Well if The Sun says it, it must be true!

-- Edited by anet on Monday 27th of April 2009 09:08:30 PM

andy wrote:

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Yeah well, i always thought this was a weird couple anyway. The girl didnt seem that nice to be honest. Good he's gone off his Yoko 

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That is amazingly horrible.

For what it's worth I wonder if this is old news that's only just been made public. A few of the songs on the album suggest that's the case. Who knows - his songs do often tend away from being strictly autobiographical, after all. It's none of our business really though.

Possibly so.
It must have been a big ordeal for all involved. Wasn't Jarvis a step-dad too? I'm sure Camille has another son.
While probably having no bearing on their split (which as Sturdy said has nowt to do with anyone but them), I've just been reminded at how surprised I was at the lack of French (or difficulty with the language) that Jarvis seemed to have when doing a Black Session for French radio when his first solo album came out. It didn't seem noticeably better than his polite but fairly basic attempts for the same radio programme when Pulp did their sessions between 1992-'95.

Speaking personally as having had a long-term relationship with someone to whom English was not a native language, it can be frustrating at times, particularly if you're not making much of an effort to learn the lingo of your partner.

Edited after seeing anet's post: I admire your restraint

-- Edited by Eamonn on Monday 27th of April 2009 10:46:32 PM

As a bit of a romantic, I actually find this news quite sad.

And here's something to depress everyone else. A rather cute interview/conversation with Jarvis and Camille. They talk extensively about Pulp-fashion:


Camille Bidault-Waddington: We met when I styled his record cover ages ago, I was going out with a photographer at the time.

Jarvis Cocker: Yeah, there was no romance at that point.

Camille: It was purely professional. We didn't see each other for three years after that. And then we met again at Steve Mackey's birthday party. We got drunk and talked a lot. We talked about children, and he said he didn't want any. Afterwards I went back to London but I forgot my blankets, so later had to go pick them up at his house.

Jarvis: And then we decided to go on a date.

Camille: Jarvis did this thing that I love. At first I thought it was weird, but now I like it. When we go out he checks to see what I'm wearing, like the colours or shapes. It's not that he tries to match me but he can dress in the same family of colours. It's this old school way of showing that you belong.

Jarvis: Yeah, but it's not like we wear exactly the same thing. It's not like it's his n' hers.

Camille: No, no, that's not what I'm saying at all. It's just like the same family of colours.

Jarvis: It's about wearing something related.

Camille: When I styled Pulp that first time, I remember Jarvis came with his own suitcase of stuff. I still remember Jarvis came with his own suitcase and stuff. I still remember that blue jumper, the one with a boat neck. It was quite girly, but still cute. He finished with all his own clothes, which I think was really good. There's no way he could have worn anything else.

Jarvis: I think stylists for bands should be illegal. The thing about a band, for me anyway, is that it isn't just to do with the music, it's to do with an attitude. The way a band looks has a lot to do with that. I expect a band to write their own songs, and I also expect them to dress themselves. I think it's cheating if you get someone else to do it for you. It just doesn't seem right to me. With Pulp we never had a uniform, it would have been physically impossible. We were never an elegant group.

Camille: You were all a little like cartoon characters, but you were very inspirational. When I didn't know him, he was very cool. I still find him cool, though I know him more now. It's true that you were a fashion icon in those days. Like Blur with their student T-shirts, and Suede with their black leather jackets and skinny trousers -- it was a fashion musical moment.

Jarvis: I suppose so. The thing I have against stylists is that the stylist might be very talented, and do a really good job...

Camille: Ah so you're trying to be nice to my profession for one second!

Jarvis: No, I'm not. What I mean is that if a stylist manages to make a band look interesting, when they're really boring, then that's a con, and it should be prosecuted under the Trade Description Act! Obviously people have influences over you, and can help you along the way, but in the end you have to make your own decisions. I've probably worn some terrible things over the years.

Camille: Yes, you did! But really you can handle lots of things, because of your body, and your behaviour. You look good in everything.

Jarvis: Well, you didn't like when I wore those plastic sandals.

Camille: Oh god, I hate them! Imagine those little toes in plastic, at, what, thirty-eight? If I wear something he doesn't like, I usually don't wear it when he's there, but I do sometimes wear it when he's not. It does put me off a bit though to know that he thinks it's crap, although he's much more polite about it than I am. I don't dress for other people, but I do dress for the occasion. Like when Jarvis curated the Meltdown festival in London. First I thought it would be cool to wear my Chanel suit to the Motorhead concert, but then I thought it would be uncool just to be the opposite, and in the end I just couldn't be bothered. All the same, each concert made me dress in a different way.

