MUSIC

The Pixie WhoFell toEarth For twelve years, Frank Black, *the frontman for what may have been the greatest band of the ’90s, has refused to reunite the group. But now he’s gotten therapy, and the Pixies will rise again by BRIAN RAFTERY

WHEN FRANK BLACK SINGS, he looks like a mutant The hair (and the grumpiness) may be baby, anxious with rage and monstrously oversize. His eyes gone, but Frank Black’s desire to recapture the Pixies’ magic is back. clench, his mouth widens in a galactic wail, and the skin on his head and neck collapses into neat, Shar-Pei folds, shoot- have been the best and most influential ing the sweat o≠ his face like cartoon tears. Black can do band of the ’90s, just as they were on the about thirty or so songs this way, without any banter or verge of dominating the alternative nation. wisecracks or knowing nods to the kids up front—skinny Now, night after night, Black shows up, sells out and plays to an audience that has teens with damp Pixies T-shirts stuck to their chests. It’s a come to catch a glimpse of what they all fierce little rock ’n’ roll endurance contest he’s been racing missed out on years ago—fans who appreci- in for the past twelve years, ever since he broke up what may ate his solo work but who, deep down, are

134 GQ APRIL 2004 Photographs by LARRY SULTAN

0404-GQ- MU01 really there to sing along to “Gigantic” or FOR INDIE-ROCK his home in Los Angeles and to seek out a “” or “.” He daydreamers, therapist. “I just decided it was time to leave will eventually oblige, churning out the for a while,” he says. “I don’t think I’ve ever Pixies’ hits with assembly-line haste, for the news of a Pixies been single and alone. It’s a little strange.” these days, Black is nothing if not an instru- reunion was met He takes an eternal pause, considering his ment of e∞ciency. Even as his encores wind not with the usual lot. “Yeah,” he finally says. “Shit happens.” down, his brain has already left his body On top of his divorce, the decision to re- and is planning a getaway. “Sometimes you music-snob eye- form the Pixies did not come easily. Nego- have time to be nice,” Black says. “And rolling but with a tiations broke down over money and sometimes you just don’t feel like it. You feeling of about- management, and time and again it have the flu and you’re tired and you’re freakin’-time justice. seemed that the rumors were what they’ve loading the truck. So get the fuck out of the been for the past decade—just rumors— way. I’m trying to find a shower. I gotta take and that the famously embattled band a shit. I gotta go find a toilet that isn’t filthy.” necessities: Jacques Tati posters on the would never play together again. After each show, Black cleans up and wall; two neatly arranged shelves of read- To indie-rock daydreamers—the twenty- heads to the most sensible hotel in town. ing material in the corner (Samuel - and thirtysomethings who subscribe to Mojo Not the cheapest, just the most practical— ett, a tome about the Three Stooges, a few and log on to every morning—the on-site laundry, quiet rooms, airport a few years’ worth of Omni magazines); an idea of the Pixies reuniting feels like a sweet miles away. At 39, he’s been playing rock ’n’ unused weight bench; and a frameless vindication of all those years of late-night roll almost as long as he’s been listening to mattress plopped on the floor. debates over who was the most important it, and whether he’s opening for or Black is big and boundless and seized band of the ’90s. Black and his band– humping gear to the van after a club date with nervous energy. He’s simultaneously mates (bassist , drummer David in Saskatoon, the hotels remain the same. peering at his computer and folding laundry Lovering and guitarist ) Black has set up his own little world on the and chatting on his cell phone. His hands usually come out near the top of such über- road, one in which he can travel from com- move constantly—tapping, cracking his geek marathons, but the caveat has always fort zone to comfort zone. It’s a pleasant, knuckles, tugging at his pant legs. Though been that the Pixies were a good two years or profitable way of living. So why, after so there’s always a smile on his face, it seems so ahead of their time and that their succes- many years of saying he wouldn’t do it, is as if he’s trying very hard to get along, as if sors—Nirvana, , —were he now going to reunite with the band that he’s thinking, This is what people do. This the ones who really molded the whisper-to- once caused him so much psychic turmoil? is how they act. Keep smiling. a-scream dynamic into something more * * * * * * Which is strange, because Black is also a popular and more marketable. FRANK BLACK HAS REMADE him- genuinely friendly guy, one who clearly Record sales aside, no one has ever been self before. He was born Charles Thomp- takes pleasure, for instance, in letting you able to replicate the tiny worlds that Black son IV, the kid forever being moved around ride shotgun in his mammoth custard-color creates in his songs, alternative planets full by his restless parents, hauling his Dono- ’86 Cadillac while he shows you around his of sad punks and Mexican superheroes van and Beatles records wherever he went. drizzly new town. Yet the overall impression and strange little turns of phrase. Take this, Then he rechristened himself Black Fran- is of a guy who is figuring out how to play for instance, from 1988’s “”: cis, the angry young man of the Pixies, the well with others for the first time in his life. master of lyrical nonsense, tossing out ver- The past twelve months have been a bitch: Onstage, Black can still take the bal shrapnel about spaceships and bone He split with his wife of sixteen years, a bru- whisper to a wail. Offstage, he lives machines. And finally he became Frank tal change that prompted him to leave quietly and anonymously. Black, the one who stopped the Pixies’ party before it could get too big and went out on his own. “I wrote a fax,” Black says as he describes the band’s unceremonious breakup, in 1992, “and just skipped out without so much as an explanation. I didn’t want to have any kind of confrontation.” It was a confusing, maddening move, one that even Black admits left scars. “People were insulted,” he says. “Maybe rightly so. But, hey, what can I say? That was twelve years ago. I was in a di≠erent place emotionally or psychologically or whatever.” He says this during a tour of his new home, in Portland, Oregon. Black—or as he prefers to be called o≠stage, Charles Thompson—has been here for eight months, and the place is starting to come together nicely, a collusion of scattershot

