“The right kind of person”: How Jarvis Cocker picks his Pulp bandmates
While they may be most associated with their mid-1990s heyday as the outsiders’ choice in the Britpop wars, it’s always worth remembering that Pulp had miles on the clock even back then. While the likes of Blur and Oasis were only a few years old when they were comfortably selling out any venue in the UK, when Jarvis Cocker and his band of miscreants headlined Glastonbury in 1995, they were three years off their 20th anniversary.
It’s true, the band formed as Arabacus Pulp in 1978. To put that in perspective, The Cure, The Go-Gos and Whitesnake formed in the same year. Ash frontman Tim Wheeler was one year old when Jarvis Cocker put the first incarnation of his band together. While other acts in the Britpop heyday were sending their first and second albums to number one, Pulp’s breakthrough came with their fourth album, 1994s His ‘n’ Hers.
Throughout that time, the only consistent member of Pulp has been Jarv himself. Keyboardist Calinda Doyle has been with the band since 1983, Mark Webber and Nick Banks have racked up decades in the band between them, but other than that, the door into Pulp has been a revolving one. In total, 24 people have been considered a full-time member of Pulp, and that’s not even getting into the sheer amount of people that have expanded their ranks live.
So, if you’re Jarvis Cocker, how do you go about picking members to join your band of merry perverts? It can’t just be anyone who rocks up with the ‘Common People’ dance memorised, yet Pulp aren’t exactly Opeth. There isn’t a steep technical hill to climb in order to join their ranks, so how does one go about joining the band?
How does Jarvis Cocker decide who joins Pulp?
In an interview with Volume 10, Cocker went into detail on how he finds new members of his band. Now, this is a group that has spent much of its five-decade history writing about the grotty little corners of human behaviour—the kind that no one wants to spend much time thinking about, let alone looking at. However, despite all that, it’s a charmingly down-to-earth answer.
“We’ve never had anybody in Pulp who could play,” Jarvis says. “The main reason for having people in the group has always been that we could get on with them and that they seemed to be the right kind of person. I’ve never been into this muso business, but you do have to be able to get on with each other.” Trust a band who’ve been together longer than a lot of countries existed for to understand the importance of not just of musical chemistry, but interpersonal chemistry.
However, Jarv does have a more direct reason for this too. “People who are too musicianly are very boring.” He says, not inaccurately. “So Pulp has always been just a succession of friends, with varying degrees of musical ability.” Honestly, considering that’s basically a description of how all the best bands ever started, who are we to argue with him?
