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Sturdy


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FAO Havenhand... lyrics to obscure 1987 songs?
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Steven.... it occured to me that you might be able to help with some of the lyric transcriptions of unreleased songs that date from your time in Pulp. You might have spotted on the Pulp Wiki site that people have attempted to decipher the lyrics from rough live recordings of Going Back to Find Her and the two versions of My First Wife (doesn't look like anyone's been brave enough to tackle Heart Trouble as yet). As you probably heard these songs a few more times than most of us, maybe you could clarify a few bits?

The following are the versions on Pulp Wiki at the moment....


Going Back To Find Her

I'm going back to find her
I've written her a letter
Maybe she will not be there
And maybe I don't really care
But I can't think of no one else
That's why I'm going back to find her
Oh, I know there will be no one there at all
And I don't really want to find her

It's just I'm feeling weaker
And I'm looking for a shoulder
Someone who will prop me up
And someone who I'm master of
And someone who's afraid of me
I don't think I will find her
No, I know there will be no one there at all
And I don't really want to find her


[vague spoken bit... starts with "I roam from town to town" i think]

Well, her house was by the river
So I burnt it to a cinder
And now I'll never see her face
So I can go some other place
And think about somebody new
And pray to God that I don't find her
No, I know there will be no one there at all

I hope I never ever find her


My First Wife (mk 1)

La la-la-la-la la-la-la-la-la la-la-la-la-la


It was a summer's day; a real summer's day
The sky was perfectly blue
And the trees rustled slightly
Each one gripping us into its cool shade
Each breath was like a mouthful of warm syrup
As we made our way up the steep stoney path
Swaying slightly
Drunk on the sun

At the bottom of the bank there was a stream
And when we laid beneath the trees and greenery
It was like lowering ourselves into dark (??) pools

The sun broke through the leaves in patches
And shone through the materal of your dress
Casting tiny rows of shadows on your body


La la-la-la-la la-la-la-la-la la-la-la-la-la


BUT IT'S OVER NOW
NO (?) NO (?) LEFT
And no leaves on the trees
I should forget it all
And no one,
No one can live on love for more than one year


The sun shone through the trees
And through the dress she wore
Her legs were long and bare
Her mouth was soft and warm
But that was years ago
It's just a memory
It's just that thing in time
To tell your friends about


La la-la-la-la la-la-la-la-la la-la-la-la-la


My First Wife (mk 2)

She is alive again
It's strange to see your face again
And I can see it's you

I should have known
And this is so predictable
And I can see it's you

Getting through the day
But you know it has to be this way
There's no way to return

Sometimes I kiss your memory
And now it's time just to go to sleep
Well, don't you ever learn?


The day is gone
And the night is long
I won't think of love
I won't think of love
I'll smoke a cigarette
Get drunk and stay out late
I won't think of love
I won't think of love


Slammed a thousand door
They lead me nowhere
Lead me nowhere
Now you lie in rest

I died a thousand times
and the next day I was still alive
The future (?)
Oh, yes

I did it
Now it's time to throw it in your face again
I did it all for you
I did it for you, babe

Now I realise that they were just you in disguise
And I remember why I abandoned you


The day is gone
And the night is long
I won't think of love
I won't think of love
I'll smoke a cigarette
Get drunk and stay out late
I won't think of love
I won't think of love

I'll see how I feel
I try not to feel
And I won't think of love
And I won't think of love
And soon this night will end
And I can live again
And I won't think of love
And I won't think of love
No I won't think of love
No I won't think of love


(?)
(?)
(?)

(?) your face
And I don't give a damn these days
I just want to go out
And I'm going out now


The day is gone
And the night is long
I won't think of love
I won't think of love
I'll smoke a cigarette
Get drunk and stay out late
And I won't think of love
And I won't think of love

Don't ask me how I feel
I try not to feel, no
And I won't think of love
And I won't think of love
And soon this night will end
And she'll live again
I won't think of love
And I won't think of love
And I won't think of love
No I won't think of love



-- Edited by Sturdy at 23:28, 2007-10-29

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LeoVK


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Interesting that some of those opening lyrics from the obscure My First Wife ended up in David's Last Summer!

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Havenhand


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I'll do my best but my recollections of the lyrics to those songs are very vague. When we rehearsed in Jarvis' garage the sound was so appalling that it was very hard to discern much from Jarvis' singing at all. Our rehearsals were appalling cause the sound was bad....very bad. Russell's violin was probably the over-riding noise because he'd always crank it up & it'd shred your ear drums to bits.
Whilst you're around, did u know there's a new book about Pulp on the horizon? I've been interviewed for it , have u had any contact yourself?