Jarvis: Yeah, but you didn't put on a leather jacket to go to the Motorhead concert, and then a boilersuit to go to the Cornershop concert and a ball gown to the John Barry show. I don't like it when people try to fit in too much. You have to tailor yourself a little bit to your surroundings of course. To me that's like if it's raining you'll wear a plastic mac and an umbrella -- it's just being practical -- but you don't want to end up being a social chameleon.

Camille: But I am. It's part of my job.

Jarvis: Yeah, but you don't throw your own aesthetic out the window just to fit in with the occasion do you?

Camille: No, but I'm less faithful to things than you are. If I like something, I'll probably end up hating it five minutes later, and then liking it again ten minutes after that. Being in my job, it's inevitable to keep having those reactions. I used to wear lots of colour, and lots of people still think I only like pink bows. Now I don't like things that are too frilly, there's a certain Calvinism over my style.

Jarvis: I think you're good at combining things that you wouldn't immediately think would go together. You have a good imagination. I, on the other hand, have no imagination whatsoever. I've stuck to the same things for twenty years. I try to look like a slightly edgy geography teacher. Like what a geography teacher looked like when I was in school. Cords, sensible shoes and glasses. I never liked geography much as a subject though. In fact the only geography teacher I can remember from school was a woman who had a moustache.

Camille: I've thought a lot about elegance now, and I have to say that I don't really know what it means. It's impossible to talk about elegance as constant. Well, I think it has to be something very natural and un-contrived, but I find the concept very abstract. I know a lot of people that other people find very elegant, but I find them all too done and so contrived. I guess elegance is something you find in somebody's manners and in their body language, it's not just the clothes. It's probably a way of thinking, but I don't really understand what it means. Like Greta Garbo wearing a white tank top and wide trousers, if you put that on somebody else it's a tragedy. Elegance is not really to do with the clothes, although if you have good clothes it helps.

Jarvis: Elegance goes with the person, with their personality. It's more difficult for a bloke to be elegant. Peter Cushing is always elegant. He was in a lot of horror films in England. He was very thin-faced, and would always wear tweed. And Christopher Lee, you know the one who was in The Wicker Man, he also did lots of horror films and was quite elegant. They were gentlemen, and not too casual.

Camille: For a woman it's easier to look casual and be elegant, although the fashion industry is full of very contrived-looking people. The fashion industry is very fascist compared to the movie industry. I think people should just be honest about what they wear. Like during Fashion Weeks, there is something so tragic about this uniform of black and Balenciaga and Saint Laurent, all you see is a bunch of black insects.

Jarvis: I think we should talk about what clothes are for. The time when I started to buy my own clothes and think about them was when the punk-rock thing happened.

Camille: In the 1970s?

Jarvis: Yeah. I am old. Anyway, the whole thing was that you had to make something for yourself, and wear things that other people wouldn't wear. You had to come up with your own individual thing. Clothes weren't just something you wore to be attractive, it was more like a statement about what you thought about things. That might explain some of the more boderline things I wore. Punk did turn into a uniform, but the initial message was that you had to make it up yourself. Where did your interest in clothes come from?

Camille: Well, I come from a city outside of Paris, my parents are very bourgeois. Not in an aristocrat-chic way just in a boring, golf player way. Not exactly middle class, but really boring. I remember as a small kid, my father said, "All right, now you're old enough to buy your own clothes." I was about fourteen, fifteen, and I went to lots of vintage stores to buy 1960 style stuff, lots of leopard patterns. My father hated it and stopped my allowance, and after that I had to go buy clothes with him. Basically I was like a young hooker with my father, buying all these designer clothes that I didn't even like. As soon as I was out of the house though, I wore all my vintage clothes. I still remember about five years ago when I went home to go to a family party, my father felt he had to check my outfit to see whether what I was wearing was OK or not. Imagine that at my age! And from a man that has no sense of style whatsoever! I can't believe I'm being paid all this money to consult on those kinds of issues, and my father from Normandy with his cashmere cardigans is telling me I look dreadful!

