VIA PRESS RELEASE | Pulp guitarist Mark Webber has announced I’m With Pulp, Are You?, a personal history of Pulp, out via Hat & Beard Press on September 30.
Throughout the book, Webber has gathered material from the extensive collection of ephemera and objects that he has accumulated over four decades of involvement with the band. The book combines images with Webber’s reminiscences to chronicle a history of Pulp, told from the inside and features photographs, flyers, record covers, setlists, badges, posters, press clippings, and merchandise, alongside masses of promotional material to present a unique history of one of Britain’s most beloved bands. I’m With Pulp, Are You? also features a foreword by Jarvis Cocker, and newly commissioned essays by music writers Simon Reynolds and Luke Turner.
Webber explains, “I began to excavate the boxes of Pulp ephemera that I’d hoarded over the years and was amazed to discover so many things that I hadn’t seen for decades, things I’d completely forgotten about. It’s taken a while to get it all together into a book, and in the meantime the group unexpectedly reunited to go on tour again. I’m excited to finally share the stuff I’ve saved, and to present it in this way, along with memories of my experiences of being involved in Pulp from the 1980s ’til now.”
When Mark Webber discovered Pulp as a teenage music fan in 1985, the band was on first-name terms with most of their limited audience. Over the next few years, Mark began to help out with stage sets and light shows, eventually becoming the group’s first tour manager and running the fan club. Having been called upon to play guitar and keyboards at live shows, he began to contribute to songwriting and recordings before being asked to join the band in 1995. This incredible backstory – from being a fan to joining his favorite band—provides the unique perspective of I’m With Pulp, Are You?
Pulp formed in 1978, while frontman Jarvis Cocker was still at school. After many years and personnel changes, they finally began to achieve widespread recognition in the 1990s with hit singles like “Babies,” “Do You Remember the First Time?” and “Common People,” and the albums Different Class and This is Hardcore. Following a hiatus that started in 2002, Pulp made a surprise return to play concerts in 2011-12 and are currently back on tour again. Having recently completed sold out shows in the UK and Latin America, the “encore” continues with European summer festivals and a sold-out US tour scheduled for Fall 2024. Dates and tickets available here. Early copies of I’m With Pulp, Are You? will also be sold on the band’s US tour.
About Hat & Beard | Hat & Beard is an independent, Los Angeles-based publishing house. Hat & Beard Press, the illustrated book imprint, publishes original, illustrated nonfiction titles of pop-cultural and historical significance that draw on existing cult audiences. Hat & Beard publish first edition artist monographs as part of four on-going series: California Artists, The Midwest Initiative, Across the Pond, and New York, New York. Hat & Beard Editions, the literary imprint, publishes books of essays, poems, interviews as well as an on-going series of reissues in deluxe editions. Hat & Beard also produces Big Table—a literary podcast about books and conversation—produced with their sister company, the arts nonprofit Invisible Republic, and dub lab, in Los Angeles.
I’m With Pulp, Are You? is part of the recently announced series, Across The Pond, which highlights and celebrates British artists. The series, curated by JC Gabel and Vivien Goldman, launches this summer with a reissue of the 1999 cult classic, The Black Chord; the first book of pop artist Derek Boshier’s drawings, Withnail & I: An Illustrated History, and A Muse Unto Herself, a monograph on the artist Penny Slinger and a reissue of 1978’s Punk Rock (Shockwave in the UK) by Virginia Boston, the “first punk book.”
