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ABC Listen, podcasts, radio,

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news, music and more.

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Today, it's a conversation with Jarvis

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Cocker, the singer, songwriter and founder

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of the UK band Pulp. She

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came from Greece, she had a thirst for

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knowledge She studied sculpture at

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St. Martin's College, I swear I... ..call

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her I. Pulp

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managed to blend pop, rock and even elements of

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disco with sardonic lyrics that came

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from Jarvis Cocker's experience of

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everyday life in post-industrial Britain. She

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said... Anyway,

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a while back, Jarvis decided to move out of his house

1:00

in London and that meant dealing with all the boxes and

1:03

boxes of stuff from his early life

1:05

that he'd had stashed away in his loft. He

1:08

thought it was time to sort through all these things

1:11

and decide what was truly meaningful to him and

1:13

worth keeping and

1:15

what was just rubbish. And

1:20

as he was digging through these artefacts, he found an

1:22

old exercise book. From

1:25

when he was a 15-year-old school kid in Sheffield.

1:28

And in this

1:30

exercise book, he realised he'd written

1:32

a detailed master plan to take over the music

1:34

industry. From this and

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a whole bunch of other jumbled artefacts,

1:39

Jarvis Cocker has produced a wonderful memoir. It's

1:41

a portrait of the artist as a young

1:43

man, from his childhood in Sheffield, through

1:47

his grand plans to infiltrate and subvert

1:49

the music industry to an insane, absurd

1:52

and near-faced artist. A

1:54

near-fatal accident in which he fell

1:56

out of a high window. I

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spoke with Jarvis Cocker at... Melbourne's capital

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theatre. The Melbourne Writers Festival.

2:04

It has been themed in on Zoom from

2:06

the kitchen table. His book

2:08

is called Good Pop, Bad

2:10

Perfect. Jarvis,

2:17

your book begins with the

2:19

loft in your old house, where

2:21

you'd stashed all that stuff from your early life,

2:24

and it was hidden away for about 20 years. When

2:27

you opened the door, what did you see beyond that

2:29

yellow door? Well, yeah. As you say,

2:31

Richard, I'd moved away from there, and I knew

2:33

that there was a lot of stuff in there. I'd

2:36

lived in the house for a short while, and

2:40

we'd just throw stuff in there to get it out

2:42

of my hair. Sometimes just literally,

2:44

if my mum was coming

2:46

round, you know, and

2:48

the house looked untied, and we'd

2:50

just, like, run round and gather it all together and

2:53

just throw it in there. So when

2:55

I opened the door, it was

2:57

just one big, absolute mess.

3:00

Stuff just thrown everywhere. And,

3:02

I mean, I suppose a lot of people, they've

3:06

got a loft or they've got a cupboard

3:08

or even just, like, a pocket or a

3:10

drawer in their kitchen that they just throw

3:12

things in. And we

3:14

all think at some point, oh, yeah, I'll

3:16

sort that out. That's something I'll come back

3:18

to later. I'll organise that. But we very

3:20

seldom do it in there. Every

3:24

now and again, this idea of this loft space kept

3:26

coming back to me until eventually, about

3:30

six or seven years ago, I guess, I

3:32

just decided to dive in. And

3:34

it literally was like diving in, because

3:37

it's actually just some storage space. And

3:40

so at its greatest height, it's about

3:42

three and a half feet, and

3:44

then it tapers down to nothing. It's a

3:46

bit like being inside a tow bar. So

3:52

in order to go through it, I had to really kind

3:54

of... It was almost like swimming, and I just had to

3:56

get in, crawl around with all

3:58

this dust and cobwebs. lift

4:00

things up and bring them back into the

4:02

main room, drop them on the floor and

4:04

then look what I'd trolled up

4:07

from the deep. Were they treasures from the

4:09

deep or was it just rubbish? The

4:12

key item in that pile of stuff is

4:15

an exercise book, a school exercise book. Well

4:17

yeah, this is one of the first things

4:19

I found in there that made me think

4:21

I was onto something because I

4:24

just decided that I wanted to look at all

4:26

the objects, take photographs of them, then decide whether

4:28

I was going to throw them or not. And

4:31

this was one of the first things where I thought,

4:33

oh okay, now I understand why you're

4:35

doing that because I had this kind of feeling

4:38

that maybe there was a story waiting

4:40

for me hidden up there in the dark

4:43

in the loft and this made me feel

4:45

like I was on the right track. So

4:47

you can see it's an exercise book but

4:49

really the important thing is here where I've

4:51

written, you

4:56

know, for me, pulp means

4:58

pop, pulp means throw

5:00

away items that I

5:02

think can reveal more about society

5:05

than the supposedly revered items. And

5:09

this exercise book is

5:11

a place where I

5:13

wrote my ideas of what

5:15

I wanted a band to be. From

5:18

the age of around seven I guess, I knew

5:20

that I wanted to be in a band. I

5:23

would have written this book around the age of 15. So

5:26

this is before I actually had a

5:28

band, before there were other members in it, but it

5:30

was my idea of what the band would be. And

5:33

it starts off very specifically actually with

5:35

what the band are going to wear.

5:37

This is, as it says

5:39

at the top, the pulp wardrobe, Hill's

5:41

dress. It

5:48

starts with duffel coats, so

5:51

that mystifies me

5:53

because duffel coats are

5:55

really made out of that very stiff

5:57

kind of felt material. and

6:00

they'd be much too hot to wear on stage.

