Having wowed fans in their spectacular homecoming gigs at Utilita Arena Sheffield in July 2023, the Britpop legends have taken their music around the globe.
The band, whose hits include Common People and Disco 2000, even unveiled a new song called Background Music during a gig in Mexico, with frontman Jarvis Cocker dedicating it to his girlfriend who was in the audience.
They have concerts lined up in Scandinavia, the US and Canada.
Pulp’s route to the top was famously a long one, with the band having been formed by Jarvis Cocker in 1978 and waiting 17 years to achieve true stardom with the release of Common People in 1995.
Jarvis charts the beginning of his ascent from gawky Sheffield schoolboy to national treasure in entertaining fashion in his book Good Pop Bad Pop, which is well worth a read.
Below are some of the Sheffield locations which played a big role in helping shape him and ultimately the band he formed, originally called Arabicus Pulp – a name he had spotted in the Financial Times when he was a pupil at The City School.
The sites featured include the childhood home in Intake where he would practice upstairs, the makeshift studio where he and his fellow band members made their first proper recording, and the nightclub where Jarvis learned how to dance.
5. Hole in the Road
The Hole in the Road, officially called Castle Square, is one of Sheffield's most missed landmarks. Jarvis Cocker describes how he loved it because it 'looked like a flying saucer that had landed on Earth & was trying to disguise itself as a traffic island'. It was there he and his fellow members of Pulp met in the early 80s to put up their first posters around town. The posters sadly didn't last long as the flour and water paste Jarvis had mixed didn't prove terribly successful. Photo: Sheffield Newspapers
6. Castle Market
Jarvis Cocker had a Saturday job on a fishmonger's stall called Grayson & Boaler, at Sheffield's Castle Market, which paid £15. The job, found for him by a man his mum dated, who thought he needed 'toughening up', inspired one of his early attempts at songwriting, called I Scrubbed the Crabs that Killed Sheffield. The lyrics refer to one occasion when the crabs had been delivered to the stall early and by the time he arrived they were emitting a particularly 'pungent' aroma. The market's manager eventually arrived to condemn the stock and order that all the remaining crabs be destroyed, Jarvis recounts, but only after 20 to 30 of the 'foul creatures' had already been sold. Photo: Sheffield Newspapers
7. Sheaf Valley Baths
Sheffield's Sheaf Valley Baths, long since replaced by Ponds Forge, were where a teenage Jarvis Cocker went for his school swimming lessons. But it wasn't the swimming which played a big part in his development so much as the smutty book he discovered upstairs on the bus back to school one day. It was called the Sexy Laughs Fantastic Dirty Joke Book and proved a fascinating resource at a time Jarvis explains he was 'desperate to find out about sex'. It didn't provide much of an eduation, or much amusement judging by the quality of jokes. But for a songwriter who would go on to mine the seedier side of life for inspiration, in songs including Sheffield: Sex City, it was undoubtedly an influence. Photo: Sheffield Newspapers
8. The Beehive
The Beehive pub on West Street, Sheffield, was the scene of another memorable early Pulp gig. Jarvis Cocker describes how it was where 'more established, first-wave Sheffield bands like Cabaret Voltaire hung out'. It had been rebranded as Rockwells, 'one of Sheffield's first Fun Pubs', when Jarvis and co were invited to performe there. They were offered £50 to play and Jarvis recalls how he dressed entirely in black for the first set and all in white for the second. Their sets included a cover of Sham 69's Hurry Up Harry but Jarvis said the 'guys in smart-casual attire at the bar were not impressed' and they didn't get invited back. Photo: submit