Hot Press meets Pixies: Pt. I

When it comes to defining alternative guitar rock in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Joey Santiago is the man. But don’t just take my word for it.

“Joey Santiago is one of the most under-rated guitarists of all time,” Pixies fanboy David Bowie once gushed. The Thin White Duke has a point. Polly Jean Harvey agrees wholeheartedly.
“One of Joey Santiago’s trademarks is playing two notes very close together and bending one slightly outwards, so you feel like your whole body is being bended and contorted,” Harvey contends. “You put on Surfer Rosa and it sounds like they’re actually in the room with you.”
In addition to patenting a trademarksound, Santiago christened the band Pixies after stumbling upon the name in a dictionary and loving the definition of “mischievous little elves”. The guitarist, who has inspired and influenced generations of musicians, is reflecting on his band’s surprise return to the fray with new material.
Before their current European jaunt, which calls to the Grand Old Lady of Dame Street (i.e., The Olympia) for two eagerly anticipated and instantly sold-out nights, Santiago and company played an intimate warm-up at London’s Brixton Electric.
In my heartfelt opinion, the Brixton date is a shoo-in for the soon-to-be-compiled gigs of the year list. Then, I must confess to having a little bit of previous with the Pixies. 
They were the first major international act I caught live, in the old Point Depot in 1991. Seeing the Pixies transformed me from a casual music fan into an all-out obsessive, as if I had been struck by a bolt of life-changing lightning emanating from Black Francis’ primal screams and Santiago’s mind-altering riffs. 
“The Brixton concert was a great night in a lovely venue but, strangely, the small shows are the ones we always get more nervous at,” Santiago confesses. “They’re a lot scarier. Festivals are less nerve-wracking. At the small shows, you know everyone is paying rapt attention, whereas at a festival someone will be lighting someone else’s joint. There’s a lot more stuff going on, which we’re subconsciously aware of.”
This seems a surprising admission from a revered guitarist who supported U2 on an arena tour, performed in front of over 100,000 people in the Phoenix Park with Red Hot Chili Peppers, and surely played every single music festival in existence.
“Of any of our Irish shows, the most memorable for me is the Doolittle gig in the Olympia,” Santiago beams. “I love that place. The people were awesome. There was one time when we paused between a song as we were tuning up. The crowd started going crazy. There was mayhem, I was thinking, ‘What the fuck is going on?‘ We’ve been in this band quite a while, but I really didn’t know that people went so batshit crazy like that. Maybe it was because we were so badly out of tune!”
I ask Joey what the mood in the camp is on this current tour. He’s refreshingly honest, certainly not reluctant to address the huge grey pachyderm in the room, i.e. the recent departure of Kim Deal.
A quick recap: Kim went for a coffee with Charles (Black Francis) and Joey and announced she was quitting the band in the middle of their recording sessions in Rockfield Studios, Wales. She had, in fact, already booked a flight home to Dayton, Ohio.
Joey and Charles swapped coffee for alcohol to cope with the bombshell, which Santiago claims was not in the least surprising, but very saddening all the same. 
“We’re still trying to feel our way through the absence of Kim Deal,” he admits. “We’re still trying to figure out our current situation. We’re still working on that and will be.
“Not to take credit away from the new bass-player Kim Shattuck or, indeed, Kim Deal and all she has done for this band but it proves the point that the three of us are enough to define what we are. People are finding that out for themselves. David, Charles and myself are able to hold the fort.
“The bass player is lucky, whoever they happen to be. It was a hard job to fill. In a way, it’s also an easy one. It’s just a ‘shut up and play your guitar’ kind of gig, which is, in itself, a variation of a Frank Zappa quote, but let’s rehash it.
“Make sure you put in that ‘shut up and play’ bit,” he cackles. Ms Deal’s ears are, we suspect, burning.
Of course, the cracks in the Pixies camp that came to a head in 2013 had been developing for years. Relations between Charles and Kim, in particular, had been famously strained almost since their inception.
Neither are the band, as a unit, particularly noted for their closeness or ability to negotiate. Some of the footage from the 2006 film loudQUIETloud, which documented their first reunion tour in 2004, makes for decidedly uncomfortable viewing.
Kim travelled to the shows separately with twin sister Kelley, while her bandmates seemed to suffer chronic communication issues. The viewers’ heart bled for the recently bereaved David Lovering, coping with the loss of his father. Santiago appeared to spend a lot of time apart from his bandmates, Skypeing his wife and daughter.
“Our communication has improved in a way. It’s still very much a work in progress,” Santiago reveals. “For us, it’s normal. It’s the way we do it. Thom Yorke thought loudQUIETloud was finally an honest look at a touring band.
