![The Flight of the Bumble-Bee (from the Opera "The Tale of Tsar Saltan") [CD and Book Set]](https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41yFdqBzFYL._AC_UL160_SR160,160_.jpg)
'You're either a pop star or you're scrubbing crabs', as Russell Senior said about Jarvis in the mid-'80s.
Russell hasn't lost his way with a quip and Freak Out The Squares is full of them. It's highly readable and very funny - and you don't have to be from Sheffield to get (most of) the jokes. Although if you never saw the catfish in the Hole In The Road, you'll feel like you did after reading this. Russell sketches '80s Sheffield in few lines, but captures it perfectly. Those crappy rehearsal rooms on Sheldon Row, off the Wicker? They really were like that. The Limit, the Hallamshire and Input Studios? They really were like that. Reading parts of this book is like being back in mid-80s Sheffield. If you're even vaguely interested in Pulp and the time and place that produced them, you should get this.
Most of the major incidents and anecdotes from Pulp’s history are here, all written very much in Russell's own distinctive voice. No ghost-writing here. Yarns such as Pulp -v- the Rugby Club, the River Porter expedition, pushing a wheelchair-bound Jarvis through town during a gale while wearing pith helmets 'for fear of falling slates', flat-sharing with Jarvis, firing Magnus and Mansell, The Day That Never Happened, smashing lightbulbs in the Leadmill and sneaking back in to replace them the next day, signing to Island, 'Je suis Bono', Glastonbury ’95, Russell going to Scarborough and encountering his black and white cut out from the Different Class cover on the beach, etc, are all classics and they're all here. Don't look for many anecdotes about the others in Pulp, however, as Russell largely chooses a few sketches or a withering silence rather than putting the boot in. There's a couple of shakes-head-fondly/in exasperation accounts of Jarvis's escapades, some banter-between-mates laughs at Nick Banks' expense and several, rather more pointed, barbs at Webber, but others escape scot-free. No, I don't mean Candida.
Since walking away from Pulp in early '97, Russell hasn't been scrubbing crabs, but he has been polishing those glossy little pebbles you see for sale in new age shops. Not that he mentions it in this book. Or many other things, including how he once put himself on the electoral roll as 'Russell Pulp' or how an extremely well-endowed young woman once got so bored of him wittering on in the Limit that she snoke up behind him and draped her bare breasts over his head to shut him up. Or, more seriously, how much Russell hated Pulp's American manager and the idiot producer who criminally removed his violin track from She's A Lady. You also won't find out how he felt about Jarvis leaving Sheffield for London or how, after Russell's Stakhanovite work ethic drove Pulp through the 80s, he felt when his position was basically usurped by Steve Mackey - a bloke with hair like Keegan's and who, let's face it, was a bit of a spiv chancer who was far less interesting, less creative and much less visually striking than Russell. This is the main flaw of the book: most of the time, Russell tells you something happened but doesn't reveal how he felt about it. We all know Jarvis left Sheffield in 1988 - but most readers won't know how Russell felt about him going and he doesn't tell you here. By keeping these things to himself, the insider's perspective is often lost.
Revelations? There actually aren’t many new ones for the long-term Pulp-watcher, although Russell does reveal that it was Vicky (Russell’s girlfriend) who Jarvis sought to impress by hanging off the ledge over Sven Books, prior to dropping and breaking his hip on Division Street. There’s a good yarn about 'turning up the Yorkshire' when encountering a despairing Luke Haines in Pond Street bus station, too. Many of Russell’s long list of famous quips also make an appearance, including the killer line about hating the colour of each other’s socks worse than fascism. A shame you don’t get his old quips about post-punk being ‘a multi-coloured refraction of the white light’, however, or the classic ‘you can dance to Pulp, but it helps if you’re a Cossack’.
Like Mick Ronson, Ron Mael or Spock, Russell Senior is one of those people who make an ideal second-in-command or power behind the throne. This is why Pulp were crap before Russell got hold of them and were crap after he left. What’s that? So why did Russell Senior leave Pulp? Russell’s not telling. Yes, it was in danger of becoming Jarvis and backing band. Yes, Jarvis had reverted to writing twee little ballads on his own. Yes, it'd all got a bit North-South Divide, London-centric cocaine socialist. But you know that's just the stuff for public consumption. Russell says he could've written a whole book about the negative side of Pulp, 'but this isn't it'. So you won’t read how narked he was when a member of Pulp introduced heroin into the band or how the nark became unbearable when that person persuaded another member of Pulp to use heroin to escape the pressures of fame at the height of Britpop. Ok, now I've just told you why Russell really left Pulp, so you don't have to look for the answer in this book.
Yes, I was hoping for more tittle-tattle, naming of names and settling of scores – just to see it all out in the open at last. But, even without the grisly, all Pulp fans should still get this.
It’s better than polishing pebbles and infinitely better than scrubbing crabs.
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet or computer – no Kindle device required. Learn more
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Flip to back Flip to front
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
