"We’d never do a hologram show": Pixies look back on four decades of pioneering rock
The most influential band on the planet discuss what it takes to survive and continue to thrive after forty years together.
Some bands are lucky if they survive their first 40 minutes on stage together, but alt-rock pioneers Pixies this year celebrate 40 years as a band — a fact they themselves seem a little taken aback by.
Speaking to Shortlist ahead of a blistering, career-spanning set at Madrid’s Mad Cool festival, did they ever envision Pixies as a life-long gig?
“God, that’s a yes and no!” guitarist Joey Santiago tells us.
“We were definitely young and had a vision,” adds drummer David Lovering, who joined Santiago, original bassist Kim Deal and lead Pixies songwriter Charles ‘Frank Black / Black Francis’ Thompson in the group’s founding four.
“Also being young itself is just very fun. When I look back on those days I look back very fondly. It was a lot of fun doing the early shows, even setting up, getting in the van. There was just a natural progression to where we went.
“But we were always looking up — ‘let’s achieve, let’s do this, let’s be great.’”
Arguably the most influential American rock band of (semi-)modern times, Pixies, with their unassuming sense of style, sci-fi tinged-Old-testament-referencing songs, and wry sense of humour would have been ‘The Band Least Likely To’ in their High School year books. But their ferocious string of late 80s-into-early-90s albums set up the “LOUD-quiet-LOUD” dynamic that would not only become Pixies’ calling card, but set the stage for grunge and any guitar-forward acts that would follow.
Wave of Adulation
Indeed, one of grunge’s most successful survivors, Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters and Nirvana, called the Pixies’ debut album Surfer Rosa his “perfect” record.
“It’s great. I agree, it’s my favourite album!” jokes Santiago, though hearing such high praise from one of the biggest rockstars in the world makes little difference to him.
“Between [someone like Grohl] saying it or the fans saying it, I’d say it’s about equal. It’s nice that people acknowledge it.”
For a band firmly seated in legendary status, Pixies are not accustomed to looking back.
“The last time I listened to Surfer Rosa was… gosh… When it first came out I listened to it constantly, I was so proud of it,” says Santiago, “So I probably did all my listening back then.”
Even with 40th anniversary re-issues on the way teasing unreleased new music (“Are we doing that?”, says a seemingly-genuinely surprised Santiago), the focus for the band remains new music. Since reforming in 2004 (now sporting bassist Emma Richardson in the role first played by Deal, and later Paz Lenchantin), the Pixies have released five studio albums — 2024’s The Night The Zombies Came being the latest. That’s as many now as they had before their initial 1993 break-up.
Their work ethic remains undimmed, a side-effect perhaps of being forged in an era where the expectation was a new album every year or so. When this current anniversary tour ends, a short break will act only as a breather before heading back into the studio again, tipping the scales of balance towards the second coming of the Pixies when it comes to the number of albums released, per era.
“Definitely, speaking for myself, I’ve learned over the years to walk away happy,” says Lovering of his experience in the studio with the latest incarnation of the Pixies.
“When it’s pre-production, when I’ve learnt the material, rehearsed it enough, I know it’ll be a good effort that I’ve made. I think with the last record [The Night The Zombies Came], I think we were all very connected in terms of what we did. We play a lot from it live.”
Here Comes Your Nan
“We’ve improved with age I think,” adds Lovering when discussing the rarities joining the new re-issues of classic albums Bossanova and Trompe Le Monde.
“When I look back at them, I’m just like, ‘God, I sucked back then!’”
But for a large chunk of the Pixies fanbase, there’s never been a ‘back then’ — since reforming, the Pixies have been consistently finding a younger and younger fanbase. And whether that’s at the end of David Fincher’s Fight Club or the final season of Stranger Things, there’s one song in particular that acts as a gateway drug to the Pixies: Where Is My Mind? Whether on Tik Tok or Netflix, the avenues to finding the Pixies music are more varied than ever before.
“We’re very fortunate to have this ongoing youth attachment — it first started in 2004 when we reunited, and it was just a sea of kids,” recalls Lovering.
“That has been the same now twenty-something years later. Even those kids have grown up, but it’s always been replenished. It’s a lot of social media helping. I’m sure they know all the new material — but it’s people my age at the back saying play the other stuff! But social media, and movies — discovery is very weighted there now.”
With studio time booked and a tour that’s taking the Boston band from their “second home” in London, playing the Royal Albert Hall, to the Incheon Pentaport Rock Festival in South Korea, the Pixies seem ready to rock for another 40 years. What do the Pixies want people to be saying about them come the 100th anniversary of the band?
“I hope people are saying, ‘I wish I was alive when they were alive, I’d have loved to see them, and now we’re stuck with watching them in a hologram show,’” says Santiago.
“We’d never do a hologram show, but I do want to see the ABBA one.”
40 years later, or 50 years later, or 200 years later, we’ve got a sneaking suspicion Pixies fans will still want to see the band in whatever future form they can.
Bossanova and Trompe le Monde are re-released on vinyl and CD on September 11th.
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