Jarvis Cocker

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and five, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My Castaway this week is a musician. After a long struggle on the fringes of the pop world, his band Pulp achieved great fame and cult status in the nineteen nineties. Its album Different Class sold two million copies, and at Glastonbury in nineteen ninety five his song Common People became a pop anthem.

Presenter0:47

Tall, gangly, and on the face of it a bit of a nerd, but in fact perceptive and eloquent, his music and lyrics made lack of success acceptable and appealing.

Presenter0:57

He himself lost his way after that triumph, drinking too much and making an exhibition of himself on celebrity occasions, but he's over that now. Married and living in France, he's presented a television series on art and written the music for the latest Harry Potter film.

Presenter1:13

What I like about people, he says, is that they don't do what they're meant to. We've been haphazard, and we've sorted it out, and that's human, isn't it? He is Jarvis Cocker. The great height of your success, though, Jarvis, was that nineteen ninety five appearance at Glastonbury, wasn't it, when you stood up and everybody knew the words to common people.

Jarvis Cocker1:33

I guess so. I mean, it's uh s quite scary to me that it's now ten years ago. But yeah, I mean, that was the event that made the uh success a kind of concrete fact.

Presenter1:44

Yeah, but the irony is you'd written it and you'd always been, if you like, a k as a kind of outsider, and what you discovered in that moment was that that you were every man. You know, it it what you felt meant something to all those people.

Jarvis Cocker1:57

Well, that is yeah, that is a strange thing. I mean, um

Jarvis Cocker2:01

You're a human being and even though everybody likes to think that the

Jarvis Cocker2:06

Fantastically interesting and very unique.

Jarvis Cocker2:08

The basic things that drive people are are always the same things. And so if you manage to kind of no matter how specific the thing you write about, if you manage to kind of write about it

Jarvis Cocker2:19

properly, it will kind of connect with people.

Presenter2:22

There'll be some people, of course, who don't know what we're talking about. I should quote a little bit from common people. I mean, the the the end line really, you'll never live like common people, you'll never watch your life slide out of view and dance and drink and screw'cause there's nothing else to do. I mean, that kind of

Jarvis Cocker2:36

Did I say it?

Presenter2:38

Did I say it? Did I lend it something new and different?

Jarvis Cocker2:40

New and different.

Presenter2:41

Um but we should explain how you came to write it.

Jarvis Cocker2:46

Um well th the the song is basically about a girl that I met when I was uh at art college in London.

Jarvis Cocker2:54

We're having a drink one night. I quite fancied this girl. And she came out with this stupendous statement saying that she wanted to live like common people. She wanted to move to Hackney and see how common people lived. So it came from that and uh I embroidered the story to make the girl fancy me. That's a great thing about uh songwriting and stuff. You you can alter the facts to kind of paint yourself in a in a more favourable light.

Presenter3:20

But the point is that you've never idealized things like the average popsum. You've never said, to coin a phrase, everything's going to be all right.

Jarvis Cocker3:26

No, no, I mean that's something that I always had um

Presenter3:26

Yeah.

Jarvis Cocker3:30

quite a bee in my bonnet about from from the start that when I hit uh puberty with a bang and uh started being interested in girls and stuff like that.

Jarvis Cocker3:40

My main uh kind of education, if you like, about those matters had been from listening to songs. And I felt that the information that I'd been given from pop songs really didn't prepare me for the real world of trying to go out with girls and relationships and stuff. And so I consciously wanted to write pop songs that had the messy bits in and the the kind of awkward fumbling bits because I felt that I'd been sold short in some way and I'd wanted to provide a public service or something.

Presenter4:10

It's the theme of your life, really, is it reality is a disappointment, but we'll we'll hear a bit more about it. Tell me about your first record for your desert island.

