Recording Sessions

Notes

In addition to the recording sessions above, many rough home demos and rehearsal tapes also doubtless exist. The earliest known Pulp recordings were made on cassette by Glen Marshall at Pulp practices during 1979 and 1980 (the whereabouts of the tapes are now sadly unknown, although Jarvis is believed to have some from this period). Jarvis said the oldest ones were recorded in his living room, with the dog closed outside who can be heard crying in the background of the recording. Other known early practice tapes include a couple recorded by Wayne Furniss in February and August 1982, and one given to Michael Paramore and Tim Allcard by Jarvis in December 1982 in order for them to learn their drum parts.

Russell Senior mentioned pre-Pulp recordings from his heavy metal band that featured songs like The Will To Power and Anorexic Beauty. He's not sure about where are those tapes now.

Steven Havenhand recalls a rehearsal room recording from 1987, which was submitted as a demo to FON Records: "It was recorded over my cassette copy of Leonard Cohen's Greatest Hits 'cause no one had a blank tape spare on the day. Jarvis was a bit uneasy about recording over Leonard but it was eventually deemed a necessary sacrifice." Alan Smyth was given a similar tape in 1989 prior to the recording of Separations.

It's probably safe to say that rough rehearsal room recordings of new songs have been made throughout the band's existence, usually just for their own reference: Jarvis in 1999, during the writing of We Love Life, said that the band were demoing "very badly recorded songs on cassette".

In addition, Jarvis will doubtless have recorded numerous writing demos at home: Simon Hinkler recalls that at least as early as 1982, Jarvis' songwriting technique consisted of playing some guitar chords into his Sony 2-track tape machine and then improvising lyrics over the top. This practice will presumably have continued, although it will probably have become less commonplace over the years as songwriting has become more of a group activity and studio time has become more readily available.

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