The Pixies Get Their Act Together
Published: August 8, 2004
(Page 2 of 3)
The songs are full of musical and verbal non sequiturs, but skewed as they
were, a decade and a half later they sound like irrepressible pop. And at a
time when rock has grown sodden with earnestness and self-pity, the Pixies'
songs sound like a corrective; they're smart, lightheaded, profound and
comic, and they rock with a vengeance.
That was the idea from the beginning. "I got exposed to some Surrealist
films of the 1920's and 30's and 40's or whatever in college, read a couple
of articles, attended a couple of lectures," Mr. Thompson said in an
interview between shows in London. "And I applied all of that in a really
fumbly kind of way to having a rock band. It was going to be quirky but in
a really simple, brief, swift fashion. It was like, `Oh yeah, I'm going to
add something or I'm going to take something away so that it's a little bit
lopsided or whatever.' Because when it's just a foursquare thing, it at
least stands a 50-50 chance of being boring, cliche-ridden,
heard-it-before. When you lop off one corner of it, well, I don't know if
it's boring or not. But it's definitely something that you've not heard
before.
"Now people pursue rock music, and they go, `I have something important to
say, and here's what it is, and ooh, I'm singing it from my heart, too.'
And it's all too serious. And people totally miss out. They totally miss
the fun, Jabberwocky, fun-with-language, fun-with-poetry."
From the beginning, the Pixies were diligent. They practiced five hours a
day, four days a week, in Mr. Lovering's garage. "We wouldn't be able to
play if we didn't figure out what we were going to play," Ms. Deal
recalled. "We could not jam. I still can't jam."
They invested $1,500 to make a demo tape that eventually yielded songs for
the band's punk-flavored 1987 debut EP, "Come On Pilgrim." With the
producer Gil Norton polishing their dynamics, the Pixies went on to make
two indelible albums, "Surfer Rosa" (1988) and "Doolittle" (1989), and two
solid ones, "Bossanova" (1990) and "Trompe le Monde" (1991). And they
toured steadily for five years, from hole-in-the-wall punk clubs to
European rock festivals.
The grind of traveling gradually frayed the band. "It's intense being on
tour," Mr. Thompson said. "You're cooped up in a bus with a bunch of
different personalities - people you know, people you don't know. You're on
a weird time schedule. Sometimes there's a lot of drinking and drugs and
all, sleep deprivation. It's kind of a weird situation."
By the end of a final tour, opening for U2 and facing audiences that barely
knew them, Mr. Thompson was no longer speaking to Ms. Deal. In 1992, he
dissolved the Pixies via faxes sent from his manager's office. "If I would
have called a meeting or something, then it would have just kind of
devolved into this big discussion," he said " `Oh, come on, Charles. Don't
do this right now.' And I just wasn't up for that. I was just, like, I'm
done. I'm done. Goodbye. There's no discussion, you know what I mean?"
Ms. Deal went on to start the Breeders, who had a million-selling album in
1993 with "Last Splash" but struggled to follow through. Mr. Thompson
renamed himself Frank Black and started writing more straightforward songs
than his Pixies material; Mr. Santiago worked on and off with Frank Black's
bands and started a band called the Martinis with Mr. Lovering in the
mid-90's. More recently, Mr. Lovering gave up drums and was scraping out a
living as a magician until the call came to rejoin the Pixies. He still
keeps a deck of cards close at hand and has sometimes been the Pixies'
opening act. "I love the Pixies," he tells crowds who may not recognize his
name. "I've been to every one of their shows."
The Pixies reunion, Mr. Thompson said, started as a joke. Or maybe it
wasn't exactly a joke, but some combination of wish and strategy. He isn't
about to say. But last July, while on tour with his own band, he was doing
an interview on a London radio station when he was asked the question he
had been asked in every interview he had given for the last 12 years: Would
the Pixies ever reunite? And for the first time, he allowed that there just
might be the possibility of a reunion.
The Pixies Get Their Act Together
Published: August 8, 2004
(Page 3 of 3)
The news zipped across the Internet to fans who had been waiting since the
Pixies ended their six-year career in 1992, and anticipation started to
build. Mr. Thompson had joked with the interviewer that the Pixies were
still jamming and working on new songs, but he also said that any time he
envisioned a Pixies reunion, it was like the classic anxiety dream of being
unprepared in public. Still, in August he quietly held some strategy
meetings with his manager and booking agent. He called Mr. Santiago, who
called Ms. Deal. "I just went, `Oh really?' " Ms. Deal said. "But Joe was
telling me, `This could be a change of school district for me. This is
important to me.' And because of that I said I'd do it."
The band members, now in their 30's and 40's, are temperate on tour these
days. Over dinner, Mr. Thompson and Ms. Deal drank nonalcoholic beer. In
London, Mr. Santiago was joined by his pregnant wife, Linda, and his
year-old daughter; Mr. Lovering played host to his parents.
The Pixies have recorded a new song together, written by Ms. Deal, called
"Bam Thwok," which was originally written for the soundtrack to "Shrek 2."
But the movie company chose a song by Counting Crows instead, and "Bam
Thwok" ended up helping to inaugurate the European version of iTunes.
Marc Geiger of the William Morris Agency, the band's longtime agent, says
he is hoping the Pixies will record a new album early next year. "I have
thought of that concept, yes," Mr. Black said. "I wouldn't mind asking Tom
Waits to produce us. Why not? I like the way his records sound."
But the band members are resolutely not looking ahead. They have kept the
tour as familiar as possible; not just the songs but their business
associates, lighting director and sound man are the same as they were the
first time around. In Brixton, even the backstage caterer was the same as
on the Pixies' last visit to the same theater in 1991.
"There's surprisingly little deja vu on this tour," Mr. Thompson said.
"It's more like just a continuation. It's like there's a bunch of songs. We
played them to death in the late 80's and early 90's for a period of about
five years. So, a bit of a long sabbatical. Now we're playing them again.
And there really isn't any mystery."
