The pre-match jitters to come before an interview are rarely hard to contend with. But sweating away in the Bilbao heat and getting lost in the Metropolitano Stadium an hour before speaking to Mark Webber, Pulp’s long-serving guitarist, is bad form for preparation. Webber, who released the book I’m With Pulp, Are You? in September 2024, has since released a paperback edition with new chapters charting the band’s more recent ventures. Some of the biggest-ever Pulp shows to date were performed on the More tour, with a sold-out show at the Co-Op Live Arena capping an impressive, contemporary high from the band. There was, and still is, an appetite for more from Pulp. Webber says, though, that he thought Pulp were finished for good following their reunion in 2011.
Mark Webber’s book, I’m With Pulp, Are You?, is out now.
That, and being told there was an essay compilation to celebrate Different Class in the works, were prompts for Webber to assemble I’m With Pulp, Are You?. Before joining the band officially in 1995, Webber served as an unofficial archivist of sorts, keeping track of the band through fanzines, running the fan club, and eventually becoming their tour manager. “I’d saved all this stuff over the years without really having any intention to do anything with it,” Webber said of the inspiration for I’m With Pulp, Are You?. “During [the Coronavirus] lockdown, we had a lot of time on our hands.
“I was going through boxes in the spare room, and I came across all this Pulp stuff, which I hadn’t looked at for years, because obviously the group hadn’t been active for a while. I started to go through it, and it had been so long that I was discovering things that I’d forgotten I had, photos that I wasn’t sure where they were taken or what was going on. It just seemed kind of interesting.
“At this point, there was no suggestion that we would get back together again. I mean, I thought Pulp was finished at that point.” The band had reunited in 2011 for a string of festival dates and, in 2012, performed what Webber and the rest of the band believed to be their final show as a group. Webber continued: “I rediscovered all this stuff and then through a mutual friend, the publisher at Hat and Beard got in touch with me because he was thinking of doing a book about Pulp. But he wanted to do a book about the Different Class album.
“I think he was going to commission different writers to write essays about it. I thought, ‘Well, that doesn’t sound that interesting.’ I knew the guy had done a lot of art books and visual stuff, so I said, ‘Well I’ve just found all these things and I think this would be a far more interesting book,’ and so I sent him a bunch of photographs that I’d taken on my phone as I was unpacking the boxes. That was the genesis of this idea.”
What followed was a four-year period for Webber, who admitted he “doesn’t really like writing”. The deadline loomed, though, and Pulp agreeing to perform a series of shows across 2023 sped up the process for Webber’s book. He added: “I guess it was 2022 when we first started talking about getting back together and playing. That, on the one hand, held me up a bit more. But on the other hand, it gave me a deadline to aim for because it seemed like there would be interest in the group, and maybe that would be a good time to publish it.” The decision for Pulp to reform was met with praise from fans old and new, though the ongoing More tour was originally never expected to happen.
Webber explained: “I didn’t think we would get back together. The few times when I had seen Jarvis [Cocker] and it had come up in a conversation, he didn’t seem interested. I thought it wasn’t going to happen. But then he came around to the idea. I think everyone was into the idea. At first, the commitment was just for those fourteen or so UK shows in 2023. We thought that would be it. But then, obviously, once word gets out, people all over want you to go and play in different countries.
“We didn’t want to agree to doing any more until we played a few shows and got the vibe. But it was kind of amazing, the response. That encouraged us to do more, and then some new songs started to appear. And then it was, ‘Well, shall we make a record?’ We were more hesitant about committing to that.” Hesitance from the band to record new material is understandable. This is Hardcore and We Love Life took years to put together. More took three weeks.
Mark Webber’s book, I’m With Pulp, Are You?, is out now.
For those already in possession of the coffee table hardback, the new album is one of many reasons to purchase the paperback. New chapters on the making of More and recent tours are included in the recent release. Webber shared: “Some older stuff that I found after the hardback came out, like some old photos and stuff, is in. There are quite a few old things mixed in with the pre-existing pages. Some pages have been rearranged to accommodate new things, and there are a few new spreads.
