Old frenemies unite, and fans rejoice.
Charles Michael Kittredge Thompson IV has been a solo artist for three times as long as he was originally with the Pixies. He’s released three times as many albums as he did with the band, under three different stage names—his original Pixies moniker Black Francis, the solo change-up Frank Black and even the combination Frank Black Francis.
And yet he’ll never totally get away from the legacy of the Boston band that he started in 1987 with a 17-track demo, the now-famous “purple tape” that was financed by his dad. Those 17 songs, remade and remodeled over the four short years that the Pixies released albums, would come to represent almost a quarter of the band’s total output, including the entirety of their debut EP from the same year, Come On Pilgrim.
Though he broke up the band in 1992, after the snowballing tension between him and bassist Kim Deal finally came to a head, Thompson keeps getting drawn back to that legacy. After steadfastly denying the band would ever reunite, they finally did, in 2004. They’ve toured on and off every few years since, most recently this “Lost Cities” tour that took them to 14 places around the country they’ve never played, and which winds up at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium on Monday.
What they came back to after their 12 years in the wilderness blew their minds. The band that never even had a hit in its original incarnation had sold–out arenas of thousands of fans swaying and singing along to “Where Is My Mind?” and “Here Comes Your Man,” treating them like the campfire songs of a new generation.
A huge number of the fans who go to these shows are just college age now, proving that as it was in 1988, so shall it be far into the future: the poster of the topless mystery woman from the cover of the Surfer Rosaalbum is still a dorm staple. The best songs from their masterpiece, 1989’s Doolittle—which is one of the five best rock albums ever recorded—have been anthems for Gen X and Gen Y, all the way through Gen I. Their titles capture the blend of the grotesque and gorgeous that defined the Pixies music: “Wave of Mutilation,” “Debaser,” “Gouge Away.” If you’ve never heard 8,000 people chanting “Cease to exist, I’ve given my goodbye/Drive my car into the ocean,” with a certain religosity that makes it sound more or less like it’s being sung to the tune of “Kumbaya”—well, it’s every bit as mind-bending as you’d expect.
Black on Black
When I spoke to Thompson between reunion tours, he admitted he’s reached a place where he enjoys coming back to this legacy. And he understands a bit better why the Pixies’ music has endured.
“I totally understand chemistry, and there’s a lot of things about a band ensemble that really make it special. I learned that on the reunion more than anything,” said Thompson. In the band’s original incarnation, he said, “I think we were too caught up in the moment to really analyze it too much. But yeah, in hindsight, looking back on it, it was pretty special.”
After years of barely looking back as he ripped through an intensely prolific solo career, he likes that the Pixies can claim their place in rock history without all of the bitterness that swirled around their break-up. He regularly revisits the band’s songs in his solo shows and sometimes on record, and four years ago, for the first time, started using his Black Francis stage name for his solo work.
“I occasionally try to go and reclaim a little bit. It’s not like I want all the glory, you know what I mean? But it’s a little bit disheartening when basically everyone’s mad at you still because you broke up the band. Not just the band, but the audience. Everyone treats you like, ‘Oh you’re just Paul McCartney, and you broke up the band, and you cut off your relationship with the John Lennon of the band.’ And it’s like, ‘That wasn’t the situation!’” says Thompson, with a laugh. “But everyone’s older [now], and you don’t get so uptight about these types of things.”
Whatever the roles may be, the comparison that Thompson joked about has actually become more and more apt as his former group’s body of work has become the songbook for a movement: The Pixies are the Beatles of alternative rock.
