Nicholas

834. - Jarvis Cocker

Nicholas

Jarvis Cocker is the singer of Pulp, one of our favorite bands of all time. Their newest record, More, is out now. We chat about hotel keys, Lil Nas X's new video, marmite sandwiches, vocal care, digestive biscuits, the one time he gave a best man speech, how he wrote his memoir, its less easy to make friends in Paris, songs named after women, how many books he brings on tour, his early rave days, Oasis at Wembley, and why he prefers performing new songs to a crowd before recording them. instagram.com/jarvisbransoncocker twitter.com/donetodeath twitter.com/themjeans howlonggone.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Published Aug 22, 2025
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0:00-2:22

All right, this episode of How Long Gone is brought to you by Stateside with Kai and Carter, a new podcast from The Guardian. And they are using this podcast to slow down the news and wrestle with the questions that we all have about what's happening in the world. And they do it three times a week, Jason. Does that sound familiar to you? We don't really talk about, you know, a lot of international global news items and climates and cultures and sports and things like that. We do talk about fashion and wellness, but for everything else, Kai and Carter are a great place. All right, so who couldn't use more news? Listen wherever you get your podcast. or watch on YouTube. How long gone? Coming back at you. It's a overcast Thursday here in Money Making Manhattan. Them jeans coming to us from his... room at the beautiful nine orchard located in uh dime square yeah as uh as friend of the show rostam called it quote unquote nine orchie wow i haven't heard nine orchie and i think that's going to take off once this and also it was it was the numeral nine not n-i-n-e just to be clear that's very nice that's so nine orchie is like i mean yeah like how do you make it gayer oh that's how i got it um Yeah, the swan room isn't enough. I had a lovely complimentary breakfast in the swan room. I got to say I'm happy as a pig and shit at 9 Orchie. It feels as if you've just dropped a perfect little storybook home right on the corner of a stinky little fish market and a guy trying to sell me Game Boy on the sidewalk. As soon as you walk outside, the fantasy ends, but that's the point of a hotel. It's meant to create a safe space for fantasy. Yeah, and then I guess if you live here, then it's the opposite. The inside of your house is hell, and then the outside world is the fantasy. Oh, no, it's all hell. It's all hell. Okay, got it. Unless you have serious... I'm Mr. Brightside over here trying to look for the bright side, but damn, you shut me down. Mr. Brightside. I was watching... There's a new season of one of those football shows I like on HBO, and the Buffalo Bills are the featured team. God, you sound like your dad right now.

2:22-4:41

Put on one of those football shows I like. I didn't know Buffalo Bills' official song was Mr. Brightside. I'm sure a lot of our listeners are going to. Yeah, that's what they walk out to. Wow. Yeah, I know. I would say that has to be the widest swing in terms of the spectrum of gayest song to least gay city and team. I feel like the Buffalo Bills fans I know, not to stereotype an entire team, but. It does. They're not super down with gay stuff for up there. Right. And in northern. I don't know anything about Buffalo. I imagine unless unless it's like the Hudson Cougars or something is different. But that's dildo throwing. I imagine that they're probably I don't think people consider the killers to be what you're saying that they are. But it's not ACDC. I'm not saying that the killers themselves are making fucking Donna Summer songs. I'm saying that song particularly. is leaning on the scale of light in the cleats compared to the Buffalo Bills. It's a red, white, and blue team. you know it's they're they're not they're not winning games because of their brains it's because of their heart and their you know this is the old stereotype that i'm basing they have they have the quarterback the quarterback is the guy who married hailey steinfeld and he's about as interesting as a fucking wet piece of paper it's crazy it's crazy how much camera time this guy gets and then he's like he's super into science so he'll rattle off these facts that like his fucking wide receiver who's got like got like playboy cardi on his beats is like yeah bro hit me when i do the yeah he's got his uh his iphone on that or his his apple watch that's not turned on because it's accessories and then the quarterback's like did you know the human head weighs eight pounds it's it's literally like that it's literally like that but i guess he's good so you know whatever it takes you know if a quarterback or a footballer of any kind american or british If they happen to be able to speak even at a mid-level, it's icing on the cake. But we don't expect much from them. Don't get me started on Lewis Hamilton. But, yeah, we're getting ready. He's different, bro. He's artistic. Night one of two with New Balance tonight over at the One Hotel in Brooklyn, a place I've never visited before. I'm sure you haven't either. Put your ones up.

4:41-6:57

Put your ones up. I have not. I have not been there, but I'm sure it's a great place. I've heard it's really nice. I mean, those hotels are usually not. That's the first place I saw the key card that was. balsa wood where they hide the technology inside of it if you remember yeah i remember correctly that scandal that scandal so i remember that's gonna how could we forget i actually i had one recently like in the last month and i remember ripping the chip out of it and just putting it in my wallet oh wow because it's the the wooden ones are bulky you know they're bulky i mean The hotel key card, unfortunately, is best in a thin plastic, almost like a lesser credit card. All of these iterations, or the old school, like, here's your key to your suite that's on a giant key chain, so you have to give it to us when you leave. All of that is too much. I know the classic key card isn't sexy, but it's the best delivery system, I think. Okay, well, I'm glad you brought this up. Fun topic, very How Long Gone specific, but here at the Nine Orchie. They give you both. They give you the tasseled, thick, heavy key with the little leather dongle scanner on it or a standard slim key card that slides easily into the Bottega holder. That seems stupid to me, but I mean... Why? We have options. I don't want options. I want one key that opens my room. I don't need options. I know, but you're saying there's two options. I like this one. I don't like this one. Obviously, some people like one, some people like the other. This is the first hotel I've been at where they say, why not have both, bitch? Figure it out with your shorty. It's really stupid, but... To me, that's the epitome of luxury, and that's why this four-star hotel should be a 4.7. That is not... I mean, I get why they do that, of course, but I just think it's... I guess it does... then allow you to judge a person based on which one they choose, which I guess I do like that. Would you judge a burrito shack for offering both black and pinto bean options? That's not comparable at all. I see no difference. I see no difference. It's a good try. It's a good try. But I think that the... Well, which one are you using then? I'm using the slim guy, but I like to know that big boy is there, that chunk of balsa wood is there in case...