6:02

LAUGHTER And

6:05

then we've got two next ones, the

6:07

scariest T-shirts, playing shirts,

6:09

a rancid tie, a

6:12

drained-haired trousers that are mauve

6:14

for some reason, pointy

6:17

boots, hot

6:19

phone jackets, silly socks, shorty

6:22

hair and a sequin used for

6:24

a silly purpose. LAUGHTER So,

6:30

my first reaction when seeing that this

6:33

document started with the passing guide was

6:35

like thinking, oh, that's a bit shallow,

6:37

but you have to remember,

6:39

this happened... This would all have happened

6:41

in the aftermath of punk rock, which happened in 1976,

6:43

1977, and

6:47

that was like a big thing

6:49

where you had to decide whether you were for it

6:51

or against it. And one of the easy

6:54

ways of showing whether you were for it

6:56

or against it was to change the way

6:58

you dressed. You know, before punk, it was

7:00

all... Everything was wide, big, wide lapels, big,

7:03

wide trousers, and then everything went very, very

7:05

thin. And I think that's my

7:07

attempt at kind of acknowledging

7:10

punk while still not wearing

7:12

clothes that I would get told off about

7:14

because I was still going to school, you

7:16

know, and you would get told off and

7:19

get attention if you were wearing clothes that

7:21

were too outlandish. Punk was

7:23

really appealing as a whole

7:25

ideology of making your own fun. Was

7:28

that the appeal it had for you and Sheffield,

7:30

Jarvis? Yeah, the timing of

7:32

it for me was absolutely perfect because,

7:34

as I say, I had wanted to

7:36

be in a band from a

7:38

very early age. I didn't really

7:40

know how to do it. You know, it was

7:42

more an idea than a practical thing. I never

7:45

really went to music lessons. I had

7:47

tried to play the guitar and

7:49

really failed miserably. And

7:51

then punk came along and said, oh, don't

7:54

worry about musical ability or anything like that.

7:56

Look, we'll just show you these three chords.

8:00

and form a band. And so it

8:02

really gave a lot of

8:04

people permission to join in. I think

8:06

it was absolutely very,

8:08

very, very important for me that

8:10

that happened. And yeah,

8:12

and then I kind of just looked around

8:15

school trying to find other

8:17

kids who weren't really too much into

8:19

sport or anything. They were left out

8:21

of any of the state of the

8:23

activities and trying to get

8:25

them to come to a rehearsal for us to

8:28

start a band. Jovis, you

8:30

had the thing early on in that exercise

8:32

book, which is called The Pulp Master Plan.

8:34

Could you read it to us, please? I

8:38

can't, yes. You can see that I've taken a lot of

8:40

trouble with this. This is why I'm amazed that I couldn't

8:42

remember it, but I've done

8:44

proper, you know, joined up writing. I've underlined

8:46

it. I'll

8:52

read you a bit from The Pulp Master Plan. So

8:55

The Pulp Master Plan, category

8:57

A, music. Being

9:00

first and foremost a musical

9:02

unit, it is fitting that

9:04

Pulp's first conquest should be of

9:06

the music business. The

9:08

group shall work its way

9:11

into the public eye by

9:13

producing fairly conventional yet slightly

9:15

offbeat pop songs. After gaining

9:17

a well-known, disproportionately successful status,

9:20

the group can then begin

9:22

to subvert and re-fracture both

9:24

the music business and

9:26

music itself. And

9:36

then, obviously that's a

9:38

little bit hyperbolic, but when

9:40

I read that, I was

9:42

quite touched by it

9:45

because it's quite,

9:47

pardon the pun, a lofty

9:49

ambition. It's unwanted something

9:52

to happen. I'm not seeing a group as

9:54

just a way to make lots of money

9:56

and travel the world and go and buy

9:58

a chateau. It's like... and

10:00

thinking of how fame

10:02

could lead to some kind of changing

10:05

of the status quo within

10:07

society. And the next

10:10

bit really made me laugh when it got to a certain

10:12

point, see if it makes you laugh as well. So, part

10:15

two of the Port Master

10:17

Plan, the music business. After

10:20

releasing first single on own self-financed

10:22

label, the group shall be signed

10:24

up on a very short-term deal

10:26

to a major record company. Just

10:29

as full-filling their content, Port shall

10:31

then use their amassed resources to

10:34

set up their own record label

10:36

and string of record shops. Thus,

10:39

all money made on a Port record

10:41

shall come back to Port, except

10:44

for the VAT. LAUGHTER

10:55

I think you can tell that the group

10:57

formed in an economics class, don't know. Obviously,

10:59

it was flipped into that. There's

11:03

also a picture you have in your book

11:05

of kind of a heroic image really of

11:07

Paul and how it rescues the struggling artists.

11:10

Can you explain what's going on in that

11:12

picture, Jarvis? I can, yeah. So,

11:14

this is really showing in a

11:16

diagrammatic form how Paul

11:19

are going to change the whole

11:21

face of the music industry. So,

11:24

you've got this arm here

11:26

with a fist and it's those major record

11:28

companies. And held within

11:30

that fist is this little figure,

11:32

a repressed artist. But if

11:35

you look above the arm, it's

11:37

like a meat cleaver. And

11:40

on the blade of the meat

11:42

cleaver, it says, Pope Incorporated. And

11:45

as it says here, soon to be

11:47

severed arm, what's going to happen is

11:49

the Pope Niek pleaver to fall, severed

11:52

arm and thus freed

11:54

the repressed artist. LAUGHTER

11:59

And Say, You know of? easy to

12:01

less? I never. I kind of

12:04

glad I was thinking base you

12:06

know is a. Kind. Of

12:08

an owl Jewish State way of looking at

12:10

Helped Saddam I guess the whole same the

12:12

book points to. It's Tottenham Could Pop Bad

12:14

Puppets Can you tell me what Could Pop

12:16

was for you as a kid? Yeah.

12:19

I mean a thing you notice when

12:21

you say pop be due to immediately

12:23

think of pop music which nowadays is

12:25

It is a very specific. Almost

12:28

like a genre of music, but. I'm

12:30

trying to think of popular why the

12:32

contents some basic even you know because

12:34

as as some bumps in the book.

12:37

And. Soak about Andy Warhol and own

12:39

bull and discovered him was his

12:41

idea of which is basically. Per.