PRODUCER: EMILY ROTH. LOCATION: SOURCES LOCATION LIBRARY. pop-culture fixations and bachelor-pad

0404-GQ- MU02 The Pixies in the late ’80s. From Pix of the Litter left: Kim Deal, , * Joey Santiago and Frank Black Though there’s no shortage of Frank- filled material due to come out this “Where Is My Mind?” at the end of his 1999 year—including a brand-new Pixies movie Fight Club, half the crowd knew the greatest-hits and a solo double- words, filling in their own little whooo-hooos disc set—fans-to-be should check out the following from ’s finest. over the closing credits. There’s even a mu- sical in the works, based on Black’s life and THE PIXIES: / (1988) A I was talking to preachy-preach scheduled to premiere in the UK this fall. single-disc combo of the about kissy-kiss Because the band has managed, through band’s first two records, He bought me a soda its own inactivity, to hold on to its mys- available together only as He bought me a soda an import. It’s a twenty- He bought me a soda and he tried tique, there is something slightly unsettling one-track assault that to molest me in the parking lot about hearing the words Pixies and reunion establishes the band’s in the same sentence. No one wants to see jarring “calm ’em and bomb ’em” sound,

The lyrics may read like gibberish on Frank Black as a sad middle-aged rock ’n’ with lovingly sincere melodies sitting TRA/ASYLUM; SPIN ART (2). the printed page, but they resonate deeply roller whoring himself on some crappy VH1 atop scalding guitar work. Standout when Black elbows them into your ears. Classic–sponsored reunion or cohosting tracks: “Gigantic,” “Where Is My Mind?” Doolittle (1989) With an extra polish He has hatched these strange binary codes golf tournaments with Hootie. In fact, from producer , his entire career, and even in conversation, much as Pixies fans would give up their this became the band’s when he tries to describe how his songs still muddy Reading Festival programs to best-selling album and work, his own digressions take on a slightly see the band perform together again, many remains a dorm-room must-have to this day. illogical but poetic rhythm of their own. of them are also aware that nothing kills a Standout tracks: “Here “Okay,” he says, “songs are word games, myth faster than trying to live up to it. Comes Your Man,” “Monkey Gone to basically, right? It doesn’t matter how seri- Black stands to gain the most from the Heaven” ous the lyric is. The rhyme’s going on, or Pixies reunion, and he knows it. “At the Bossanova (1990) Flush with alliteration or syncopation or meter or end of the day,” he says matter-of-factly, reverb and surf-rock twang, it’s an altogether quieter whatever, whatever game you’re playing. “it’s my band.” For the past decade, pro- Pixies sound—though there It’s like figuring out a puzzle. It’s like a moters have come to him every year, wav- are still moments of barely crossword puzzle, you know? I mean, not ing their wallets, and each time he has contained rage. Standout exactly a crossword puzzle—filling in the shooed them away, more interested in tracks: “Down to the Well,” “Velouria” (1991) A blanks. It can’t be stupid. Or maybe it could doing his own work than in going through return to the band’s angry be. A lot of it is…slippy-slidey.” the headache and the heartache of getting roots, this is still the band’s Got it? Maybe not. But if