Jarvis: My mother used to make me wear clothes that I was totally humiliated by. Like Lederhosen. She had this idea of what she wanted me too look like, which I most days found quite distressing. But, apart from the Lederhosen, I've come to appreciate it in later life. She had a very strong sense of what she would and wouldn't allow me to wear. Like when I started secondary school Birmingham bags were in. They were super wide trousers, a bit like the ones Camille's go on today, and they would flap around a lot in the wind. They had a high waist, and a three button front and my mum said they were stupid. I was only allowed to have slightly flared trousers. when I was a kid I felt self-conscious about not being allowed to join in with the trends at the time. There were these star jumpers, very tight and with two stars on them, but I wasn't allowed one of those either. I had a lot of handed down clothes from older relatives. Sometimes, getting older, I'll buy some of those clothes at jumble sales just to have them. I have a star jumper now. When I was young I had a big complex about not really fitting in and looking different. That's why the punk thing was so important for me. I was about thirteen at the time, which is an important time in any boy's life anyway, and punk taught me that it was a good thing not to look like everybody else. That was really helpful for me at that age. Instead of worrying about being different, I would accentuate it more. This is what you have to do as you get older. You turn disabilities into advantages, so that something that could be embarrassing becomes your selling point.

I think we've established that elegance isn't just about clothes. It's more to do with the person's aesthetic, isn't it? So something that looks elegant on one person could look **** on another person. It's about how you make something fit in with your personality and say something about you.

Camille: But if you heard someone say "Ah, but I'm so elegant!", that would be the freakiest thing ever. I mean, it's good to be confident, but if you go around believing things like that about yourself it's the beginning of the end.

Source - MissMagAddict at The Fashion Spot for typing this.






-- Edited by Fuss Free on Monday 27th of April 2009 11:20:10 PM

that was depressing. 




-- Edited by Frisko2000 on Tuesday 28th of April 2009 12:24:38 AM

It's a shame. The looked lovely together, but if it doesn't work than it doesn't work.

My job is in pictures ... and he hasn't been wearing a ring for a year, and they haven't been pictured together for a long time either so I think it's old news. Unfortunately the paper I work on wasn't interested in doing anything. or maybe fortunately, it's noone's business i suppose.

what's more worrying is the interview in the next GQ saying that a Conservative government is necessary
i think he's forgotten how the torys stitched up sheffield in the 80s then

but i know nothing about politics so can't get into an argument about it!!!! (don't mean to start one either).....

calumlynn wrote:

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weener wrote:

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what's more worrying is the interview in the next GQ saying that a Conservative government is necessary
i think he's forgotten how the torys stitched up sheffield in the 80s then

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I could never, ever imagine Jarvis actively voting Conservative.

 

 

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Isn't Jarvis Mum involved in the conservative..? surprisingly...

 

Is this GQ interview actually out yet? Probably best to read the whole thing before jumping to conclusions about Jarvis supporting the Tories.

andy wrote:

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Does anyone think "I Never said i was Deep" is about them relationship ? Or even the whole album, you can read a lot into it. 

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I don't know, but I always thought "Roadkill" and "Forever in my Dreams" were about them. Roadkill was one of the last songs recorded for We Love Life, and I recall Jarvis and Camille had broken up right around the time the album was nearing completion. I always thought the song was a reflection on the fallout from their relationship... Then they got back together shortly after 9-11.

Forever in my Dreams was an older song, but obviously, it was about tackling his fear of commitment. That he should release the recording shortly after his marriage just makes it seem obvious.

anet wrote:

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Is this GQ interview actually out yet? Probably best to read the whole thing before jumping to conclusions about Jarvis supporting the Tories.

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Well, for what it's worth, 8 years of Bush II has turned a whole generation of Americans into fervent socialists. Maybe there's hidden value in poor leadership???

 

-- Edited by Fuss Free on Tuesday 28th of April 2009 03:04:16 PM

Just found this great interview with Jarvis' mam. Looks like it's from 1998. She's almost as quotable as her son! No wonder he's so grounded...




'Jarvis was a wonderful mistake'

Christine Connolly raised Britain's coolest pop star on discipline, square meals and solid Tory values, she tells Quentin Letts


FOR some time now, teenaged girls and men in their thirties have tended to concur that Jarvis Cocker is the wittiest pop star in the country. As a gangling, bespectacled chronicler of working-class suburban life, he has become the very embodiment of cool.

If there is anyone who could salvage Tony Blair's dreams of "Cool Britannia" - and win his government the respect among young people that he seems to crave - it must be Jarvis. So the news this week that he and his band Pulp have released a song entitled Cocaine Socialism will have been met with sickly smiles and queasy stomachs in Downing Street.

lThe song was written after Jarvis was approached by "creepy" Labour Party officials (his description), who hoped to persuade him to support Mr Blair. Alas - its lyrics display the sort of contempt for New Labour that the "Red Wedge" bands of the Eighties used to reserve for Mrs Thatcher: "Well, you sing about the common people / So can you bring them to my party and get them to sniff this... and all I'm really saying is come and rock the vote for me / So now please come on and toe the party line..."

