The first lyrics Jarvis Cocker ever wrote: “It was a bit boring”
“I was born to perform,” declared Jarvis Cocker earlier this year in the lyrics of Pulp’s masterful comeback single ‘Spike Island’, and the Sheffield indie icon certainly has the credentials to back that claim up. For, despite emerging onto the mainstream during the age of Britpop, the lineage of Pulp dates all the way back to Cocker’s school days.
Growing up surrounded by the emergence of punk rock, it was almost inevitable that Cocker would turn to the world of music eventually. In his memoir Good Pop, Bad Pop, he recalled spending countless hours of secondary school doodling logos for his band, and even concocting stage outfits for that as-yet hypothetical group, taking inspiration from new wave heroes Devo. Ultimately, though, it is Cocker’s songwriting talents, rather than his doodling ability, that have made him such an enduring figure in British music.
Particularly during Pulp’s 1990s golden age, incredible lyricism seemed to flow from Cocker with an effortless grace, crafting universal anthems like ‘Common People’ or ‘Disco 2000’ alongside a litany of pulchritudinous and – more often than not – pretty horny tracks that seemed to subvert expectations of what could be achieved within the confines of an indie pop song.
Nobody is born with songwriting talent, of course, but some figures do seem to have a more natural knack for the art form than others. Still, that is not to say that the very first lyrics Cocker ever wrote were akin to Shakespeare, even if they did revolve around the Bard himself.
As he recalled on This Cultural Life in 2022, “We were studying Shakespeare in English, and everyone thought it was a bit boring. So I just wrote something with some words about Shakespeare.” That seemingly insignificant means of passing the time in a dull English lesson, however, ended up becoming the origin story for one of Britain’s greatest songwriters.
Those inaugural lyrics in question certainly weren’t among Cocker’s best: “Got a baby, only one thing’s wrong. Quotes Shakespeare all day long. Said baby, why you ignoring me? To be or not to be,” he recalled. From those lines and the song’s apparent title ‘Shakespeare Rock’, it sounds as if Cocker was attempting to render the playwright in a rockabilly style; a style which, perhaps for the best, Pulp has never really crossed paths with.
Given that Pulp formed when Cocker was just 15, that would date ‘Shakespeare Rock’ to around 1978, some five years before the band unveiled their debut single. Thankfully, that single, ‘My Lighthouse’, shared nothing in common with Cocker’s English class jottings, switching rockabilly literature for a gentle acoustic atmosphere.
It is certainly interesting to think what might have occurred had Cocker continued down the path of ‘Shakespeare Rock’, crafting a variety of vaguely educational parody songs, like a more swotted-up version of his fellow Sheffielder, John Shuttleworth.
If you really think about it, though, the sense of humour seemingly present in that first track has certainly stretched on throughout the rest of Pulp’s discography, so perhaps that English lesson was more impactful than first thought.
