Jane Savidge brushed shoulders and worked with the best assets of the so-called Britpop period. Her latest book on the seminal and underrated masterclass Pulp record, This is Hardcore, is out on March 7. Speaking with Ewan Gleadow, the Suede and Pulp biographer talks the longer-term impact of This is Hardcore, where it all stemmed from and the perfect storm which caused such a controversial release from a band whose audience had expected Different Class Mark Two. Jane’s book on This is Hardcore is out March 7.
Ewan Gleadow: Thanks so much for sending the book through early, it’s marvellous. I was at work and checked out the first few pages, but then you get hooked and put your lunch break in so you can rattle through more of it. How did this book come about?
Jane Savidge: I’ve always wanted to write a 33 and 1/3rd book. This is the 181st in the series. I wanted to write one about R.E.M.’s Murmur, which is probably my favourite record of all time. But it had already been done. So then I thought about which band I was going to do, it was always going to be Suede or Pulp. I’d already written a book about Suede and Coming Up. I thought about Pulp and thought ‘What’s the point in doing Different Class?’. Even though it’s superb, it’s kind of one-dimensional in lots of ways. I think This is Hardcore has a hidden depth to it and improves on repeated listening.
It’s a completely misunderstood record. There’s so much stuff going on in it that was triggered by certain events. People don’t know anything about that record, really. It sold less than half of what Different Class had in its first week and effectively put an end to Pulp’s trajectory. I thought it was a fascinating subject to write about so I pitched it at the end of 2022. There’s a long process where Bloomsbury looks at all the submissions, they must get hundreds of the bleeding things. I started writing a cosy crime novel about famous old people in a retirement home who decide to charge a bus to drive them off the top of a cliff because they don’t like living there.
They’d been sent there by their children and there’s all these ridiculous characters – one called Chester Draws, for instance. There’s a cancelled comedian. I was about 40,000 words through when Bloomsbury rang me and said ‘we read your proposal, we love it. Can you do it?’ So I thought I better write it then. I think I went back to the proposal, realised I’d hardly done any work on it and wrote the book flat out in four to five months, intensively researching all the interviews that Pulp has done for that twenty-year period. There’s a great archive called Acrylic Afternoons which Charles Bosworth put together which has got every interview, most of which me and my company, Savage and Best, organised.
Anyway, all those interviews around the time, I realised, my God, we worked them hard. Particularly Jarvis. I worked out the series of events and what was going through Jarvis’ mind at the time and what the trigger point was. That’s when I realised the Michael Jackson incident, February 19, 1996, was year zero for This is Hardcore, the incident that pushed Jarvis to a level of fame that he hated. He wanted to be famous his whole life, an astronaut who gets all the girls. That was the kind of thing he would say in all his interviews. Then suddenly he was catapulted into what I described as the wrong kind of fame, which is why I bookend with those sections about Jarvis ringing a helpline called Total Fame Solutions, where he says he’s had the wrong kind of fame.
Ewan: Initial reactions to This is Hardcore, which the book goes through well, compared to how it is now Pulp is back on tour, it feels as though a reassessment has taken place without accounting for the trauma the band was heading through at the time. It doesn’t appear in the shows either, but new ears and a new perspective must lend themselves to This is Hardcore.
Jane: I think I say in the book, when I went into the offices of Geoff Travis and Jeanette Lee, they said ‘We’re going to play you a new pop song.’ And I sat there slightly open mouth. It might have been a longer version of This is Hardcore than is commercially available. I remember saying ‘So, that’s the single?’. Almost as if I thought, ‘Well, if that’s the single, that’s the single’. They weren’t playing the game. Pulp had only released Help the Aged by that point which was the track which made Russell leave because he didn’t think it was up to much or whatever. I think everybody was expecting Common People Mark Two. The record is nothing like that, for all sorts of reasons.
It was obviously the disappointments of fame, drugs, despair and equating hardcore pornography with fame. Not softcore pornography, but the kind of hardcore pornography where the viewer feels like they own the person. I think that was the comparison Jarvis wanted to make. I think all those things were more grownup issues, very grownup for a band who were meant to be slightly more, I don’t know, fun than that. I came to the conclusion that the record accidentally destroyed Britpop because it was probably, subconsciously, meant to destroy Jarvis’ career, or at least the fame he didn’t like that he’d achieved. He wanted a different trajectory from that moment onwards. The record accidentally destroyed Britpop, they were part of the movement and nobody liked being part of it.
