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.
13. Studio Electrophonique
'Studio Electrophonique', at 32 Handsworth Grange Crescent, is where Pulp recorded the four-song demo tape that Jarvis Cocker would hand to John Peel a few weeks later to secure the band's first session for the legendary DJ. The studio was run by a man called Ken Patten, referred to as The Colonel, and Jarvis describes how it was 'very reasonably priced'. There were a few rules, including no shoes indoors, no drums (Ken had invested in an electronic drumkit to avoid upsetting his neighbours) and no amplifiers. Jarvis describes listening to the tape for the first time back home and calling it 'incredible' to think 'that sound coming out of the speaker was us'. Photo: Google
14. Sheldon Row
After moving out of his mother's house, Jarvis Cocker lived for a while with a friend called Tim on the top floor of an old factory on Sheldon Row, just off The Wicker, which had no heating and where the rules included 'no television, no meat and no bass'. He recalls how he got ill a lot at the time but he met an interesting cast of visitors he dubbed the 'lost souls'. Sheldon Row probably looks a little different today to how it did back then. Photo: Google
15. The Leadmill
The Leadmill in Sheffield city centre is where Pulp played their third gig, following earlier shows at City School and Rotherham Arts Centre, on August 16, 1980, as part of a 'Local Band Festival'. Today there is a plaque at the building marking the occasion. Jarvis Cocker describes it as the 'official 'birth-date' of Pulp. Their short set included a cover of Stepping Stone and their own 'epic instrumental' called Message From the Martians. Compared with their first gig, it was a triumph, with a review in local fanzine The Bath Banker describing how there had been 'vast cheering for encore'. Photo: Simon Hulme