Pulp

Friday

Alec Marsh

Forget Oasis – we should celebrate Pulp’s legacy

It begins with an electric swish sound that makes you feel like you are falling backwards, followed by an arresting synthesiser da-da-dum drumbeat. Then we get the voice, in double-time: ‘She came from Greece, she had a thirst for knowledge. She studied sculpture at St Martin’s College…’ With those words, singer Jarvis Cocker and his fellow members of Pulp caught the attention of a nation. And chances are, three decades on from the release of ‘Common People’, this musical intro will still send a tingle down your spine, particularly if you’re aged anywhere between 40 and 70. Forget the record-marketing buzz of ‘Blur vs Oasis’ (always less entertaining than the

Thursday

Ivo Delingpole

The political climate at Glastonbury was not especially febrile

Everyone who wasn’t at Glastonbury this year knows exactly what it was like: a seething mass of hatred and rabid leftiness, characterised by an angry punk duo named Bob Vylan calling for the death of the IDF. But that’s just the tabloid hysteria talking – betraying also maybe a hint of envy towards those lucky enough to have bagged one of the £400 tickets. The truth is, the political climate was not especially febrile. Sure, the jaunty red, white, green and black of the Palestinian flag was very en vogue, but a few years back it was the blue and yellow of Ukraine and the EU. A few decades before

Thursday

Graeme Thomson

Jarvis Cocker still has the voice – and the moves

For bands of a certain vintage, the art of keeping the show on the road involves a tightly choreographed dance between past and present, old and new, then and now. It’s not a one-way transaction: there should be some recognition that the people you are playing to have also evolved since the glory years of the indie disco and student union. Halfway through the first date of Pulp’s UK tour following the release of More, their first album in 24 years, I started thinking about Withnail & I. Watching the film repeatedly as a young man, the booze-soaked antics of the dissipated ‘resting actor’ and his addled supporting cast seemed

Tuesday

Andy Miller

The greatest British pop singer who never made a hit single

This is a magnificent book, regardless of whether the reader knows who it is about. I state this bluntly at the outset because I am keenly aware that many more people are ignorant of Lawrence’s career and achievements in the field of popular music than will be familiar with them; and that I will need to use up a significant number of words attempting to explain a figure who has repeatedly proven inexplicable to the public at large. So here goes… Has the indefatigably eccentric Lawrence led a charmed life or a cursed one? Lawrence Hayward may be the greatest British pop star never to have enjoyed a hit single.

Thursday

Lynn Barber

Jarvis Cocker measures out his life in attic junk

If you were hoping for an autobiography this isn’t it. Jarvis Cocker calls it ‘an inventory’ and insists: ‘This is not a life story. It’s a loft story.’ But anyway it’s as quirky and engaging as you would expect from Cocker and also the most beautifully produced book I’ve seen in years, designed by Julian House. And it does, in its circuitous way, tell us quite a lot about Cocker’s formative years in Sheffield. The MacGuffin is that Cocker is meant to be clearing out a loft where he’s been storing stuff for years and deciding what to ‘cob’ (chuck) and what to keep. Of course he has trouble cobbing