While Sheffield band Pulp had one of the longest rises to stardom – having formed in 1978 – it’s apt that drummer Nick Banks’ story starts at their landmark Glastonbury appearance some 17 years later.
His autobiography So It Started There opens by describing the backstage energy ahead of Pulp’s pivotal surprise Glastonbury appearance in 1995. Asked to headline the Pyramid Stage after The Stone Roses were forced to cancel last minute when guitarist John Squire broke his collarbone, Pulp’s performance that night is now widely regarded as one of the best headline sets ever. In just over an hour they cemented their place in the Britpop pantheon. As Nick Banks asks at the end of the opening chapter, “How did I get here?”
Banks then goes back to the beginning to tell his story of a happy Rotherham childhood that produced this extraordinary career. He recounts how he bought his first album – the distinctly un-punk ‘Out Of The Blue’ by ELO – aged 12 in 1977, quickly followed by the Sex Pistols ‘Never Mind The Bollocks’, after first making sure his parents wouldn’t be offended by the title and make him return it to the shop. He speaks fondly about having a World Cup-winning goalie for an uncle in Gordon Banks, and recounts the personal and musical journey that took him from punk to goth to Britpop.
Initially inspired to give drumming a go by the Sex Pistols’ Paul Cook and Blondie’s Clem Burke, by 1986 he was playing in a couple of local Sheffield bands when he saw a ‘musicians wanted’ ad looking for a drummer pinned to the wall in the café of The Leadmill. The band with the vacancy was his favourite – but still fledgling – Pulp. “My heart actually did skip a beat and catch in my throat.” After meeting Jarvis Cocker later that evening in a queue for the bar, and an aborted audition a couple of days later involving a stray dog, Nick joined the band.
Written with his trademark warmth and humour, in So It Started There Nick tells his story of being a key member in a band who helped define Britpop as a musical genre to become superstars at the top of their creative game. His story echoes what Jarvis told the Glastonbury crowd that night in 1995, “…if you want something to happen enough then it will actually happen. If us lot can do it, you can do it too.”
‘So It Started There: From Punk to Pulp’ is available now via Omnibus Press.
This article originally appeared in the Sheffield Star.