It remains the stuff of legend.
The year was 1996. Oasis won Best Album for (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? Prince won Best International Male. Bowie won Outstanding Contribution. Jarvis Cocker jumped onstage whilst Michael Jackson was singing a ballad about saving the planet and ran around and wiggled his arse about and pulled his shirt up to his nipples like a small child who’s had too many fizzy strawberry laces. Batman Forever won Best Soundtrack.
Wait, what?
Batman Forever won Best Soundtrack?
Oh, the Jarvis Cocker thing. Yeah. That did happen. Unfortunately that really happened.
To make matters worse Michael Jackson was in the midst of attempting to rebuild his shattered public image, which had taken a somewhat turbulent journey through the first half of the decade after the first child abuse allegations emerged in 1993.
The Pulp frontman, meanwhile, was still riding high off the back of the 1995’s Different Class, the album that brought the world perpetual indie-disco bangers “Common People” and “Disco 2000”. You know, the songs that come on just before the closing-time lights make everyone dissolve into dust like a vampire. The only songs that your dad will get up and dance to at a wedding. Those ones.
It was a clash of titans, it really was. Something had to give. The unstoppable fringe and the immovable ego.
Cocker reportedly took issue with Jackson’s messianic performance of “Earth Song”, a gospel choir interpretation of the feeling when you reluctantly offer your hobknobs around the room and get none back yourself, which he sang onstage accompanied by lots of children dressed in rags.
Michael, a word please. Not a good look that, fella. That’s a bit, you know, Jesus Christ our saviour that, mate.
The Brit-pop singer was only too keen to show Michael the error of his ways and prove that you know, it wasn’t all about him, by invading the stage during another artist’s performance (on a night he was being awarded “Artist of a Generation” no less) and wander about aimlessly for a couple of minutes despite several attempts to usher him offstage.
Like an eel soaked in butter, however, Cocker repeatedly evaded the attentions of the security staff who had rushed onstage by utilising a dazzling array of complex evasive manoeuvres, such as moving out of the way and also going to a different bit of the stage where there were no security men.
MJ didn’t seem too flustered by the intrusion, which is likely due to the fact that at this point he was hovering 20 feet above the crowd in a crane singing “What about the greed?” over and over again.
The whole thing was completely farcical, and above all else, very, very British.