Jarvis's salvo, however, has gone down very well indeed in one particular quarter: his mother is delighted. That is not because she is some core-conviction Lefty, dismayed at Labour's drift away from socialism. Not a bit of it. Christine Connolly fully supports her son's latest political turn because she is a committed Tory - and anything that inconveniences Mr Blair is just fine by her.

Jarvis's mum came to public attention earlier this year when she ran for a council seat in Bassetlaw (and lost by one measly vote). "Rock rebel's mother standing for Tories!" cried the headlines, contrasting Jarvis's coolness with the desperate un-trendiness of being a member of the Conservative and Unionist Party.

Now in her mid-fifties, Christine Connolly is a tall, broad-shouldered Yorkshire housewife who expresses her opinions frankly, punctuating them with a hearty smoker's laugh. Her favourite word appears to be "pet" and she has an endearing habit of patting your arm as she thumps down her Tory philosophy.

Home is a 16th-century farmhouse near Worksop, with a pretty garden at the front. Jarvis may mock bourgeois values, but mum's place glories in its brass trinkets and comfortable, deep shagpile. The scent of furniture polish and summer blooms fill the air and, as we settle down to look through Christine's old photograph albums, the daily is busy cleaning in the next room.

Christine alights with glee on a photograph taken in 1963 of the infant Jarvis - then a bonny baby with a soft little rump. Christine herself was a beautiful, oval-faced 21-year-old art student, married to a musician called Mack Cocker, when she gave birth.

"Jarvis was a bit of a mistake," she says. "Oh, that sounds terrible. He was wonderful - but a wonderful mistake."

Among the family photographs, she finds another gem that shows Jarvis at six, in shorts and Aertex shirt, with legs like Twiglets. "He always has been skin and bones," she says.

Mack Cocker deserted his family when Jarvis was seven. "I just woke up one morning and Mack was not there," Christine recalls, and suddenly her face crumples and tears spring to her eyes, though she tries to conceal them. "Mack just left a note and walked out."

Young Jarvis, she says, was "quiet" about his father's disappearance. (Mack only recently resurfaced in Australia, offering a newspaper his thoughts on his son's development.) Afterwards, Jarvis saw more of his grandparents. With a sigh, his mother says: "They'd have been so proud of him now." And this brings on more tears, so she lights a cigarette and draws on it deeply.

While Jarvis was growing up, his home town of Sheffield was on its way to becoming one of the municipal citadels of the Left; among the rising stars was David Blunkett, now Secretary of State for Education. Christine says she never warmed to him: "They were just starting the trendy teaching methods in the schools. Luckily, Jarvis's headmaster had no time for that sort of nonsense."

She was already a Tory in the Sixties. "I read Marx and the Communist manifesto, but although I thought communism was a brilliant idea, I could see it didn't work. Human nature isn't like that, pet. If you have worked bloody hard all your life, you want to keep what you have got.

"I've got wealthy socialist friends. I say: 'Why don't you give your new washing machine to some poor family?' and they never know how to reply."

Her beliefs are founded on self-maintenance, traditional discipline and square meals. Jarvis was always a good eater, she muses; he "ate like a horse". To this day, when her second husband, Derek, wants only a small helping, he will say: "Now don't go giving me a Jarvis portion".

Young Jarvis was in the Scouts and did well at school. Christine hoped he might become a brain surgeon but he was too squeamish. So when he hit a reclusive spell in adolescence, she helped him buy an electric guitar and encouraged him to master it.

By his mid-teens, Jarvis and the nascent Pulp were practising at home, making his bedroom pulsate with noise. Christine, her libertarian instincts coming to the fore, let them get on with it. A chance of success came early when the disc jockey John Peel invited the band down to London to make a record.

"John Peel would phone me up and say: 'Don't worry, Mrs Cocker, I'll look after him - he'll be all right'." But the Peel episode was one of several false dawns for Jarvis, whose mocking whimsy was too off-beat for the Eighties. It was not until the Nineties that Pulp's records really started to sell.

In Sheffield, Christine worked for Bell fruit machines, collecting money from their one-armed bandits in the pubs around the city and seeing the rough side of life. Much to her amusement, the local crime ring took a liking to her and would escort her down the darker streets to ensure she did not fall among thieves.

