The SPIN Interview: Jarvis Cocker

Photographed for SPIN by Philip Gay

Jarvis Cocker walks into Chicago's Star Lounge Coffee Bar, and though physically striking -- tall and glamorous in natty thrift-shop chic and substantial spectacles -- no one seems to recognize him. (They probably register that he's somebody, they're just not sure whom.) Maybe it's the beard, flecked with some distinguished gray; he grew it while on a chilly artists' retreat to the Arctic late last year. Or maybe it's because Cocker never had as huge a presence in America as he did in the U.K., where as leader of the swaggering Pulp, his mug was ubiquitous in the late '90s as part of the Britpop explosion (see: Blur, Oasis), before the band's dissolution in 2001.

He's in town to finish mastering his raucous second solo album, Further Complications (Rough Trade), which he and his band recorded with famously bell-and-whistle-free producer Steve Albini -- a potential shock considering how grand Cocker's music has tended to be in the past.

Domestic life is equally simple now for Cocker, 45, who moved to France in 2003, splitting time evenly between there and London, enjoying happy anonymity with his wife and six-year-old son, Albert. "Eventually he'll realize Daddy writes songs with rude words," says Cocker. "But at home I'm just me. He's not allowed to call me Jarvis. He has to call me Daddy."

Americans probably don't realize quite how famous you were in the U.K. Pulp had a platinum record with Different Class, and you were all over the TV.
Oh dahhling, I was massive. For your younger readers who won't know, it was after the Brit Awards of 1996, where I staged some kind of protest of Michael Jackson's performance. That one action transported me to a kind of tabloid fame, which I couldn't have imagined. So basically I was known by just about the whole population of the U.K. As a shy kid growing up in Sheffield, I fantasized about how it would be great to be famous so I wouldn't actually have to talk to people and feel awkward. And of course, as we all know from fairy stories, when you achieve that ambition, you find out you don't want it. My whole set of values had nothing to do with that kind of tabloidy thing. It took me a long time to work through.

There were surely some aspects you were able to enjoy.
Some days it was really exciting. I didn't mind it when Pulp were getting popular. I just pushed it too far with that thing, 'cause it wasn't "Jarvis Cocker played an amazing song at the Brit Awards last night." It was "Jarvis Cocker titted about at the Brit Awards last night." I had been in a band 15 years, and in 15 seconds, I became more well known. All that bloody work! Thrown away!

Was part of the pressure of fame fan-based? Did you get a lot of people saying, "You saved my life"?
Yeah, and it's hard to respond. I get very flattered when people say things like that. It goes back to the self-consciousness -- if you sat there and thought, "This song is gonna save some people's lives," I can guarantee you'd write a real pile of shit. For me, the great thing about music is that anybody can do it. That Michael Jackson thing, if I think about the reasons for protesting, that's one of the big factors: When somebody sets himself up as a kind of messiah, it fundamentally goes against the spirit of what art is about. It isn't that you're a fucking superbeing with a hotwire to God and message for the world. You've just tapped into something that's inside of everybody. That's why the fan thing makes me uncomfortable, because I'm no better than the people who come up and talk to me.

When your first solo record, Jarvis, came out in 2006, you spoke a bit about quitting music altogether.
Luckily for the world, I've decided not to.

When was the last time you seriously considered retiring?
In those years before I made that last record. But I'm in it for the long haul now. I got my appetite back. There were certain problematic things at the end of Pulp, so I had to take a bit of time and think, "Maybe I've done as much as I'm gonna do." And for whatever reason, luckily or unluckily, I got back into it.

What were the problematic things with Pulp?
The fallout from the Michael Jackson thing, stuff like that. I started the group as a kid, and it got a certain amount of fame -- which I wanted -- but then it flipped over into something I didn't want. There are a lot of mixed desires when you're in a band. Hopefully, a big part is that you like playing music and you enjoy creating and expressing things. But also, you want to get your cock sucked, or you want people to say you're great or whatever. But once you've had your cock sucked a few times, that's the end of that one. I just had to weed that stuff out.

How have your priorities shifted?
It's the major myth of our age, that if you can get famous, everything will be good. That's what American Idol -- in England it's called Pop Idol -- is based on. It's not based on people thinking, "I've got a gift of music, and I'm gonna enrich people's lives." It's just, "I'm gonna be famous, and I'm gonna be in magazines, and I'm gonna go to parties, and everybody's gonna think I'm great." It's basically taken over for dying and going to heaven. So everyone's curious about that, and I was no different, being a bit of a shy kid. You think becoming famous will solve that. It just took me time to realize that that's a complete fallacy. But to quote Lou Reed, usually you are "set free to find a new illusion." Human beings just delude themselves all the time.

But you've hosted shows on British TV, so you're not totally opposed to the limelight.
When I was in Pulp, I actively did more TV stuff because that was during the Great Britpop Wars, and it seemed important to prove that indie people could speak. That war doesn't exist anymore. Underground culture was ignored then, and Robert Smith would just go on TV and mumble. You'd say, "Come on, Rob, give a little power to the indie people. Help them storm the barricades." So I did feel an obligation. I don't have that desire anymore, because it's a different landscape now. I'm talking mainly about the U.K., but probably here as well. The idea of trying to rehabilitate the mainstream has disappeared.

So who won the Britpop Wars?
Nobody. It was exciting at the time because it did seem like what traditionally would be underground or independent culture was suddenly being taken seriously. Naively, I thought that we were going to have a revolution and create a new utopia. But it didn't work out that way. And the music was pretty dull, generally speaking.

The underwear you recently donated to a charity eBay auction was going for an even higher price than Fergie's.

Find out the answer to that question and many more in the June 2009 issue of SPIN, on newsstands now.