Pulp’s Nick Banks on his new memoir, the band’s future and the “joke” of Britpop
Pulp drummer Nick Banks has spoken to NME about lessons learned from his memoir, how Britpop seemed like a “joke” at the time, and what the future may look like for the band.
Released last week, So It Started There: From Punk To Pulp tells of the early times, the good times, the not-so-good times and the WTF times” of the band – as described by frontman Jarvis Cocker – as well as the drummer’s early years and life outside of the band.
“It was a bit of a lockdown project; I just thought I’d get on and write my version of events,” Banks told NME. “I don’t think that there’d really been an insider’s view of all of the events. Every person’s and every band’s story is unique, but I just felt like ours was that little bit more unique so needed to be put down on paper.”
Banks joined the Sheffield band in 1986 and played on all of their albums since 1992’s ‘Separations’. Their first breakthrough came with 1994’s ‘His ‘N’ Hers’, achieving further success with the seminal and era-defining 1995 follow-up ‘Different Class’. However, the band had struggled for attention until the mid-90s, having been writing, touring and plugging away since their formation in 1978. Banks explained how writing the book left him surprised at “just how dogged we had to be during the dark ages”.
“When you join a band and you hope to release records and have successful concerts and then nothing happens for years,” he said. “It was good to revisit and see how we sticked to it to try and get somewhere.
“It was strange to see so many bands seem to appear out of nowhere and overtake us during those years. They’d have their names in lights and lauded by everyone as ‘the best thing since sliced bread’. It was very frustrating to be ploughing a very similar furrow for years and we couldn’t get arrested – but it gave us more of a sheer bloodymindedness to keep going until someone took notice.”
Due to the band’s “doggedness” and Northern spirit, Banks argued that they likely would have carried on regardless of if they’d have broken through to the mainstream with the likes of ‘Common People’ and ‘Babies’.
“We’d come through the dark ages and we were reasonably confident that we were making something that could at least be a minor success,” he said. “Even if ‘His ‘N’ Hers’ hadn’t been a success, I think we’d have kept going. Even if it was half the success it was, that was still loads more than we’d had before. We would have carried on until we felt that everyone had the chance to see what we were about.”
Would a band like Pulp be able to exist and play the long game in today’s climate?
“We’d have certainly given it a go,” he replied. “Back in the ‘90s, we were helped by being able to scrape by on unemployment benefits. I don’t think today you can do that kind of stuff, and it’s much harder to make do. It’s always been hard for bands to make it, but today it’s even more difficult.”
Pulp became one of the flagship bands of the Britpop era alongside the likes of Oasis, Blur and Suede, but Banks has claimed that it was unfair to attach the label to the band given all that they’d already been through.
“At the time, we thought it was all a bit laughable and crazy to try and lump a band that had been going for 17 years into some kind of new movement – it all seemed a bit of a joke to us,” he said. “People had tried to shoehorn us into other failed musical categories before, which we found equally comical.
“Sat here with hindsight, it does seem like it did help us because it’s always better to have more fellow travellers being talked about the same way. But it certainly wasn’t taken very seriously by us.”
This summer saw Pulp reunite for a string of reunion gigs across the UK and Ireland – including a massive show at London’s Finsbury Park, two Sheffield homecoming gigs, a headline set at Latitude, and a finale at London’s Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith.
“I’ve always been very positive about playing,” said Banks. “It’s an honour to play these songs to the people who they mean so much to and it was just a joyous time.”
The drummer also described it as “serendipity” that the shows came as he’d finished writing his memoir, and that they came at what many called ‘the second summer of Britpop’ at a time when Blur were also on the reunion trail, Noel Gallagher was touring with a new album too and various specials celebrating the genre were on TV and radio.
“There isn’t a red telephone that rings and we all say, ‘Right, 2023, let’s get together and have a run around’,” he said. “There’s none of that malarkey, it’s just everything aligning.”
This December will see the band play what is currently their last scheduled gig together at Edinburgh’s Hogmanay celebrations on New Year’s Eve – however, Banks teased that their could be more activity on the horizon.
“I love new year – it’s much better than Christmas,” he said. “We’re going to need heaters on stage because it’s going to be chuffing cold! I don’t know if we’re going to play a special New Year’s song. We’ll see what happens, but it’s going to be very exciting.
“It’s the last scheduled thing we’ve got. Hopefully we’ll have more to announce for next year but I don’t know how much I can say at this moment in time, sorry! It’s classified. I’m looking forward to whatever 2024 may bring.”
The summer’s reunion shows also saw the band perform the unreleased track ‘Hymn Of The North‘; a song which Cocker had previously written for the 2019 play Light Falls. Despite excitement from fans, Banks said that there “hadn’t been any talk” of Pulp recording and releasing their own version.
“Jarvis did it for a play, and I don’t really know anything about it,” he admitted. “Having said that, sometimes you never know when a call is going to come in about studio time.”
Banks also downplayed the chances of the band releasing a new album soon, and that these recent gigs were “more about getting the party back”.
“There have certainly been no conversations about new material and to be honest,” he said. “I’m not sure if any of us have a real appetite for that because you have to put three to five years of your life into it. In terms of writing, recording then touring, it would be really difficult. I can’t see it happening myself – we’ve got other things to do.”
Aside playing some shows with his other band The Everly Pregnant Brothers (also featuring legendary Sheffield artist Pete McKee), Banks said that the rest of his year would be taken up by Pulp’s South American gig and using his new lawnmower “before the winter sets in. He added that the gigs along with the release of his book were about “taking stock”, and joked that he’d be open to the idea of So It Started There being turned into a biopic movie.
“As long as I was played by Jack Dee, that would be fine,” he said. “A lot of people say I look like him, and we met a few months ago and had our photo taken side by side. We looked at it and went, ‘Nah!’
“I don’t know how tall Robert Peston is, but it would be quite funny for him to play Jarvis. Candida [Doyle, keys] would have to be played by someone quite petite – Jane Horrocks, perhaps. Mark [Webber, guitarist] would have to be somebody quite quiet, but I’ll have to come back to you on that. We could also have a CGI version of Jim Reeves to play Richard Hawley. He was a hired hand to fill out the sound, but he’d still have to be there.”
Asked if he’d had feedback from the rest of the band on his book, Banks replied: “There will be some details that people recognise differently, and that’s only human nature and natural. Candida has been enjoying it so far.
“I’ve not really had any feedback from Jarvis as of yet, but it has been reported that he’s been flicking through it while laying on his sofa – which I see as a positive thing as it’s not yet been commented on with a snort of derision!”
So It Started There: From Punk To Pulp by Nick Banks it out now. Pulp play Edinburgh’s Hogmanay at West Princes Street Gardens’ ‘Concert In The Gardens’ on December 31. Visit here for tickets and more information.
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Andrew Trendell
NME
