You wouldn’t expect Black Francis, the vocalist of the Pixies, to read the CBeebies Bedtime Story.
Biblical brutality, mutilation, incest, torture, and death have all been mentioned in his band’s broken, frequently abstract lyrics throughout their enormously influential history.
“Goats of lust” and “sliced up eyeballs” aren’t often the kinds of pictures that put your toddler to sleep.
Fortunately, when he appeared on CBeebies earlier this month, he didn’t speak his own songs. However, there was a noticeable Pixies flavor to the book he selected. “There Was A Young Zombie Who Swallowed A Worm” is the title.
Although the 59-year-old adds, “I usually don’t do things like that, but I enjoyed it,”
“My girlfriend sort of insisted, so I did it with feeling and, you know, I raised five kids, so I’m pretty good at bedtime stories.”
Pixies’ appearance on children’s television at any other stage of their career is difficult to envision.
From Nirvana and Radiohead to, well, James Blunt, the harsh guitars and entwining harmonies of songs like Debaser, Monkey Gone To Heaven, and Where Is My Mind symbolized the direction of alternative music in the late 1980s. He recently remarked, “They’d be furious to hear that, wouldn’t they?”
The band disbanded just as the artists they influenced were starting to gain popularity, yet their standing increased during their absence.
Their 1989 album Doolittle, which was recorded in a hair salon basement for forty thousand pounds, was awarded the second-best record of all time by the NME in 2003.
Thirty years after the band’s formation, it sold 300,000 copies in the UK twelve years later, earning them their first platinum record.
By then, they were back together for an excellent second phase. They are preparing to embark on a stadium tour of Australia with Pearl Jam at the time of our conversation.
“Our audience just seems to get bigger all the time,” admits Francis. Thus, the appearance on CBeebies.
When Francis (born Charles Thompson IV) left college and convinced his guitarist roommate Joey Santiago to follow suit, the Pixies were created in 1986. Bassist Kim Deal and drummer Dave Lovering were attracted in by a local newspaper ad.
Their acidic sound was dubbed “a wild new shock” by one writer in the indie music press, and they had a deal with the British label 4AD after a buzzy demo tape.
Francis asserts that simplicity is the key to their success.
He talks about the Pixies’ 1990 Reading festival debut as the main act. A group with a “very Vegas kind of affair” concert was further down the bill.
“They had lights and confetti and balloons,” he remembers. “There’s a lot of nonsense going on.
“Their tour manager turned to our manager, Chas Banks, and said, ‘So what do you have prepared for your set?”
“And he replied, ’25 good songs'” .
Since that was all we had, I was rather pleased that he answered in that manner. We merely had our music; there were no balloons or dancing steps.
Naïve energy
The music also veers between heart-pounding punk to what the band referred to as “dust-bowl songs”—country-tinged, heartland folk ballads.
The album is “more traditional” than previous Pixies albums, according to Lovering. Francis claims that his solo work from the 1990s planted the seeds for those things.
“I’m going to go out on a limb here, and I’ll say something that I’ve not said in an interview before,” he continues.
“I started to give myself permission to stand outside of so-called underground music after the Pixies split up. I even traveled to Nashville to record a few of songs.
“And when we reconciled, the producers and, discreetly, behind the scenes, the managers, were very cautious, trying to ensure that Charles didn’t make it into a ‘country thing.'”
“I believe I somewhat deferred to that, but I didn’t think the outcomes were really noteworthy. I therefore began to incorporate more of those items into the mix.
“And I think everyone around me has, consciously or unconsciously, relaxed and allowed me to do it.”
“It’s unrealistic to expect a band in their fifth decade to re-capture the spittle-flecked anger of youth,” he says, warming to the idea.
However, as you improve your composition and guitar skills, that naïve enthusiasm fades. It’s really challenging to access. The I-know-what-the-hell-I’m-doing enthusiasm is much easier to access.
“You know what, even though that might not be what people want to hear? I can’t go back to being 19. Additionally, it sounds more ridiculous the harder you try.
That theory is refuted by one of his recent songs.
Oyster Beds consists of two minutes of slender, powerful riffs accompanied by what seem to be some of Francis’s most bizarre lyrics to date: “A musketeer and her two deers / A country house in Dadasphere.”
“A little laundry list of things I’ve painted in the last few years” is the song’s lyrics, which he actually penned at his art studio.
“I wasn’t feeling very passionately about the message since it’s a punky song and I was kind of like, ‘I just need some words here.’…
What benefits does painting offer him that music does not?
“Solace [from] other people,” he says with a laugh. “While playing with others is beneficial since it fosters companionship, it can occasionally get tiresome.
“With painting, I realised, ‘Oh, I can do this and have all of the debates and fights in my head, and there’s no one to answer to’.”
He then goes into amusing detail to explain that procedure.
“I will therefore say, ‘Don’t forget about your narrative,’ if the brushes are taking the lead. ‘Screw the narrative, because right now huge brush is in command and big brush is making a big mess,’ my inner monologue will say.
“After that, you’ll realize that you’ve sufficiently damaged the artwork and that it’s time to consider its purpose. To restore some order to all of this turmoil, we must temporarily allow figurative language to take control.
Thus, it turns into a dispute between the painting’s various components. I truly like that they are all instructors at the Black Francis art school.
“It’s crazy, even insane, what’s going on in my head, but I do it for hours.”
Crazy, perhaps, but the most captivating art is produced by creative turmoil, which is why Pixies remain exciting even after all these years.
