{"id":860219,"date":"2026-09-25T13:52:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T13:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/860219\/"},"modified":"2026-09-25T13:52:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T13:52:11","slug":"jarvis-cocker-tells-us-about-pulps-new-film-and-future-it-was-like-a-new-beginning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/860219\/","title":{"rendered":"Jarvis Cocker tells us about Pulp’s new film and future: “It was like a new beginning”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jarvis Cocker<\/a> has spoken to NME about Pulp<\/a>\u2018s new film What Do You Do For An Encore?<\/a>, the unique DNA and history of the band, and what the future holds for the Sheffield indie icons.<\/p>\n

Directed by Garth Jennings \u2013 who helmed the classic music videos for Pulp\u2019s \u2018Help The Aged\u2019 and \u2018A Little Soul\u2019 \u2013 the 90-minute movie captures the band\u2019s two sold-out shows at The O2 in London last summer, <\/a>featuring narration from the group, unseen archive material and rare behind-the-scenes footage. The movie also follows the group\u2019s \u201cextraordinary journey from obscurity to cultural touchstone\u201d up to the huge tour for their first album in 24 years, \u2018More\u2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Cocker sat down with NME just before the London premiere of the film \u2013 and ahead of the afterparty which bled into the frontman celebrating his 63rd birthday at Soho\u2019s Bar Italia, as made more famous by the Pulp classic from \u2018Different Class\u2019 \u2013 where he explained how the tour that followed the release of \u2018More\u2019 had a certain newfound spirit to it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s one of the interesting things about the documentary for me is that, by accident really, it ended up being filmed,\u201d Cocker told us. \u201cIt was the week that \u2018More\u2019 came out, so the thing that I was concerned about was if the new songs would fit with the old songs. Would they play well together, or would they not? You know, this is a 24-year gap between the last record. So it was an amazing thing that we played them; they fit in, and it all went well.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that did give us a bit of energy. It was great to play the old songs. That\u2019s the time when they come back to life, is when you play them live. But then to have new stuff as well, it was like a new beginning or something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Check out the rest of our interview with Cocker below, where he also told us about what it takes to be a member of Pulp (and there have been a lot), paying tribute to Steve Mackey<\/a>, playing for a new generation, and how the beauty of music is ultimately that \u201cyou don\u2019t know where it\u2019s going to take you, but hopefully it could take us somewhere good\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

NME: Hello, Jarvis. Did releasing \u2018More\u2019 leave you with something to prove when playing these shows?<\/p>\n

\u201cI suppose so, yeah. The thing that was a relief was that there was no kind of disconnect. It was like we just left the room and then made an album. I don\u2019t know what we did in that 24 years, actually! I suppose, I had a son and I did do some solo music and stuff like that. With the Pulp thing: any band that\u2019s good is to do with the combination of the people in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

People sometimes underestimate how all the individual elements of Pulp you are more than the sum of your parts\u2026.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a funny selection of people. Candida [Doyle, keys] has got their issues with their arthritis and so she is limited in her playing, but that\u2019s what makes a group. You have to just find out what you can do and then you end up having a sound that is to do with your capabilities. None of us are particularly trained musicians. Candida is the only one with grade four piano or something. Everybody else is like, \u2018Whatever\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Did you not even learn recorder at school?<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I went through a period of trying to learn how to read music, but I just couldn\u2019t do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

An interesting bit of the film is when you show the timeline of the sheer number of people who have been in Pulp over the last 48 years (that\u2019s 24 members, dear reader). How important was it for you to spotlight this cast of characters?<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, the criteria for being in Pulp was never musicianship. It was more that you got on with the person, because that was part of the reason I wanted to have a band in the first place. I was quite a shy child, and I was no good at sports, so it was my way of trying to get a gang. It was more important that you would get on and not fall out in the van going to a concert and stuff like that. We\u2019ve never had anybody who was particularly musically gifted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beyond getting on and haphazard musicianship, would you say there\u2019s any shared DNA between Pulp members?<\/p>\n