12:45

Annum Son things that surround you and

12:47

say okay, they're not products we can

12:49

put those on. economy will name if

12:52

you if you put those things in

12:54

your life and violent things to represent

12:56

within an hour of work which I

12:59

guess was a very revolutionary idea of

13:01

the times. And says oh

13:03

yeah I'm involved with this is t

13:05

things the name because. Listening to

13:07

pop radio as a kid when I was

13:09

like, say, when my mum was getting ready

13:12

to go school. That. Was

13:14

assigned. I really. Realized of

13:16

nice to do to and as

13:18

the sole goal lead you go

13:20

to my lovely. A similar

13:23

to that this won't do

13:25

you go to man those

13:27

ladies when you're alone in

13:29

you know about ah know

13:31

the thoughts that surround you

13:33

specific than see in saw

13:35

to yourself. And.

13:41

I mean when events that line and I

13:44

can see inside. Your head as

13:46

a kinda absolutely Texas seismic.

13:48

The sofa. Semenov

13:51

a radio could see inside your

13:53

head and see your thoughts. Can.

13:56

understand me but here's the thing i learned

13:58

from that some was Even

14:00

though as a kid I didn't really understand what

14:02

he was singing about, when I

14:04

heard it, it gave me this kind of tingling

14:07

feeling, anything. A lot of us

14:09

will have experienced that when you hear a song

14:11

that you really like, you get

14:13

this kind of fully tingling around your shoulders

14:15

and the back of your neck, and I

14:17

loved that feeling and

14:20

I found it very mysterious, like thinking,

14:22

how can a sound coming out of

14:24

a little box make me

14:26

have a physical reaction? And

14:28

I think that's really what

14:30

led me wanting to write my

14:32

own songs, like wanting to be

14:35

able to create that feeling myself and

14:37

make other people feel that. And

14:39

it's still a thing that I use, you know, if I'm

14:41

writing a song and we're rehearsing it,

14:43

if I get that feeling while we're playing it,

14:45

I know that I'm on the

14:48

right track and it's a very inevitable

14:50

thing. It's like a

14:52

little light that guides you

14:54

in the right direction, hopefully, if

14:56

you can keep your wits about you. So

14:59

the part that I grew up with was

15:01

chart pop and it was a weird

15:03

kind of democratic

15:05

yet capitalistic thing.

15:08

People kind of voted for the records that they

15:10

liked by buying them. A

15:13

seven-inch single was pretty cheap, like

15:15

50, 60 pounds, something like that.

15:18

And then, you know, you would buy a record and then you

15:20

would listen to the chart run down to

15:22

see whether the record that you bought had gone up the

15:25

charts or down in. Some kids at

15:27

school would bring a transistor radio to school

15:29

so they could listen to the midweek chart.

15:31

I mean, that's taken quite

15:33

a big interest in the charts.

15:36

Listening to a song like that, like where

15:39

do you go to my lovely on a

15:41

transistor radio, hearing that slightly tinny sound, when

15:44

I was that age, it all sounded like music

15:46

from another planet to me. And

15:48

it sounded like, I don't know, a place you just sort of

15:50

maybe get there one day in your life. Did

15:53

you think you could ever get there or

15:55

was that just an impossible science fictiony place,

15:57

that land where that music came from? The

16:00

point actually, because my inner kind

16:02

of child with ambition was to be an astronaut,

16:05

which is really going off into

16:07

the unknown or whatever. You

16:10

mean the thing of getting a radio and

16:12

turning the dial and then hearing something and

16:14

sometimes the signal will go in and out

16:17

or whatever. You're right, it seemed like it

16:19

was being beamed in from another planet. I

16:22

think the human imagination is an amazing

16:24

thing. It will fill in dirt and

16:27

it sometimes catches

16:29

your imagination. You go

16:31

off into it and I found

16:33

that was another thing that I liked about

16:35

pop was that it took you out of yourself

16:37

in the way. It stirred up

16:39

these, like I say, the tingle or whatever,

16:42

would stir up some feelings inside

16:44

you that maybe you didn't even

16:46

know you had. And then

16:48

once those feelings had been stirred up, it

16:51

would set you off on a bit of

16:53

a quest to find out where did those

16:56

sounds come from, where did those ideas come

16:58

from. So it expanded your horizons.

17:00

I thought that was what I liked

17:02

about it. Got another photo

17:04

from your book, school photo of you,

17:06

Jarvis, towards the end of your life

17:09

in high school there. You've

17:11

got glasses on, you got sort of fluffy hair

17:13

and a skinny tie and a little stripey, tiny,

17:16

tiny, stripey little beard thing on your chin

17:19

there. What are the kind of looks you're

17:21

going for there? So by

17:23

this point, I think I have got other people

17:25

to be in a band with me. Maybe

17:28

we've rehearsed a little bit, but

17:30

being a pop star was

17:32

not on the school curriculum. So

17:35

I had to try and kind

17:37

of teach myself through other channels.

17:40

And one of the channels was being a music

17:42

fan. I can

17:44

see very clearly three particular

17:47

influences on my look at

17:49

the time, which is me trying to channel

17:52

three other pop performers that

17:54

I was into. So if

17:56

we start with the hair, which as you say

17:58

is quite high. and unruly.

18:01

That was a direct homage

18:04

to Ian McCulloch of Echoing

18:06

the Bunnyman. I

18:09

really loved Echoing the Bunnyman. I'd first heard them on

18:11

the John Deol show and I'd gone

18:13

to see them and they said this kind

18:16

of secret concert that ended up being not

18:18

that far from check-in. So

18:20

a lot of the music but I

18:22

definitely liked the hair as well

18:24

because Ian McCulloch and his hair

18:27

hair was experiencing difficulties

18:29

with keeping my hair under control.