6:57-9:17

And it kind of resembles, you know, when I think it looks like a hockey puck, actually, but it's made out of some type of tile epoxy. It's a it's a terrazzo hockey puck. Wow. What a fucking slide. Of course, of course, of course. Boy, it was like a terrazzo hockey puck. But yeah, I'm going to be editing this podcast right after this. And these banging Devin Oha speakers, let my nuts hang, blasting myself with the voice of you. That's great. Hit those frequencies again, buddy. Those $10,000 speakers, that's what they're best used for, is hearing human voices, not music. A 37-kilobyte MP3? That sounds worse than the Soulja Boy ringtone. Damn. Okay, so before we get to our guest, it looks like Lil Nas X was roaming in L.A. Street at 4 a.m., Zac Efron-style, and was later hospitalized for a possible OD. What? I didn't know this. I just saw this five minutes ago from Academics, my source, of course. Okay, so prayers up for X. Academics, listen to his caption. Pray for Lil Nas X. Bray was just trying to find the Old Town Road rainbow emoji. Hollywood is hell of a dot, dot, dot, dot. What the fuck? You had to do it. That's why Academics is corny. He's like, oh, this guy almost died. Time to reference his hit song. Old Town Road and say he was looking for some dick. You cannot. Look, was he looking for Skid Row trade? Maybe. I don't know if he plays in those waters, but, you know, I don't want to joke and make. No. Make light of this subject. When it happened to Efron, I think he just went down there and he just got hit with a two-piece and got back in the Escalade and went home. I was like, damn, that was a bad idea. I shouldn't have done that. That was not a good idea. My TRT can't save me down here on Skid Row. Made a couple of phone calls and it was all good, but... I mean, to go down there and we're going downtown at 4 a.m., there's no other reason than to get drugs, right? I mean, going downtown. Unless he has sinister sexual desires, which I don't believe. No, he might have been going to. I mean, I bet the Soho Warehouse gym opens at 4.30. So maybe he was just trying to kind of get in there before the rush.

9:17-11:44

Maru knows his order down there, so he can just kind of grab his matcha and head on over to the gym. It wasn't a late night. It was an early morning is what you were saying. Exactly. He was going to do Griffith after. He's like, what do you mean you guys aren't open yet? I had to go to the gym at a weird time yesterday at like 3 p.m. And I ran into this professional runner I know named Tom Black. Great name. And I was kind of like, oh, bro, you're here at the fucked up hours. And he was kind of like, yeah, yeah, I usually do my miles in the morning and then come here in the afternoon to do. my weightlifting and i was like oh yeah okay got it yeah yeah sure so this is your second workout in my first i just want to be very clear doing my miles in the morning is a really good way to sun your little ass isn't it he really he put me in my place and it felt good honestly at least he's a professional i'll hear it from him i won't hear it from an amateur and when you have the the cojones to say something like that he could have just run a mile two miles And it would count. I don't exactly. I don't know. The way he said it, one can only assume it was at least double digits. Exactly. I'm not going to I'm not going to I'm not going to question what he did because he's in much better shape than I am. So I'm just going to assume it was double digits. You know, I'm just going to give him the benefit. You're right. Letting your nuts hang at Equinox. Story of my life. Well, we do. We do have a guest today. And this has been a long time coming. Jarvis Cocker is a obviously legend. Sheffield's own The Singer and Frontman of Pulp, a band that Jason and I have listened to since we were in high school. And they did The Unthinkable, which is reunite and put out a good album after 20 years, which is unheard of. But they're also they're coming to the touring in America, I think, starting in September. And they're hitting several cities, actually. Yeah, and I've heard that they're still out there. They still put on a great show. They're still playing all the parts live the way it should be done. God bless. But, yeah, let's give him a jingle. Excited to talk to national royalty. All right, this episode of How Long Gone is brought to you by Quince. Jason, the temps are warming up. It's getting hot out there. Summer always changes how I get dressed. I need pieces that feel lighter.

11:44-14:02

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14:02-16:08

It was brought to you by TaskRabbit. Oh, baby, let me tell you something. This is not a joke. I use TaskRabbit a lot because I can't do anything. You need some art hung? TaskRabbit. You need something put together? A cabinet? Got to reach that cheese grater on the top shelf? TaskRabbit. Anything you need, TaskRabbit can take care of it for you. How it works, TaskRabbit connects you with skilled taskers in your area. They can help you move. They can assemble furniture, repairs, yard work, mounting, and more. You can search for a tasker based on cost, skill set, availability, and past client reviews so you know exactly who's showing up and can have confidence that they know what they're doing because taskers have assembled over 3.4 million pieces of furniture, completed 700,000 home repairs. handled 1.5 million moves, and the numbers are just going up, Jason. Yeah, throw a little money at the problem. It's not so expensive, and that job that you really don't want to do is something that another person out in the world is very good at doing and would gladly do it in exchange for a little bit of money. So when life happens, your to-do list grows. Get ahead of it now and get $15 off your first task at TaskRabbit.com or grab the TaskRabbit app using promo code how long taskers book up faster, especially for same day tasks. So book trusted home help today. That is $15 off your first task using promo code how long with the TaskRabbit app or at TaskRabbit.com. All right, Jarvis, what's going on? Thank you for joining us on How Long Gone Today. I apologize if I'm a bit slow because I've been doing a few interviews today. So yeah, my brain may be slightly slow. Not as much petrol in the tank, perhaps. Well, I just had a biscuit. Okay. So, yeah, hopefully that's going to start having an effect on me soon. Just a regular biscuit. Do biscuits... Just a regular... Do regular biscuits really give you that much of a boost? They can do. Okay. These ones are kind of like a sourdough digested biscuit. They're quite...

16:08-18:13

crunchy. They're quite a thing. Okay, I know what you mean. Have you gone on the journey that many people I know have gone on, which is you sort of give up regular bread, you dip your toe into gluten-free for a little bit, maybe the missus gets you into it, and then you have an awakening with our friend Sourdough, where we should kind of land on. What do you think? Yeah, well, it's kind of like a halfway house, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. It is. The methadone clinic. Yeah. Yeah. There's there's there's commonalities here. Yeah. And I suppose I do have white bread, sliced white bread sometimes. And weirdly enough, that feels like a treat. You know, like you're indulging yourself of doing something, I guess, because it reminds you of being a kid. Yeah. Yeah. And it was not a treat necessarily when we were kids. But as an adult, I really do look at it as a guilty pleasure. with a good bit of butter on there. Yeah, if you're having white bread, Jarvis, what are you topping that with, some marmalade, or are we talking sandwich building? No, I would generally take the crust. I like the crust of a white loaf, and then I would toast that, and then I would have butter on it, and then not marmalade, but marmite. Oh, wow. Wow. that in america i don't know like a yeast extract so it's very yeah we do it's it's controversial it's contrary it's a polarizing flavor okay all right so that kind of and then i like the fact that you've got the softness on one side and then the crust makes it a bit harder And that's a real indulgence. I enjoy that. Okay. That's a very specific way of preparing. I didn't know you were. How serious are you in the kitchen? Oh, yeah. I'm a gourmand. I'm not great. I can cook about five dishes, I think. Okay. I think that's what they say like every man should be able to do. You know, just have specialties, I think. Yeah. Yeah. I can do.