\u201cJust individuality, I suppose, and that you are your own person. When it started off, it was the misfits at school who weren\u2019t really into sport, although the first drummer did leave because he wanted to play football. It was more like kids who were a bit, for want of a better word, considered to be a bit weird at school, and then it\u2019s probably stayed like that, you know. We were once famously compared to the escape party from One Flew Over The Cuckoo\u2019s Nest, when they go on that van trip, when we arrived to play a show in Hull. I suppose that hasn\u2019t changed that much.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\u2018Pulp:Jarvis Cocker performs live with Pulp. CREDIT: Joseph Lynn<\/p>\n

It\u2019s beautiful how both the concert and the film take the time to pay tribute to the late, great Steve as well, and just show how he was cool as fuck\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, he was. I\u2019m very grateful to Garth for doing that because we obviously wanted to pay tribute to Steve, but it\u2019s hard to do that and you don\u2019t want to go too far with it, but I\u2019m very happy with it.<\/p>\n

\u201cSteve was the member of Pulp that I was closest to. He was really important because when I moved down to London, I thought I had a flat in Camden, but when I got here, the guy had given it to somebody else. So I was homeless, basically. Steve was squatting in Camberwell and just said, \u2018There\u2019s a room below us that\u2019s free, you could go there\u2019. So he kind of rescued me totally there.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think the band would have carried on really. He joined as the bass player, so then there were two members living in London. Even though we went into kind of like a period where we didn\u2019t really do very much, because Steve was a very organised and quite a driven person, he wanted it to work. Without that kind of impetus from him, I probably would have given it up. So I owe a lot to him.\u201d<\/p>\n

We interviewed Garth<\/a>, and he said that he was amazed by how Steve never had a bad haircut either, which is a very rare feat\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, true.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"PulpJarvis Cocker with Steve Mackey performing with Pulp at Glastonbury 1995. CREDIT: Mick Hutson\/Redferns<\/p>\n

In terms of getting Garth on board as creative director, what was your brief to him, or did you just let him run wild?<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we announced that we were going to play again, he got in touch and said, \u2018That\u2019s great news, if I can help in any way\u2026\u2019 For some reason I just took that as he was offering to design the stage show, which it since turned out he wasn\u2019t. I went to see him in his office in Paris and talked about it, and it turned out that we\u2019d both recently seen the ABBA show [Voyage<\/a>]. We both spoke about that and how, apart from the thing of it obviously being amazing with the ABBA-tars, the way that show has real people playing as well, and it was an interesting way of staging something. That was an inspiration. The stage show that you see in the documentary is what Garth came up with; he designed all that. When we started talking about making a film \u2013 because that actually is his job as a filmmaker \u2013 he said, \u2018Well, I can do that\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were going to do it at the end of the first bit of touring when we played at Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith<\/a>, but the finance disappeared at the last minute so we couldn\u2019t do it. It was much better to do it when we did it really, because the fact that it kind of captures that moment where Pulp come back to life as a creative force is great.\u201d<\/p>\n