18:31

It was kind of

18:33

busty and Ian made me realize

18:35

that it needn't be a

18:37

drawback you can actually accentuate it and

18:39

make it into something so I'm very

18:42

grateful to him for that. But

18:44

he mentioned this kind of thing which isn't

18:47

really a beard it's just like

18:49

a stripe of hair. It's just

18:51

sort of shaven. That was really kind

18:54

of difficult for me because my

18:56

father I'd left when I was seven

18:59

years old. My mum had

19:01

to turn to get me shaved out and

19:04

maybe there are sometimes women

19:06

do have facial hair but

19:09

not that many. She

19:12

was trying to teach me about shaving from

19:15

a position of absolute ignorance so

19:18

consequently I kind

19:20

of cut myself to ribbons quite a lot when I was

19:22

doing it and then I tried after

19:25

shaving I just couldn't believe that

19:27

that could even be marketed because

19:32

it's made out of ink. He just

19:34

shaved and then suddenly he put something on his face

19:36

that absolutely killed.

19:39

Anyway so he

19:41

was a drag so I wanted to try and turn into

19:43

something and that beard

19:45

was I was into

19:47

the Stranglers as well and the

19:50

Stranglers the lead guitarist and vocalist

19:52

Hugh Colwell he'd done a

19:54

solo album and on the back sleeve he seemed

19:56

to have got this little beard. And

20:02

since looking at that record sleeve again

20:04

with this picture of you going well

20:06

on, I think that maybe I

20:09

made a mistake and it isn't actually a beard, it's

20:11

just like a cleft in his chin. And

20:17

then the, I suppose the most obvious part

20:20

of my look is these

20:23

national health spectacles. National

20:25

health spectacles were things at that time that

20:27

you could get free on the national

20:30

health in the UK if you were

20:32

from a low income family. We

20:35

qualified as that because my mum was

20:37

a single parent. If

20:39

you wore national health, other kids

20:42

would just say, ha, you've

20:44

got no money. There was

20:46

a kind of a social stigma attached

20:48

to them. And then in

20:50

the wake of with all this thing of

20:52

people, and to find things that otherwise would

20:55

have seen a draw, but all

20:57

this cause I was gonna be wearing national

20:59

health sticks. And to me

21:02

that was another empowering thing, you know,

21:04

that I could see. No, these

21:06

glasses are not as kind of

21:09

poverty. These glasses are

21:11

like rock-style glasses. So, fuck you.

21:16

You've got

21:21

a cassette with you. Tell me about this cassette

21:23

and the process of getting from A

21:25

to B or to C to D as a

21:27

band once you've put together a bunch

21:30

of mates to start a band with Jarvis. So,

21:34

this cassette contains the very

21:36

first rehearsal of all. As

21:40

we've covered up to now, we've

21:42

covered my visualisation of what the band

21:44

is gonna look like, how

21:47

it's gonna change the whole of

21:49

the music industry, what I personally

21:51

am gonna look like as a

21:53

singer. The only kind of

21:55

missing part of this whole jigsaw

21:57

is what music are we gonna

21:59

have? And just one small

22:01

omission is that we actually

22:04

have to have songs and

22:06

music. So this is a

22:08

big moment. So I had managed to persuade

22:11

some people to come and have a rehearsal

22:13

with me. We went

22:15

round to my grandparents' house,

22:17

and they had like an

22:19

electric organ in their spare

22:21

room. One of us played

22:23

the organ. I was trying to play the guitar.

22:26

And then the drummer, we didn't have

22:28

any drums. So he just hit

22:30

the coastal pool in the room

22:33

with like one of those little

22:35

shovels that he used to call

22:37

it. You can

22:40

imagine this horrible kind of

22:43

noise. And we just kind

22:45

of pressed play and record on the cassette

22:48

recorder and just started making news. I

22:50

don't know whether that's because we thought somehow

22:54

through some magic process, when we listened

22:56

back to this cassette, a song would

22:58

have magically appeared. I

23:03

don't know. I mean, I think if we were quite

23:05

that naive. But anyway, we just we

23:07

recorded it and we went back round to our house

23:09

and started listening to it. And we, you know, within

23:11

two minutes, it was

23:13

like we were really depressed because it

23:15

was just this horrible, horrible

23:18

cacophony of everybody making. It was like

23:20

a competition to see who could make

23:22

the most noise. Obviously, the

23:24

Colescottle kind of woman. All

23:29

except for this one tiny moment.

23:32

This was a moment where while

23:35

we were in the grandparents room,

23:38

there was suddenly this moment where a shaft

23:40

of sunlight came through a crack in the

23:42

curtains and blinded us. And

23:44

at that moment, everybody stopped playing

23:47

and I just went, the song. And

23:51

it was just this moment, maybe less five

23:54

seconds on the tape. But

23:57

it was a clue. It wasn't a song, obviously,

23:59

but it was. I'll prove that to

24:01

make a song and to make music,

24:04

you have to collaborate, you

24:06

have to make things happen after

24:08

the same time. And if you could do that,

24:12

then that might lead to something.

24:14

That's on there. I mean, you

24:16

have to wade through 60 minutes

24:18

of absolute fortune in four seconds.

24:21

But it was like the first very small

24:23

incline that that's what we need to do.

24:25

I don't put it in the book. Music

24:28

is just organised noise. It's

24:31

a way of making sounds, doing

24:34

what you want them to do. And that's

24:36

what you have to learn to do. I

24:39

think this is the point you make, the point of

24:41

persisting through that awful noise until

24:43

something comes into focus. Is that how you'd see

24:46

it? Yeah, I think so. It's

24:48

like, and that first rehearsal,

24:50

this moment was like four seconds. And

24:53

then the interesting bit hopefully

24:55

get longer and longer until

24:58

eventually you have actually got a

25:00

song. Occasionally I've been

25:02

asked to go and do like a

25:05

music workshop with young children, maybe, you

25:07

know, like kids of like eight or

25:09

nine years old, sometimes

25:11

a little bit younger. And you can

25:13

get a kind of instrument. You say, go on, take what

25:15

you want. And then say,

25:18

okay, start playing. And then

25:20

I put my fingers in my ears for about 10

25:22

minutes because the first thing a kid is going to

25:24

do is give them the permission to make noise. They're

25:27

going to make noise. You just make as much noise

25:29

as you possibly can. And

25:32

then, just for 10 minutes, it

25:36

starts to settle down. Part

25:38

of it is just physical. Maybe

25:40

they're on me today because it could be hitting something

25:43

so hard for 10 minutes. But

25:45

other than the thing, if it's just boredom or

25:47

you're giving yourself a headache, and then you get

25:49

to this point, as I say, where you start

25:51

to listen to the other people. And

25:54

then you realize that when that happens, it

25:56

sounds better. And

25:58

then something starts to... And I think

26:01

it is just a persistence. It's almost

26:03

like the songs will just happen as

26:05

a natural byproduct of just being with

26:08

those people. Podcast

26:25

and broadcast. This

26:27

is Conversations with Richard Fidler.

