“[Explaining the title – Ed] It’s a phrase that a girl I met in Sheffield once told me. She went to see the Stone Roses at Spike Island and I said, “What do you remember about it?” and she said, “Well, I just remember all those blokes walking around saying is everybody sorted for E’s and wizz?””Jarvis Cocker (366)

“With the rave thing, when I moved down to London in 1988, that was in full flow. I went for it, I thought, drugs were a big part of it, but the fact that everyone was loved up and being friendly to each other (unlike in Sheffield where you couldn’t look at anyone in a weird way otherwise you get your face caved in). I thought even if it is drug induced it’s got to be better way, people have got to realize that that’s a better way to carry on. I had a honeymoon period of a couple of months and I remember going to another one, maybe in October so it was getting a bit cold, and I got split up from the friends I had gone with so I was trying to get a lift. These people who 20 minutes before we’re “nice one mate” didn’t want to know. They really could pull the shutters down and be friendly in the warehouse party and 20 mins later they’re not. So that’s where that song came from.”Jarvis Cocker (367)

“It’s the same thing with ‘Sorted For E’s and Whizz’. Me being a naive get, when I first went to raves I thought there was some change in people’s attitudes going on, that people had decided that they’d got fed up of boozing and looking for birds and fighting, that they’d prefer to go out and have a good time and be nice to other people. And ‘Sorted’ is actually about that disillusionment, that one minute. People’d be shaking your hands, saying, ‘Yeah, all right, geezer, you’re my best mate,’ and then as soon as the thing had finished and you were trying to thumb a lift off these same people, they’d be like, ‘F*** off’!'”Jarvis Cocker (783)

“The story behind ‘Sorted For E’s & Wizz’ is that when I went to London, living in a squat, I kept hearing about acid house parties and eventually I went to one in a hangar at this Santa Pod dragster raceway. We did some Ecstasy. The whole thing blew my head off. It was magical, especially because I’d left Sheffield where I felt I had the measure of the place and I wasn’t sure about London – and my girlfriend had left me, just to get that one in as well. We went to quite a few raves after that, though it was never as good as the first. In the end it came full circle: the one at Santa Pod where I got split up from my friends, as it says in the song, and suddenly all the people who’d been going “nice one” and “empathy”, when you’re trying to get a lift home they’re all “No mate, sorry mate, no chance”. The “common people” goes out the window then. I couldn’t believe it. I’d thought there was going to be some social change. Although I knew a lot of it was drug-induced, I thought people would somehow feel it’d be better to be nice to each other rather than looking out for number one all the time.”Jarvis Cocker (784)

“The song is about a girl I met when I was at art college in London. We were having a drink one night. I quite fancied this girl and she came out with this stupendous statement that she wanted to live like common people, she wanted to move to Hackney and see how common people lived. I embroidered the story to make it as if the girl fancied me.”Jarvis Cocker (368)

“In Sheffield, if you say someone’s common, then you’re saying they’re vulgar, coarse, rough-arsed. The kind of person who has corned-beef legs from being too close to the gas fire. So that’s what attracted me to calling it ‘Common People’, the double meaning, “Oh, you’re common as muck” and then Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s ‘Fanfare For The Common Man’.”Jarvis Cocker (784)

“It could be the ultimate in safe sex. In singing that song, you reach more women than you ever could in real life. But what I’m saying on the flipside of that is that for the woman involved, it’s much better for her to have a relationship with that song than it is to have a relationship with me. Because I’m human and fallible and I’ll get drunk and not turn up when I’m supposed to turn up, whereas that song, every time you put it on, that CD will perform exactly how you want it. It will always do its best. So you’re better off with the song version of me than you are with the actual real person. That’s basically what I’m saying.”Jarvis Cocker (497)

“But that’s how I see myself. Like I said, I think I may have that phrase on my tombstone. I also hope it’s amusing. I think it’s funny to say that thing about yourself. But often what happens with me is that I’ll say something that’s kind of funny but that is, unfortunately. I like it when it’s both things at the same time. I like it when you’re not sure if it’s serious or not. But it is a problem with me. There is real emotion in that song. It’s not like Jon Bon Jovi emotion. But it wouldn’t work if it didn’t have a kernel of truth in it. If it was just a joke, what’s the point, because once you’ve heard a joke once or twice there’s no need to hear it again. Generally speaking, for my music, it has to have that emotional core to it, because otherwise why would you get on stage night after night and sing that song? There’s got to be something that you get from it. I don’t think it should be purely a cathartic exercise and smear your blood all over the stage and fuck everybody else.”Jarvis Cocker (497)

“I’ve got a bugbear against Disney. I don’t think it’s right to present kids with that kind of world because it isn’t the world that they’re going to live in.”Jarvis Cocker (498)

“I tried to get the feeling across that I wanted to believe that [everyone could be happy – Ed], but I wasn’t particularly convinced. And I actually think that we do need some of the dark, messy stuff in human nature, because otherwise life would be pretty boring.”Jarvis Cocker (498)

“Childhood’s supposed to be that thing you get dewy-eyed and nostalgic about, isn’t it? And seeing these fat blobs wobbling around, feeling sorry for them – you’re fucked before you even start. And wondering why that is. Because I do blame the parents! If you think of what’s happened to our generation, people are leaving it later and later to start a family. I just squeezed it in before I was 40. I was in a really negative frame of mind one day, and I just thought, “What the fuck is happening?” People are having kids because they can’t hack going out any more, they can’t handle the hangovers, they’ve done drugs, they’ve tried everything. In desperation they think, “Oh, I’ll have a kid and see if that sorts me out. See if that stops me going to the pub every night”.”Jarvis Cocker (499)