-- Edited by Havenhand at 19:36, 2007-10-30

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Eamonn


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Steven, is that the French book on Pulp you mentioned on another thread recently? Any idea if its a straightforward (not a word you'd associate with any aspect of Pulp I suppose) biography or what?

Re Pulp in 86/67 - when we badger you with questions of your time in the group do you have anything in the way of primary sources that help your recollections or are you going completely on memory? For example did you record (m)any of those garage practices on some clapped-out Ferguson tape recorder or 'owt?

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Havenhand


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Hello Eamonn, hope u r well & all.
I did have a recording of all the early mixes of Death Comes To Town for a time but I've moved around so much that it's now lost. I think I loaned it to a guy called Ned (surname unknown) whilst I lived in Rugby in the 90's, it wasn't returned & sadly it's now gone. There was a recording of a PULP rehearsal from 1987, which we submitted as our demo for Fon Records. It was recorded over my cassette copy of Leonard Cohen's Greatest Hits 'cause no one had a blank tape spare on the day. Jarvis was a bit uneasy about recording over Leonard but it was eventually deemed a necessary sacrifice. I believe there was also a video of a PULP gig at The Limit from 1987 knocking about somewhere as well.

-- Edited by Havenhand at 01:40, 2007-10-31

-- Edited by Havenhand at 02:15, 2007-10-31

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Havenhand


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p.s The new book about PULP is the one I mentioned in an earlier posting. I was asked 5 questions in relation to it, the author's name is Jean-Marie Pottier & he has a MySpace page if u search for it. I believe it's due out in Spring of next year & it's in French.

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Eamonn


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Havenhand wrote:

There was a recording of a PULP rehearsal from 1987, which we submitted as our demo for Fon Records. It was recorded over my cassette copy of Leonard Cohen's Greatest Hits 'cause no one had a blank tape spare on the day. Jarvis was a bit uneasy about recording over Leonard but it was eventually deemed a necessary sacrifice.

Priceless biggrin.

The Leadmill gig from '87 is presumably 'The Day That Never Happened' show - the last Pulp gig did before Jarvis' move 'darn sarf' wasn't it? I think the 'live' bits from the Countdown video are taken from it...and the brief clip of Jarvis clad in some feather-boa type jumper singing Death II on the Hits DVD. 


Thanks for the informative as ever replies.

Wonder if we could get any of the Franco-philes on here to interview Jean-Marie about his book. Did you get your French GSCE Sturdy?!




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Sturdy


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Hello Steven,

Thanks for the reply there. Yep, realise I'm probably asking the wrong person about the lyrics but let me know if anything rings a bell in the ones I posted up there.

No I haven't heard anything from the person writing the French biog (and sorry Eamonn, I did German at school!). I may do some digging.

That rehearsal tape sounds mouthwatering - presumably it ended up in the hands of Dave Taylor or someone else from FON?

Eamonn - the video Steven is referring to was from The Limit, not the Leadmill. It would presumably be from March '87 (the same one that there's a tape of) or May '87. The only bits from the Day That Never Happened that are on the Hits DVD are the brief backstage shots (Russell tuning his guitar etc) and about 2 seconds of Death Comes To Town. The Countdown and feathery jumper footage comes from two different Leadmill shows in '91.

Phew, I'm all geeked out.

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Havenhand


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Hi Mark,

You're right, the demo would've gone to Dave Taylor. Dunno if it's still in existence though, I'll leave that one to you.

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Eamonn


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Thanks for clearing up the late 80s Pulp footage issue Mark; it would be great to see all of it. Jarvis or Mark Webber are probably the only two likely to have those Pulp gigs on VCR I presume though the audio of those Limit Spring '87 gigs can be tracked down.

As for the French book, I emailed Jean-Marc and this is what he had to say:



Dear Eamonn,

Thank you very much for your interest in my book, it's really nice. I will try to answer to the few questions you asked me, without making too much mistakes in English, I hope...

- About the birth of the project :
I am a big Pulp fan, although not a "classical one" (I'm only 25 and, because we the French are sometimes slower to discover good bands than you in GB smile.gif, I think I only heard Pulp for the first time in 1999, and the only album of Pulp I bought on the week of its release was "We love life"). When I was a teenager, I was listening to a lot of britpop bands (mainly Blur/Oasis, of course) and when I discovered Pulp, I thought that it was how britpop should always be (clever, glamour and popular). One day I discovered that there was no biography of the band in French, so I tried my luck and send a brief summary of my project to a publisher, who accepted it.

