(Credits: Derrick Santini / JG Contemporary)
As gawky as he may have appeared to the public, Jarvis Cocker was a notorious troublemaker during the 1990s when Pulp were at their peak.
From mooning at Michael Jackson during the 1996 BRIT Awards to provoking the British media with his somewhat risque lyricism, there was seemingly no barrier to what Cocker was able to do to rile people up. Frontmen at the time seemed to have a sense of bravado about them, especially within the Britpop sphere that Pulp had been thrown in alongside, but rather than being an arrogant so-and-so, Cocker presented himself as more of a lovable rapscallion, who knew how to push buttons in a playful manner rather than to deliberately antagonise.
However, neither of these instances mentioned are the most dangerous thing that he’s ever been a part of, and in 1997, during a television appearance, he almost ended up not just creating chaos, but decapitating a legend of heavy metal as a result of his hijinks. There’s a fine line between being a nuisance and causing genuine harm, and perhaps this is the moment where Cocker found himself teetering over the edge of said boundary.
During the ‘90s, TFI Friday was one of the most popular variety shows on UK television, with host Chris Evans presenting a somewhat anarchic mixture of music, interviews and light entertainment on a weekly basis. Channel 4, the channel on which it was broadcast, had made a reputation for itself as a beacon of rule-breaking television, with an approach that felt vital and urgent for the period while also maintaining integrity through genuinely forward-thinking programming, and shows like this were at its core.
Behind the desk that Evans used to present the show from and conduct his interviews with the stars was a life-size cardboard cutout of Cocker, which was something that the Sheffield musician didn’t completely get on board with. He had a marked disdain for Evans, and made that apparent when he appeared on the show, displaying a complete disregard for the broadcaster and promptly choosing to dismantle parts of the set, including the effigy of himself.
In an act of unruliness, Cocker decided to turn the figure into a makeshift projectile, hurling it out the studio window, which was situated on the first floor. Unbeknownst to him at the time, this act almost caused carnage outside on ground level, which the recipient of his careless destruction duly told him about. Beneath the window happened to be Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich, who later confronted Cocker after he’d nearly had his head taken off by the statue.
“Apparently, he’d gone outside to have a fag,” Cocker later revealed, “and just as he stood on the front step, this cut-out came down like a fucking guillotine, an inch in front of his nose. Luckily, it was raining a bit, so he was sheltering. If he’d been outside and it had fallen on his head that would have been it. Lars Ulrich killed by a wooden Jarvis Cocker! It was a close shave.”
It’s not known whether Ulrich still harbours some sort of hatred for Cocker, but the fact that he was almost killed, not by him, but a life-size cardboard representation of him, makes me think that he’s probably too frightened to ever listen to Pulp.
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