26:35

You can find more conversations

26:37

anytime on the ABC Listen app.

26:41

You've been an interviewer as well and there came

26:43

a time when you interviewed Leonard

26:45

Cohen about songwriting.

26:48

Can you tell that story about

26:50

what happened when you asked

26:52

Leonard Cohen about what it means to

26:54

write songs and the business and the

26:56

process of writing songs, the mechanics of

26:58

it? Well, that was a real big

27:00

mistake, to be honest. The

27:04

section of the book that I talk about

27:06

that is a section called The Magic Circle.

27:08

It's like an interlude in the book. It

27:11

starts off with me thinking about this question.

27:14

This question of should

27:16

I even be discussing the

27:19

creative process because maybe

27:22

that means you'll chase the muse away. You

27:24

know, if you think about it too much

27:26

and analyze it, you'll kill it. And I

27:28

think this is a common superstition

27:31

in musicians, not just musicians,

27:33

but creative people. For instance,

27:35

I heard that David

27:37

Lynch once went to

27:39

a therapist and just before

27:42

the session began he said to

27:44

the therapist, I'm not very good

27:46

at doing David Lynch impression. I'll

27:48

try it. He said, hey, could

27:50

this... It

27:52

sounds like a normal Irish, actually. Can

27:56

this affect my creative process?

28:00

And then the analyst said, well, you

28:02

know, David, in all honesty, yeah, it

28:04

could do. And then so

28:06

the story goes, David Lynch stood up and said,

28:09

sorry, Dad, that's a chance. I'm not prepared to

28:11

take and just walked out of the consulting

28:14

room. So I

28:16

think because we don't really know

28:18

where songs or ideas come from,

28:20

because sometimes it seems like you're

28:22

tuning into some message from the

28:24

blog. You don't want to kind

28:26

of mess the receiver up. You

28:29

don't want to disconnect

28:31

if you're thinking about it too much. And as

28:33

you say, I had a

28:35

real example of that from when

28:37

I interviewed Leonard Cohen. I

28:40

used to do this show on

28:42

the BBC in the UK that was every

28:44

Sunday called Jarvis Conker's Sunday service. And every

28:46

question came in saying that, well, Leonard

28:49

Cohen has got an album coming out.

28:51

It was the album, Old Ideas. And

28:54

there's a listening session

28:56

going to happen in this hotel in

28:59

central London. Will you host it? And

29:02

I mean, I said yes, straight away, because

29:05

I'm the massive fan of Leonard Cohen. And

29:07

the idea of meeting him was exciting

29:09

to me. But once I said yes,

29:12

then the kind of nerves

29:15

started, because, you know, there's all this

29:17

stuff, don't meet your heroes, all these

29:19

things that people say to you and

29:21

things like that. And I'm not a

29:23

professional journalist. So I kind

29:26

of worried about whether my questions were going to

29:28

be good in all this country. So I got

29:30

myself into quite a state about

29:32

it, which was then answered

29:35

by, on the actual day, we turned up and

29:37

nobody told me that we were going to have

29:39

to listen to the album first. And

29:41

not only that, I was going to have to sit

29:43

next to Leonard Cohen whilst we listened to

29:45

the album. So I just had to

29:47

sit next to him in complete silence for

29:50

14 minutes, which was just really

29:52

stressful. Because I did, if

29:55

I move or if I switch you in to interpret

29:57

that as some kind of Christmas or the musical. I

30:00

was just like, that's what it

30:02

is. Anyway,

30:07

we eventually get to the

30:09

Q&A thing after. I was

30:13

just asking about, there's a track on the album

30:15

called Banjo. I just said,

30:18

I quoted a couple of lines. I

30:21

just said, you know, what were you

30:23

getting at then? He just

30:26

looked at me intently

30:28

for a few seconds and

30:31

then he just said, I

30:35

don't think that we should go here. And

30:39

then I wouldn't let it go. And

30:43

then he just looked at me again and said, we

30:46

should not discuss these

30:49

sacred mechanics. It'll

30:52

put a monkey wrench in the whole thing

30:54

and neither of us will write a song

30:56

again. I

31:02

took the hint that we shouldn't trust him this time.

31:08

So, yeah, that was an example

31:10

of this thing of, and I

31:13

look at it and say this sacred mechanics, you

31:15

know, that's a lovely way of putting it. He's

31:18

right, you know, it is a sacred

31:20

thing. It's a magical thing and

31:23

that's what keeps people doing

31:25

it. And still

31:28

it's out of benefit that it's not to write

31:30

a song. I don't

31:32

really know what's going to come out because

31:35

all formula, I've not been saying this

31:37

before, I know that I've been writing

31:39

songs for over 40 years. It's

31:42

always a surprise and you're always taking

31:44

a stumble in the dark and sometimes

31:46

that can be frustrating because you're thinking,

31:49

surely after 40 years I should

31:52

have this probably some kind of

31:54

professionalism or some whatever. And you

31:56

do pick up little bits and

31:58

you learn to be a... attentive

32:01

to your moods and ideas but

32:03

still a massive part of it

32:06

is dealing with the unknown and

32:08

it's kind of what keeps you coming back to it because

32:10

you've got this chance of surprising

32:12

yourself and discovering something new about

32:15

yourself. There's another

32:17

photo taken from the Sheffield star.

