemble poetry. That's always rubbed me up the wrong way because it's just not poetry," he says. "The rhymes in lyrics tend to be very clunky and kind of obvious but it works in songs. I love the fact that songs rhyme, that's one of the real joys of writing for me. When you find a good rhyme you congratulate yourself.

If you could high five yourself you would do." Still, he is proud that his work will stand on bookshelves alongside that of poets such as Philip Larkin and Seamus Heaney and impressed that the lyrics he wrote as a young man still resonate today. "I'm not a person who would sit at home listening to his own music, but I found myself having listened to them because we were about to do some concerts and I wanted to remember what the words were," he says. "I was pleased, because it's not a given that you spend your adolescence doing something that stands the test of time. It could have been absolute twaddle." But now that he is in his middle age, and apparently taking a pause from song writing, is the well of creativity drying up? "I think that's a horrible way to think of life, as material. You're playing at it then and I think that's rubbish. At the moment I'm doing the living bit and maybe I'll start commenting about it in a while," he says. "I don't really like happy songs, and I'm going through a relatively happy time right now.

I don't want to spoil it by commenting on it." Mother, Brother, Lover: Selected Lyrics, by Jarvis Cocker, is published by Faber and is out now. Listen to Jarvis Cocker speaking to Sarfraz Manzoor on The Strand from the BBC World Service. Pulp Tour Dates and Concerts | allgigs.co.uk Pulp Tour Dates and Concerts | allgigs.co.uk Pop/ Rock Sheffield-based band formed in 1978 by singer, songwriter and guitarist Jarvis Cocker. The band reformed in 2010, featuring the original line-up: Nick Banks, Jarvis Cocker, Candida Doyle, Steve Mackey, Russell Senior and Mark Webber. Their albums include "It" (1983), "His and Hers" and "Different Class", with familiar songs including "Lipgloss", "Do You Remember the First Time?", "Common People", "Sorted for E's & Wizz", "Disco 2000" and "Help the Aged".

Band member(s) Pulp | Biography & History | AllMusic google+ Artist Biography by Stephen Thomas Erlewine Most bands hit the big time immediately and fade away, or they build a dedicated following and slowly climb their way to the top. Pulp didn't follow either route. For the first 12 years of their existence, Pulp languished in near total obscurity, releasing a handful of albums and singles in the '80s to barely any attention. At the turn of the decade, the group began to gain an audience, sparking a remarkable turn of events that made the band one of the most popular British groups of the '90s. By the time Pulp became famous, the band had gone through numerous different incarnations and changes in style, covering nearly every indie rock touchstone from post-punk to dance. Pulp 's signature sound is a fusion of David Bowie and Roxy Music 's glam rock, disco, new wave, acid house, Europop, and British indie rock. The group's cheap synthesizers and sweeping melodies reflect the lyrical obsessions of lead vocalist Jarvis Cocker , who alternates between sex and sharp, funny portraits of working class misfits.

Out of second-hand pop, Pulp fashioned a distinctive, stylish sound that made camp into something grand and glamorous that retained a palpable sense of gritty reality. Jarvis Cocker formed Pulp in 1978, when he was 15 years old. Originally called Arabicus Pulp, the first lineup consisted of schoolmates of Cocker . After a year, the band's name was truncated to Pulp . While they were in school, Pulp performed a handful of gigs. The band recorded a demo sometime in 1980-1981, giving the tape to John Peel at one of his traveling shows. Peel liked the tape and invited the band to appear on his show. Pulp had their first Peel Session in November 1981. Instead of leading to record deals and pop stardom, Pulp 's appearance on Peel led nowhere. Discouraged by the band's lack of success, every member but Cocker left the band in 1982 to go to university. The following year, Cocker assembled a new lineup which featured eight members, including keyboardist Simon Hinkler , who would later join the Mission .