I collect quotes from bands on how much they hate Britpop. It’s amusing, really. I think the band have reassessed that record. It’s very dark and despairing and is a dark period in Jarvis’ life. I felt uncomfortable writing about it. I heard yesterday he likes the book, so that’s nice to know. I didn’t think he’d want to be troubled with all that again, to be honest. But there’s been a reassessment because of Paul Burgess and Louis Couldbourne’s photo book about This is Hardcore, and Nick Banks touches on it in his book as well. There has been a reassessment of the record in hindsight. It must have felt like a self-destructive record at the time, and God knows what Pulp would have gone on to achieve if they made Different Class Mark Two, but it was there and it did something, and it’s a wonderful record.
Ewan: I think it was one of the first records I bought.
Jane: Some people had a problem buying it and were hiding the cover from their parents or from people in school, which I think the band would’ve been amused by because it’s meant to be a scary cover in lots of ways.
Ewan: It almost feels like a reaction to Different Class, which you said earlier is very one-dimensional, in the sense of its sound and what it aims for. There is a reactionary part of This is Hardcore which seems to happen now with some bands going against the grain of what they’re known for.
Jane: Jarvis, probably along with Brett Anderson, are the greatest lyric writers of that generation. I think that was possibly hidden away in what else was going on. If you listen to the lyrics of Babies or Razzmatazz, they’re incredibly sophisticated. I’m not quite sure people realised that at the time. They just sang along with the common people. This is Hardcore, Mark Webber said Jarvis normally arrived on the day with a complete set of lyrics. It might have been Steve Mackey who said that, but that is what Jarvis did. The words for this came much harder than that, it was so hard to get out. I think Jarvis was accused of having writer’s block, which Jarvis dismissed as more of a mild constipation.
Ewan: It’s the perfect storm of a lyricist who is having a clear health crisis, an infighting band and that frustration can be the perfect catalyst for the momentum needed to create one of the best records out there. It feels like some of the best records out there are made in a time of real suffering and can extend to being a nightmare on release. Like This is Hardcore, the chance to be reassessed and that’s the most important part. We see it now with Arctic Monkeys, they go against the grain of what people expect them to do. That’s where the crossroads is for a lot of artists.
Jane: I think there were quite a few contenders for which record brought Britpop to an end. You could go as far back as Suede with Dog Man Star, a totally tortured and epic album filled with weird sexual topics you wouldn’t associate with Britpop at all. I think there are some parallels between This is Hardcore and Dog Man Star. Then there was Radiohead with Kid A, which was a very heavy record and Blur released their heavy record, Blur. A return to embracing grunge when Britpop was killed off. A lot of records aren’t just written in absentia of anything else that’s going on, they are a reaction to everything going on around the world.
When Kurt Cobain died, they opened the floodgates of British Music. It meant Pearl Jam and Soundgarden stopped selling. People started to listen to British music again. It was going on anyway. People wanted to hear songs about pebble dash graves and prams in hallways and kids hiding under covers. I think the reaction to Britpop becoming this cartoon-laddish culture is what did it in the end. When Britpop started it was quite fun. All the bands used to dance together at Syndrome Nightclub just off Oxford Street. It wasn’t about having your own bodyguards and avoiding everybody else you saw at a party, which is what happened when some bands joined the movement. Then it became an ever-decreasing circle. Then the bands started to reject that kind of music and move in other directions.
Ewan: It seems like a cycle. We see it in different genres time and time again, where a band will find success and either continue with it until people tire of it or until the band starts to tire of it. In those latter circumstances, it’s the band that changes and evolving the sound is crucial. I think that’s what Pulp did very well. Even after This is Hardcore with We Love Life, a very different and comfortable – nearly a pop record.
Jane: There are common themes running through all their records. The way Jarvis writes about women, as unattainable girls, or as a protector of women or saviour in those songs. This is Hardcore has a very grown-up view of women, the first grown-up view of women that I think we hear on Pulp records. Jarvis writes about the nature of what it is to be a man and later on, on We Love Life, I think he’s reassessed. He was always a different kind of man, he was described as camp simply because he didn’t fit the bill of macho, which was around at the time. Then of course there’s I’m A Man which is about the toxic nature of masculinity. I think it’s been identified as a theme of the record, but it was written at a time when it was the Loaded generation. It was the GQ generation, the era of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Liam Gallagher making disparaging comments about Justine from Elastica. They’re all fitting in together with a view of masculinity Jarvis can’t relate to.