At Sheffield's notorious Bull and Mouth pub one day, she found that one machine had been stolen and another was being upended by some vandals, who were subsequently given a good piece of her mind.

"I used to carry large amounts of money on me, but I never had trouble. And at the end of my working day, I would find groups of old men waiting to play dominoes with me. Bell Fruit kept offering me promotion but I said no. I just liked the job too much."

Friends urged Christine to seek her fortune in London but she said no to that, too. "I've never been fond of London. It feels dirty. The people have never got time."

It was last year's general election count, to which Christine went along to support her local Tory candidate, that inspired her to try to enter local politics. She found the Labour supporters that night an unlovely sight.

"They looked like something out of a Brueghel painting," she recalls. "I was astonished to discover that these people were not just Labour supporters, they were Labour councillors."

If that was the best they could muster, she thought, I'll have a bash at it myself. The Connollys and some like-minded friends decided to mobilise and start up a local Tory party branch. It now has 20 members. Christine has come to loathe the nannyism of the Blair Government, and its meddling in areas of life where she thinks common sense should prevail.

"Labour says that if you have young children, you mustn't have sharp knives in the house," she says, well into her stride. "Fine. So how are you going to bloody well cut onions?"

Her no-nonsense attitudes still extend to her son. When Jarvis comes home, he is expected to "pull his weight" with the washing-up. Sometimes, he brings back friends from the pop world. "I've met Damon Albarn," she says. "A nice little lad, he."

And then there are the girls, skinny fashion victims straight off the London scene who touch down in Yorkshire and are immediately given the benefit of some Worksop wisdom about eating plenty to keep up their strength, and not to go taking those drugs.

"Ooh, I have had fun with them," Christine says. "When they come to the pub with us, they have a job keeping up with me! I teach them a good bit of common sense. A lot of them are on drugs. Why can't they just get their kicks from a gin and tonic and a cigarette?"

What about Jarvis and drugs? I ask. What does the down to earth mother of the man whose best-known songs include Sorted for Es and Whizz say to dissuade him?

"As a mother, you never stop worrying, but he has always been level-headed. When he was little, I used to din it in to him that drugs were dangerous. A lad I was at college with killed himself with drugs - that sort of thing puts you off for life. As for cigarettes, Jarvis smokes OPs - other people's!"

Christine listens to his music with maternal interest, telling him exactly what she thinks. "He went through a dirgey period for a bit, and that were awful," she says, with a laugh. She "quite likes" the band's most recent album This is Hardcore, but her favourite song is Common People.

When she goes to Pulp concerts, she is more nervous than Jarvis. "I get palpitations. I know how shy he is; I am gobsmacked every time I see him perform," she says. "Jagger's mother must feel the same way."

Cocaine Socialism (Island records) by Pulp is the B-side to the single, A Little Soul.
Jarvis's former Scout group are trying to raise money for their new hut by raffling his donation of a triple platinum disc. Tickets (£1 each or £5 a book) are available from the 270th Sheffield Intake Scouts, PO Box 1353, Sheffield, S12 2YW. Please enclose an sae.

Superb! I had thought that Little Girl with Blue Eyes was written about J's mum, but the woman in that interview comes across nothing like I'd imagined the character from that song to be.

hehe, seems like Jarvis' mom was / is a bit of a dad too.

I think Jarvis isnt tied up to any political party, that's it, we shall wait and read the interview, but i really dont think it's gonna read he's a torie. His criticism on society have always been about humans and their weird values and behavior, whatever party they are supported by. He's in the middle somewhere, just like everyone one of that arent radical about everything.

Totally.

Jarvis' mother sounds absolutely nauseating.

The article has been updated with Jarvis' statement denying he's a torie

ALL the best pop stars "flirt with fascism" at one time or other...

It's a side-effect of cocaine addiction, isn't it?


Well I'm thinking that it can't be love.

I haven't read the full interview yet but my feeling is Jarvis has made a valid point that there is simply no alternative to Labour. No credible opposition. I haven't voted at the last 2 general elections as I don't feel either would be any better than the other.

Before that I did vote Lib Dem but I feel even they have lost their way

I think Labour would benifit from electing a new leader, if it takes 4 years of a Tory government to get that then so be it!

The split up makes me sad, but like others it's the inherent romanticism that makes me feel that way.

Then again, I would guess a relationship with a stylist would be very unstable. But then again, so would one with a musician. I have no clue.

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