Jarvis Cocker takes a selfie as his alter ego “Darren Spooner”

After Pulp went on their rather extended hiatus back in 2001, Jarvis Cocker kept quite active. He got married, became a dad and a stepfather, moved to Paris, DJ’d, and did voice-overs for Wes Anderson. He also worked on solo albums and various one-off collaborations with the likes of Nancy Sinatra, Marianne Faithfull and perhaps the strangest project of his career, Relaxed Muscle, a freaky duo formed with electronic musician Jason Buckle. Previously Cocker had worked with Buckle when the latter was a member of the Sheffield-based All Seeing I collective. Cocker recorded with them and even appeared live with All Seeing I on Top of the Pops in 1999 singing “Walk Like A Panther.”

Relaxed Muscle was a dirty-sounding, dirty-minded concoction conceived to be an “anonymous” band. The name seems to refer to Viagra, which relaxes smooth muscle to allow for more blood flow to the penis. One of the songs on the album, A heavy nite with… Relaxed Muscle, is called “Rod of Iron.” You get the idea. Musically they sounded sort of like Suicide meets Cabaret Voltaire meets Add N to (X). Richard Hawley played guitar under the moniker “Wayne Marsden” which is the name of a kid who bullied Jarvis at school.

The lengths Cocker—who was billed as his alter ego “Darren Spooner”—went to hide the fact that he had anything to do with Relaxed Muscle (which I think was a pretty open secret) included using a Darth Vader voice box during phone interviews with journalists and wearing a skeleton leotard bodysuit and deliberately naff corpse paint on his face in photos, videos and when they played live. Few were fooled.
 

 
Cocker spoke about his split personality with Self Service magazine’s Ezra Petronio in 2003:

Which brings us to Darren Spooner. How did he come about?

Jarvis: Oh, right. Well, that happened years ago. Pulp was making a video for one of our songs called “Mis-Shapes”, which is on that DVD. It’s not one of our better songs, to be kind. And the concept the director had come up with, which we agreed with, was that I was going to play two characters in the video. So I played myself, and then I played this kind of rough guy who was the leader of this gang. In England we used to call them townies. It’s the kind of guy who would go out on a Saturday night and they’ve all got a sort of short-sleeved shirt on even when it’s the middle of winter, and just want to have a fight after the pub. Kind of like that. So I drank about three quarters of a bottle of brandy, and then did my acting bit, and anyway, I got into character, and suddenly the name Darren Spooner came into me mind. I don’t know why because I was so drunk, but I guess because it sounds a bit like Jarvis Cocker, it has the same number of syllables. And I became Darren Spooner for that day. And unfortunately when I went home, I couldn’t get out of character. My girlfriend at the time came into the flat we shared and I was on the kitchen floor singing “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” by Michael Jackson. Anyway. So that was the first appearance of Spooner back in 1995. And then it became my pseudonym, like when I was on tour and I checked into hotels.

And for those last couple of years did he reappear? Is there any trace of him in the last couple of years of Pulp?

Jarvis: I’m sure it comes out now and again. But more probably he comes out when I’ve had too much to drink.

So for that video you shot, he made an official kind of coming out.

Jarvis: Yeah, but then, I didn’t want people to know it was me.

Oh, well done!

Jarvis: I thought if I had skull makeup on, people wouldn’t know. At least I wouldn’t look like myself. I was happy with it. He’s like an anti-superhero, a super nasty hero. And I thought he was quite good. I was nicking his look really. As l said, a lot of it is instinctive, so I can’t say why really.

Make-up can’t really disguise how tall someone is, can it? By the time Relaxed Muscle played live, the pretense was definitely over, although I don’t think that really mattered to any of the participants, who seemed to be having a good time:
 

The video for “Sexualized,” directed by Jarvis Cocker
 

The Jarvis Cocker directed video for “Billy Jack”
 

Choreographer Michael Clark has used several Relaxed Muscle numbers (and live performances by the group) for his dance company to great effect. Here’s “Heavy”
 

“Mary, I just called to tell you that both of our children are on drugs”: Relaxed Muscle live at London’s Trash, 2003