“I ended up writing a lot more than I intended. I thought most of the writing would just be captions or extended captions. But then once I started doing it, it was a lot more than I expected. I told all the others that I was writing a book. They were fine with that. I sent Jarvis everything before he wrote his foreword. I don’t know if he read it all, but he didn’t ask me to change anything or take anything out.
“I put off reading Jarvis’s book for quite a long time. But when I read it, I thought it was really good. When I last talked to him about it, before it came out and before I had done too much on mine, I didn’t have any impression that his book would be as visual as it was. When I finally saw it, I was a little bit gutted, because it was a bit too close to what I’d been working on for a couple of years.
“But because it’s on the earlier period, like his childhood and stuff, it didn’t touch too much. I thought it was a good read. And then Nick’s book came out, but I decided not to read it until after I’d done all my writing so that I didn’t confuse my memories with his.” The paperback features writings on the new tour, along with images of the set design and album artwork from More. Pulp’s eighth studio album topped the charts in the UK and introduced younger listeners to the band, as had the Encore tour before the album’s release.
Partway through the interview, Webber asked me what the appeal of Pulp was to the new generation of fans. My response was a very poorly remembered moment sitting in front of my grandparents’ jukebox, being dissatisfied with Queen, and searching for songs elsewhere. Pulp’s appeal to a new wave of fans is more than the Trainspotting generation influencing the next. Where part of the appeal is in the alternative scene and context of the commentary made in their work, a major reason why those born in the tail end of the twentieth and start of the twenty-first century have picked up on Pulp’s songs is that the music is still relevant.
They still connect to the misfits of today, and few artists can say their work has crossed the wide generational gap. There is a freshness still, an excitement which prevails in Pulp songs. Tapping into that energy and not just preserving it, but challenging it and expanding it, is what the band has managed to do over the last three years. Webber, alongside Cocker, Nick Banks and Candida Doyle, are not offering direct rips of their material. They are changing enough to reinvent, but not enough to lose that chance to reconnect.
Mark Webber’s book, I’m With Pulp, Are You?, is out now.
Joined by Jarv Is… members Andrew McKinney, Emma Smith, and Adam Betts, as well as the Elysian String Collective and Relaxed Muscle member Jason Buckle, Pulp has managed to adapt their songs to modern life. The relevancy remains; the everyday details which define the songs are still there. Hiding in wardrobes, boxes of milk tray, taking advantage of cheap drinks wherever possible, these are still functioning and fundamental parts of life for a listener, no matter the generation. But adaptation has come through, too, and Webber is a key player in that. More offered not a connection to the past but a shedding of the fear heard on This is Hardcore. The band, for the first time, felt comfortable in those awkward situations, the growing pains of Different Class and the kitchen sink drama of His ‘n’ Hers are amplified brilliantly.
Grown Ups and Slow Jam, both featuring in Pulp’s More set, are shining examples of lyrical triumphs and instrumental evolution. Part of that instrumental change comes from an unlikely source. Webber credits Big Thief as being his route back into contemporary music, with the purchase of a Collings Guitar SoCo Deluxe prompted by listening to the Adrianne Lenker-fronted group. He said: “I bought two Collings Guitars, they’re the guitars they play. I bought a Magnatone amp as well, but I still can’t sound like Big Thief.”
Changes to Pulp’s touring style were also present during the More tour. The band had no opening act for their UK shows, opting for an interval instead. The reason for the fifteen-minute break, where fans were asked to vote on a song for the band to play, is simple. “A practical reason is to go to the toilet!” Webber said. “It just felt nice to break it up in two halves like that, and then strangely the second half was like a breeze.” A breeze indeed. Over a month on from the More tour and it can be argued that the band’s most recent tour is their best to date.
Webber confirmed there was nothing in the diary after the slate of US tour dates just yet, but there are Pulp-shaped plans to come in 2026.
Mark Webber’s book, I’m With Pulp, Are You?, is out now.
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