Earlier this year, I watched a man jumping off boxes in flares, gliding down light-up stairs, and gyrating all over a stage, singing songs about growing up, being in love and dancing in clubs. He was a 59-year-old Jarvis Cocker in a velvet suit, and it was fantastic.
Jarvis turned 60 this week and, in a world where everyone seems to be trying to shout louder to get ahead, I wanted to pay tribute to the coolest, nicest man in music who doesn’t act a day over 35, and never seems to speak much above a whisper.
There’s a certain, slightly ethereal magic about Jarvis. You just know he’s got stories in his locker that you’d only ever hear if you were having a glass of wine with him at a pub in the middle of nowhere. He’s lived what seems to be a charmed life, fronted one of the biggest bands of the Britpop era – one still selling out huge gigs in 2023 – and yet, all he wants to do is tell you that you can do it too.
Photo: Tim P. Whitby
There’s no huge ego here, no scandal, (unless you count him gatecrashing Michael Jackson at the Brits, which was really a cause for celebration), there’s no gossip, no hatred. He’s just Jarvis. A man who’s known by one name now, like a British Cher or Kylie. A bloke who’s so easy-going, he once explained to The Guardian’s Miranda Sawyer: “I went to Saint Martin’s because I just wanted to get out of Sheffield. I just looked at the colleges and it said, ‘This one is on Charing Cross Road,’ so I thought, ‘Great, three years in Soho. Summat’s going to happen.’”
He was right. But it didn’t happen straight away. Pulp famously ‘made it’ at an age that makes most music executives dry heave. Jarvis was 32 when ‘Common People’ changed our lives, which perhaps is why he’s not an insufferable prick now. There’s a lot to be said for spending your twenties in relative anonymity figuring out who you are before fame comes knocking.
One day last year I was listening to Pulp all morning and tweeted ‘Do you think Jarvis Cocker would go on a date with me if I wrote to him and asked him?’ before going to a cafe about five minutes from my house for lunch… and Jarvis was on the table next to me. I didn’t follow through on my request for a date, but I did feel like he somehow knew. Had I manifested Jarvis? Or is he just a benevolent god who rewards his followers with an appearance when they ask?
It was extremely on-brand for Jarvis when he was asked to write an autobiography and thought it might be too self-indulgent to do so. Instead, he coupled it with clearing out his attic, and writing an inventory of all the objects from his past he found in there, and the stories they conjured up from his career. Throughout the resulting memoir, Good Pop, Bad Pop, he repeatedly suggests he’s not special, and that anyone can do something like he did.
Photo: Nicky J Sims
This quiet nobility, this self-effacing nature, and the fact he’s the only frontman we can think of who performs in glasses and somehow makes it rock’n’roll, is timeless. In 2023, we look back on some of the culture of the 90s and noughties and cringe at the toxic masculinity and in-your-face nature of a lot of celebrities, but Jarvis has stood the test of time.
Considering he fronted one of the largest Britpop bands of the decade, there was hardly any laddishness to Pulp; they seemed like a solid bunch who were grateful people were listening to their songs. Jarvis even diminished the dying embers of the era, describing Britpop as having evolved into “slightly overweight men with their shirts untucked, getting sucked off while watching The Italian Job.”
There’s still an air of ‘I can’t believe we’re getting away with this’ to him, which means he couldn’t be more of a national treasure if he tried. I often say he should be the Minister For Culture, but I wouldn’t want him to have to put up with the insufferable colleagues he’d be working with. (If any BBC execs are reading this, though, I implore you to put him back on 6Music).
So on this, the week of his 60th, I want to thank him for everything he’s done for music; for the good guys, for making sure something happened, and for giving the working class a bit of hope that, sometimes – just sometimes – it does all work out. As the man has said himself: “It’s OK to grow up, just as long as you don’t grow old. Face it, you are young.”
Long live Jarvis Cocker, we hope you’re celebrating this weekend with probably the coolest, most understated party ever. I bet he didn’t want to make a fuss.
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Alexandra Haddow is performing her debut stand-up show ‘Not My Finest Hour’ around the UK in 2024. Tickets available here
