SPACE I BELIEVE IN

Interviewed by Geoff Bell

I had seen The Pixies for the first time at Reading Festival, where they headlined the final night, shortly after the release of Bossanova and again at Belfast the following October. I decided to put Rock a My Soul fanzine together shortly after that. The first issue was put together as Trompe le Monde was being rehearsed and was released just in time for the UK tour that precede the release of the album. Copies of the zine had managed to filter their way into the band's hands; either the copies I had sent to 4AD Records or the copies I had thrown on stage at the end of their appearance at Manchester G-Mex. Andy Barding had managed to interview Kim for me and invited me over to the then secret gig that was planned for the Mean Fiddler. We had no tickets but we had balls. We were Pixies fans trying our best to put together a good Pixies fanzine and obviously wanted to make contact with the band if not try to see as many gigs as possible. I felt a right twat forking out a weeks wages to travel to London to see a gig that would probably sell out by the time I got there!

We arrived at the Mean Fiddler about four hours before the door was due to open in the hope of being able to chat with a Pixie. My sights were set on Black Francis. When the band arrived, Charles refused to do an interview, but came back about half an hour later taking me up on the offer of chatting about UFOs.

Tell me about your UFO experience?

"Well, as I understand it, in 1965, I was a few months old, and I was en route to San Fransisco with my family.

"We stopped at some cousins' house in Nebraska. I think it was the city of Alliance. It's a small town in North Central Nebraska. It was late in the afternoon, but was still ight out, and a large saucer-shaped ship, kind of reddish-orange.

"It had sort of what you could describe as portholes, as my mother describes it, little windows or something."

Was it just your mother who saw it?

"No. Cousins and different people. It was floating above the house. It must have been there for about ten or fifteen minutes I think. And they called the police, and the police came down. It moved real fast. The police tried to follow it, but it moved too fast. And that's all I know about it really."

Do you think the military got involved in it? All this stuff is reported to the Air Force.

"Yeah. I think pretty much all sightings..."

We were interrupted here by a previous acquaintance of Black's, where he mentions:

"We're finishing off our record this week, and then everyone else is going home. I got my little brother over here, so we're going to hang out and go up to Scotland or something."

Do you know much bout this Blue Book stuff? I continue.

"No. That's just one of those modern myths about... um. No, I think there was a thing called the Blue Book, but it was closed, and they ascertained that there was no proof or existence of existence, or something like that.

"I haven't read a lot of the literature. A lot of the literature is pretty bogus. But it's kind of interesting."

Black recognised my Ulster accent, "Are your from Ireland? I'm getting a little better on my accents. I can spot wee people come from.

"You got a good gig in Belfast."

It was brilliant. I met you at the door at the back afterwards.

"Oh, you did? Was I a rude bastard?"

Uh-huh (I wonder if he remembers the incident, and is trying to be nice about it).

"You got to be a rude bastard sometimes. It's coz if you're friendly, you never get anywhere, man - you'll just be standing there talking for ever!"

He calls out to Jean, his "babe" who may have wanted to speak to him, but disappeared.

I talked to Gil Norton a few weeks ago on the phone, I continued, and he seemed really pleased with a song on the new album called Backwards and Forwards.

"That's going to be called Space or Space I Believe In or something like that. There's a few songs that haven't been titled yet."

He wasn't too sure what you're words would be like, but they just seemed to fit into place.

"Yeah. He didn't like the words at all at first. He hated it. So I stuck with it.

"He didn't like w#the words though, coz it was about this tablas player... you know tablas? Indian drums.

"We got this tablas player to play on the song. His name is Jef Feldman. He's the brother of a keyboard player that used to play with Captain Beefheart, who plays in Pere Ubu now - and he's played on our new record. His brother is an expert tablas player - he's jammed with Ravi Shankar and everything!

"It goes -

We needed something to move and fill up the space

We needed something, this is always just the case

Jefrey with one F Jefrey took up his place

Sat on a carpet and with tablas in hand took up the chase

Now it occurred to me as he drove away D equals R times T"

Kim walks past making some kind of "eugh" noise, which throws Black off. I continue by asking him if there are any songs he's really pleased with on the album.

"All of them pretty much."

Would you say the new album is the best thing you've done, or maybe it's pushing the Pixies onto new ground?

"Mmmm. People always use the phrase new ground. I don't know... it's always new ground.

