Mark Webber on Pulp's Different Class

This extract from the second part of Mark Webber’s interview with Jason Barnard at The CAT Club begins in the last stretch of making Different Class. From there it moves into the sudden public glare that came with the album’s release and the Brit Awards interruption that neither Pulp nor Mark Webber expected to define so much of that period.

Different Class

The band went back into the studio. “We recorded at The Townhouse near Shepherd’s Bush,” Webber recalls. “Queen had worked there, and people from their fan club would still turn up at reception wanting a look around. Chris Thomas was producing us, music-business royalty. He started at Abbey Road around the Beatles, worked with the Sex Pistols, Roxy Music, John Cale, Elton John, INXS … quite a list.”

For Webber, it was his first major recording session. “There was a bit of pressure, but at the time everything just seemed easy. We were on a roll. Chris would regularly stop everything to tell stories from the old days, drink brandy, and play the mixes phenomenally loud.”

It was around this period that Mark’s role in the group would be clarified. Webber explains “We were in the studio and Geoff Travis and Jeannette Lee, the managers from Rough Trade, came for a meeting. It was announced there would be a band meeting, and that I wasn’t invited. They went upstairs to the games room, which had a pool table and a record player. They were up there for hours until eventually someone asked me to come upstairs. I thought they were probably going to say, ‘This has been great. Thanks for all your help. See ya! We’re about to become incredibly successful and this has all become a bit too familiar,’ or something like that. But what happened was Jarvis said something like ‘We’ve had a talk about it, and we’d like you to join the group.’ I don’t think I answered them at the time but it was just kind of assumed the answer was yes. So then over the next few weeks, I was written into the recording contract, the management and the publishing. From then on, everything was split six ways instead of five. For a short while up until this point, I had become a bit frustrated – not because I felt like I should be in the group, but just because it wasn’t really very clear where I fitted in.”

Different Class became a defining album of the decade. “We were slightly inept musicians that were suddenly making records with this guy who’d worked with everyone. It was amazing. The songs just came quickly – we recorded half the album, realised some weren’t good enough, went away, wrote more, and finished it off. It all felt effortless.”

With Different Class the group’s world accelerated beyond recognition. “There was so much happening: radio, TV, concerts, that we didn’t have time to think,” Webber says. “It was just next, next, next.” The contrast to the group’s early days wasn’t lost on him. “Not so many years before this, Pulp played the Co-op Hall in Chesterfield to a dozen people.”

Success also brought intrusion. “Once Jarvis started getting tabloid attention he couldn’t do anything anymore.” One such headline was the “Ban This Sick Stunt” Daily Mirror front page about the ‘Sorted for E’s and Wizz’ artwork. “We were actually out at Top of the Pops that day to record a performance ‘Mis-Shapes’ as it was a double A side.” The record company sent their special tabloid consultant on damage limitation to advise the band how to respond. “He f struck a deal with the Mirror whereby Jarvis would do an interview with them for the next day if they would publish the lyrics to the song. It was just a realistic portrayal, an observational piece, but they made out that it was encouraging people to take drugs so we persuaded them to print the lyrics so that it was clear that wasn’t the case.” The rest of the band were less impacted. “Jarvis did attract most of the attention so the rest of us could pretty much go to the supermarket and lead normal lives.”

Sorted for E’s & Wizz

At the height of their fame came the Brit Awards and the moment that would further put the spotlight on Jarvis Cocker and Pulp. “We were performing at the ceremony and were nominated for a few awards. Didn’t win any of them! We’d seen Michael Jackson rehearse ‘Earth Song’ in the afternoon, and it did seem a little bit over the top.” Webber remembers. “So it comes to the show and it was one of those situations where all the industry people are sat around tables and they have dinner and there’s an endless stream of alcohol. Because we’d been nominated our table was next to the stage. Michael Jackson was performing and Jarvis was annoyed. I didn’t hear this, as I was sitting practically opposite on a big round table, but Candida just said to Jarvis, ‘If you’re not happy, why don’t you do something about it?’ Pete Mansell was also there, he was Pulp’s former bass player who was dancing, playing a scally, during our performance. So Jarvis and Pete stood up and just walked onto the stage. The amazing thing was there was no security between the floor and the stage. There was just a little ramp that they walked over, and they were on the stage. Didn’t have any plans as to what to do when they got there, so they just scurried back and forth and Jarvis did this wafting gesture, and then they came back and sat down. Richard, who was the tour manager after me, got the vibe that this wasn’t cool and said ‘Let’s all go back to the dressing room.’ Soon after that, we were told that Jarvis had been taken for questioning, so the rest of us just went to the after show party. He was kept in the police station overnight, and obviously the record company lawyers got involved. The next day, we were starting a tour in Brighton. We went down there, did the sound check and we didn’t know until the last minute if Jarvis was going to be there. But then he was released and the show went on. That tour was a bit crazy, with photographers following us everywhere.”

It marked the moment Pulp moved from pop success to cultural phenomenon and to exhaustion. “We’d been on a treadmill since His ’n’ Hers,” Webber says. “It was all new and exciting for a while, but after Different Class and all the touring we wanted to hibernate a bit.”

By the end of 1996, Pulp had sold millions of records and were being hailed as the most articulate band of their generation. Yet inside, the fatigue was obvious. “We did a lot more than we probably wanted to,” Webber says. “After going round the world with Different Class, we’d had enough for a while.”

Separations

When the glitter of Different Class began to fade, Pulp found themselves confronting the realities of the kind of fame they had once mocked. The whirlwind of chart success, the tabloid fascination following the Brit Awards incident, and two years of near-constant touring left them adrift.

“We did have a break after the last concerts of that tour,” says Webber, “it felt like a long time but it was maybe only a couple of months. We’d already written ‘Help The Aged’ by then because we first performed it in the summer of ’96.”

Russell Senior, Pulp’s violinist and key force behind the group for a decade, had become detached. “When we were recording Different Class, Russell wasn’t that interested in the process like some of us were,” Webber recalls. “He spent a lot of time in a lounge at the back of the studio developing a board game that he thought was going to make his fortune. It was called The Housing Market, about buying and selling houses.” Webber also highlighted other issues, “The violin is so loud in that BBC Glastonbury broadcast … That was done by someone who didn’t know what the balance should have been, but the violin was often quite painful for the rest of us. The rest of us just started to go in a slightly different musical direction.”

Senior’s attention drifted, and his domestic life made touring harder. “Russell was the first in the band to have children so was not wanting to go away so much. Somehow, it was decided that he was leaving. I remember the business meeting about the divorce, but not really the discussions up to that. He sort of lost interest after a while. We were doing other stuff and didn’t seem like he was that interested in contributing to those new songs.”
His departure marked a change in the group’s balance. “Russell had been the one who brought me in, he was the organiser back then.” Webber says. “With Russell having left the group, there was more space for my guitar. Things became more guitar-led. The songs maybe became a bit more conventional, but there was a chance for me to be more myself in the parts I was playing.”