Ewan: The album cover seems to come into contrast with this stance.
Jane: Absolutely. At first glance your toxic male will look and go ‘look at her’, but that is why I’m conflicted about the cover anyway. I think it’s a beautiful image. Jarvis described the images as beautiful but I think what he is talking about are the paintings in general. I think because of what’s happened to the painting being digitally manipulated to look more like a photograph than a painting, I think it becomes a bit of a problem. There were demonstrations on the posters, defaced with ‘this is sexist,’ ‘this is demeaning,’ next to Hardcore. Certain aspects of the artwork, the name of the record stamped across her face like she’s owned and it’s a very subversive pose. We know very little about the model, whose name is Casia. She’s Belarusian.
There was a rumour she was Vladimir Putin’s goddaughter but no one could verify this. I think it’s just internet tittle-tattle. I wasn’t going to put it in if it wasn’t verified. We don’t know anything about her and I thought I’d make the comparison between her and Lolita. We don’t hear Lolita’s voice in the book, we just hear a narrator. We don’t know her opinion on anything and we don’t know the opinion of the model on the cover. I think there’s difficulty in assessing whether it is sexist and demeaning, but it is not sexy. I think the irony is that Jarvis wanted it to be offensive in a way, he wants people to know pornography is offensive. We get forced into this position where a snuff movie about a snuff movie is still a snuff movie. I think that’s the comment.
Ewan: This is Hardcore does sort of nail the attitude of the time, though some may see it as a light perversion of the sex and drugs mentioned on records from Pulp previously. It’s the sharp turn from those optimistic tracks championing the working class to a real malaise. It’s the sharp contrast of the band over two records in just three years. I was in a club last night and the difference between Different Class and This is Hardcore becomes clear.
Jane: I mean imagine that in the club, saying the new Pulp single was called This is Hardcore. Everyone would probably retire to the corners and cry. They always had that element. My Legendary Girlfriend, F.E.E.L.I.N.G. Called Love, they always have these massive gaps in the middle of their songs which presumably you’re meant to stand around on the dance floor waiting for something to happen. And then it does, it’s fantastic. But there are still moments when it’s quite embarrassing to be standing around talking to somebody, slightly different to it being live. When they did F.E.E.L.I.N.G. Called Love live, it was perfectly fine to stare at a stage because Jarvis would be doing things with his hands, his shadow puppet stuff. So your attention is taken, but on a disco dance floor, it’s hellish.
Ewan: It was always a surprise to see his shadow dancing during Sunrise at the gigs last year. It’s kind of mesmerising, and I suppose that’s where the transfer is. This is Hardcore, the more you get into it, the more the shields are put up, the droning note on The Day After the Revolution for instance.
Jane: I compare the track generally to David Bowie’s Station to Station period. You could describe it as being LaMonte Young-infused because Mark is a massive Young fan. You could never say that on any pop record. Then of course Jarvis scares the crap out of you at the end with ‘bye bye’ at the end. There’s a drone at the beginning of Seductive Barry too, a lot of droning going on.
Ewan: There seems to be a kind of comfort in new sounds at a period which was very harsh on the band.
Jane: I think Steve was experimenting with recording techniques and decks, all that kind of stuff while Mark was in a different direction. It’s why the record has a distinctive sound. Party Hard, it’s a very cynical song but still a Pulp stomper.
Ewan: They were very quick to transition out of those drone materials too. We Love Life feels very much an acoustic and mellowed, naturalistic record. There’s a lot of lyrics about Jarvis’ father and there’s a real calming consistency, which is not what you would have expected from Pulp because of the prior record, or even after when they released After You in 2013. This is Hardcore and We Love Life is a nice pair, they both mark sounds Pukp has not ever returned to in the sense of a formalised recording. Their new song Background Noise sounds very His ‘n’ Hers so it does appear the band is right back to those Glory Days.
Jane: Whereas those two records were post everything, and The Day After the Revolution in particular is what Jarvis wants. This is what he thinks he wants as he skulks towards the millennium, where you reassess everything in life.
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