Black were to the band back together. There was always most underrated record. scream it at you, to throw back his bald residual “Pixies money” dribbling in, and Standout tracks: “U-Mass,” noggin and howl it out, it would all make Black did all right by it—no Sting-style “Head On” Complete ‘B’ Sides (2001) perfect, slippy-slidey sense. villa in Tuscany, but he wasn’t starving. Possibly the best batch of * * * * * * This year, though, the interest was just too castaway tunes ever THE MOST FAMOUS QUOTE about high, and the o≠ers were just too good. assembled, further proof the Pixies didn’t come from one of the band It all started in August, when Black made that the group was simply incapable of turning out a members or their label or a gushing rock a joke on a British radio show about reunit- clunker. Standout tracks: “Winterlong,” critic. Instead, the plaudit that pops up in ing, a remark that was picked up and “Wave of Mutilation (U.K. Surf)” seemingly every article or mention of the repeated the next day on the New York FRANK BLACK: band came from the guy responsible for the Post’s Page Six and on CNN’s ticker. Sud- Frank Black (1993) Black’s biggest hard-rock anthem of its time: denly, everyone thought it was really hap- first solo album is his finest “I was trying to write the ultimate pop pening, and Black began to consider the post-Pixies, pre-Catholics song,” said of “Smells Like notion seriously. “I was like, ‘Well, yeah, record, an extensive working out of Beach Boys Teen Spirit.” “I was basically trying to rip what the hell?’ ” he says. “I wasn’t so uptight fixations and new-wave o≠ the Pixies.” about it.” After all, he says, they all will fetishes. Standout tracks: “Los A few years after the Pixies’ demise, the make “crazy money.” “There’s a lot of mys- Angeles,” “Hang On to Your Ego” posthumous shout-outs began to roll in, tery around the band, so we’ve been getting FRANK BLACK & THE CATHOLICS: especially from those artists who had really high o≠ers,” Black says. “I could use Pistolero (1999) Stripped- copped from the band’s sound: Nirvana, the money right now. I know the other guys down and raw, Black’s new band used a no-frills Radiohead, Weezer. The Pixies slowly could use the money. We could all use an approach to flesh out his became a hand-me-down band, and lis- influx of cash in our lives. And let’s face it: reinvigorated songwriting tening to Doolittle or Bossanova for the Those European festivals, they pay a lot.” chops. Standout tracks: first time was like discovering a fuzzed- It’s a blatantly commercial statement, “Bad Harmony,” “Western Star” out musical world that rendered every- and were he Chris Cornell or Perry Farrell, (2000) Black’s best work since thing else damn near irrelevant. Soon, we’d tell him to take his $20 Ticketmaster Trompe, a grizzled batch of nonhits like “” and surcharge and shove it up his greedy ass. But Sticky Fingers–esque blues- “Head On” were anchoring mix tapes and when the Pixies reunion was announced rock. Standout tracks: “Blast

college-radio playlists alike, and by the early this year, the response was not with Off,” “Hermaphroditos”—B.R. LEFT: COURTESY OF ELEKTRA ENTERTAINMENT/MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES. CD COVERS, FROM TOP: ELEKTRA/ASYLUM; 4AD RECORDS/WB US (4); ELEK time David Fincher used the swooping the usual music-snob eye-rolling but instead