- About the content of the book :
My book will be published by a collection called Les Cahiers du Rock ( http://www.cahiersdurock.com), which has already released books about Bruce Springsteen, The Beach Boys... The aim of this collection is not only to make traditional biographies but to show the French audience (who does not really knows that, because pop is not a culture in France like it is in GB) how pop music has multiple connections with a lot of things (politics, social trends, sport...), so I think it will be more a kind of mix biography/essay. So I won't try to compete with Mark Sturdy's very interesting and detailed biography, that I am actually reading, because my book will be much shorter than his (roughly 200 pages).
I will try to tell the story of the band and relocate it in the broader context of British music and society since 1978 (Pulp was one of the rare bands of that time to have such a longevity and a strange career - unsuccessful/very successful/moderately sucessful - so their story is, in a way, a story of british pop music in the past 30 years). So I hope that my reader will find in it interesting answers to questions like : Why Pulp was an 80s indie band very different of the other indie bands ? Why Pulp was not really a "britpop" band in the (let's say) Menswear acceptation, but a wonderful "britpop" band in the Kinks/Jam/Smiths sense ? How Pulp successfully refused recuperation by Tony Blair's New Labour, contrary to Blur or Oasis ? Why "Common people" encapsulates perfectly the spirit of 1995 GB ? And other ones...

- About the interest of French audience :
I don't know exactly what is the interest of French audience for the subject (anyway, the book will be, in its first edition, only published to 2.000 copies approximately, it's not really intended to be a bestseller smile.gif. But I know that there is quite a Pulp fan base in France and, by living in Paris, I took conscience that Jarvis is quite a "hype" character for pop music fans younger than me (he makes DJ set in pubs, etc.) so I hope people will get interested. No translation in English is planned for the moment, and I'm actually discovering that it's difficult, for a French author who doesn't work for the national musical press (I never really worked for it, although I own with two friends a musical blog - a little sleepy right now - that is quite well known : http://impunite-zero.blogspot.com), to obtain the interviews I want. For example, I made a formal demand to interview Jarvis but I didn't get any answer for the moment (by the way, if you know on your forum some people who played in Pulp or were close to the band, I will be very happy to contact them).

That's it, I hope that it's not too confused. If you or other people have other questions, feel free to e-mail me, it will be a pleasure for me to answer.

Best regards,

Jean-Marie



Nice guy, eh? Good English too.

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Havenhand


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Nice work Eamonn. I think Steve Genn would be a good person to interview for any Pulp book. He was very close to Jarvis whilst I was in Sheffield. If anyone plans to contact Jean-Marie then it might be worth mentioning Steve as a potential interviewee. He can be reached via his MySpace page.

-- Edited by Havenhand at 16:32, 2007-11-01

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Mike


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This book sounds really interesting; too bad my French is lousy.

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Will


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Any help with the lyrics on PulpWiki is welcome. I transcribed many of the rare and unreleased songs myself, and I'm not particularly good at deciphering lyrics, so I'm sure there are quite a few mistakes in there.

I did have a go at doing the lyrics for Heart Trouble, but didn't get very far. I suspect the lyrics on the recording I have are unfinished in any case. Steven, do you recall whether Heart Trouble was a regular part of the live set while you were in the band, or was it quite short lived?

Also Steven, I've included a quote from you about the rehearsal tape you mentioned on the recording sessions page. I hope you don't mind.

I agree that the new book sounds interesting, although like others my French is quite rudimentary. Thanks for getting hold of the information, Eamonn.

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Havenhand


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Hello Will

Heart Trouble was a part of the set for around the first three or four gigs I played with Pulp. We played The Leadmill twice in 1987 by the way, there was another gig there between the set at the 100 Club & the first Limit gig in '87. Jarvis had composed a story about the Devil coming to Sheffield & he narrated the story to a backing track of Pulp 'noise', the story culminated in a version of Death Comes To Town, which we did without a bass guitar 'cause I was playing Russell's electric. The 'set' lasted around 20 to 30 minutes & was a proper Pulp oddity. I think it must've been a Thursday when we did that because The Famous Door Club was afterwards, that was The Leadmill student night at the time.
I don't mind you using any quotes of mine for the PulpWiki, which is an excellent resource by the way. Feel free to use whatever you like.