Jarvis Cocker4:18

Well my first record

Jarvis Cocker4:20

It's the theme from the T V series The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, which always seemed to be on in the school holidays when I was a kid. I don't think I'd last very long on a desert island at all. I've not got very many practical skills. But at least if I had this song playing maybe I could, you know, act the part a little bit.

Presenter5:07

It was the theme from the television series The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, and it was written by Robert Mellin.

Presenter5:12

If um Glastonbury was your high point uh of your career, Jarvis Cocker, then presumably the British Awards a year later in nineteen ninety six were probably the low point that was when you went up on stage when Michael Jackson was singing and kind of bared you're behind.

Jarvis Cocker5:26

Well, I'd like to point out I didn't bear my behind.

Presenter5:26

Yeah.

Presenter5:29

All right. What did you do then?

Jarvis Cocker5:30

I shook it.

Presenter5:32

Uh Again the

Jarvis Cocker5:36

I don't I would oh, yeah, no, I would never d expose my

Jarvis Cocker5:40

My backside. I mean, for aesthetic reasons, and also, uh, it's too rugby player, kind of, it's it's just unpleasant.

Presenter5:47

Why why did it become such a big story that as if you'd done something terrible?

Jarvis Cocker5:51

I suppose it's one of those things that aren't supposed to happen. I mean, I never thought that it would happen. Uh, we were at the Brit Awards and, you know, they were very pleased that year because they got Michael Jackson to play.

Jarvis Cocker6:02

And I just thought the the the hypocrisy of the whole thing wa was really getting me down. And I was just arguing with our keyboard player, Candidate, and she's saying, Well, why don't you do something about it? Stop complaining

Jarvis Cocker6:14

And so I said, Yeah, I am going to then and so then I started walking to the stage and, you know, I you would have thought that there would have been some security or something.

Jarvis Cocker6:22

But lo and behold, the next thing, I'm on the stage and not really knowing what to do. So, of course, when in doubt, uh wiggle your bum about uh in front of people.

Presenter6:34

But it was just kind of one.

Jarvis Cocker6:34

And what

Presenter6:35

Incident that became part of a kind of descent into a pretty

Presenter6:41

You know, rubbishy behaviour, if you like. I don't that sounds if I'm telling you off, I'm not, but that seems to be what happened, isn't it?

Jarvis Cocker6:47

I don't know whether that was a particularly rubbishy behaviour, but it was certainly attention seeking behaviour, and I did get attention, and and the fall out from that, I guess, was the real kind of

Jarvis Cocker6:59

Thing that did me in for a while because it made me a very instantly recognizable person.

Presenter7:04

Yes, you became a kind of tabloid figure, as it were. Which which added to what you didn't like, didn't it? Because what you were against was kind of the artificiality of fame.

Jarvis Cocker7:07

Yeah, which which

Jarvis Cocker7:14

Well, that's it. I really messed it up for myself there. You know, um, I was now the observed rather than the observer, you know.

Presenter7:21

You lost your invisibility.

Jarvis Cocker7:23

The hunter became the quarry or whatever. And it just did me in it. And and I can remember thinking as a kid, you know, oh well if I was famous, you know, I wouldn't have trouble with girls, you know, girls would just be throwing themselves at me and I'd just live in a hotel and get room service all the time. And I guess even though I was quite old when we got fame, still in some strange way I thought I was gonna enter this new realm, this new world.

Jarvis Cocker7:49

And uh of course that wasn't the case, so there was a kind of a crashing disappointment, which was kind of doubled, I suppose, by the fact that then suddenly I realized that the life I'd been living before was was quite good and uh but there was no way kind of back to to doing it anymore. So I'd really uh

Jarvis Cocker8:06

I'd really done it.

Presenter8:08

Record number two.

Jarvis Cocker8:10

Record number two is Joy Division transmission. It's kind of post-punk, it it's from a couple of years after punk happened, but punk was a a very important event for me because I was about 13 and I was very kind of conscious that I didn't look normal and stuff. And then punk came along and said, Hey, it's alright to be different. So suddenly all these kind of gorky, messy bits suddenly became, you know, fashion features and plus points. So I kind of grabbed it with both hands and really got into it. And this record reminds me of that time.