136 GQ APRIL 2004

0404-GQ- MU03- MUSIC

with a feeling of about-freakin’-time jus- “He’s opening up more.” tice. Here’s a band that’s been name- Improbable as it seems for a cynical dropped and ripped o≠ for years, never guy like Black, therapy has been a big getting the big payday they deserved. Not help; indeed, the Pixies reunion would only will they finally get some cash, but af- never have happened had he not done it. ter years of loaning out records and lectur- “I do it on the road once, twice, some- ing 14-year-olds on how Bush and the times three times a week. I end up talking Vines have nothing on and in all kinds of weird situations—on my Co., true aficionados can finally look smug cell phone, on the side of the road in and say, “See? We told you so.” Montana or in a phone booth at six There is the risk, of course, that the o’clock in the morning in some little vil- newer, older Pixies could suck, that the lage in Scotland. It’s very educational, in- admitted money lust will undermine teresting stu≠.” One of the topics Black everything. But once the band members has spent the most time talking about is finally got back together to rehearse for his rather vagabond childhood. “When I their on-again, o≠-again, on-again tour—a was a kid, I used to move a whole lot,” he feat that took some serious zero-hour says. “So I’m used to a kind of transient managerial wrangling—Black found his lifestyle. I discovered through therapy priorities changing. “Without getting too that it isn’t always the best thing for me. mushy, there was not really much of a I’m less able to connect with people. So breakup the first time,” he says. “[This I’m trying to change that a little bit.” time] we went through the breakup that Portland seemed the perfect place to we never had. The financial stu≠ is great, do that, a fairly innocuous town where he but I really feel like there’s a kind of peace- can hang out or hide out as he wants. His ful, joyous thing about just playing music brother and father live nearby, as does his with people. It’s something that we had new girlfriend, but no one else knows he’s when we first started, and somehow it got here. The cable guy milling around his messed up. I hope that this time around I apartment seems much less interested in can make that up and say, ‘Okay, sorry I installing a new modem than in figuring used to be such a grouch.’ ” out why this guy has an eighteen-fret Pow- Besides, Black has never embarrassed erpu≠ Girls guitar. And the 20-year-old himself artistically. After leaving the record-store clerk with the Pixies shirt Pixies, he fared better than anyone ex- whom Black passed repeatedly while pected, stepping into a pile of cowboy shopping for Celtic rock was com- punk and recording nine albums in the pletely oblivious to him. At the moment, past decade. Taken together, the output Black is happy for such anonymity, some- is a bit too much for anyone but a true times spending whole days in his apart- Frankophile to wade through, but at ment listening to jazz and classical least two of the albums—1993’s Frank stations and reading, or playing The Sims. Black and 2000’s Dog in the Sand—are “It’s kind of fun not knowing a soul,” he near masterpieces. says, “but at some point I imagine I’m Having made the music he wanted to gonna wanna know a couple of people, make, Black is now more at peace with his have a couple of acquaintances.” relationship to the Pixies. “I’m perfectly A few months from now, Black will pack comfortable with the band’s legacy,” he up and go on the road again and likely says. “I haven’t always been, but whatever. make enough money to keep him set for You’re never gonna escape the shadow, life. And yet he seems to know already that but you wanna be taken seriously. And I this relatively humble existence is what he have been, eventually.” needs to return to. “It’s easier to leave your A few years ago, Black’s take on his past hometown,” he says, “when you know would have been less measured and diplo- you’re gonna get back to it.” matic. He had a reputation for being un- He wiggles around on the black leather willing to make nice with the press and couch and stares at the tra∞c below these for being impatient with the demanding impossibly foggy mountains. “It’s nice to fans who would go so far as to chase him look at the freeway like it’s a constant sort down back alleys to cuss him out for the of art piece,” he says. “It’s kind of soothing various ways in which he’d disappointed in its own crazy way. When it gets dark, it them. “I always ended up with someone just lights up the hills.” He pauses, and a yelling at me,” Black says. “I used to yell proud, wild grin spreads over his face. “It’s back. But now I just try to avoid it.” all…twinkle-twinkle. You know?” Joey Santiago, the Pixies’ guitarist, agrees. “He’s mellowing,” Santiago says. brian raftery is a gq associate editor.

138 GQ APRIL 2004

0404-GQ- MU02