Jarvis Cocker I REMEMBER…

Jarvis Cocker (57) is the singer, director and philosophical muse who helped propel a nation into and beyond Britpop. Here, he looks back on his childhood dreams, time with Pulp, and the infamous Brit Awards incident

- Richard Aldhous

WE LIVED IN WHAT WAS ACTUALLY A CONVERTED STABLE IN THE OUTSKIRTS OF SHEFFIELD. The family were all close together—grandma and grandad next door, auntie across the garden. The kitchen was the heart of the house—as always. If something was going to happen it was going to happen in the kitchen. We had a big garden that was considered posh for the area. It was home.

SOCIAL HOUSING DOMINATED WHERE WE LIVED in the south-east side of the city and out towards the west. We were lucky to have space to roam around in. You’d see these towering, hulking stacks out towards the horizon and I was always intrigued by the concept of community. The North has always been very community-led and I worry it has lost some of that in recent years with the diminishing of industry and advent of the internet. I think the sort of childhood I had is gone forever.

A LOT OF PEOPLE REGARDED LOWER-INCOME, INDUSTRIALISED COMMUNITIES AS UNINSPIRING but personally I found them fascinating. They gave me a lot of inspiration and there were a lot of good people. I’m not going to dress up my childhood as some sort of philosophical rite of passage, but it certainly wasn’t unpleasant. The Seventies and Eighties in Sheffield weren’t pretty but it didn’t matter to us.