Ahead of Pulp’s headline set at Montreux Jazz Festival, Jarvis Cocker hosted a talk on ‘Outsider Art’, sharing reflections on his travels to meet artists working beyond the mainstream, and exploring the creative freedom that comes from making without needing a “why.”
In conversation, he discussed the making of the band’s sixth album This Is Hardcore, admitting it was one he struggled with:
“I’ve often found that if you think about it too much, if you’ve got too much of a strong picture of what you’re trying to do, in some ways that can really restrict what you’re doing. The trick is to try and do it with your mind semi-turned off, and that took me a long time to learn. In fact, I wish I’d learned it before starting this record… Pulp had made This Is Hardcore which took going on for a year. Mainly because during a lot of the time we were doing it, I was wondering why we were doing it.”
Speaking about what he learned making his 1999 docuseries on ‘Outsider Art’ titled Journeys Into the Outside with Jarvis Cocker:
“Another thing that comes across in Leonard’s interview [one of the artists featured in the show], there’s no why in his mind. That’s the thing I found with most people I spoke to when making this programme [Journeys Into The Outside], we’d always be wanting to know why they were making these things, why they were making a paint mountain, why they’d covered the whole of the outside of their house in broken plates. But it was like the question why never came into their mind because it they enjoyed it so much. So yeah, I wish I had known that before starting that record.
“We spent a long time making ‘This Is Hardcore’ and eventually got it finished and then two weeks after it come out when I was supposed to be promoting it, I said I’m going to go make this TV series and left the country. Which wasn’t very popular with the record company as you can imagine! But I don’t regret having kind of sabotaged my musical career, because having found this art, it did intrigue me.”
That evening, Pulp lit up the festival’s Lake Stage with a career-spanning set that blended fresh material from their new UK No.1 album More with Britpop classics like “Babies,” “Disco 2000,” and a euphoric “Common People.” It was a triumphant return, arriving just weeks after their surprise Glastonbury set and cementing their status as one of Britain’s most enduring live acts.
