JARVIS COCKER
Pulp’s evolving original in his own words and by his own hand.
The former frontman of Relaxed Muscle presents his Self Portrait, and gets on the analyst’s couch to talk battling the algorithm, the saga of a smashed guitar and his ongoing spiritual quest.
“I cycled to Richmond Park and sat with some deer.”
JARVIS COCKER
I’d describe myself as a… short-sighted musician from the north of England, is my standard description. You could add, who likes to sleep a lot.
Music changed me because… it’s what I decided to spend my life doing. My mother always had the radio on, and the pop radio of the ’60s was there from the off. That’s gone deep in my consciousness, I think. I wanted to be an astronaut, but I swapped that for being a pop star because of The Monkees on telly.
When I’m not making music… I enjoy cycling. I cycled to Richmond Park on my birthday and sat with some deer. But I’ve never knowingly worn Lycra.
My biggest vice is… online Scrabble, on my phone. I don’t play against other people, just the computer. I have it on intermediate, not easy and not super-hard, but I can beat the computer, and in this day and age that feels like a massive victory.
The last time I felt embarrassed was… when [current project] Jarv Is were touring the West Coast of America about a year and a half ago. We were playing the only old Pulp song we play, His & Hers, and in the middle I talk to the audience about their phobias or fears. I asked this bloke what his was and he said“Trout.” I launched into this whole thing about trout, when I got off-stage the band were laughing. They said, “He didn’t say ‘trout,’ he said ‘Trump.’”
My formal qualifications are… 10 O-levels, four A-levels and a BA in Fine Art that I got from St Martin’s – I’m still feeling the benefit of that every day.
The last time I cried was… two days ago. I’d been asked to go on Jools Holland’s Later…, and they give you an A-to-Z list of everybody who’s ever been on. I watched Jonathan Richman doing a song, Now Is Better Than Before, on a nylonstring guitar. It ended and I just burst into tears.
Vinyl, CD or MP3?… vinyl. It’s the perfect form for recorded music. I never think I’m making a CD or a stream. I’ll be making a record.
My most prized possession is… there’s a birthday card my son made me. I was a bit down, and he wrote a message inside it that was exactly what I needed to hear. The only other physical item I can think of is my guitar. We’d gone on holiday and my mum had started going out with this scuba diving instructor, a German guy, and he asked me what I wanted to do. I said “I really want to be in a band but I haven’t got a guitar.” He came to visit the next Christmas, and brought this German guitar, a Hopf. None of what’s happened since would have happened without that guitar. For most of my career it’s the only one I owned: it’s really fucked up – a few times I’ve lost it on-stage and chucked it at somebody, or I’ve thought, “I don’t want to be in a band any more” and I’ve chucked it at the wall, but it’s always been glued back together and it still works.
The best book I’ve ever read is… pretty impossible to say. One book had quite an effect on me reasonably recently – did you watch that programme on Netflix, Wild Wild Country, about the Bhagwan? I enjoyed it, but it didn’t really go into why he amassed such a following. So I tracked down The Book Of The Secrets, transcripts of talks he did in the early ’70s. I was half expecting to read a chapter and think, “A load of crap”, but it’s something I’ve taken a lot of pleasure from.
Is the glass half full or half empty? …in my post-Bhagwan mindset I’ve been trying to see beyond the glass. I’m lucky, I keep getting asked to do interesting things. My glass is in danger of overflowing at the moment.
My biggest regret is… just being slow. I wish I’d released more records.
When we die… I’d rather be buried than burnt because at least you’re going back to the soil. I would hope that there’s a spiritual equivalent where you get recycled, that some energy or whatever goes back to the energy field it came from. Obviously, I’ve got no idea.
I’d like to be remembered as… if a couple of songs still got played after I’ve popped it, that’d do me.
Jarv Is’ Beyond The Pale is out now on Rough Trade.