Speaker 48:44

Listen to the silence, let it ring on Eyesburg lances rising up the sun. We would have a fine time living in the night. Let the blindish virtue waiting for our sight.

Presenter9:11

Joy Division and Transmission and memories for Jarvis Pocker of being a teenager in Sheffield where you apparently had the kind of

Presenter9:18

Freedoms that every teenager would really, really like describe them to me.

Jarvis Cocker9:23

Well well uh yeah. I mean uh my mum I suppose by Sheffield standards was fairly bohemian. I mean my girlfriends were allowed to stay over when I eventually got one. But th maybe that she was just so pleased that I'd finally got one that she thought I'd she'd better not put any obstacles in the way. But uh

Presenter9:39

And your father was a a jazz m she was an arts student.

Jarvis Cocker9:43

Yeah, my mum yeah my mum went to Soul Plain Art College uh and that was cut short by my imminent arrival.

Presenter9:49

So you're a bit of a mistake, as it were.

Jarvis Cocker9:51

That was uh very much a a mistake because at the time when my mother discovered she was pregnant, she actually wasn't going out with my father anymore. Uh she didn't believe that she was pregnant. It was almost like an immaculate conception. It was traced back to some kind of fumbling on a Boxing Day party around Christmas 1962. But she'd gone to the doctors'cause she thought she had appendicitis or something and was told that she was like three, four months pregnant.

Jarvis Cocker10:18

As I say, they weren't they weren't going out with each other, so it was obviously a shock to to the both of them, but they went through with it and got married.

Presenter10:24

And then spool on a few years, when you were seven your dad left Yuptenoft.

Jarvis Cocker10:30

Hmm.

Presenter10:30

Wh d just that left a mark? Do you remember the day?

Jarvis Cocker10:34

Well, I suppose it it must have left a mark, but um I can't remember being upset.

Jarvis Cocker10:41

I'm sure it ha has had a an effect on me, but

Jarvis Cocker10:45

Um

Jarvis Cocker10:46

I have no sense of of of a loss or something like that.

Presenter10:49

It feels scarred.

Jarvis Cocker10:51

Well, because it was I guess it was a a strange split in so much as my father just disappeared. He he just went to Australia and I didn't see him again for twenty odd years. So it was just bang, he's gone and so now it's just me, my sister and my mum.

Presenter11:04

Yeah, but you you you you avoided marriage for some time, did you? I know you're married now, but it's as if maybe y

Presenter11:11

Well, I'm getting into kind of psycho babble here, but it's it's lack of role model, huh?

Jarvis Cocker11:16

Yeah. Yeah, I remember quite soon after my dad going really, um

Jarvis Cocker11:23

Consciously thinking, yeah.

Jarvis Cocker11:25

Obviously that doesn't work, so I'm not going to have any part of it.

Presenter11:29

What you did have trouble with, uh as I read it, was um what your mother sent you to school in as a boy. I I I read that you were sent to school in a sweater dress, is that right?

Jarvis Cocker11:37

It's wet to dress.

Jarvis Cocker11:39

Uh no, no, that I wasn't actually that no, that would have been the I think the social services would have got involved there. No, I mean, she used to make me wear very short shorts and then long jumpers, so it looked like I had a jumper dress on or something.

Presenter11:51

And Lederhosen, I read.

Jarvis Cocker11:51

And later her

Jarvis Cocker11:53

The Laidhosen was the most embarrassing thing, I guess. It was.

Jarvis Cocker11:57

Black leather shorts with two zips at the front and kind of little leather braces with a with a bone carved stag on the front of them.

Jarvis Cocker12:07

And of course mum thought I looked very

Presenter12:08

You remember them in great detail.

