It’s been fun guessing who Patchwork were on the Saturday evening Pyramid Stage slot, various folk were convinced it was going to be Robbie Williams or Chappell Roan, and even Talking Heads were said to be ‘definitely confirmed’ by one music industry insider.
But no, it was Pulp, it was always going to be Pulp, but they still kept a vast Pyramid Stage crowd guessing until the last minute, with scores of people coming on stage before them to form a human shield so the band could sneak on unnoticed. But then the keyboard refrain of Sorted for E’s and Whizz began, up popped Jarvis Cocker, and it was on. A real treat for a festival that loves its added bonuses.
“Did you know it was us?” asked Jarvis after Whizz and Year 2000, to which the crowd all said ‘YES’.
“How did you know?” he replied, mock-aghast, “You must be psychic.”
The truth was, it just fit. They’re on tour for their new album More, they’ve been denying it just a bit too strongly, and hell, aren’t Pulp just right for this occasion?
In fact, it was particularly right since it’s 30 years - 30! - since Pulp famously replaced The Stone Roses at the last minute after John Squire broke his collarbone. That show became part of Glastonbury lore, as one of the truly great sets where the band - who had just released Common People but hadn’t released the album Different Class - won the nation over and Jarvis established himself as one of the most loveable frontmen in existence.
He told the crowd today that they played those first two tracks for the first time at that show - Sorted For E’s and Whizz arriving readymade as a true Glastonbury anthem - and that they were effectively “born at Glastonbury.” Much as Supergrass had referenced the previous day, Britpop is really quite a long time ago now, and the nostalgia is irresistible, but the music still sounds fresh and vital as it ever did.
Pulp play a couple of songs off the new album, Spike Island and Got To Have Love, which accomplish a similar job of feeling immediately classic on the big stage, taking in that nostalgia in the former and pointing a way to the future in the latter.
But really, the job here was to get people bouncing around like mad, and Do You Remember The First Time? and Mis-Shapes certainly accomplished that. The ever-deadpan Jarvis couldn’t resist smiles breaking out on his face among the mayhem which stretched all the way up the hill.
There was a big fan treat with Acrylic Afternoons from His N Hers, from the days of suburban romance and misfit sleaze, with the, as it turns out, singalong lyrics, ‘On a pink quilted eiderdown/I want to pull your knickers down.’
After they start to run out of time - “I was talking too much at the start” - they squeeze in Babies before Common People arrived to create a mass jump-along that just felt right. That song belonged here in 1995 and it belonged here again tonight, a perfectly rendered bit of Larkin-esque pith that nails the perverseness of the British class system and is also, well, a damn fine tune.
Pulp weren’t a surprise tonight, they delivered yet another worldie of a performance.