32:20

You're still quite young and you're with

32:22

your bandmates in a living

32:24

room and you've got a

32:26

little what we'll invest on and you're

32:28

holding a kind of a

32:31

is it a metal or ceramic tortoise in

32:33

your hand. Tell me what's going

32:35

on in that photo, what's about to happen and

32:37

what do you think the significance of the tortoise

32:39

is? What had

32:41

happened was like an amazing

32:43

thing. I mentioned John

32:46

Dealing, I don't know if people in

32:48

Australia are so familiar with it and

32:50

he was very a very pivotal figure

32:52

in the UK in the early late

32:54

70s. He was the only person who

32:56

really played new wave and

32:59

punk rap music. He started

33:01

God's father of independent and alternative

33:03

role in the show. So I

33:05

started listening to a show and it

33:08

was a massive musical education for me. I

33:10

used to record things off his show and

33:12

it provided a lot of ideas. One

33:16

feature of his shows was he

33:18

used to have these sessions where

33:20

he would send out a band

33:22

down to the main of those

33:24

studios in London and they would

33:26

record four songs which he then brought us

33:28

on his show and it

33:30

was like every indie band's dream to

33:33

get a John Dole session. It

33:35

was no different. So I

33:38

thought that he was coming to

33:40

Sheffield to do some DJing at

33:43

the Polytechnic. As

33:45

luck would have it, Pulp had

33:47

recorded their first demo about two

33:49

weeks before then. So I

33:51

did a copy of the demo. I made like

33:53

a cardboard sleeve for it, did like a sleeve

33:55

design on it and went down to

33:57

the John Dole Road show as it was built.

34:00

spend the whole evening trying to think,

34:02

when am I going to give him this cassette? Finally,

34:04

the roadshow came to an end. He was packing his

34:07

records up. I thought, I still haven't given him the

34:09

cassette. I've got into it now, I've got it now.

34:11

Walked to the stage. He was

34:13

just picking his record cases up. And

34:15

I kind of presented this tape and

34:17

just said, please, Mr. Field, will you

34:19

listen to this? He kind of

34:22

looked at me, took it away, said, I'll listen to that on the

34:24

way home. And a

34:26

week later, the unthinkable happened. There

34:28

was a phone call. Actually,

34:31

it was taken by my grandmother. I was at

34:33

school. My grandfather

34:35

did some creative wiring, so my

34:37

grandparents who lived next door,

34:39

and those, we shared the same phone

34:41

with them. But my grandmother answers the phone.

34:43

And there's this guy saying, hello, I'd

34:46

like you to come down and record a session for

34:48

John Field. And she went,

34:51

oh, I think he wants a general visit.

34:53

I don't know. I'll put the number. Yeah.

34:58

When I came back from school that day,

35:00

she told me. And then, so this was

35:03

just an incredible moment where

35:05

I just thought, I've not even seen

35:07

school. We're going to do

35:09

John Field session. This is it. Starved

35:11

and it's just around the corner.

35:15

So that same thing that you referred

35:17

to, what's the result of that? The

35:19

local Sheffield newspaper, the Sheffield Star, stand

35:21

out about this at this school of

35:23

kids and got a John Field

35:26

session. That was a story. So

35:28

this photographer came to my mum's house

35:31

and had this terrible corny idea of

35:33

what his original concept was. He wanted

35:35

to take one photograph of us in

35:38

our stage gear and

35:40

one photograph of us in our school

35:42

uniforms. And we just said,

35:46

very cheesy. So the

35:48

photograph is like a compromise. We're kind

35:50

of in my mum's living room. I

35:53

think I have got my school uniform on, but the

35:55

rest haven't. One member of the

35:57

band is wearing a children. That definitely was not a school

35:59

uniform. I'm looking at

36:01

the news piece, I've never

36:04

really seen it in the

36:06

newspaper, the definition isn't

36:08

it so good. Looking at the

36:10

actual print of the photo and

36:13

going what's that that I'm holding and I'm holding

36:16

this, it's actually a radio,

36:19

it's a radio in the shape of

36:21

a key to us. It's

36:24

like when you turn it

36:26

on it stays fresh along

36:29

with the music, this is pretty good.

36:33

I used to be leaped on the symbolism

36:35

of the fact that I'm holding this tortoise

36:37

because we all know the story of the

36:40

tortoise and the air, you know the air

36:42

is doing things quicker, the tortoise takes its

36:44

time and this

36:47

particular point when that photograph was

36:49

taken I thought pop star

36:51

and was just around the corner

36:54

in actual point of search. It

36:57

wasn't until 14 almost

36:59

15 years after that

37:01

photograph was taken that the first time

37:03

I hit record so I

37:05

found a contingency in thinking

37:08

obviously some form of projection online part

37:11

but could it be that somewhere

37:13

I knew that I was destined

37:15

for life in the slow life that

37:18

it would take so

37:20

long for me to realise this

37:23

ambition that I'd had since seven

37:25

years old. Obviously it's impossible for me

37:27

to have known it but there is

37:29

photographic evidence of me holding a tortoise.

