IS it possible that the role of contact lenses has been underestimated in the history of pop? When it comes to the story of Pulp, Britpop’s greatest band (well, it’s either them or Suede, whatever Blur or Oasis fans might say), Nick Banks, drummer with the Sheffield band and now author, contends that this is indeed the case.
“I think they were a significant facet that could easily be overlooked,” he suggests over Zoom. We are, to be clear, currently discussing Pulp singer Jarvis Cocker pre and post-contacts. 
“All through the 1980s, Jarvis was not taken seriously,” says Banks. “Stick-thin, thick glasses, bit of an odd demeanour, singing in a very low voice at that time ... Pulp were seen as wacky, which everyone thought was the worst thing you could possibly say about a group.” 
“Jarvis in ’88 moved to London to do his film course at St Martins. It’s the time of year for going to university and lots of kids are doing it now. You go to a new town. You don’t know anybody. So, you can reinvent yourself because they don’t know the idiot you were back home … Yet.
“So, Jarvis went to St Martins, shed the glasses, put contact lenses in and the press sort of changed from ‘Oddbod Jarvis and his misfits’ to – ‘Ooh, there’s this new, tall, sexy Jarvis.’
“We were like – ‘Sexy Jarvis? Are you on drugs? What are you talking about?’ We were falling about laughing at this concept of ‘Sexy Jarvis’. But I don’t think he would have gotten this moniker of ‘Sexy Jarvis’ without ditching the glasses.” 

The Herald:

Banks looks over his own glasses and down the Zoom lens at mine. “We’re glasses wearers ourselves, but when you’re trying to make it in the pop world, contact lenses helped.
“And so the press started taking a bit more notice, and, yeah, it seems dumbfounding, but at that point Pulp’s trajectory started going that way …” He angles his hand in an upward direction. “So I think contact lenses are a big part of the story.”
It’s a Thursday morning and Banks is ever so slightly bleary-eyed. He was out celebrating Jarvis’s 60th birthday the night before. Today he’s talking to me about his memoir, So It Started There: From Punk to Pulp. It’s a chunky book that takes in the band’s many lows and the highest of highs as seen from the back of the stage. Most notably he offers an inside view on the band’s career-defining appearance at Glastonbury in 1995 as late substitutes for the Stone Roses.
“It certainly felt like a pivotal moment, yeah,” Banks admits. “Because it was so unexpected. It came out of the blue and it was an opportunity to be seized. We knew it was a massive moment for any band. Common People had just been out and it had been at number two in the charts. We knew it was going to be interesting. But we didn’t know it was going to be as monumental as it was.
“The Stone Roses had pulled out a few weeks before and we got the call and we were just worried that you were going to have 80,000 Stone Roses fans chucking bottles of piss at you which is, you know, a sub-optimal moment.
“It could have gone either way. But playing Common People, it was the first time we heard an audience singing a song back to us. And the volume was ‘Oh my God’ volume. That was a ‘bloody hell’ moment. I remember screaming my head off because it was so amazing.
“It couldn’t have gone any better and that just topped it off.”
Perhaps it was all the more remarkable given Pulp’s back story. After years and years of public indifference and ridicule, “Sexy Jarvis” and the band were suddenly an overnight success.
By that point Banks had been a member of the band for the best part of a decade. He joined in 1986 after seeing a “Drummer Wanted” ad on the wall of The Leadmill in Sheffield.
“Pulp were my favourite band in late 1986,” Banks admits. “We used to go and see them as much as possible whenever they played in Sheffield. They mostly only played in Sheffield. If you’re a drummer like myself and you’ve a chance to join your favourite band it doesn’t get any better than that. 
“I questioned Jarvis about this a few months back. ‘When I joined, Jarvis, were there other applicants?’ He chuckled a bit and went, ‘No.’”
Banks couldn’t be accused of being in it for the money. For years there wasn’t any. Things only began to change in 1993. 
“The UK music scene was on the cusp of wanting to hear something else. We’d had long-haired, scruffy-looking Americans in plaid shirts playing grunge and perhaps people like Pop Will Eat Itself and the Wonder Stuff were sounding a bit old hat. And the great thing about British pop music is it’s constantly changing and evolving. The spotlight of interest is constantly moving. I suppose the trick is it moves in your direction, or you move slightly into its direction so you get the beam. And we could see that beam of interest was moving in our direction. 
“Obviously you had Suede and Blur coming through, so people were up for trying something different And we had the unsigned young Pele upfront doing all his daft dances and funny little shakes and things.
“We’d seen it for years, and we knew if Pulp and Jarvis could get some kind of exposure, any exposure, it would give folks a chance to have a look and see what they think.”
What followed was a manic few years of music press front covers, hit singles, bigger and bigger tours and the odd spot of tabloid notoriety. The release of the single Sorted For Es and Whizz caused drug storm headlines. And then there was Cocker’s bum-wiggling escapade in the middle of Michael Jackson’s performance at the Brits.
What’s amazing about that moment, Banks says, is the way the court of public opinion altered the narrative. The papers had Jarvis in their sights when it happened. “Jarvis is this nasty horrible person who hurts children and pushes them offstage,” Banks recalls. But that was quickly disproved. “And all of a sudden the papers were going, ‘Yes, free Jarvis, he’s an innocent man.’ With no idea of what they’d said just a few days before. It was hilarious and strange to see all that.”
What was Banks’s own role in all of this? Time and again in his book he suggests he takes a back seat in Pulp discussions. “There are strong personalities within the group and there’s always lots of opinions to be listened to. And sometimes some people shout louder than others and sometimes you may say, ‘Let’s do this.’ And it never gets taken up, so you think, ‘Well, I shan’t say it any more because nobody ever listens to me anyway.’
“But at the same time you weren’t festering with a dark place in your heart thinking, ‘These b******s are out to get me.’ Your role is to be there. Ready.”

He quotes pop’s most famous drummer. “Ringo said once that in all those years in the studio, yes, he was bored out of his mind. But he said, ‘My job was to be ready as soon as John or Paul came up with something that was interesting.’”
After their final album We Love Life, released in 2001 and a tour in 2002, Pulp went away for a long time. Banks returned home to Yorkshire to take over the running of his family’s pottery business. 
Now and then the band would reunite to play live, but this year saw the first proper Pulp tour for a decade.
In truth, 2023 has been a bittersweet one. It also saw the death of bass guitarist Steve Mackey in March. But Banks and his bandmates enjoyed their recent live outings. And we’ll get another chance to hear it when they headline Edinburgh’s Hogmanay party.
“I love New Year more than anything so to play at the best New Year town in the world will be ace,” Banks suggests. It’s another sign that Pulp still matter in the 21st century.
“I think the music stands the test of time,” Banks says. 
“I still think these songs are saying something to the audience. Yeah, they were out a long time ago but people were still able to get great enjoyment from them, so to be able to play them to rapt audiences is fantastic.
“I don’t think there is much point in demeaning that by saying, ‘Oh they’re just trotting out the old stuff. They’re just playing their hits’. So what? They’re great songs and people are enjoying them.”

So It Started There: From Punk To Pulp by Nick Banks, is published by Omnibus Press