Pulp’s ‘exhilarating’ first gig had the band cover unlikely rock band’s debut song

Pulp’s first gig had the Jarvis Cocker-fronted group covering an unlikely band, and an even unlikelier song.

Cocker and the band’s first show had a shortage of original tracks, with a few covers thrown in to extend the performance. While Pulp may have an arsenal of hits to their name now, their first show was far from the lofty heights of their recent More tour. Cocker, speaking to The Ultimate Record Collector Magazine, recalled how the band had little in the way of dependable originals and why they opted for a cover of a song that was put back into the charts by Motörhead. While Cocker has covered rock and roll classics in the past, namely Paranoid by Black Sabbath, the decision to run through Leaving Here, a 1963 Motown classic popularised by Motörhead, is wild.

Cocker said: “It wasn’t like the audience went mental for us, but to actually be on a stage… I mean, we’d played at school, and obviously people knew us there, but to play to real people and kind of get away with it, yeah, that was exhilarating. Until you’ve been on stage, you don’t know what it’s gonna be like.

“You’ve seen it – you’ve seen bands on stage. Once you’ve gone and seen bands you can tell that they’ve just decided what they’re gonna do on stage from watching a Live in Concert from Billy Joel or something. They’ve based their look on that and talk to people in a way that they’ve seen people do it on TV.

“We didn’t really do that, but it was good to do it. We played an impromptu Motörhead cover. First and last time. We played Motörhead, covering the song Leaving Here, which was on their live EP that was in the charts at the time. We really liked that song, and it was pretty easy. We ran out of songs so we played it as the last one.”

It is not the only time Pulp has featured a cover song in their set. During a performance at Red Rocks in Morrison, Colorado last year, the band had listed The Man Comes Around on their setlist. While the Johnny Cash cover was not performed that night, the band did treat audiences in Australia to a cover of ABBA’s The Day Before You Came.

Cocker has also covered songs during his solo shows, with a tour of the US in the late 2000s seeing the Disco 2000 songwriter cover Bruce Springsteen. He would also cover Aline, among other French classics, for the Chansons d’Ennui Tip-Top album he released in 2021.

Pulp released their cover of Cash’s The Man Comes Around earlier this year, with two songs leftover from the More sessions, Marrying for Love and Cold Call on the Hot Line, released as B-sides.