37:33

So we all tend to think of

37:35

the past as something almost like an

37:37

object, something like that happened,

37:40

so that's something that's carved

37:42

in stone but when

37:45

you actually go back and look at the

37:47

past closely you realise that it's not

37:49

carved in stone at all, it's more like

37:52

little marks on the sand and sometimes

37:55

the past will really surprise you things

37:57

that you take as a fact. find

38:00

out were absolutely

38:03

the opposite of what you thought at the time. And like

38:05

so, you know, this idea

38:07

that maybe I had this kind of

38:09

inkling that I was a tortoise. Yeah,

38:13

it was just a bit of a strange moment. You're

38:16

hearing a conversation with Jarvis Cocker, founder

38:18

of the UK band Pulp, recorded

38:21

with an audience at the Melbourne Writers

38:23

Festival. Jarvis' book Good Pop,

38:25

Bad Pop, is the

38:27

story of his early life, told through a bunch

38:29

of old items he found in boxes of stuff

38:31

that he'd been stashing away in his loft. And

38:34

at this point, I asked Jarvis the story

38:36

behind one of those items, which was a

38:38

scrap of paper, a handwritten

38:40

get well message from someone called

38:42

Adrianne that simply said, hang

38:45

in there, Jarvis. It's

38:47

all about falling out of the window. The

38:50

girl who wrote that note, hanging there,

38:52

Jarvis, was someone that I had a

38:55

cushion. And

38:57

one night, we

38:59

went back to her first, and

39:02

we were just

39:04

like sat there, you know, sometimes you can get in

39:06

those moments where you know that there's

39:09

some things in the air, but neither of

39:11

you can make a move or whatever. And

39:15

for some reason to kind of like light an

39:17

atmosphere, I decided

39:20

to try and do a stunt to

39:23

enforce it. Such,

39:25

I mean, just such a bad idea. And

39:28

the stunt, I don't know if I can really

39:30

act it out very well here. So about

39:33

a week before this awkward encounter

39:35

occurred, I'll be at a party

39:37

and at this party, somebody

39:39

did understand they've gone up to the windows.

39:42

And they were such windows. So

39:44

they lifted this window up, then they walked

39:46

through a window about three feet here, and

39:49

they lifted that one up, then he

39:52

went out onto the balcony.

39:55

And then stepped across onto the other window ledge

39:57

and came in. So he stepped out to a

40:00

one window came back into the other

40:02

window. A brief moment around the

40:04

outside of the building. Everybody

40:06

in the party thought it was a

40:08

great stomach, myself included. And

40:12

so for some reason, this idea comes

40:14

back into my head whilst I'm in

40:16

AGN's flat. So I thought I'm going to

40:18

do a stunt to ingress you. But

40:21

when I go to her windows, this

40:23

is where the idea should have stopped, because I go

40:25

to her. She's living in a modern flat. So

40:28

her windows were these kind of like

40:31

a metal frame. And then there was a hinge here.

40:34

So you open a handle and then

40:36

you push. And so as

40:39

you push the window, this top

40:41

bit kind of comes in and the

40:43

bottom bit goes outside the building. So

40:45

there's no way to do that stunt,

40:48

because the window is sticking out. So

40:50

there's no way that you could stand

40:52

on the window ledge. As

40:56

I said, that should have been the point at which

40:58

I said, OK, let's do

41:00

something else. And

41:04

somebody's only saying it's deceased. I

41:06

said, I've got an idea. So

41:08

my idea was to go out of

41:11

the window and then hang from

41:13

her window

41:16

ledge, reach

41:18

over to the other window ledge,

41:20

swing across back up into the

41:22

room. Now you can

41:25

tell there's a lot that could go wrong with that idea.

41:32

So a couple of minutes later,

41:34

I'm out and I'm hanging

41:36

from the window ledge. And

41:39

I kind

41:41

of think

41:44

this is really difficult. I

41:47

realize there's no way I'm going to be able to

41:49

go across to the other window ledge. So

41:51

I think, OK, I've given it a

41:53

go. Let's go back into the living

41:55

room. I

42:00

can't even to lift myself

42:02

back into the room. So

42:06

I look up, she's looking at me out of the window, and

42:08

I say, is

42:11

there anybody else in the fire? And,

42:14

so it's at this

42:17

point that I realize I'm kind

42:19

of starting to lose my grip. So

42:23

I say, I'm gonna attempt a

42:25

controlled drop. I don't

42:27

even know what that means,

42:29

you know, a controlled drop.

42:33

Falling is falling. I should point out this

42:35

window is on the third story of an

42:37

apartment block, it's quite a long way up.

42:41

My logic there was that if I let go, anxiously,

42:46

I would fall straight down, whereas if

42:48

I wake until I lose all screens

42:50

and I fall backwards, and fall on

42:52

my head, or fall on my back,

42:56

I'm gonna say, okay, I'm gonna count to

42:59

three and let go. She's

43:01

gonna please don't do that, please don't do

43:03

that. So

43:06

one, two, three. And

43:08

then it was like quite a long

43:11

time. And then, I

43:14

hit the ground. I'm on

43:16

the ground, I look up, like

43:20

I see you like looking out of the window, and I say,

43:23

can you call an ambulance please? And...

43:30

It's kind of a funny story, but you know,

43:34

the revelation that I think I got from

43:36

this was, if that scene had been in

43:38

a film, first of

43:40

all, there would have been like dramatic music, and

43:43

then also probably when I was there,

43:45

and I would have probably found out

43:47

last that Ansel Strandhill and heroically dragged

43:49

my son back in, but that didn't

43:51

happen. This wasn't a film, this was

43:53

real life. And

43:56

something about that, I think, is

43:59

the fact that I survived. something

44:01

made me realise that instead of maybe

44:06

taking inspiration from films

44:09

and other songs and things like that, I should

44:11

be looking at real life, I should be looking

44:14

at reality. It

44:16

brought me down to earth in more

44:18

ways than one. It made me focus

44:21

on my immediate surroundings and

44:24

I ended up in a hospital, I was in

44:26

a convalescent hospital for like two months and

44:30

talking to the guys,

44:33

other people over there.

