It’ll make the reading of this text harder once the links rot, but it’s a nice touch to have QR codes in the text. The first one is a video that shows author Banks explaining how to engage with that extra-textual feature using a smart device. If you aren’t able to get that far or figure out what those weird squares mean at the start of each chapter, then you might persist in your confusion. Those reading this book years after YouTube disappears will simply be out of luck. We all know that a general, if not fanatic, interest in PULP as a band will outlast all forms of social media.
I hardly think I’m unique in finding the QR codes nifty. When I’m reading a book that constantly references other works in making its argument or shaping its narrative, I struggle to keep my attention on the text itself. I’m mentally cataloging pages I want to revisit as I finish each chapter, then deciding whether to look up the materials the author referenced. I’m also driven to continue reading (in most cases) because I decided to read the book for a reason and still want to keep going.
I’ve settled on dog-earing pages as I go, and then returning to the book hours or days or weeks later to check on those pages. I have stopped reading with a pen in hand because I get so wrapped up in my own annotations (to say nothing of the desire to investigate the topics the author mentions) that I lose steam with making progress through the book. When I revisit the text, I usually remember why I marked certain pages, but if I don’t, I just chalk it up to past me’s over-exuberance and leave it at that. If that page was truly worth remembering or revisiting, its power would stand out on a second view, right? I hope…
You can probably tell from my meandering introduction to this review that this book is full of the kinds of references that pull me away from the text. So, the QR codes help, but they are not sufficient to satisfy my curiosity. There is plenty to be curious about in Banks’ life story. He starts with his grandparents’ generation on both sides to establish his working class roots. He also has a famous football playing uncle that I had not known of before reading this book or listening to PULP in the first place. The uncle shows up periodically in PULP history when managers, club owners, bookers, etc., ask if Nick is any relation to keeper Gordon Banks. Nick’s lack of football smarts is a gift to us because he became a solid drummer and an engaging writer instead.
Banks spends a few chapters on family history and his childhood before getting on to his passion for music and participation in the Sheffield scene of the ‘70s and ‘80s. We might know him for PULP, but he spends around 100 pages of this 400-page book on his life before joining the best band Britpop had to offer. It’s great to have this context because it makes their eventual success as a group that much sweeter. (The same goes for Jarvis Cocker’s and Mark Webber’s recent books about their contributions to PULP.) As the subtitle indicates, Banks’ journey starts with punk. He was part of the scene and not just the scenery, too, which makes the stories more interesting than the usual “I heard about this band through friends / siblings / neighbors and bought the record and went to shows, etc.” story. Those pathways into an underground scene are individually important (I mean, I know I feel that way about my story) but can quickly become genericized in a book like this one because they fit a template. Banks has enough personality as a writer and a drummer to make the tales of punk and goth bands he was part of as interesting as anything that happened when he was on Island Records’ payroll. I really hope he shares the FATAL NOISE demo at some point. A six-song demo recorded in August 1981 by guys who had just finished their O-level exams and that sounds “a bit like it was recorded with a thick sock over all the microphones” is a no-brainer for me (p. 67). Release the session!
A few years on, Banks tries his sticks with a few other bands, but doesn’t cut the mustard. He recounts seeing the “PULP want drummer” ad in a local cafe around 1986 and feeling like his life had been leading to that moment. As with Webber, Banks was a fan before he joined the band. Banks couldn’t have known the heights he’d reach with PULP within the decade; he just wanted to join the cool local band he liked. In recounting a few rehearsal misfires with two other Sheffield bands, he concludes “I always wonder how my life would have diverged from its eventual path had either of those opportunities come off. Narrow margins.” (p. 112). Feels like a “Something Changed” situation, years before Cocker wrote that song. I’ll add that Banks’ use of a phrase such as “narrow margins” at the end of the paragraph is a writing tic that shows up throughout the text. It’s charming and makes me think of how BUZZCOCKS got their name. (This is your hint to start a band named NARROW MARGINS.)
In a bit of corroborating evidence, Banks tells a story about Cocker and the rest of the band moving into the same place. He explains that Cocker showed up with their buddy’s transit van full of “trash — sorry, my mistake — carefully curated curios and antiques” on move in day (p. 135). After about 20 minutes, another car pulled up and Cocker hopped in for a driving lesson, leaving Banks to move most of Cocker’s belongings into the building. I’m sorry but this is the kind of hilarious and avoidant behavior that seems exactly on brand with the version of Cocker I hold in mind from reading Good Pop, Bad Pop. The fact that this moment probably isn’t even a memory for Cocker is what makes it all the more absurd. When recounting Cocker’s assessment of him as a drummer, Banks reveals that there’s a chance Cocker had never even heard him play before, but knew they’d get on as bandmates, so he was allowed to join (p. 115). Essentially, you had to be willing to put up with Cocker’s nonsense to be part of PULP and it appears that Banks had the requisite patience, if not the drumming chops, to make the grade.
That patience is an asset for a drummer in a band focused on visual presentation and pop hooks that might pull attention away from the beat. Thankfully, Banks is perceptive and is not as sought after as Cocker, so he is able to observe various humorous happenings throughout the band’s career and relay them in a way that makes him feel like the cool friend you have in a big band. Notably, his invisibility as a performer indirectly led him to the relationship that would become a marriage. He and friends had seen two women crushing it at a pub quiz game and started chatting them up. The group moved on to another pub and the conversations continued. Banks and Sarah (the pub quiz game champ) get to talking about what they were listening to while getting ready for the night. (I’m pleased to know Banks also thinks “Hatful of Hollow” is a better representation of early SMITHS material than their first album.) Anyway, Sarah tells him she was listening to “a song about some bloke hiding in a wardrobe while spying on others shagging” (p. 217). Banks replies that he wrote that song, which is true, but of course sounds completely insane to the person he’s attempting to court. Things work out and they appear to still be married, thirty years on. Imagine someone telling you they had listened to “Babies” earlier while you’re flirting with them and having the relationship work because you wrote the riff that became that song.
For me, the most powerful anecdote concerns the recording of “Common People.” (I’m basic, I know.) Banks relates how they’d road-tested the song and knew its features forward and backward, but it was a challenge to get right in the studio. The issue is that playing to a click track with a consistent tempo is a problem when you have a song that starts out at a certain speed and gets faster as it goes. He explains how they tried troubleshooting it by playing at the opening tempo throughout, the closing tempo throughout, and an average of the tempos throughout. Nothing worked, so they had to have their drum programmer make a click track that “increased in tempo every few bars” to match the way PULP played the song live (p. 251). I’d never sat with a stopwatch and metronome to clock the song’s beat, but the story of this recording session matches my experience of the song. In 2011, Mrs. Tall Rob and I saw one of PULP’s reunion gigs at the O2 Academy in Brixton. When they played “Common People” and the lead-in to the last chorus hit, I thought I was going to die. The drum beats, synth stabs, and light flashes were among the most overpowering I’ve felt at a gig, and we were in the balcony. We should all be so glad that they were able to capture a shred of that power in the studio. There’s not a QR code in the world that can capture that embodied rush of live music propelled by a hard-hitting drummer. There’s no substitute for the real thing. At least we have the records and the books and the memories to keep us sharp.
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