Jarvis Cocker12:09

Oh oh yeah, they're burnt forever into memory and obviously my mum thought I looked cute and maybe I did look cute but going to school

Jarvis Cocker12:17

In Sheffield dressed like that when I I already was kind of self-conscious with the glasses and the long hair and the bad teeth. You know, suddenly this goat herd turned up at at uh school and uh of course everybody laughed their heads off and uh I I was mortified'cause I was ver always been quite shy, a very sh shy child and I just wanted to to blend into the background and suddenly you know I was uh feeling like you know I should be yodling or something.

Presenter12:40

Tell me about the next bit of music.

Jarvis Cocker12:42

Lieutenant Pidgin, Moldy Old Doe. This I mean this is I guess it's a novelty record but it's one of those records that for some reason I find quite moving. There's something about it, even though it is uh silly, there's there's something quite touching about it. Just before I left Sheffield uh to go to London there was an all-night cafe and they had a jukebox there. This record was on it and I often used to amuse myself by playing it.

Presenter13:37

Lieutenant Pigeon and Moldy Old Doe. So you're in the the dinner queue at City School Sheffield, Jarvis Cocker and it's sort of nineteenth century.

Jarvis Cocker13:43

And it's

Jarvis Cocker13:44

Someone else watching already thinking about it.

Presenter13:47

And you suddenly think, right, this is the secret of life. This is how I'm going to cure all my problems. I'm going to invent a band and I'm going to call it pulp. Yeah?

Jarvis Cocker13:55

Yeah, and I knew that I wanted a group that was kind of a pop group. I didn't really want a serious rock group, I wanted it to be pop music.

Presenter14:02

And John Peel spotted you at some point, didn't he?

Jarvis Cocker14:06

Yeah, I went to one of his uh John Peel's road show things and gave him this tape and he said, Oh, I'll listen to that on the way home and uh I I never thought that he he really would and then about three days later there was a call I had to run round to my grandma's'cause we didn't have a phone in our house and it was his producer saying do you want to come down and do a session? So I was amazed, you know, it was the show that I listened to kind of religiously every night so it was it was really like a a dream come true for me.

Speaker 214:22

Unna

Presenter14:33

So did that confirm for you that there was a future in it for you, that and therefore you could hop off the regimented path and not go to university? Because you deferred, didn't you, by that stage you had a future?

Jarvis Cocker14:43

Yeah, yeah, that that definitely gave me the confidence, the the misplaced confidence as it turned out. You know, it it gave me the ammunition to say to me, Mum, I don't want to go to university, uh, let me put it off for a year and let's try this out.

Presenter14:56

But you nearly got into Oxford to read English. What why didn't you? What went wrong?

Jarvis Cocker15:00

Oh, very simply. Uh I didn't read one of the books I was supposed to have read and then pretended that I had.

Presenter15:06

What was the book, Dan?

Jarvis Cocker15:06

Um it was Thomas Hardy uh tested the Derbervilles.

Jarvis Cocker15:10

I'd read it. I'd read some of it.

Jarvis Cocker15:12

But I hadn't got to the end of it and I just kind of

Jarvis Cocker15:16

talked some rubbish and the bloke found me out straight away and so that was the end of that.

Presenter15:20

So you stayed in Sheffield for six years?

Jarvis Cocker15:23

Hmm.

Presenter15:23

Everybody else had gone. I mean, everybody else was in the bathroom.

Jarvis Cocker15:26

Everybody else in the band either had strict parents or or had common sense and just gave up.

Presenter15:31

What were you kind of waiting? What did you think would happen? Did you think somebody would come for you because you were special or you were just going to kind of see what happened? I mean, what were you thinking?