In this incarnation, Pulp had distinct folk overtones, as well as new wave underpinnings. The group landed their first record contract, releasing their debut album, It , in 1984. It didn't make much of an impact and the band fell apart again. After the second incarnation of Pulp disintegrated, Jarvis Cocker formed another version of the band, with guitarist/violinist Russell Senior , who became Cocker 's first full-fledged collaborator. Cocker and Senior added drummer Magnus Doyle and bassist Peter Mansell to the group, as well as Tim Allcard, who did nothing but read poetry. Musically, Pulp backed away from the folky inclinations of It , adding keyboardist Candida Doyle in 1985, which led to a darker sound; shortly after her arrival, Allcard left the group. In 1985, Pulp released a series of singles on Fire Records. Just as their fortunes were looking up, Cocker became injured severely. As he was trying to impress a girl, he fell 30 feet out of a window, injuring his pelvis, foot, and wrist.

For two months, he was confined to a wheelchair, but he performed concerts anyway. Released in 1986, Pulp 's second album, Freaks , was a dense, dark affair. Following its release, the band split during the filming of the video for "They Suffocate at Night." All of the members, except Cocker and Senior , left the group. For a year, the band was dormant, but Candida Doyle returned in 1987, with drummer Nick Banks and bassist Steven Havenhand joining shortly afterward. Havenhand was soon replaced by Anthony Genn , who was soon replaced by Steve Mackey . Although the group had a stable lineup, they weren't gaining much of a following. In 1988, Cocker moved to London with Mackey and began studying filmmaking at St. Martin's College. While he was studying, Pulp was offered the chance to record another album. The resulting album, Separations , was recorded in 1989 and reflected Cocker 's newfound obsession with acid house but it also boasted some full-fledged pop songs. Separations was released nearly three years after it was completed.

Cocker was prepared to stake out a career in film when a single from the album, "My Legendary Girlfriend," was released. NME named the song Single of the Week in 1991 and Pulp 's career suddenly took off. In early 1992, Pulp left Fire Records for Gift, and began releasing a series of singles that consolidated the success of "My Legendary Girlfriend." In particular, "Babies" earned the band a great deal of attention. "Babies" led to a contract with Island Records, their first major-label deal. Island released Pulpintro, a compilation of the Gift singles, as the band recorded its major-label debut, His 'n' Hers . Upon its spring 1994 release, His 'n' Hers earned positive reviews and became an unexpected success, reaching the British Top Ten; it was also nominated for the 1994 Mercury Award. For the rest of 1994 and the early part of 1995, Jarvis Cocker suddenly became omnipresent on British television. These suave, humorous television appearances became legendary, making Cocker somewhat of a national hero, as well as a sex symbol.

No matter how popular Jarvis Cocker had become, the band didn't break into the big time until they released "Common People." The single became a massive hit upon its May 1995 release, debuting at number two on the U.K. charts. In July, Pulp accepted a last-minute headlining slot at Glastonbury Festival when the Stone Roses had to cancel. Pulp 's set was rapturously received, launching the band into superstar status in England and conveniently setting the stage for their forthcoming album, Different Class . During the recording of the album, guitarist Mark Webber -- the president of Pulp 's fan club -- became a full-time member of the group. The first record to feature Webber was the double A-sided single, "Mis-Shapes" and "Sorted for E's & Wizz," which was released in August, two months before Different Class . The single became a number two hit, despite a major tabloid controversy over the lyrics to "Sorted." Different Class arrived in late October to rave reviews throughout the British press. The album entered the charts at number one, going gold within its first week and platinum within the second.

At the end of the year, the album topped many best-of-the-year lists. In February of 1996, Different Class was released in the United States to positive reviews. The massive fame and attention that Different Class brought Pulp influenced the direction of their follow-up, 1998's world-weary, paranoid This Is Hardcore . The album's troubled sound and somewhat mixed reception led some to speculate whether or not the group would continue; the band's members took some time to pursue side projects such as DJ-ing at various nightclubs and remixing tracks for artists like Black Box Recorder and Death in Vegas . Meanwhile, they continued to play live, performing at various festivals, including the Meltdown festival curated by Scott Walker . Walker proved such an inspiration for the group that Pulp hired him on as the producer of their new material after recording with Chris Thomas went unsatisfactorily. The resulting album, We Love Life -- its name inspired by the September 11 terrorist attacks -- was released in the fall of 2001 in the UK and in the spring of 2002 in the US to critical acclaim. In 2006, Cocker released a solo album entitled Jarvis.