18:13-20:37

Coco Van. I can do beef bourguignon. They're both from my time of living in France. I can do... I used to make a very unhealthy macaroni cheese, but I've kind of gone off that as I've got older. I can do one vegetarian dish, which was like a vegetarian moussaka. That was from a Lyndon McCartney's book. And then I can make kind of weird... I used to... Cooked this for my son when he was younger. I like a kind of almost like chili con carne, but using baked beans rather than kidney beans. So kind of dangerous. Kind of dangerous, but a comfort food. Well, comfortable when you have eaten it, not comfortable for other people. Yeah, sure. So it's like a British chili, I guess. British chili in some way. Yeah, yeah, a lazy chilli, I suppose, yeah. So no Yorkshire pudding, though, for you? I can do, yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, because I'm from Yorkshire, and I am able to make a reasonable Yorkshire pudding now. I mean, not like, sometimes you get them in restaurants, they're gigantic, I don't know how they do that, but, yeah, I get them to rise. The trick to making... A Yorkshire pudding is really patient. You just have to get the oven up to its maximum heat, put them in, and then just have confidence they will rise. If you open to look, then they will just fall flat as a pancake straight away. So you've just got to believe that it's going to work. That's a real metaphor for life. True. Yeah, I mean, they often say the most important ingredient in a sandwich is air. Yeah. You could say the same thing for a pud. Yeah, that's right. I often do. And you often do. So I know that you came out with the memoir a few years ago, and was that the first run of podcast press that you had done? Yeah, it was, actually. Yeah, I mean, I did. Do you know, there's a guy called Adam Buxton. He does podcasts. He's quite popular, and I'd heard of him because he used to have a radio show. But then I ended up on one that was...

20:37-22:39

actually quite similar to this because we talked about food all the time. We had to talk about favourite restaurants and favourite foods and for some reason at that time everything that I mentioned involved cheese. All the foods I came up with involved cheese which that's a thing of the past now because I don't have any dairy products now because It's not good for your voice if you sing it. Oh, yes. Yes, I did. Okay, so it's a voice-related. It's not that you heard yourself on this podcast talking about cheese passionately for an hour and realized maybe you should pump the brakes. Maybe a combination of those two things. Yeah. Okay, sure. What do we think cheese does to the vocal cords? Because I have heard this before, but what is the issue that it causes? Dairy creates a lot of phlegm in the body. I'll let Jarvis explain. Exactly, yeah. So milk and cheese, they make you a bit phlegmy and you just can't make your voice not as clear. And when we were all younger men, we could... chug all the milk and cheese that we'd like and still sing like a bird but now you know when you're older you don't process that dairy so well no that's it so all of us not just you yeah i wondered what was wrong with my voice but that explains a lot now i i can i have to go back to the drawing board on this next time have you so when you're if your voice isn't feeling well and there's you know thousands of people out there how good does the steroid shot feel before you hit the stage if you need it. I've never had a steroid shot. I have to get the other people in the band who can sing to help me. Okay, so you go old school. You just have people use the microphones on stage more. Yeah, well, it happened. We were playing last year. We played in Mexico, and I don't know whether I had picked up the virus or whatever, but my voice went really bad, and I couldn't hit notes and stuff like that.

22:39-25:03

We had like an emergency summit where we'd met in my hotel room and we played back like the live versions of songs and I'd sang along and just said, look, I can't hit that note, I can't hit that note. And they just very kindly helped me. And I guess it was perceptible. I'm not saying it was like a completely professional and he couldn't tell and he thought I could sing fine. But luckily, anyway, I don't know if it was, you know, Mexico City is very high. I don't know if it was something to do with the altitude or something like that. But really my voice went quite weird. And I'm glad to say that it's come back to normal. What other care do you do? Do you just drink a lot of tea? Do you have any weird concoctions that you've discovered over the years that keep you? You know, humming? Yeah, there are these licorice-flavored sweets called vocal zones. Okay. Sounds like a pedal. Yeah. Yeah, it does sound like a pedal. Anyway, you're allowed to suck as many of those as you want during a day, and that kind of is good for your voice. And then there's also a tea that's called... Throat Coat. Throat Coat, I'm familiar with. Great name. Yeah, and then there's also stuff you can spray into. Throw and now what? That's got a good name. It's got, well, it's got very. Entertainer's Secret. Entertainer's Secret. But the secret is out now because we've told everybody about it. But that's. I know. We're giving it away. We're giving it away for free. That's got very good packaging because it's like, it's like a jacket and a bow tie on the tube. It's a little. Yeah. It's a little suit. Yeah. It's a little. It's a nice little suit. Like something Frank Sinatra should spritz on before he goes out in Atlantic City, perhaps. Exactly. I've been told by a few people, though, that that is a. that's a secret hack for sober singers because it does have just a tiny bit of alcohol in it oh right okay yeah to help the sourdough yeah yeah exactly exactly just a taste just a little it sounds like we have we have we have three great products with three great names and it was great hearing you of all people sort of make a meal out of the pronunciation of them i feel like there's room in the market for one more a fourth

25:04-27:24

vocal suppository or some type of a ivy drip it could be an under the tongue situation maybe okay we'll workshop it but this could be a good you know kind of revenue stream as the you know as the ship begins to sail off into retirement you know okay yeah i think it's i think you should be looking at business opportunities because you can't perform forever and i know you know that that's the name of the product you can't perform forever but with us you can If you need any business help, just know that we're here for you. Okay. Well, maybe it's a special biscuit. You know, we started off talking about biscuits, but maybe there's some kind of biscuit that as it goes down, you throw it somehow stimulates your vocal cords. Okay. Is there a biscuit flavor out there that you've been dreaming of that you're just not seeing produced? You're not seeing it at Tesco? Alcohol. No, no. I don't actually have. I like blander kind of flavors, I suppose. I like. Are you familiar with water biscuits? Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I used to like those a lot. They kind of taste of nothing. Roasted cardboard. Yeah, but they're very crunchy. The texture of it can be quite dangerous, actually, if you. If you bite into it, you can cut yourself if you're not careful. So, yeah, something like that, a kind of water biscuit maybe would be. I'm interested in pursuing this for sure because I don't think those get enough shine over here in New York City. Biscuits need more of a presence stateside. Yeah, because biscuits to us, especially I'm from the south, a biscuit is a fluffy kind of slathered-in-butter fat boy breakfast. Oh, right. And they are delicious and beloved, but I think there could be some reframing that would help us all and our waistlines. Okay, great. Let's do it. Okay, on the same theme of food, Jarvis, on the new record, which we do enjoy, there's a song on there called Farmer's Market, which I believe seems to be about picking up chicks at the farmer's market, which is about as cool of a topic as you can get.