Jarvis Cocker15:42

I just thought that if you did something and it was good, then somehow people would discover it. And what I ended up was I ended up being on the dole. Because that was your alternative laid out path, I guess, that if you left school at that time and wanted to do something in any way vaguely creative, you kind of went on the dole and did it. But, well, it didn't quite work out that way. Maybe you would do it for six months, and after that, you just got into the dole living by Fortnite's culture and kind of just wandering around like a lost dog or something. And I didn't want to end up like that.

Presenter16:14

Yeah.

Presenter16:15

But you did, I mean, if you don't mind me pressing on on it for a second, you know, that's what you did between the ages of, what, eighteen and twenty-four?

Jarvis Cocker16:23

Yes, supposedly my formative and supposedly the best years of your life.

Presenter16:23

Yeah, that was

Presenter16:26

Well, very creative years. Did you think somebody was just suddenly gonna

Presenter16:30

find you, discover you, promote you in some way.

Jarvis Cocker16:35

I don't know. I mean, I I didn't do the band every minute of the day and I I didn't really want to move to London. I I

Jarvis Cocker16:42

I'd always kind of had an affection for Sheffield and thought that it was an interesting place. It's not um a beautiful town or anything, but there's something about it, I don't know, some spirit to it.

Jarvis Cocker16:53

I put number four.

Presenter16:54

Yeah.

Jarvis Cocker16:55

Engelbert Humperdink, this record of his, Ten Guitars, reminds me of that because there was a pub just down from this factory that I was living in. And this song, which I'd never heard before, was a big favourite there. And I saw some very interesting acts there. There was an old woman who had to be carried onto the stage and she used to sit there and she sang this song. What was it? I haven't had it up since Christmas. I haven't had it up since Christmas. That old umbrella of mine. And so this reminds me of that. This pub is now closed and that kind of entertainment is kind of gone. And this, I think on a desert island, this would make me smile listening to this song.

Speaker 417:37

Oh dance, dance, dance to my tan guitar.

Speaker 417:45

And very soon you know just where you are

Speaker 417:52

Through the eyes of love you see a thousand stars.

Speaker 417:58

Oh when you dance, dance, dance to my tandem.

Presenter18:06

Engelbert, Humperdink and Ten Guitars. You mentioned the the the woman singing in in in the pub uh with the umbrella. Um I mean it's been said that you're kind of Alan Bennett of pop, which is quite quite nice thing to have said about you really. But it is true, isn't it? It's this noticing these people who are both sort of funny and moving and and and

Presenter18:27

I suppose in their unique way say something about humanity.

Jarvis Cocker18:31

Yeah, I mean I like people who kind of don't particularly have an am ambition, you know, like you were asking me how could I spend all that time in in Sheffield.

Jarvis Cocker18:41

I don't know. I to me it it it seems like it doesn't really matter that much where things happen. It's it's kind of what's going on in in your head really that that's that makes life interesting or not.

Presenter18:49

Uh

Presenter18:52

Now the most

Presenter18:54

Formative experience during this these six wasted years when I'm not allowed to call them wasted years was that you ended up in a wheelchair.

Jarvis Cocker18:58

Yeah.

Jarvis Cocker19:02

That's it, that was the high point yeah. I I was trying to impress this girl that I'd met in this disco and and we went back to her flat.

Jarvis Cocker19:12

And I think I've been to a party the week before where I'd seen somebody do this to me very impressive stunt of going out onto one window ledge and then coming back in through another window, you know, by walking around the outside of the building from one window ledge to another, which was great in this party where they had sash windows.

Jarvis Cocker19:30

But then in Earth Flat which was kind of modern, which had the kind of um

Jarvis Cocker19:34

windows that hinged in the middle, so to open them the window went out into the street. So I thought, oh yeah, well I'll hang from the window ledge and swing across to the next uh window ledge.

Jarvis Cocker19:46

Not really realising the feebleness of myself, and all that ended up was I was hanging from the window ledge. And after the rap.

Presenter19:52

How far up were you?

Jarvis Cocker19:54

Um it was higher than a double-deckled bus,'cause one went past.

