Remembering Jarvis Cocker’s unusual cover of Jimi Hendrix song ‘Purple Haze’
Jarvis Cocker has been a UK music mainstay since the 1990s when his band, Pulp, soared to the top of the charts with their decade-defining album His ‘N’ Hers. The Sheffield band remained a key player throughout the remainder of the decade, narrating the British nation’s millennial come down with 1998’s This Is Hardcore, and 2001’s We Love Life. The group disbanded a year later, but Cocker didn’t slow down, re-emerging in 2003 to promote the Relaxed Muscle album A Heavy Nite With. Since then, he has contributed to film soundtracks, released solo albums, established himself as a beloved presence on BBC Radio and even published a few books.
The footage below is taken from a three-day residency Cocker’s band Jarvis undertook in 2009. Held at London’s Village Underground venue, the residency saw Cocker and the band test new material and experiment with a few covers, including this surprisingly faithful rendition of Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Purple Haze’, which Cocker seems a bit embarrassed about introducing.
Featuring one of the most commonly misheard lyrics of all time (It’s “kiss the sky” not “kiss this guy”, by the way). ‘Purple Haze’ was supposedly inspired by a dream Hendrix had in which he was walking under the sea. According to the guitarist’s recollection of the reverie, he was surrounded by a purple haze, which engulfed him as he plodded along the ocean floor. His salvation, he later claimed, had been a profound faith in Jesus. Ouch, take that, counterculture.
While an early version of the single featured the lyric “purple haze, Jesus saves,” the guitarist later decided against it, perhaps realising that the addition would alienate a significant portion of his fanbase. Hendrix drew the line, however, at suggestions that the song was about drugs. While the lyrics appear to vividly portray an LSD trip and Hendrix was indeed taking large amounts of drugs at the time, he dismissed the claims outright.
There’s actually an interesting connection between Pulp and ‘Purple Haze’, which is that the track received its first live outing at the Mojo Club on January 8th, 1967, in, of all places, Sheffield.
You can revisit Jarvis’ searing cover of ‘Purple Haze’ below.