27:24-29:33

kind of elaborate on that a little bit more if that's what it's actually about this is hitting close to home for jason specifically so i think he's feeling seen yeah all right okay well that's it's the specific farmers market is one in la i think it's on fairfax oh and i went there uh with my now wife that was my girlfriend at the time and my son but my son from my first marriage and We ate some Mexican food. My son bought some very hot chili sauce to take home and frighten his school friends with. And I bought some postcards of those cars. I think they're designed by, is he called Barris or something? You know, those kind of like funny, kind of like Hot Wheels cars, but they were real cars. Oh, okay. Made in the kind of 60s and 70s, very kind of like drag racer cars, but with big pink bubbles for you to sit inside to drive it and stuff like that. So there was a shop that sold that kind of stuff. I think that has now closed down and is online. But I don't know. I really like that place. I didn't start a relationship there, but I wrote some words that mentioned that. I imagined an encounter between a guy kind of having been to the market and then he sees a woman and he likes her, but then he's just putting his groceries in the back of the car and then he thinks, hold on, why don't I go and talk to her? And he does. And that puts his life in a completely different, on a different track. A similar thing happened to me with meeting my wife, but I didn't meet her in a farmer's market. I met her at a wedding, actually. I was the best man at a wedding, and I met her there. That's a pretty classic tale, actually. And also, of all the people to be a best man at the wedding, I feel like you really fulfilled those duties. Well, yeah. In a fantastic way. Whose wedding was it, Jarvis?

29:33-31:51

It was Steve Mackey, who was a cult space player, but unfortunately he's no longer with us. But it's the only time that I've been a best man. And I was thinking that because I was, I guess I was 40, 41, 42. So I thought, you know, everybody's married who's going to get married. And most of them are getting divorced now. So that's it. I'm never going to be a best man. And then. out of nowhere, I got asked to do it. So I was very happy to be asked. Did you write the speech or did you freestyle? Yeah, I wrote it. I did a kind of PowerPoint. Oh, wow. So we did a presentation. There were visual elements. Yeah, yeah. I managed to get some photographs and I kind of told his life story in a slightly, gently disparaging way. Of course. It's a sweet spot. Showing slides. and talking about stuff and um yeah there was there was laughter and tears a visual element i've never seen a visual element implemented for a best man speech but i'm i'm inspired uh yeah well it's i i i mean really a powerpoint is just a glorified slideshow and um i it's true it is yeah it was a good way of showing some slightly embarrassing pictures of him um and but not Not making him too embarrassed. I mean, I've seen the worst best man speech I have witnessed was a relative of mine. Their daughter got married. And in the best man speech, he basically incriminated the groom into some kind of stealing something and hiding in the loft of the house to avoid the police. And, you know, all the kind of older people, they're kind of. You know, the atmosphere turned very cold at that point. People were wondering whether they should call the police and get him arrested. Do you think that your relative was under the influence of alcohol, or is this just a natural occurrence? No, I mean, the best man definitely was under the influence of alcohol, and that was why he kind of made this terrible speech. Yeah, I don't know. The marriage didn't last that long.

31:51-33:58

He was kind of doomed from that particular moment, actually. It's a bad omen. Have you performed at weddings? Yeah, once a really long time ago. I didn't really know the people who were getting married, but me and a friend were on holiday in France, and we got a kind of invitation to a wedding. The kind of thing at the wedding was everybody who was there had to go and perform something, which was quite good, actually, because it was a good way of getting to know people. And there was a guitar there, so I played a song. One of your own or a cover song? Yeah, I'm terrible. I mean, I said I know how to cook five different dishes, and I probably know how to play three other people's songs. That was really why I started writing. my own songs. I always wanted to be in a band and when I finally managed to persuade some people to come round to my mother's house on a Friday night to rehearse, because we were all so musically inept, we just had to try and write our own songs because we couldn't work out the chords to anybody else's. Apart from Stepping Stone by The Monkees, because that's just... It's only four chords, and that was quite easy. Great song. I haven't thought about that in a long time. It is a good song, yeah. That's one retirement thing I won't be able to do. I won't be able to be a wedding singer. You can't. Look, at this point, I think it's acceptable for you to focus on your own music. I think it's okay. Yeah, I don't want you to be a wedding singer, but I would say that this newest album... has taken a direction in a little bit of a lounge lizard territory. Would you agree or be offended by that? Well, I don't know which... Are there any songs in particular you think are going in that direction? Good question. I mean, I guess just as, you know, the band has progressed and everyone's gotten older...

33:58-36:16

Oftentimes, you know, song, you know, tempos will slow down a little bit more and things will get a little more groovy maybe. Yeah. I don't know, maybe Tina. Yeah. You know, it has a little different feel to it. I suppose so, yeah. I haven't really got the voice to be a Frank Sinatra or a Scott Walker or anybody like that. I admire those people, and I wish that I could sing like them, but I'm kind of stuck with my voice, which is expressive, shall we say. It's expressive. It is, but I think you have a crooner sense in you, just in your own style. Okay, well, maybe I should try. You croon. You're encouraging me now, so maybe I could try and work more on that, yeah. Get out there and croon. Don't be afraid. I mean, I don't know if you're one of those guys. Some people are addicted to being on stage and performing, and some people, you know, it's okay, and they can hang up the hat whenever it's time. Where do you think you stand in there? I've attempted to retire quite a few times. You have? Yeah, and I've never managed it because writing songs is the only thing I can do, really. And it's the way that I try and work out what I'm doing in my life. And also, it's the only way that I kind of remember what I have been doing in my life. You know, I've never kept a diary or anything. songs are the only thing that will say remind me of you know i'll listen to a song from 1988 and i'll remember what i was doing in that year much more than if i try and just sit down and remember what i was doing i'm i'm shocked to hear that you've never kept a diary that's that's interesting but i i did it did it make writing a book more difficult or do you think you were able to kind of get back there mentally when you needed to well i was really lucky actually with that