Jarvis Cocker20:00

You always kind of think that there's going to be a guardian angel or or I will find that last ounce of strength that will help me pull myself back into the window in this life-threatening situation and suddenly I realized that that wasn't the case and and I let go and fell and and fractured mid-pelvis and and me uncle I ended up in a wheelchair for, I don't know, a couple of months, not not that long, but uh I could have easily killed myself if I'd have fallen in a different way, so and it would have been such a pathetic

Jarvis Cocker20:28

Meaningless death.

Presenter20:30

Are we talking life changing event here, or was it just something else that hammed you?

Jarvis Cocker20:35

No, that was quite uh a turning point for me because then it was then that I kind of decided that I needed to get out of Sheffield, I suppose. Uh

Presenter20:44

It only took you another three years, and

Jarvis Cocker20:45

I know, well, you know, I've never been quick

Presenter20:49

Next. It's a piece of music.

Jarvis Cocker20:51

Record number five, Scott Walker, The War is Over. Sunday had made a tape for me and I I I had flu and I was laid in bed and I was feeling very sorry for myself and I I put this tape on.

Jarvis Cocker21:02

I thought maybe I was had a high fever or something and and it was just the flu that had made me imagine that this music was so good and I I rewound the tape and listened to it again and and I've I've kind of uh loved his music ever since really.

Speaker 421:16

The room below just sighs

Speaker 421:22

Outside they sing, The war is over.

Speaker 421:28

Raise your blinds, the wall is over, let me get some sleep.

Speaker 421:41

Tonight

Presenter21:45

Scott Walker and the war is over. So was pulp existing all of this time in in in different forms? Was it or was it kind of on hold?

Jarvis Cocker21:52

It was like a it hovered like a an indistinct

Jarvis Cocker21:57

spiritual presence. It was for big periods of my life it it was kind of like a security blanket in a way, you know, that it just kind of made me feel that I was doing something.

Presenter22:03

Yeah.

Presenter22:06

But you you came with it, the security blanket, to London eventually. You went to St Martin's Art College to study film.

Jarvis Cocker22:11

Yeah, well

Jarvis Cocker22:13

As you've been reprimanding me earlier about, you know, I should have made something of me earlier life. I eventually came to that conclusion as well myself. And so that got me down to London. It was very exciting because uh the the college was uh in in Covent Garden, just just next to the tube, so you were right in the centre of things. But it wasn't like every day I was sitting there with nose to the grindstone. As I say, often the group really was just an amorphous excuse for it was just something that I could say when you know people say, Oh, what do you do?

Jarvis Cocker22:44

I saw I'm in a group, you know.

Presenter22:45

Why do you think it was, then, that your songs really began to take off at that point? You know why were they different? Were they what was it that rang a bell?

Jarvis Cocker22:56

There was a movement in English music at that time of music that would have been kind of condemned to a kind of indie ghetto normally, suddenly was going to the top of the charts and it and it was kind of an exciting time. It was

Jarvis Cocker23:09

this feeling of, you know, uh the outsiders, the lunatics can take over the asylum or whatever. I was very carried away with it. I thought, you know, come on, revolution is gonna happen now, you know, ever there's gonna be a change, you know, and uh

Jarvis Cocker23:23

It didn't quite turn out that way, but it it was quite a bit.

Presenter23:25

But it did briefly, didn't it?

Jarvis Cocker23:27

Yeah, for a few months. And maybe that's how things always happen. These things do go in cycles and there isn't any way of prolonging it.

Presenter23:34

And then, to quote the song, you then began to slide out of view.

Presenter23:39

Um in the end you sorted all that out for yourself, didn't you? You didn't go into therapy or go into rehab.

Jarvis Cocker23:46

Probably meanness on my part, you know, with the priory being very expensive. I don't know whether it's that great to cure yourself, but

Jarvis Cocker23:56

If you do try and sort it all out yourself, you you kind of have

Jarvis Cocker24:01

the satisfaction of knowing that you've done that.