The question of which trailblazing band would have the most lasting influence on the alt-rock generation is a complicated one. Influential bands like the Ramones, Black Flag, Husker Du and the Replacements were either too out there or too culty to bridge the gap between acting out and looking inward for a mass audience. Nirvana is the sentimental favorite in many corners, but ironically Kurt Cobain was fond of saying he was just ripping off the Pixies. That’s a huge oversimplification of what he accomplished musically, but it is interesting that his only real Pixies “rip off”—a virtual copy of “Gouge Away”—turned out to be Nirvana’s biggest anthem, “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”
Death to the Pixies
If, as Thompson says, the Pixies were too caught up in making their music to appreciate what they had, they spent the next several years after the band broke up running as fast as possible away from it.
Deal checked out first, hooking up with Tanya Donelly of Throwing Muses for the Breeders just a year after joining the Pixies. She was frustrated over Thompson’s resistance to using her songs; “Gigantic” is still a fan favorite today, but other than that, she didn’t get much on the Pixies’ records. Donelly was in a similar situation, getting frozen out by Kristin Hersh in the Muses. After the arty record Pod, she left to form Belly, and Kim Deal brought on her sister Kelley. Their next full-length, 1993’s Last Splash, was more successful than the Pixies had ever been, thanks to “Cannonball” and some other hits. What’s more, it was different enough from the Pixies that Deal’s own musical genius started getting its first recognition, separate from Thompson’s. (Later in the ’90s, the Dandy Warhols would sum up how the Alternative Nation felt about her in their tribute song, “Cool As Kim Deal.”) But live, the Breeders were hit and miss, and for various reasons—not least of all, Kelley Deal’s drug bust—the band went on an eight-year hiatus they never really recovered from (although 2002’s Title TKand 2008’s Mountain Battlesare both pretty good). Deal briefly soldiered on with another band, the Amps, but it just wasn’t the same.
Pixies guitarist Joey Santiago and drummer David Lovering briefly played together in the Martinis, before Lovering went off to do his bizarre science-as-magic act the Scientific Phenomenalist; many Pixies fans caught his act when he’d open for Thompson’s solo shows.
But Thompson had the strangest path—as Frank Black, he almost seemed to be pursuing the fringes. His first two solo albums, Frank Blackand Teenager of the Year, were successful, and nearly as acclaimed as his work with Pixies. But starting with The Cult of Rayin 1996, he seemed to be pouring out material, but moving further and further out of the mainstream. I happen to think he’s written some of his best songs since then: “If It Takes All Night” is one of the best rock songs ever written, nailing that raw, frontier spirit of the music’s early years that so many have tried and failed to recapture. “I Burn Today” is a Nashville-inspired slice of melancholy, and one of his most moving songs. From “In the Time of My Ruin” to “Threshold Apprehension,” he’s constantly offering new doorways to the unique worldview he first laid out in the Pixies.
Part of the reason those songs haven’t connected as often as they did in his Pixies years is the sheer volume of material he’s produced. He admits his first priority is to be constantly producing.
“I get a lot of satisfaction out of moving ahead, and just writing a lot of songs, for better or for worse. I don’t know if they’re good when I’m doing them. Sometimes I have an inkling or a hint that ‘oh, this a good one,’” he said.
But in the end, it really does come down to chemistry. Thompson has never found another foil like Santiago on guitar—in the same way that Morrissey never found another Johnny Marr, there’s just a magic to the interplay between Thompson’s intense imagery and Santiago’s epic sound that can’t be replaced. Add in the glimmering edges of Deal’s songwriting, and the rhythmic foundation that she was able to create with Lovering, and it’s easy to see why the Pixies’ music is leaving its mark on generation after generation. It is, in fact, everything that “alternative rock” was supposed to be—able to push limits outwardly in sound and vision while at the same time pushing inward for a genuine emotional connection to the listener.
When Thompson says he’s finally come to appreciate this chemistry, it’s not just talk. That much is obvious from the fact that he stepped aside to let Deal write and sing the only new song the Pixies have released since their reunion, “Bam Thwok.” A new Pixies album continues to look like a long shot (Deal is said to be the hold out), but Thompson is rolling with the ongoing reunion. He’s ceased to resist.
“It’s all good,” he says.