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So the book was all based on stuff that was in a loft of the house. And the thing is, when I moved down to London to go to college, I brought lots of stuff with me. I didn't really know why, but it made me feel more kind of protected or something. I don't know. And I used to carry it from place to place because I was living in squats when I first arrived in London. stay somewhere and then a bailiff would come and say you've got to move out of this house and you'd have to pick it all up and move somewhere else so I moved this stuff around from place to place eventually pulled kind of sold some records and I bought a house and I put it all in the loft of this house then I split up with the woman that I was living with so I left the house because it was too depressing but all the stuff was still in the loft and some friends lived there for 20 years whilst I was in Paris and I used to kind of think, why have I, you know, I moved this stuff around. It seemed like it was important to me at some time in my life. I should look at it one day. And eventually I did look at it. And that was the thing that acted a bit like a diary because I would, it was such a mess inside this loft where it all was. I would just pick an object up and look at it and think, why have I held on to this for 20 years? And then. As I looked at it, I would remember where it had come from, and it would trigger memories. Until I looked at the object, I would never have remembered that thing again. No, it was an ingenious way to write a book like that, because I do think that if you haven't kept a diary, you've got to have something to trigger that stuff. Yeah, I mean, I found a photograph of a mug. in a car engine well wedged in between some cables in a car engine and I thought what is that and then suddenly I remembered that I had actually taken a guy who ran a garage to court because I'd taken my car to be repaired and then it broke down about a day after and I opened the hood of the car and there was this cut there was this

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tea mug wedged in the edges. So I just went back and said, what the fuck are you doing here? So you've kind of, you've messed my car up. So I didn't remember that. I don't know how. I mean, I actually went to court and represented myself in court and won. But I had no memory of this happening. So it's weird. You know, it's weird with the mind, the things that stick in it and the things that don't. Yeah. I'm glad that that one was unearthed because that's one of those memories that you'd want to remember because it has a good happy ending. You fought the law and you won. Yeah. Well, you didn't fight the law, but you fought a bad boy. Yeah. I punched the air when I remembered that. A little celebration never hurt anybody. And instead of writing a song about it, you threw it in a box and here we go. Well, do you have enough stuff in this box to write memoir number two? Is there enough of a... a fever out there to get more chapters from you how much shit is how much shit is left are we going to just do based on suits this episode of how long gone is brought to you by squarespace obviously jason you and i spend a lot of time on the worldwide web so to all our peers our listeners our friends our colleagues obviously maybe even your parents if they're freaky um and if you're doing anything in the world writing, taking pictures. I do topless boxing. You need a website. Exactly. A website that works, that does what it's supposed to do, that allows you to be creative, but also business-minded. Jason, there's one place to go for that, Squarespace. Yeah, Chris, I'm over here. I'm modifying calculators and putting Claude inside of them so you could cheat at school. And I just want a place where I could have everything all in one place. I can have the SEO tools. So those future graduates can find me and, you know, I'm able to accept, quote unquote, donations for my services that might be gray area. You know what I mean? And then email campaigns. Hey, I got a new, you know, 2.3 version upgrade. Boom, boom, boom. Get the analytics going. Raise some money. You know, show your investor all of your cool analytics of what's going on. They're going to want to get in early and we can use Blueprint AI to make your website look as professional.

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as your competition, if not more. So head to squarespace.com slash howlong for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use offer code howlong to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain. Hi Talk House Network listeners, it's your old friend Nels Klein from Wilco here. Wilco is touring this summer and we'd love to see you somewhere on the road. We're playing shows this June and July in Rochester Hills, Michigan, Chautauqua, New York, Lafayette, New York, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Vienna, Virginia, Forest Hills, New York, Portland, Maine, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Memphis, Tennessee, La Grange, Georgia, Charleston, South Carolina. Virginia Beach, Virginia, Wheeling, West Virginia, and Columbus, Ohio. Plus, there are even more dates, some with Willie Nelson that I didn't even mention here. So please go to wilkoworld.net to see the full list of dates. We'll see you on the road this summer. Now, you know what? I kind of discovered that device for writing that book and I thought... That would be it. But I only got up to, the book ends, not wanting to do a spoiler for anybody who hasn't read it, but it ends in the year 1985, I think, before I'd moved to London and before Pulp had become known at all. I have got other objects left and it's kind of becoming fairly urgent now. If I want to write part two, I'd better... I'd better start it because that house has to be sold before the end of the year. So I'm working against a deadline there. Why are you selling the house? Is it just time to unload or is it an emotional release? Part of both, really. I mean, I could say it was kind of like I bought that house and never really lived in it.

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At the moment, my son is kind of living there a bit, but I don't want him to get too comfortable. Keep his ass on his toes. Well, I mean, living in Paris for 20 years is quite a long time. I've been to Paris countless times in my life, and I don't really get it. I don't enjoy it the way some people do. Did you learn to love it, or were you there for love? Well, I was... I ended up there because I got married and my son went to school there. I didn't like, you know, when I was first there, attempting to socialise was difficult. Because in England, you know, the way you kind of meet people is you go to a pub, you get really drunk and you kind of just kind of talk to people because you're drunk. And then if you keep going to that pub, they become your friends. And alcoholics, maybe. But in Paris, you know, people have dinner parties and things like that, and they don't really go to... There are bars, but you don't really socialise in that way. So I found it difficult to make friends there and stuff like that. But over the years, then, I don't know, something weird happened after I'd been there for... I don't know, 14 or 15 years, suddenly I started to see what was good about it. And weirdly, now that I don't live there anymore, like my son was living in my old flat there, but now he's moved to London and I got rid of the flat. And now I find myself, I have actual dreams about Paris quite a lot. Because it's weird when you've got... You've got a kind of city mapped out in your mind, but you're not there anymore. It's like part of you is missing or something. It's a strange feeling. Well, when you go back, do you slide into it, or have you not really been back unless you have to? Well, we pass through it.

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Just the other day, we were on our way to play a concert in San Malo, which is on the coast. And we got a Eurostar and then we got in a van. So I was, you know, I drove through it and it was quite a weird feeling to, you know, to recognize it but not realize you weren't part of it anymore. No, I get that. I get that. But I mean, London is home. I'm sure it feels better to be back. Yeah, London's all right. I mean, my main... My main revolution in my life has been that I've spent quite a lot of time in the countryside recently. I'm becoming a bit of a kind of Farmer Giles kind of guy. What are you doing out there? Walking around? Yeah, I'm trying to learn the names of trees. The only ones I really recognize at the moment are the obvious ones, like an oak, because I recognize the leaves of an oak tree. I was brought up in Sheffield, a very urban place, but surrounding Sheffield is countryside, and yeah, it's quite good being in the countryside. It's like it puts you in your place. You kind of look at a landscape that probably hasn't changed for thousands of years, and you just realise that human life is not that big a deal. It gives you the perspective. Yeah. Just one small part of the planet Earth. Well, are you friends with our friend Plum Sykes? Do you know her? No, I don't. She's also a country liver, but we hung out at her house in the Cotswolds last summer. She was like a Vogue editor for a long time in the fashion world. But I wanted to ask you, as a country living person, how many hours can you leave a roast chicken out of the icebox for? over there in the country? Probably all day. Yeah, all day, huh? Well, as long as it's not in a heat wave or something. If it's in the shade, yeah, I'd say all day. I mean, if you're leaving it out in Broadstone, then I'd say probably four hours. Okay. Do you have any animals to speak of, or is this just merely grass?