44:35

I started taking notes, I think I've

44:38

got them here actually, and

44:40

it's not this real kind of

44:42

conviction that what I had to

44:44

do was stop dreaming and just

44:46

try and take down real

44:49

life that was happening to me. So

44:51

I started writing these

44:53

kind of character studies

44:56

of people I have met

44:58

whilst in hospital. The

45:00

first one on the list is Doug

45:03

One, about 50, trapped nerve,

45:06

always giving nurses quality street,

45:08

silly shoes with high heels,

45:10

hit by taxi, teeth removed

45:13

to fix skull. And

45:16

when reading that on those, they read a

45:19

little bit like the notes that a private

45:21

detective might make if they were kind of

45:23

tailing someone. And I think they

45:25

are a bit like that. This was me thinking,

45:27

if I can take

45:29

the details of life

45:32

down in as much detail as I'm

45:34

capable of, that will catch

45:36

the case wide open, that will reveal

45:38

something to me. And

45:40

it was a real turning point in

45:42

my songwriting, I began to write about

45:45

my everyday life and put that

45:48

stuff in there. It

45:50

was a very, very significant moment and set

45:52

me off on a different path, which I've

45:55

attempted to follow to this day, I

45:57

guess. But yes, Adrianne

46:00

had a sense of humour so I

46:02

find her kind of

46:04

get well-known quite funny, hanging in their

46:06

jaws. The

46:09

fall was from such a height

46:12

that it shattered a whole lot of bones on

46:14

the whole right side of your body. You had

46:16

a fractured pelvis, broken wrist, broken arm. It must

46:19

have been extraordinarily painful. Years and

46:21

years ago I interviewed the Australian theatre and

46:23

movie director Jim Sharman. He's the guy who

46:25

directed the Rocky Horror Picture Show and

46:28

he had a long period of convalescence in his

46:30

youth from illness. And here's a theory

46:32

which was if you look into the lives of people

46:34

who've gone on to do very interesting things, very

46:36

often you find at some point in their

46:39

youth they've had a long period of convalescence

46:41

where they've been stuck in bed and

46:44

it's allowed them to bring all these stray

46:46

thoughts together and the drive to go

46:48

and do something extraordinary after that. Do you think that's

46:50

what happened to you, Jarvis? Yes,

46:52

it's an interesting theory. I

46:55

think it could do because as

46:57

well as taking these detailed

47:00

notes on the other people in the ward,

47:02

I also looked at their own life and

47:04

where I was in it, you don't often

47:07

get that chance to be taken out of

47:09

hustle and bustle's life and you can't wait

47:11

to get back into it. You

47:14

kind of make a plan

47:16

about how you're going

47:18

to engage with life when you're

47:21

along. He definitely wanted that effect

47:23

on me. It was like a reset but

47:25

he kind of reset it and then I

47:27

came back. I had this

47:29

new idea about how to go

47:31

back things. Eventually, I think

47:33

that's where the idea that I would

47:35

leave Shefflin first entered in

47:37

my head. I would have to maybe

47:40

leave Shefflin, go to London to

47:42

take things to another stage. I

47:46

found as I read the book I really

47:48

liked the young Jarvis. I really liked young

47:50

Jarvis' optimism and his drive and his creativity.

47:52

He's willingness to go against the grain. He's

47:55

willingness to try and make something wonderful

47:57

out of the junk that's just lying around.

48:00

1980's Thatcherite Sheffield. I think sometimes when we

48:02

think of our younger selves, we're embarrassed by

48:04

our younger selves, all our foolishness,

48:07

the things we don't know, the things

48:09

we got wrong, the silliness, the embarrassing

48:11

things we did. In the process of

48:13

writing this book and

48:15

recovering these objects, did you

48:17

like your younger self much more once you written the

48:19

book? Yeah, that's an

48:21

interesting question because when I read back

48:23

stuff that I had written at the time,

48:26

often I did find that kind

48:28

of excruciatingly embarrassing or

48:30

just irritating. When

48:33

you look at things that people have written, that's

48:36

then trying to project a certain

48:38

idea about themselves. So when

48:41

I found that notebook, although it's very

48:43

bombastic, this idea that pulp are going

48:45

to restructure the music business, I was

48:47

kind of charmed by the fact that

48:49

the 15 year old me

48:52

had that kind of level of ambition.

48:54

But then there was, for instance, this

48:56

object. Just to be clear Javis, you're

48:58

holding up a worn away soap

49:01

bar of Cussons Imperial leather. That's

49:04

right, is it? Yes, and we

49:07

found that acutely embarrassing. And

49:10

so what the hell is that doing there? And

49:12

then, gradually dawned on me,

49:14

the thing is that this

49:16

particular design of the

49:19

Cussons Imperial leather label

49:21

was discontinued in the mid 90s,

49:23

early 90s, I think. And I

49:26

was so horrified by this that I

49:29

started buying dead stock of

49:32

Cussons Imperial leather. Then

49:36

the dead stock ran out. And

49:38

this was the last bar of soap

49:41

with the old label that was in

49:43

my possession. When

49:46

I got to this stage where there's

49:48

more label than soap, which

49:51

is normally when you would throw it in the bin, I

49:54

could just cannot bring myself to do that.

49:56

And therefore put it in the loft

49:58

for future generations. But this

50:02

says something not so good about me.

50:04

I think this says something about a

50:07

fear of change. Why

50:10

would you hold on to a fragment of

50:12

old soap? So yeah,

50:15

I think I was very lucky to

50:17

stumble across this way of approaching a

50:20

memoir or a life story. For it

50:22

not to be my ideas about what

50:24

my life has been, but for it

50:26

to be actual documentary evidence of the

50:28

things that I've chosen to

50:30

have in my life, not all of

50:33

which are great, but they

50:35

can't be denied because they're there. You know,

50:37

I've kept hold of them. It

50:40

gave me a different kind of in

50:42

into looking where I am and

50:44

where I've been. Jarvis, it's been

50:46

such a pleasure speaking with you and having this wonderfully

50:49

intimate conversation with you, despite you being on

50:51

the other side of the world. Please thank

50:53

Jarvis. Thank you. Thank

50:58

you. You've

51:08

been listening to a podcast of

51:10

Conversations with Richard Feidler. For

51:13

more Conversations interviews, please go

51:15

to the website, abc.net.au.conversations.