TOC: Because you don’t get over to the States much, do you feel any obligation to play Pulp songs?
Jarvis Cocker: I don’t play any Pulp songs. On the last tour at the end of the set, I played covers, usually a well-known song. I did [Black Sabbath’s] “Paranoid,” “Eye of the Tiger” and [Springsteen’s] “State Trooper.” The band would decide a song on the day of the concert, learn it, try it out in the sound check and do it that night.

TOC: Pulp was around for 15 years before it scratched the bottom of the charts with a hit in 1993. Considering the accelerated culture of blogs, will it be possible for another band to do the same?
Jarvis Cocker: No. And I hope it isn’t, because it’s stupid to spend so much of your life in suspended animation. I don’t think that ten years in the wilderness really did Pulp that much good. Now people are more excited when they find some band on the Web that is from the northern part of Greenland.

TOC: After Pulp’s final album [2001’s We Love Life] you worked on many projects—Relaxed Muscle, Harry Potter, writing songs for Charlotte Gainsbourg and Marianne Faithfull—but you considered retirement.
Jarvis Cocker: I did, and unfortunately for the world I decided against it. This year will count 30 years since I formed Pulp. That’s a long time. You have to check that you’re doing it because you want to do it, not just because you can’t think of anything else to do. It’s healthy to have self-doubt and a certain amount of self-loathing.

TOC: On the song “Disney Time” off your solo album, you seem critical of Disney. Yet when you curated the Meltdown Festival in 2007, you had the artists cover classic Disney tunes. Is it a love-hate relationship?
Jarvis Cocker: I’ve become a father and so would find myself watching Disney films with my son. The early ones are quite touching. “Disney Time” came from the experience of watching Dumbo, which I had never seen before. It emotionally destroyed me. You are aware that your emotions are being manipulated, and you feel violated slightly, especially if you consider yourself a left-field person. I’m not into Disney; I don’t drink Coca-Cola. I’m not mainstream.

TOC: Yet you wrote songs for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, appearing in the film as the frontman of the Weird Sisters. Do kids recognize you?
Jarvis Cocker: I had a very specific look going on in that film—giant fur jacket, snakeskin trousers—that I wouldn’t normally wear down the street. That would get me attention, but probably the wrong kind of attention. I’ve been doing some stuff for a children’s film Wes Anderson is doing, an animated feature.

TOC: The stop-motion adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox?
Jarvis Cocker: I’ve written three, four songs, and some of that might become bits of the score.

TOC: Now you’re writing the new Disney songs.
Jarvis Cocker: If you criticize Disney, the next step is “do better.” I get the chance to do it myself and corrupt young minds.

TOC: Pulp also wrote a James Bond theme for Tomorrow Never Dies that the studio never used. What happened?
Jarvis Cocker: It was weird. They set up a kind of American Idol situation, where they asked about nine different artists to come up with a Bond song. They listen to nine different attempts of working “tomorrow never dies” into a lyric. We were told on a Wednesday that the deadline was Friday. Consequently, I was really pissed off when they went with Sheryl Crow instead.

TOC: I fear for the people trying to write the lyrics for the new Bond film, Quantum of Solace.
Jarvis Cocker: They could have my song “Quantum Theory”! I’ll just change the lyrics up a little bit.

Jarvis Cocker performs the Pitchfork Music Festival at 8pm on Saturday 19 in Union Park.