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No, no, no livestock, no. I mean, we've got a dog. Okay, that doesn't count. I was hoping for some livestock. Does the dog know how to catch the ducks after you shoot them? No, he doesn't. He watches sheepdogs, and I can see that he's quite jealous of how they round up sheep. So maybe he could become the first Chihuahua sheepdog. That would be my claim. That would be revelatory. That would be big. Yeah, that could be my claim to fame. What's the Chihuahua's name? He's called Tony. Tony. Yeah. Okay. That sounds like you named your dog after your Coke dealer in the 90s, but I like it. It's actually named after Tony Soprano. Because you're just such a fan of the program. Well, yeah, because it was a lockdown purchase, the dog. And we watched all the Sopranos during the lockdown, and that helped a lot. And I enjoyed it a lot. So Tony became the obvious name. And he fulfills. He kind of lives up to the name. Oh, does he? He has a similar attitude, the way he views the world. Yeah, kind of. How much more reading do you get done in the country versus in the city? Probably, yeah, probably read a little bit more in the country. Okay. But not that much more. It's harder to get books in the countryside, so I have to kind of carry them around. I mean, that's something that I do on tour as well. My bag weighs a lot because, especially, you know, we're coming to America, so we'll be there for three weeks, so I'll probably end up bringing maybe eight or nine books. Wow. One or two of them might be hardbacks, so that is quite a lot to carry around. Yeah, that does add some kilos to the Czech bag. I just read On the Road by Jack Kerouac whilst we were on the road.

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And I really liked it, so I think I'll probably try and read some more by him whilst I'm in America. Yeah, that seems like a good idea. Wow, okay, so you just, why do you think you put that off for so long? Because that's a book that most fellas, you know, that's like high school. Yeah. A rite of passage. Is when you tackle that one, if you have a cool teacher. Yeah. Yeah, if you have a cool teacher. Yeah, well, I think I had a kind of slightly immature attitude when I was younger. I didn't want to read all the books that everybody else was reading. I wanted to discover new ones and stuff. So I kind of tried to do that. And then as you get older, you realize that books are well-known, are well-known for a reason because they're good. So I'd been bought on the road a couple of times, you know, for my birthday and so forth and just never really felt like reading it. And then I just suddenly thought, you know what, I'm going to read that. And I really... I enjoyed it. It's quite strange to read it. I'm 61 now. So, yeah, like you say, it's more of a book that you read when you're younger to give you an idea about a different way of living your life if you want to live it that way. It was very influential in its time. But, yeah, I really enjoyed it. So I think I will try and read more about it. Now, do you have your own boss in these situations? So you've got the back lounge set up Jarvis style? I've got a bit, but I try to avoid tour buses. You fly. Well, it's just when the first time I came to America, it was when Pulp supported Blur. Blur did a tour in 1994. And we had to travel on a bus and we had to share it with the crew as well. And we had to sleep on it, you know, because we didn't have much of a budget for it. So that was just like a kind of very traumatizing experience. It's just like the way that people turn feral very quickly on those buses. And you just spend two days traveling across the desert and then you're supposed to sleep in this kind of...

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coffin like alcove and I hated it so we definitely don't have a tour bus as in a bus that we live on we will travel by bus because some of the dates are quite near so yeah being on a bus being on a bus for two hours is okay that's all right that's just like sure you can handle that i can have the overnight stuff that puts you on edge yeah yeah yeah i think that's reasonable i mean it is a terrible way to live and travel but i thought it was sort of unavoidable at a certain point but you've earned the right to figure out a new way for yourself. Thank you. I appreciate you saying that. Yeah, I'm sure everybody appreciates that about you. I'm sure everybody appreciates that about you. When I was talking about Tina earlier, but I was realizing when I was listening to that song, are there any other songs where you, I guess they're kind of named after women or you're calling out to a woman's name like Deborah or Tina? Is this a theme where there's more? More songs that I can't think of right now? Yeah, I mean, that's what I realized with that song. I realized that maybe what could even, I guess, could be considered an issue with that because you mentioned Deborah from Disco 2000, but there's also a Pulp song called Sylvia. There was a Pulp B-side called Paula. There was a solo single that I did called Angela. And now it's Tina. So I've obviously got to think about women's names that end in A. I don't know why. Are all of these women real? Well, Deborah, yeah, Deborah definitely was real. That song is pretty true. It's about a girl. I was born in the same hospital as her and went to the same school as her. Sylvia was a girl who looked a bit like Sylvia Plath, so that wasn't her real name. Paula was a girl.

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was a girl from Hull who used to follow pulp around a bit. Angela was, I don't know if that was her name at all, it was just somebody I saw in Australia once. And Tina was, Tina was real, Tina was real. And Tina was a woman in Sheffield who I thought I would try and talk to once, but then just as I was walking over to her, she started talking to another guy and so I gave up. But then I kind of... I used to bump into her occasionally and developed a bit of an obsession with her, which ended up being the inspiration for that song, which is really the guy who sings that song is kind of a jerk, I suppose. It's fun to create these characters, isn't it? Yeah. But yeah, I enjoy singing that song, actually. Yeah, it's a great one. I did want to talk about clothes a little bit. Okay. Just because I feel like that is something that you are passionate about. Have you been working with someone to make these suits and these jackets for years, or do you kind of spread the love around? Yeah, well, all my clothes used to be secondhand. That started from really in the aftermath of punk rock happening. where I didn't want to wear flares anymore so I just started going to jumble sales which I guess they're like a bit like yard sales but they would be in like a church and you would get clothes very cheaply and I kind of developed I don't know a look from doing that then I graduated to charity shops and And did that for quite a long time, then actual vintage clothing shops. But then in recent years, I have had things made, I guess because now the clothes I'm interested in are like 50 years old, so you would never see them in a charity shop, you know. So there's a tailor in Paris.

