Pulp used Common People as ‘an experiment’ while shopping around for Different Class producer

Unlikely producers and “an experiment” which would become the band’s biggest hit formed the road to Different Class for Pulp.

Guitarist Mark Webber confirmed that the band had been in talks with The Buggles frontman Trevor Horn and veteran band The KLF as potential producers of their follow-up to His ‘n’ Hers. But Webber says a decision to bring on Chris Thomas with a plan to use Common People as a way to test the waters was conjured instead. Speaking to the Ultimate Record Collector Magazine, Webber confirmed that Pulp had approached numerous industry veterans for their album and would eventually settle on trialling Thomas.

Webber said: “We don’t remember whose idea it was to approach Chris Thomas. I know they spoke to Trevor Horn and apparently also asked The KLF to produce Common People, but they’d just split up, and they were not interested in doing any music at that point.

“The idea of Chris Thomas came up, and he came to see one of our concerts and loved it, and Jarvis and Steve and Geoff met him and got on with him. We did Common People as an experiment.”

Frontman Jarvis Cocker added that the band very nearly broke up long before Different Class came to be. Praising former band member Russell Senior, he said: “Russell brought an awful lot. An attitude to things. Pulp wouldn’t have existed, because I was ready to take up my place at Liverpool University.

“I’d got a place to read English there, but because we’d had the John Peel session, I thought that was going to mean that we were going to get signed and become famous immediately. I deferred my place to go to Liverpool, but then I think I deferred it two years, and on the third year they said, ‘Well, you’ve got to come now, or we’re going to rescind your offer.’

“So I was getting ready to go there, and Russell had just finished his degree in business studies, I think it was, in Bath. He’d come back to Sheffield, and he said, ‘What do you want to do musically?’

“I said, ‘I’m giving it up. I’m going to go to Liverpool to read English.’ And he said, ‘Why don’t we have a rehearsal?’ So we had a rehearsal with him, me and Magnus Doyle. Russell had a few songs from a band that he’d been in called The Masons; he played those and I had a go at them.”

Senior would rejoin the group in 2011 for the first run of reunion shows though did not appear for the second reunion tour, nor for the More sessions. Pulp will continue their More tour in 2026, with a performance at Southbank Centre set for July, with European dates to follow.