Jarvis Cocker24:04

That happens a lot in our culture, it's like you know, you pay somebody to do something, or you take a drug to make you feel a certain way, or you take a drug to make you feel another way. And it's like laziness, you know.

Jarvis Cocker24:17

You should actually have to do something to feel good, rather than just kind of swallow something.

Presenter24:22

Record number six.

Jarvis Cocker24:24

Dory Previn, uh the lady with the braid. I remember very vividly first hearing this record. I'd moved to London, I was living in this squat and I was trying to put a curtain rail up, which was uh I think it took me just about all day. And uh I was listening to the radio and it's one of those moments where you have to stop what you're doing and

Jarvis Cocker24:45

pay full attention to it. And I apologise to Dory that it will always be associated with with bad curtain hanging in my mind.

Speaker 424:55

There's a column on the shelf.

Speaker 424:58

I papered that wall myself.

Speaker 425:02

That was myself.

Speaker 425:05

Would you care to stay till sunrise? It's completely your decision.

Speaker 425:12

It's just the night cuts through me like a knife, like a knife Would you care To stay awhile and save my life?

Presenter25:24

Dorry Previn and the Lady with the Braid. So how do you earn any money these days then, if you're not rid I mean, pulp's kinda disbanded, isn't it?

Jarvis Cocker25:32

Poison it. I mean, like I say, it's gone through so many dormant periods. It's like it's like Vesuvius. You can say it's dead, but you never know.

Presenter25:32

Poison it.

Jarvis Cocker25:42

Um, like I've recently I've done these songs for Harry Potter and stuff like that, and I've written songs for other people. I did some songs for For Nancy Sinatra last year and a song for Marianne Faithful a bit before that.

Jarvis Cocker25:55

I mean, the wolf is he's always circling the house, but um

Jarvis Cocker26:01

I've consciously took a couple of years off. Like you say, I got married, something I thought I would never do. I had a kid.

Jarvis Cocker26:07

Um

Jarvis Cocker26:10

And maybe because of my dad disappearing and stuff like that, I've got more of a be in the bonnet about being, you know, a hands-on parent, a a new man or whatever. So so I I I I I I definitely decided I I I'd had the resources to take a bit of time off and do that. I kind of had all these ideas that, you know, once I hit forty that was it was, you know, it wasn't appropriate to still be prancing around on a stage and stuff and then and then you suddenly realise, well, you enjoy it and also big point, you can't actually do anything else, so uh, you know, you better stick with it.

Presenter26:44

Number seven.

Jarvis Cocker26:45

Number seven, this is uh Johnny Cash, I See a Darkness. It's um.

Jarvis Cocker26:50

I think it's a very powerful song. The first time I played it to a friend of mine, he just burst into tears. Whether that's appropriate on a desert island where, you know, some of the other choices I've kind of thought, mm, let's have something to jolly me along whilst I'm there. Anyway, I think this song it's one of those that whenever you hear it it kind of grips you and um so I think it would have to be there but maybe I would only play it on special occasions.

Speaker 427:17

Volcanistry.

Speaker 427:19

Its opposition.

Speaker 427:23

comes rising up sometimes.

Speaker 427:30

That it's dreadful.

Speaker 427:33

And position.

Speaker 427:34

Comes blacking in my mind.

Speaker 427:41

And that I see it on.

Presenter27:44

Johnny Cash and I See a Darkness. To remind you, you say, Jarvis, on your desert island, of your wife Camille, with whom you live in Paris with baby Albert. Now, Jarvis Cocker in Paris is quite an image. Um h how does it work for you?

Jarvis Cocker28:00

In a way it's a bit like being on a desert island actually'cause I don't know anybody there except for my wife.

Presenter28:05

Speak for the future.