Jarvis Cocker: the secrets of Pulp's songs | Music | The Guardian Music Jarvis Cocker: the secrets of Pulp's songs An exclusive extract from a new book of selected lyrics reveals the blueprint for the band's signature style of narrative pop Jarvis Cocker speaking at his alma mater, The City School, in Sheffield. Photograph: David Levene Jarvis Cocker Sunday 16 October 2011 14.59 EDT First published on Sunday 16 October 2011 14.59 EDT Share on Messenger Close I never intended to be a lyricist. I had wanted to be a pop star from about the age of eight (that's probably when I first saw the Beatles' film Help) but, when I finally managed to cajole three school friends into being in a group with me back in 1978, we were too inept to play other people's songs and so had to write our own material. Because it was my group and I was the singer, I ended up having to write the words.

Hence I found myself in the position that a lot of songwriters start off in: you don't particularly want to do the job but because a song isn't really a song until it's got some lyrics, it's down to you to write them. And this kind of "Aw, mum, do I really have to do my homework?" attitude stays with you. Many of my lyrics were hastily written the night before a recording session because I'd been putting off writing them until the very last minute. It's strange that the most intelligible part of a song – the words – should be seen as the most boring and chore-like aspect of the songwriting process by musicians themselves. And I think that's down to a very simple fact: the words to a song are not that important. They're contractual obligation, a necessary evil, an afterthought. Take an undisputed rock classic like Louie, Louie by the Kingsmen. The lyrics to that song are so indecipherable that they actually prompted an FBI investigation into their allegedly obscene content back in the early 1960s. After 31 months, the FBI concluded that they were "unable to interpret any of the wording in the record".

In other words – you can't tell a word of what the singer is singing and it doesn't matter. But once you've realised that the words are not so important, then the real fun of lyric-writing can begin. If nobody's listening, you can say whatever you want. My first attempts roughly coincided with my first romantic dealings with the opposite sex. I was struck by the massive discrepancy between the way relationships were depicted in the songs I'd heard on the radio and the way I was experiencing them in real life. (Could have been my technique, I suppose.) So I decided to attempt to redress the balance, to put in all the awkward bits and the fumblings. Maybe lyrics weren't that important to a song's success, but I realised that they were important to me. I was always looking for something in them that generally wasn't there. I had loved pop music from an early age and now I wanted it to go through puberty with me – so I ended up documenting my puberty through pop music itself.

This became the blueprint for the way I worked: an attempt to marry "inappropriate" subject matter to fairly conventional "pop" song structures, to try to create the kind of pop music I wished had been there for me in my hour of need. This friction between the words and the music presents problems for me when displaying the lyrics on their own. Ever since lyric sheets started to be included in my record releases, I have included the instructions, "NB Please do not read the lyrics whilst listening to the recordings." This is because the words only exist to be part of something else, a song, and when you see them on a printed page you are seeing them taken out of their natural habitat – away from that "something else". I remember buying Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon as a teenager and rushing home to play it. I sat with the gatefold sleeve open on my knees, poring over Roger Waters's words while the album revolved on the record deck – and, to my horror, it made the lyrics seem awful.

What had seemed profound and meaningful on the bus ride home from town now seemed clunky and awkward: the syntax was mangled and the words crudely shoehorned to fit the rhythm of the music or the vocal melody. I have always had an extreme aversion to the way lyrics are often typeset to resemble poetry. Lyrics are not poetry: they are the words to a song. My very first attempts at lyrics, dating from 1978, were either very silly (eg: Shakespeare Rock: "Gotta baby only one thing wrong: she quotes Shakespeare all day long. I said, 'Baby why're you ignoring me?' She said, 'To be or not to be.'") or embarrassingly earnest (eg: Life is a Circle: "Life is a circle you're caught on. Life is a road that's much too long. It winds, goes ahead – only stops when you're dead.") If I have learnt anything about songwriting since then, it is that in order to ring true a song must be rooted in your own personal experience (but not take the place of it).