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And the shop is called Husbands. Oh, yeah, I'm familiar with Husbands. That's really up your street, look-wise. Yeah, so most of my clothes are made by them. All the clothes that I wear on stage now are made by them. Oh, that's great. I didn't realize that. I didn't know that. I mean... He makes suits that I really like but I don't think would work on my frame. But I'm glad that you found him because I feel like you are the right frame. Yeah, he's a good guy. I feel like he has good taste in music. Yeah, he has. He has good taste in music. Do you remember the last – I know you used to probably go to raves back in the day in the 80s and 90s. Do you remember the last rave you went to? Well, I mean, that's a long time ago because, you know, raves. The thing that I liked about raves was a lot of the fun was just finding them in the first place. It was just after I'd arrived in London, so 1988. The first one we went to was we bought a ticket and there was a coach that left from Soho Square. We were on this coach and as we got near to the party, everybody started smiling and laughing. So they almost had a knee in the coach and were getting in the mood. But we just thought, wow, these people are in a good mood. And, you know, that first encounter with the Rave was such an amazing revelation to me because having been brought up in Sheffield and, you know, I'd gone to nightclubs from quite an early age. There was always an edge of violence in nightclubs in Sheppard. People would like guys would try and get off with girls. And if they couldn't get off with girls, they'd just beat somebody up just for something to do. So it was always a bit like it was it was fun, but you had to be careful. And what I liked about raves was as soon as you got in there, you know, there was like a.

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a big ferris wheel in the background and all these lasers going off and everybody was just in a really good mood nobody was really drinking alcohol and getting wasted and people just dancing all night and it was it was like what i dreamt a nightclub would be like and so i really remember that first experience, because I just thought, wow, this is the future, and the future's going to be great. And then, you know, I kind of got a bit disillusioned with it, I suppose. One rave, I don't know if this was the last one I went to, but there was, you know, the police didn't like raves, they were illegal, you know, they were set up without people knowing, and it became a kind of cat and mouse thing that would happen, that people would... If you could get everybody to the rave before the police knew where it was, then they probably wouldn't be able to stop it happening. But the police started getting wise to the fact that people were using mobile phones because it was in the very early days of mobile phones and they would track things. So there was one night when we kept going to places and then the police had got there first. So they said, all right, OK, we've moved it to. And then they give you another map reference. I mean, we're just driving around, driving around, driving around all that. And we finally got to this party and they'd had to set the sound system up in a escape tunnel underneath the M25 motorway. So it was just a concrete channel and with speakers at one end. And I don't know. I just got this feeling in my mind. I remember dancing and then I was walking down the tunnel and I felt like I was moving back in time. And I got to the end of the tunnel and there were people kind of sat in the grass and I thought they were like cavemen. And it was all like, it was all a bit weird. And I'm sure you were sober for all this too, right? No, I wasn't. Got it. Got it. Yeah.

1:00:17-1:02:18

Yeah, when you're dancing in an escape tunnel that's supposed to be for badgers and deer to stop getting run over a motor, I just thought, yeah. And then, you know, then places like the Ministry of Sound opened and clubs that played rave music, but once it was indoors and it was just another club. uh it died for me and i i just it was it was the kind of renegade aspect of it that that was exciting right right right has to have a little danger what is the what is your like these days how often are you going to see a band play a friend or someone you want to see or is it pretty much like unless you're touching the stage i'm not going to kind of get out of bed No, no. I mean, the last show I went to see was Oasis at Wembley Stadium. We went to, Jason and I, but we went on Sunday. We were there on Sunday. All right. I went on Saturday because we had played in Sheffield on Friday night, and a friend of mine said, oh, I can get you into Oasis tomorrow. So straight after the concert, we traveled down to London. I don't know what you thought, but that was quite an amazing experience, I have to say. The atmosphere of it was... Everybody singing the songs, it was a really unusual atmosphere. I agree. I said that that many happy people in one place is sort of unheard of. But you're right, singing every word to every song... uh is a very rare occurrence because usually bands you know they like to play some new stuff that nobody cares about yeah and that that's gonna that's gonna limit the singing yeah yeah it was great i i loved it it was it was a quite a good experience so i was i was i found myself surprised that so many people like the same amount of people were singing along

1:02:18-1:04:42

to the Richard Ashcroft songs as well. I was really happy for him. And I feel like it's given his career like a big second life. Yeah, I mean, that was a perfect, I mean, him doing Bittersweet Symphony just before they come on just gets everybody up to a pitch of Exxon, you know, so. Yeah. Yeah, it was good because I, when I saw that he was going to be Richard Ashcroft and cast and I saw, oh God, this is going to be a real kind of 90s nostalgia exercise, but. It worked. I was really impressed with that. How do you feel about the nostalgia of things and how it's all coming back? I mean, I'm sure you benefit from it in some ways, but it sounds like you're turned off by it as a whole. Well, no, I mean, it's funny, actually, because, you know, Britpop, which is a word that I don't like, but I think the reason that it didn't really work back in the 90s was because it was really enthralled. to the 60s, you know, he was thinking that it could make the 60s happen again. And that was doomed to failure, because you can't make the past come back to life. But it was a time when people were bothered about music, and I think that's why those Oasis concerts have worked, because everybody was aware of them, and everybody knows the words to those songs. You might be surprised that you know all the words to those songs. It's a collective experience, and that was the main thing that I took away from it, was that what's happened since the 90s is that most of the rest of society has become less about collective experiences. You know, you look at a lot of things on your own, on a screen, on your phone or on your iPad or on your computer, and so a lot of entertainment has become just you or maybe you'll text somebody, but to be stood there with, like, 70,000 people all in the same frame of mind is an amazing feeling. You know, that's that's why that's why I think live music is still a valid thing, because it's something that it only happens when you're there with an audience. You know, otherwise you're just rehearsing. You know, a rehearsal is a completely different thing. You're playing the same songs, but when you're playing it and there are people there, they.

1:04:42-1:06:56

How they react to it alters what you do, and it's not something that you can completely quantify and say how it works or why it works, but it does work. When you guys are playing, are there more young people there than you thought there would be, or are you surprised at the demographics that are coming to a pulp show in 2025? Totally, yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, we played last autumn, and that was something that I was really unnoticed straight away, you look out into the audience and you see people and I'm thinking, well, why are you here? Because you weren't even born when we were last here. Why are you here? Well, yeah, but I just, you know, I've always been curious about that. I always wonder about, I've always wanted to know what brings people together, you know, because that's the exciting thing about a concert, you know. You get people coming from all over the place and they all gather in this one room and it's the only time ever that they'll all be in that room together and they're watching something. And you make something happen between you and the audience. And like I said, I love that. It's what makes songs come back to life when you play them to people and you get a reaction back from them. Then it's not... It is a nostalgic thing because it's something happening right then in that moment. That's a good way to look at it. I've never thought of it that way as far as the nostalgia portion of it. We talked about this in the intro a little bit, but you're one of the few bands that reunited and put out an album that was good. I want to just say... I just want to say congratulations because that is a feat that not many people accomplish. Well, thanks. Many dare. It is. It's just a funny, most of the time, you're dreading that from a band that you love. You're like, please, God, do not put out new music. I would just want to see you play. You know, I just want to see you play. I want to have that experience. Yeah. What other bands have, I guess, like when New Order got back together and put out that record, whatever, 20 years ago, that one?