Jarvis Cocker28:05

It it's just it's the thing you know, I can do the normal things like, you know, get a sandwich with the filling that I asked for in it, but I'm kind of desperately conscious of the fact that I'm when I enter a conversation, suddenly it grinds almost to a halt and

Jarvis Cocker28:20

It just embarrassed me, so I I ended up kind of not saying anything in the in the end.

Presenter28:25

So it's a bit of a desert island. What about the real desert island, our desert island? How do you see Jarvis Cocker as uh Robinson Crusoe?

Jarvis Cocker28:33

Well, I I really wouldn't last

Jarvis Cocker28:36

For a start I'd become a vegetarian straightway, I'm sure, because the thought of me killing some beast I might be able to do a fish.

Jarvis Cocker28:44

But, you know, anything bigger than that.

Jarvis Cocker28:47

A chick in no way

Jarvis Cocker28:49

And and a and a sheep, forget it. Um so I think I'd become mainly vegetarian. Building shelter and stuff like that, I'm sure it wouldn't withstand any kind of storm. Mm maybe not even a mild breeze. But the main thing would be that the lack of company I I'd like people to be around uh to distract me from myself. Stuck on a desert island I probably would uh have no choice but to think about myself and I would find that very boring.

Presenter29:17

Last record

Jarvis Cocker29:18

On the last record.

Jarvis Cocker29:20

Is kind of to try and help me with that. It's well it's got a lot of connotations really. It's sailing by, which is the music that gets played in the shipping forecast.

Jarvis Cocker29:30

I've for many years used this as an aid to restful sleep. I find something very comforting about listening to it when you're laid in bed. And also on a desert island it'd be happy because it would well it would remind you of the fact that there are boats out there listening to the shipping forecast and some of them might sail nearby so you could get rescued. This would help me. This would be like something that could help me deal with that isolation.

Presenter30:39

Sailing By, written by Ronald Binge, Vernon Handley, conducting the BBC Concert Orchestra there. Now, Jarvis, if you could only take one of those eight records, which one would you take?

Jarvis Cocker30:49

Well, that would be very difficult. Maybe I would take that sailing by because of it.

Jarvis Cocker30:55

The trouble is with, you know, have your favorite songs, if you hear them too much, you you'd end up hating it and to end up hating something that you loved would be awful. So so maybe I'd go with that because it's fairly it drifts by, it's fairly ambient, so

Jarvis Cocker31:08

Maybe it wouldn't drive you mad so much.

Presenter31:11

And what about a book? We give you the Bible, as you know, and the complete works of Shakespeare.

Jarvis Cocker31:15

That's very kind of you. And that would be good actually because I've never read the Bible, so that would give me something to look at, see what all the fuss is about.

Jarvis Cocker31:26

The book I would take is Sombrero Fallout by Richard Broughtigan, which isn't a very long book. I re-read it the other day, it only took me about three hours.

Presenter31:34

What's it about? What is it?

Jarvis Cocker31:35

It's kind of funny. It it's funny and sad at the same time, and that's generally what I go for. It probably in a lot of these songs that I chose as well, you know, that

Jarvis Cocker31:43

So there's something about that mixture that that gets to me in some way. I think life's like that, isn't it? It's kinda funny, but then it's it always turns out to be a tragedy'cause the main character dies in the end, you know.

Presenter31:49

Doesn't it?

Presenter31:55

And what about a luxury?

Jarvis Cocker31:58

We've kind of brushed on my great indolence during the course of this interview. I think a bed would be the thing, with a mosquito net if possible, because.

Jarvis Cocker32:10

I think as long as you've got a decent night's sleep, you can kind of deal with things a lot better I think.

Jarvis Cocker32:16

If anything was going to help me get through this experience, I think that would be it.

Presenter32:20

Jarvis Cocker, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island is.

Jarvis Cocker32:23

Well, thank you very much for uh inviting me.

Speaker 232:34

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.