I would subscribe to Leonard Cohen's view, "Art is just the ash left if your life is burning well." Life is the important bit and detail is key – only a true eyewitness would notice apparently insignificant minutiae. When you put such details into songs, they bestow authenticity. I think that you don't really have much control over what does and does not stick in your mind: it's the haphazard nature of memory that gives you an original voice, provided that you can learn to recognise it and use it. The worst thing you can do is to make a conscious effort to ignore all that stuff and write "properly", to try to do it "how it's supposed to be". That happens a lot – or maybe people don't value their own experience enough to deem it worthy of being written down. It wasn't until I moved away from Sheffield in 1988 that I began to write explicitly about it – I couldn't really see it clearly until then. Then I wrote about it in a frantic attempt to stop it fading from my memory. I couldn't wait to get away from the place, yet then I obsessively recreated it in my mind. Only I made it better than it was.

It's good to keep in all the awkward moments and false starts but you can mess with the order a bit and adjust the lighting when needs be. You're the boss, after all – it's your kingdom. No one needs to know where reality ends and wishful thinking takes over. For various reasons my songs have always been based on narrative. Sometimes I'd love to be able to get away with being allusive and vague, but any time I've tried it's been a disaster. Sometimes the narrative takes over completely and I dispense with any melody whatsoever, just "talk" a song. I probably got the idea of doing this by listening to The Gift by the Velvet Underground, or maybe it was Roger McGough's work with the Scaffold. If you can't think of a decent tune to go with the music then don't bother – just speak your way through it. Otherwise you're getting dangerously close to opera (and that's really dangerous). I began this by stating that lyrics aren't really important in pop music but, of course, over the years I have found many exceptions to this rule. Chart pop (what a quaint term) might not provide much linguistic sustenance but once you get off the beaten path it's there to be found.

I've already mentioned Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground but Scott Walker, Leonard Cohen, Lee Hazelwood, Jim Morrison, Dory Previn, David Bowie, Mark E Smith, Nick Cave, Jeffrey Lewis, Will Oldham and Bill Callahan are just some of the other writers I have admired for their ability to tackle thought-provoking subject matter in song. I thank them for their inspiration. (And let's not forget Dylan – I came to him late but something like A Simple Twist of Fate is a magical example of storytelling in song). There is a quote from Albert Camus on the back cover of Scott Walker's album Scott 4: "A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to discover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened." That kind of nails it: those images get embedded when you're too young to know much about it and then you spend the rest of your life trying to excavate them. If you're lucky, they're worth the effort. A recent exhibition of the work of American artist Jeff Koons was called Everything's Here. I subscribe to that worldview: you can live on "lipgloss and cigarettes".

There are more references to TV shows and showbiz entertainers in my songs than references to the Greek myths but it's all valid. You can mythologise anything if you put your mind to it. In a way it's more fun to look for profundity in something that's not designed to have it. Or maybe that's just awkwardness on my part – I do have a tendency towards that. When I was nine years old, we were learning how to draw bar charts at school when the teacher decided to construct one based on the times we got up in the morning to get ready for school. For some reason I was determined to have a bar on the graph all to myself and so claimed to rise at 6am every morning (which was an obvious lie as I was usually at least five minutes late each day). The teacher was sceptical but let it go and, much to my satisfaction, I got my own exclusive bar. I don't know why I was so determined to be different from all the other members of my class, but it felt important to me. Perhaps it still is.

But I'd like to think that it was more than mere cussedness on my part, that it was the start of a sensibility, a desire to look in the less obvious places – less obvious because they were right under your nose. Pulp was the perfect name for the band because this was an attempt to find meaning in the mass-produced and throwaway world that was, after all, what we were surrounded by on a daily basis. To sift through and find some beauty in it all. Take a look – it is there. Mother, Brother, Lover: Selected Lyrics by Jarvis Cocker, to be published by Faber & Faber on 20 October at £14.99. To order a copy for £11.99 with free UK p&p go to theguardian.com/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846. On a visit to his former school in Sheffield, the Pulp frontman talks about youth, fame and the changing face of pop Published: 16 Oct 2011

Question: Which UK pop group was formed in Sheffield in 1978 by singer Jarvis Cocker?
Answer: Pulp