The Britpop legends have reformed and following a string of acclaimed gigs around the UK they are due to perform at Utilita Arena Sheffield on Friday, July 14 and Saturday, July 15, supported by Richard Hawley, another member of Sheffield’s musical royalty.
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. 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
6. 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
7. Division Street
An alternative blue plaque in the window of a florists on Sheffield's Division Street bears testament to the time in November 1985 when a 22-year-old Jarvis Cocker fell around 20 feet after trying to impress a girl by climbing out of a window. He ended up in hospital with a fractured pelvis. He describes the fall as a pivotal moment in his life when he realised that rather than looking elsewhere for songwriting inspiration the 'something' he had been searching for to write about is happening all around him. Photo: Robert Cumber
8. Impulse record store
It was on a wall near the Impulse record shop, on Cambridge Street in Sheffield city centre, that Jarvis Cocker recalls seeing a poster for a concert at the Hallamshire Hotel where Pulp were supporting a band called the Defective Turtles. That poster inspired him and his fellow band members to make their own posters - something he said was 'yet another way of us being part of the scene'. Photo: Picture Sheffield/Sheffield Newspapers