1:06:56-1:09:07

I was like, oh, thank God it's good. It happens every once in a while. It's just a rare... I mean, but I think that the touring of it all has gotten so much more popular that it's bringing bands back to the studio, I think, because they just see that the audience is still there. But the results just aren't very good in my listening experience. You can tell when they're doing it for the money and when they're not. Yeah, I guess so. I mean, that was it. Yeah, it's as simple as that. That's true. The way that the record came about was really from playing. And there was one song, the song that's on the record called Hymn of the North. That was a song that I'd written for a play that had come out in 2019. And I gave that song to the guy who was doing the string arrangements. for the live shows we were doing. And he worked out an arrangement. So then we would just play that soundcheck, which just made soundchecks a bit more interesting because we were playing something we weren't familiar with. And then we just thought, OK, well, why don't we just try and play it? And I think, you know, that's how you are when you first start for a band. You know, you write songs and you think, OK. Could we play this for people? And then it's exciting to see what people make of it. And, you know, luckily the night when we played it in Sheffield, no one threw anything at us on stage or walked away to the bar. So then I just thought, OK, well, let's see how far we get with that. Let's keep writing songs. If nothing else, it'll give us other things to play live. And eventually, you know, we had enough songs that were good that we thought, OK, we'll. will make a record. But I'm glad that we played them live first because you have to, until you play a song in front of an audience, you don't really learn whether it's good or not. As soon as you play it to an audience, you can tell whether they're into it or not. And also you can tell which bits of the song work and which bits you still have to do some work on. It seems very similar to the way a comedian would work out a routine.

1:09:07-1:11:25

yeah trying it out in front of the crowd and then when it's finally done but usually it's the other way around with bands if you write the record you know at uh someone's house in malibu and then three years later you're playing them for the first time and you hope everyone likes it but i i'm glad that you guys sort of reverse engineer it yeah yeah well then you end up with more good songs yeah i think so because when we have done that in the past You have this horrible moment where you play it, you know, you've recorded it and you play it and you realise, oh, I'm singing that bit too low. You know, you just, as soon as you're singing it to an audience, you just realise really fundamental things about a song. And if you've already recorded it, it's too late to put it right, you know. So, yeah, that's my, if I was, if this was a workshop we were doing, that would be my advice to... to young musicians play songs like learn about them and also write lyrics before you go in the studio there's two things out there that seems like good advice i also i mean we talked about song titles earlier but i've i mean since i first saw and heard sorted for ease and whiz i i thought that was one of the greatest song titles of all time and it really it really just still grabs me to this day And I just want to thank you for that. I want to thank you for that. All right. Well, we should really be thanking a girl whose name I can't remember because she gave me that title because I was in a club that's just shut down actually in Sheffield called the Lead Mill. And I was talking to this girl and she said that she'd been to see, she'd been to the famous Stone Roses concert at Spike Island. And I said, oh, what was that like? And she said, well, all I can remember. is that there were these scally guys walking around, and they were just going, everybody started for these and whiz, everybody started for these and whiz, and that phrase kind of stuck in my mind, and we were trying to finish different classes at the time, trying to just write songs, because we'd released Common People with only one of the songs written, and we had to make some shit. So that became the chorus of that song.

1:11:25-1:13:40

Unknown girl in Sheffield. Thank you. Thank you. And I also think that and Jason and I come to London a lot and we both really like it. We spent a lot of time there. And I think that the the class stuff that comes up so much, I think I learned at least from a top down view of that from pulp in a lot of ways, like what that stuff was and kind of what it meant and how and not realizing how important it was to sort of the fabric of British society. which is what I've come to understand. Yeah, it's a weird thing, the class system in the UK. I suppose, you know, you're brought up with it. And, you know, that was the whole idea of the different class record because I always felt a bit ambivalent to it all because, you know, I was born in Sheffield. That's a pretty working class place. I was scared of working class people like minors because they would just beat you up if you were wearing Australian clothes and stuff like that. So I could kind of think, oh, yeah, theoretically I'm on your side, but please stop. Will you please stop kicking me in the face? And then Sheffield's also quite a big student town. So you would get kind of more kind of middle class people coming there. And that was. Kind of good because you could go to their parties and drink their drink for nothing on the weekend. But I just got this feeling that there had to be another class. You had to kind of try and escape from these weird bands. I didn't want to belong to a particular demographic group. So that was a whole kind of idea. behind that but it still does like as you say you you must have been aware that if you come to london it's it's still alive and kicking yeah it's just it's very it's i think there's also just in america being upwardly mobile and striving to be rich and successful is sort of what we reward yeah uh in in many ways and i think that's a very big difference it doesn't it feels like in in london or in the uk that you're kind of supposed to stay where you're at you know it's not as it's not as um

1:13:40-1:15:53

it's not as sort of rewarded to be a striver. No, no, you're right, yeah. I was just going to say, despite all of that, growing up in California, I was able to piece together, you know, what all of that meant, and I was able to create my own version of common people where I lived. Our version of renting a flat above the shop, we can figure out and make that our own. It was really fun growing up and bopping around to your songs when I was, like Chris said, when we were teenagers. It really made music fun, and we still play your music all the time. I'm going to DJ a party tonight, and I'm sure I'll play one or two Pulp songs. Thank you for everything you've done and taking the time to chat with us. Yeah, thank you for your service. All right. Well, maybe come and see us if you're around. Yeah, we'll try. Yeah, if we're in town, we'll definitely try to come to one of the shows. I would love to. I missed the last one. But, yeah, thanks again. We appreciate it. All right. And hopefully we see you soon. All right. Thanks a lot. All right. Later. Bye. I don't usually make any notes before we play because I think you should always be spontaneous on stage. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? I think you should come on and be in the moment. We come on here, and you're there, and we do our thing, and we see what you make of it, and then it comes back to us, and it's something that happens, right? Which is what I believe in. But because I was sat in the tent today, and I was thinking about things, and I did actually write a few things down. So let's see if I've missed any of the mail. Carrots, potatoes, pizza. That's my shopping list. Alright, I've said most things. The only thing is you can't buy feelings and you can't buy anything worth having. Also, the other thing is if you want something to happen enough, then it actually will happen. Okay.

1:15:56-1:18:04

And I believe that. In fact, that's why we're stood on the stage today, after 15 years, because we won the platform. So, if the lank you get like me could do it, and us lot, yeah, you could do it too, alright? So, on that positive note, this is the last song. We can't play anymore after this. This is... Carmen P. Faye. I want to sleep with common people like you. Or what else could I do? That's it. That's it. Simple, with prêts de véhicules. And if it's just an impact, it's free.

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