Steven

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Sturdy


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A hitherto undocumented mid '80s Pulp show! I'm a sucker for those you know.

So would that have been around Dec '86/Jan '87? Was Captain Sleep on board for that one or did you have Candida back by then?

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Havenhand


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Hi Mark,

It was early 87, can't remember the date but Candida was there.

Steven

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Will


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Steven, thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed and interesting reply. I will add the new information about Heart Trouble and the live date to the site soon.

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Havenhand


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No problem at all Will. If there's anything else you need to ask then fire away, I'm never too far away.....apart from tomorrow, when I'm in London gigging with The FNB.

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Sturdy


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Here Steven,

Do you have any recollection of this event below (listed on the Wiki)? Might it be one and the same performance as this Leadmill thing?

----
Unknown art event (1987/8)
Some Pulp members, including Nick Banks, Jarvis Cocker and Russell Senior, performed some custom-written instrumental music for a performance art event at the Leadmill around this time. The performers are only remembered (by Nick) as Penny and Karen.
----

Nick's main recollections were that he played the timpani and Penny and Karren ended up rolling around the stage semi-naked, covered in flour...

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Sturdy


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Oh, hope the gig went well by the way!

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Eamonn


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Sturdy wrote:

Oh, hope the gig went well by the way!



Yeah, if not he might have to think about getting in a couple of girls to get up on stage and roll around half-naked, covered in flour!

Just in regards to Jean-Marc's book and his request to interview Jarvis; it strikes me as ridiculous that the pair of you have spent a lot of time on literary Pulp projects, desperate for the involvement of the band to hear even the smallest part of the band's story from the horses' mouths - especially Jarvis; and he rejects it. Meanwhile every other music site/blog seemed to have an exclusive interview with him between this time last year and the spring when the Jarvis Cocker solo record was looking for exposure. What are we to glean from that? "If it's not going to help make me money I'm not interested?"

A real shame considering the fact that whilst Pitchfork or Stylus or The Daily Star ask him the same question for the 1000th time, you could genuinely pique his interest over matters like; Who's chucking the drum kit down the stairs on Coy Mistress; or why he got so uptight when Manners and Magnus got hammered and stoned before gigs but still managed to deliver on-stage or which of the two half-naked girls covered in flour at some Pulp related event in the mid-late 80s did Jarvis fancy the most...

A real shame isn't it?
 



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Havenhand


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Sturdy wrote:

Here Steven,

Do you have any recollection of this event below (listed on the Wiki)? Might it be one and the same performance as this Leadmill thing?

----
Unknown art event (1987/8)
Some Pulp members, including Nick Banks, Jarvis Cocker and Russell Senior, performed some custom-written instrumental music for a performance art event at the Leadmill around this time. The performers are only remembered (by Nick) as Penny and Karen.
----

Nick's main recollections were that he played the timpani and Penny and Karren ended up rolling around the stage semi-naked, covered in flour...


Yes, that's the one I was referring to. The two girls were carrying round balloons which were full of water & putting them in various places on the stage.Every now & then they would drop one. I think it was Russell's idea for them to do that. I'm not sure what the meaning was behind the performance art thing, Russell seemed to have it all worked out in his head but I don't think he passed on the meaning to the rest of us. As I recall, the girls were dressed in black bin liners to protect their clothing from the gluey mess.

-- Edited by Havenhand at 12:35, 2007-11-07

-- Edited by Havenhand at 12:45, 2007-11-07

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Havenhand


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Sturdy wrote:

Oh, hope the gig went well by the way!


Thanks Mark it was fine. We were only there to do one song , I think we've now broken the record for the shortest set ever.



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Havenhand


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Eamonn wrote:
A real shame considering the fact that whilst Pitchfork or Stylus or The Daily Star ask him the same question for the 1000th time, you could genuinely pique his interest over matters like; Who's chucking the drum kit down the stairs on Coy Mistress; or why he got so uptight when Manners and Magnus got hammered and stoned before gigs but still managed to deliver on-stage or which of the two half-naked girls covered in flour at some Pulp related event in the mid-late 80s did Jarvis fancy the most...

A real shame isn't it?
 


I'm sure Mr Sturdy could get a cracking interview out of Jarvis, given the chance.



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Sturdy


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Hello Steven, thanks for clearing up the thing about the Leadmill. All interesting stuff. Unfortunately I think my chances of getting an interview out of Jarvis, cracking or otherwise, are nil!

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