How Jarvis Cocker falling out of a window led to a forgotten Pulp classic
Pulp has become widely known for pioneering 1990s Britpop alongside peers Blur, Oasis and Suede. But long before laddish hits like ‘Common People’ and ‘Disco 2000’ made Jarvis Cocker a household name, he was a nerdy kid who was horrified by stoners and useless with girls.
In the mid-1980s, a decade before Pulp’s height of fame, Cocker was desperately trying and failing to flirt. On one occasion, he was impersonating Spider-Man to try and impress a girl. His courting attempt was such a failure, in fact, that he ended up in hospital for two months. The interaction somehow led him to fall out of a window, injuring himself so badly that he had to play gigs in a wheelchair.
Although Cocker may have come away from the incident without a girl on his arm and instead with hip and ankle injuries, it also led him to write one of Pulp’s forgotten classics. Limited in his movement due to the injuries, he asked his mum to bring in a keyboard for him and ended up writing ‘Dogs Are Everywhere’. The song was released as a standalone single in 1976 and was later included in the 1994 compilation Masters Of The Universe.
‘Dogs Are Everywhere’ is much softer than the Pulp we know now. It’s a playful track which pairs cutesy synths with plucked guitar, layered with a ballad sung by Cocker’s distinctively deep voice. The single followed on from the band’s debut album, It, sonically. It was a soft precursor to their defining Brit-pop sound on Different Class and His N Hers.
On first listen, the lyrics sound as though they might be as quaint as the instrumentals, as Cocker sings, “Oh, dogs are everywhere, almost everywhere that I go”. Really, his lyrics weren’t about man’s best friend but about people who behaved like dogs. He told Record Collector: “I wrote ‘Dogs Are Everywhere’, inspired by one night after playing in Chesterfield. Magnus and Pete were always pissing about and getting stoned. Myself and Russell were puritanical and thought that was terrible.”
Cocker wrote the track specifically after a night Magnus, Pete and their friends stole beer from behind the bar, and the band got into trouble. He shared, “That’s what ‘Dogs Are Everywhere’ is about – people who display a doggish attitude.”
Eventually, it was Pulp’s decision to lean into this doggish attitude which would gain them widespread popularity and acclaim in the 1990s. The rise of bright guitar-based indie pop was accompanied by a culture of youthful laddishness. Oasis embarked upon drug-fuelled tours of the United States and feuded internally and externally with the likes of Blur. All of a sudden, dogs really were everywhere.
If Pulp were to keep up with their contemporaries, they had to cultivate a similar reputation of chaos. Ditching the soft sound and puritanism, their biggest hit, ‘Common People’, appealed to the masses who could relate to smoking and playing pool, while the follow-up single ‘Sorted for E’s & Wizz’ gained controversy for promoting drug use. Cocker’s prank at the 1996 BRITs also gained them widespread visibility in the news as he was charged with actual bodily harm.
As their lyrics got grittier and wittier and the band fell further into Brit-pop culture, Pulp gained more commercial success. Jarvis Cocker’s puritanical attitude was lost as he transitioned from dorky Peter Parker-esque teen to indie icon, devolving into drug abuse. He has since told The Guardian, “You make it, and you’re bathing in champagne, and you can snort as much cocaine as you want and fuck as many beautiful women as you want. Then you find you can do those things, but they don’t actually make you very happy.”
Though it was this doggish Pulp who would gain widespread acclaim and a place in the history of alternative music, Cocker’s naïve disavowal of his bandmates’ recklessness in ‘Dogs Are Everywhere’ provides a softer look at Pulp’s humble beginnings and a forgotten classic.
Listen to ‘Dogs Are Everywhere’ below.