Did having new generations of fans at those shows give the whole experience a different energy?<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, I can\u2019t explain that. When we were offered these shows back in 2022 or something, the promoter said that when he went to shows, they would put Pulp songs on and everybody would sing along. So he knew that we had new fans. Any performer\u2019s nightmare is going on stage and no one\u2019s there, so I just said, \u2018Are you sure that\u2019s true?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cIt took quite a long time for him to convince me. I just thought, \u2018OK, he\u2019s sincere. Let\u2019s try it\u2019. That\u2019s been an amazing thing, because we always wanted to be a pop band. We always said that, and pop music for me is young people\u2019s music. Pop music was how I tried to decide what I was going to do, how life was gonna be. It gives you tips about dating and kissing and stuff like that, so I was really happy that younger people were still finding that in the music. The pop hadn\u2019t gone flat; it was still fizzy, it was still invigorating people in some way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is it something in the spirit of Pulp? Are bands like yourselves and Oasis<\/a> needed right now so we can enjoy an escape and peek our heads above the bin fire that is life?<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, maybe, but the thing is that Pulp songs aren\u2019t relentlessly cheery! The only Pulp song that\u2019s slightly like that is \u2018Something Changed\u2019<\/a>. A lot of people have told me that they played that at their wedding, and that it is a fairly straightforward love song, but that was part of my self-appointed way of writing. I felt that where I\u2019ve been let down by pop music was that the words were a bit unrealistic.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was always my ambition to try and write about what I thought love and things like that really were like: the awkward bits of it and stuff like that rather than, \u2018Yeah, everything\u2019s great!\u2019 So I hope Pulp don\u2019t give a false picture of life, but I hope it is inspiring that you can just take things from your life and dramatise them. That\u2019s what I like, that\u2019s what I search for in other people\u2019s music or any kind of art \u2013 I want to feel like they\u2019re telling me something about themselves and that they\u2019re not trying to put on an act. If that makes people happy, I\u2019m happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The end of the film poses the question of why Pulp are still doing this, and you reply, \u2018Well, why wouldn\u2019t you?\u2019 How much should we read into that? How do you see the future of Pulp?<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, I think there is a future. The thing is, I don\u2019t like to make pronouncements on the future because the whole thing about the future is you just don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen. We did the album \u2018More\u2019, and making it was quite a pleasant experience; playing it has been good, so that\u2019s an inspiration, but obviously it came after a 24-year gap. We just can\u2019t do that anymore because I\u2019ll be dead in 24 years. What will probably happen is that everybody is going to have a bit of a rest. Maybe I\u2019ll ring people up towards the end of the year and say, \u2018Shall we have a practice or something?\u2019 We\u2019ll just see what will happen. I like to think of Pulp as an organic thing. Sometimes it bears fruit and sometimes it doesn\u2019t, but I feel fairly confident that we will manage to do something else, but I don\u2019t know when.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a keeper of notebooks, do you have any thoughts, designs, ambitions on what you would imagine a new Pulp album would be?<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s an interesting question because we\u2019ve kind of picked up some newer members, and there are like nine of us now. Some of the newer members, like Emma Smith and Richard Jones, are from a more classical music background, and that\u2019s interesting. I might try and explore that a bit more.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know. That\u2019s the good thing about music: you don\u2019t know where it\u2019s going to take you, but hopefully it could take us somewhere good.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Pulp'sPulp\u2019s Jarvis Cocker. CREDIT: Press<\/p>\n

So what are you going to do now?<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m still doing the radio show on BBC 6 Music<\/a>, so that keeps me a bit busy. I\u2019m looking forward to spending some time with my wife, and the dog. Myself and my wife are also curating an art show that\u2019s going to be on at the Hepworth Gallery<\/a> in Wakefield in May next year. That will take up quite a bit of time. I keep myself busy, you know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two of your last shows were playing \u2018More\u2019 in full plus deep cuts at the orchestral Southbank gig<\/a> for Rough Trade\u2019s anniversary and the rarity-packed headline show for End Of The Road<\/a>. Considering they were quite special setlists, were they recorded and will they be released?<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know what, I don\u2019t know. That\u2019s a good question. I hope that they got recorded. At the Southbank we played \u2018Wickerman\u2019, which is the first time we played that for ages, and then at End Of The Road we played \u2018Deep Fried In Kelvin\u2019, which is the first time we\u2019d ever played that song. I always forget to ask. I think they were probably recorded, but who knows? I don\u2019t think we would release it, but I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jarvis, the end of our time is near: is there anything you\u2019d like to add or want the world to know?<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a big question. No, I just hope that they enjoyed the film, you know? It\u2019s been quite a thing to see all the archive footage. It\u2019s a bit like when they say how your life flashes before your eyes, but I\u2019m not dead. That\u2019s what I\u2019d like you to know: I didn\u2019t die, I didn\u2019t die\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Pulp: What Do You Do For An Encore? will stream exclusively on MUBI from tonight (Friday September 25).\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jarvis Cocker has spoken to NME about Pulp\u2018s new film What Do You Do For An Encore?, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":860220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[88,206],"class_list":["post-860219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=860219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/860220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=860219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=860219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=860219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}