That’s ‘Doctor’ Cocker To You

Cocker was awarded an honorary doctorate by Sheffield Hallam University during a ceremony held at Sheffield city hall yesterday, according to BBC.

The singer, who completed an access course at the school before moving on to Central St. Martin’s College of Art and Design in London, playfully poked fun at the honor, cautioning fans it’s probably best not to come to him for medical advice.

“I’m called a doctor now,” Cocker quipped. “Don’t worry, I won’t open a surgery.

“But I guess if you are a songwriter maybe I could have some kind of musical surgery. If you had a song with a swollen chorus, or a varicose verse, or if you need a little bit of help I could try and heal your song for you.”

Sheffield Hallam, which was formerly known as Sheffield Polytechnic, holds a special place in Pulp history.

In 1981, Cocker met famed Radio 1 DJ John Peel, who was spinning at the school, and gave him a Pulp demo tape.

Peel was impressed and invited the band to record a session for Radio 1 and the rest, as they say, is history.

Besides his success in Pulp, Cocker has enjoyed a solo career that includes work in art and film.

Last week he set up shop at the Village Underground gallery in East London for a performance U.K. newspaper The Guardian called an “attempt to break down the barriers between performer and audience, music and art” that spanned three days and included “music, improvisation, yoga, burlesque, live graffiti, pole-dancing, circus skills, hula hoops and performance poetry.”

“I wanted to look at another way of presenting music rather than just putting on a show,” Cocker told the Guardian. “Can it work in an art gallery? Will people come along?”

The 46-year-old musician also said the gig, which he first attempted in his adopted hometown of Paris earlier this year, was an experiment aimed at finding a way to free music from the rapidly dying concept of the album as the de facto way to release new material.

“The record has always been the central thing, the music business has always been focused on the album,” Cocker explained to the paper. “But maybe as the record becomes less important it’s going to be more about the performance. If we are not getting paid anymore then the only reason you keep on doing it is the compulsion.”

Read more about Cocker’s three-day art-gallery jam session here.