"It's just a bunch of tunes, y'know. Maybe they're the best bunch of tunes we've done, maybe they're nt. It's really for the people that buy the record to decide, the people that write reviews and that kind of thing."

There were stories of you using alternative guitar tunings, but from the Planet of Sound EP it appears just to have been Dropped-D tuning.

"Yeah. Dropped-D. Nothing like Sonic Youth or anything like that."

There's something about that tuning.

"It's more chunky."

It's like the ending of Cinnamon Girl by Neil Young.

"Yes, Cinnamon Girl. That's the only other song... you play that with Dropped-D and it sounds correct [he sings the riff in question]... it sounds very correct."

It's one of the coolest songs I think he's done. I prefer his Crazy Horse stuff most.

"I haven't listened to enough Neil Young records to separate the two. I just hear him when I hear him."

He's done some really dodgy records in the past.

"Yeah. But I guess that when you've done that many good records, you have to do a couple of duds."

What would you do if Ivo sues the Pixies, like Geffen sued Young for producing poor records?

"That's a pretty impossible question, coz Ivo would never do that. It's a different kind of record company."

From what you've played live and what's on the new EP, the new album sounds like it's gonna be really cool.

"Yeah. We put it together really fast, but I think it cam out pretty good. We tried real hard. It's all you can ever do - if your fortunate enough to play in a band that has enough money to go into a studio and record songs."

Do you find the new way of song writing is working any better for you?

"No. Not really."

Would you revert back to the old-fashioned way of sitting at home strumming away and coming up with lyrics?

"I still do it that way. We still do it like that pretty much."

The image the press has given of the new album is that you've just come in with chords and no lyrics at all - 'Here it is, this is the new song... let's work on it!'

"That's pretty correct. That's all it boils down to. If you're a basic rock band, all you've got is chord progressions and riffs. And lyrics, if you've got lyrics. That's all it is - that's the whole formula!"

Gil said that you've been reading a wide variety of stuff to get lyrics for the new album.

"He thought I was reading. What did he say I was reading?"

He didn't say specifically. He said you were getting inspiration from different places.

"I guess I do a little reading here and there, y'know, encyclopedias and magazines. Nothing very extensive."

Lyrics are just secondary to some songs. It's more to do with the music.

"I would say so. They're secondary, pretty much."

In Planet of Sound, I don't know what you're going on about in the verses, but the chorus comes in and gives it that essential life, just gives it something.

"Yeah. The old chorus, y'know. Verses and choruses [laughs].

Theme from Narc doesn't really have a chorus. I thought it was pretty cool, because the chord progression in it is completely fucked up. It isn't standard rock n roll progression.

"Kind of. But it is kind of spaced kind of weird."

It's a Pixies-style progression. Some f the stuff you play isn't really standard. It's still in key, nut... You've mentioned yourself in other interviews that I've Been Tired should really be a four-chord thing, whereas it's a three-chord...

"Yeah. We do that a lot. Or we go the other way, and take something that should be a four-chord and add a fifth chord!"

I play along to some Pixies stuff on guitar. Sometimes a song seems better if you can become part of it. Did you find that when you were learning to play?

"No. I didn't really learn a lot of cover songs. Though I do, accidentally, learn a little bit of a song hee and there."

I bring the conversation back to UFOs which is what I had intended the whole interview to be about, but side-tracked here and there, by asking, do you read a lot about UFO file cases?

"I just pick up the background information that you see in newspapers and magazines and late night talk shows."

Would you ever judge a particular UFOcase?

"I'm not really like, a UFO person. I just..."

Write songs about them...

"Write songs about it. It's a good topic, I think, for pop music."

I thought that maybe you gained your interest from your family's experience.

"I wouldn't say that that isn't part of it, I suppose it is. But, mostly, it's a just a good topic. It is a hobby to get into - I suppose it wouldn't be very satisfying though... It doesn't seem that you'd get a chance to see one [laughs]!"

Tell me about the some Motorway to Roswell.

"Roswell is a town in New Mexico were there suppose to have been a crash in 1947. There was this case, The Roswell Case. And they supposably took dead alien bodies from this ship."

Would you think there is life on other planets?

"Maybe there is, and maybe there isn't. I kinda think there is, but who knows? Maybe we could be the only ones."

