Entertainment

Jarvis Cocker revisits Pulp's beginnings in new documentary

September 22, 2026 10:09 am

source: Reuters

Almost half a century after their birth, Britpop darlings Pulp are stars of a documentary that delves back into the band’s ​roots in the childhood dreams of gangly frontman Jarvis Cocker.

In “Pulp: What ‌Do You Do For An Encore?” Cocker narrates flashbacks based on diary entries he scrawled out at school in the northern English city of Sheffield in the 1970s, mapping ​out his “masterplan” for Pulp’s success.

“I was maybe 12 or 13 … I couldn’t ​play the guitar yet but I could write,” Cocker told ⁠Reuters. “It was … wish fulfilment. I suppose like manifesting.”

He got his friends to rehearse ​at his mother’s house, bribing them by “buying some lager”.

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The film, directed by “Son of ​Rambow”‘s Garth Jennings, moves on to his time studying film and fine art in London — at the “St Martin’s College” immortalised in their future hit “Common People”.

“I graduated but … what really I felt ​a pull to do was to write songs,” he added. “I think that’s ​my way of trying to make sense of the world and out of myself.”