Would you expect them to be like us, or the science fiction sort of thing, were they are completely bizarre?

"Well. I guess in thinking about things like chemistry and biology, I think they would look different probably."

What do you think of Star Trek: The Next Generation?

"I don't watch that one. It doesn't have the same kind of electricity. You can tell as soon as you flip it on - it just isn't the same."

To me it's very similar. The storylines are the same.

"It may be a good show infact, but it just doesn't feel the same when I look at it. So why bother?"

It's probably nostalgia.

"Oh sure. But people that rear really into it might get something out of it."

Can you name a few albums that you'd recommend or are faves?

"Yeah, yeah. Let me think about that for a second. There's a group called Angst, they've a record called Lite Life. That and one of their other albums is really good."

Is that an old record? I've never heard of them.

"It's about five years old. They're from San Fransisco, and it's on SST Records.

"I'm trying to think of stuff that isn't famous like Pet Sounds by Beach Boys, anything that's kinda like obscure."

My sister saw a cover-band in Northern Ireland doing a Pixies song.

"Oh yeah?" he sounds really excited. "Which one?"

Here Comes Your Man.

"Really. Wow! Are they like a proper covers band?"

Yeah. They're what we call a Showband. They play mainly hotels and clubs. It's basically just covers - pop and country.

"Wow! That's something!"

Have you heard of any other bands playing Pixies covers?

"Yeah. Just little pub bands and stuff>"

Some of your songs are great. They'd be good standard cover fare if your music was heard by a wider audience.

"It is an interesting concept. I don't know if it would work or not. Maybe it would. I've thought about that, but it seemed like it wouldn't work because it would sound just like us - but then, our songs are just too obscure sounding."

With Bossanova you seemed to be aiming to a wider audience. I think it was the way Gil mixed it. It was more radio-friendly. Everybody was predicting you would be the next big thing, but you never managed to break into mainstream.

"It's because we're not a mainstream band."

Your singles never get played on the radio or anything like that...

"You kidding me? We're way too left-field. When you say we don't play pop music... we do. We're kind of a poppy band."

Surfer Rosa was a very poppy album I thought.

"Yeah. I thought so. I always get pissed off when people talk about, 'Wow! What hard records Come on Pilgrim and Surfer Rosa were!' And I just don't find them that way.

It's just the hard mix maybe.

"Yeah. I think they were fooled by the hard mix."

The interview turned to the Mean Fiddler gig that night...

"I'm looking forward to the show, but I'm not looking forward to the fact that it's going to be a little too crowded."

I would have thought that you'd prefer a more intimate show.

"Oh yeah, it's fun to play. I'm just saying that it can be a little too crowded... I prefer a little elbow space when I'm watching a band."

A lot of people go on about Monkey Gone to Heaven as being one of your best songs. I think it's bollocks when compared to a lot of the other stuff. You probably think it is one f your most popular songs, so you've got to play it every night.

"Yeah. There's ones I like better. My favourite ones are Wave of mutilation and The Happening. The Happening is pretty much my favourite one."

I loved the way you played two versions of Wave of Mutilation at the Belfast gig. I couldn't believe it when you came back for an encore and did the album version of t he song.

"Yeah. It's a true encore."

It gives a good lift to the show, much like the way you opened this tour with Rock Music, and the old curtain trick from the last tour Is that just incorporating the last thing, or...

"It gives the opening a black space to play in front of, instead of our gear."

[A fella called Jason wearing a Pixies tour-jacket with his name on it walks by. Black asks him if he heard about what had happened at their recent Valencia gig...]

"...Basically the show didn't happen. The entire lighting rig collapsed on stage. Only Happy Mondays had their gear up. None of our crew put our gear up, or The Farm.

"The Farm were supposed to have been doing the soundcheck when it fell, but they wouldn't get on-stage - they kept telling them 'It's gonna go!' and sure enough, it fell on Happy Mondays' backlawn [laughs]!

"It was really bad. Someone could really have gotten hurt."

Jason: "The worst time that can happen is when the band's on-stage>"

You wouldn't have wanted the Happy Mondays to be killed and become another Lynyrd Skynyrd! I quipped.

[Laughs]

[The interview ended here as I was holding back the soundcheck. He seemed like a decent sort of fella (he gave me a beer), and it's a pity that I could never do a Frank Black interview]

Reprinted from Rock a My Soul #2