“We’re not The Monkees. There’s not much talking. To be fair, those cameras were capturing us less than hour before we were due on stage and that’s when we really go into shutdown mode. You’re not going to see everyone’s personality blossom. Generally, we don’t hang out with each other. That’s the nature of being in our band. Our communication is not the best. To be honest, I’m not complaining about it.”
When Kim walked out of the secret Rockfield sessions (overseen by long-term Pixies producer and cohort Gil Norton) the band were in the middle of nailing their ace comeback calling-card, ‘Bagboy’, and the four songs that were to make up the self-released EP-1.
“I wasn’t much of a Tweeter then, but Dave said to me, ‘Hey, people will know where you are when you tweeted because the location thing is on’. So I had to even delete a tweet in case it blew our cover. I couldn’t even tell my own friends.”
2013 has turned out to be year of the unexpected return. Pixies are back to thrill and David Bowie’s The Next Day seemed to fall out of nowhere. Pigs actually flew last February when even My Bloody Valentine finally managed to deliver the long-awaited successor to Loveless.
Charles recently said that he’d love Pixies to be Bowie’s backing band. It was actually Joey who introduced Mr. Francis to Bowie’s oeuvre when rooming together at the University of Massachusetts. Seeing as the admiration appears to be mutual, and Bowie has covered ‘Cactus’, would Santiago be prepared to step in if such a vacancy arose?
“Absol-fucking-lutely!” he responds without hesitation. “We’ve had the pleasure of meeting him. It was a very easy hang-out. He’s a very comfortable person to spend time with. When you think about it, your first requirement should be that you can hang-out with someone.”
Pixies successfully pulled off a surprise strategy with their new material, so what can we expect in the future?
“All I can really say is EP-2 is going to happen,” Joey tantalisingly reveals. “But I don’t know when it’s going to happen. At this point, our thoughts are that the album format is dead. You don’t have to go into a record store to sell your music anymore. You buy from the ether. It’s like it falls out of the sky. What is an album anyway? How many minutes? How many songs? Is that all there is to it? Alright, do you want it now, or do you want it later? Do you want a light three-course meal, or a big fat steak?”
This is somewhat strange coming from someone who played on many classic albums, notably the aforementioned Surfer Rosa and Doolittle, although I’d make a strong case for the sci-fi dream pop of Bossanova being their strongest hour.
“I know,’ Joey agrees. “When I first listened back to Doolittle, I genuinely felt it was going to be a stepping stone for other bands. I had a feeling it was going to be a classic record and it will always be up there. You go to college and there’s always someone who wants to explore the horizons and we’re one of those bands who seem to be on those horizons, which is absolutely amazing. We seem to be one of those lucky bands that people are eventually going to bump into on their musical travels.”
Kurt Cobain famously said of writing ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’: “Basically, I was trying to rip off the Pixies”.
“I never had the pleasure of meeting Kurt Cobain,” Joey rues. “I’ve subsequently met Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic separately. There’s a lot of lovely honesty in what Kurt said. It was amazing to hear that he was such a big fan. It’s so flattering. Nirvana captured the atmosphere of what we did. They had their own spirit and just ran with it. That’s the right way to emulate someone and not sound derivative. They did it. They didn’t sound like the Pixies, even though they tried to.”
Speaking of emulating a classic band, the very first song Santiago attempted to play when he strapped on a guitar was ‘Rock & Roll’ by The Velvet Underground, which Joey agrees has an added resonance after the death of Lou Reed recently.
“There’s a bit of the song that’s only two notes that bend, so that became one of the things I wanted to do with the guitar. If you listen to ‘Rock & Roll’ and that bit in the middle that just soars, and then you listen to ‘Ed Is Dead’ (Come On Pilgrim)... it’s very obvious where that came from.
“It’s something I stumbled upon while listening to music when I was young. I love when a note bends and shakes. I’m not so interested when the octave is there and it settles down. I love the way Hendrix bent the crap out of notes, as did The Beatles and ZZ Top.”
As the late, great Joe Strummer beautifully said, ‘the future is unwritten’. Santiago is keeping Pixies’ post-tour plans under wraps, but promises there will be plenty of activity in the near future.
“We’re one of those lucky bands that have such a solid fanbase,” he says with gratitude. “The fact that we’re not bound to any record company makes it even more liberating. We can actually do anything. The internet is incredibly empowering. These days, we’re available everywhere. I love it. Some people might have reservations. Not me. You’re truly able to act like a kid. Say you love a certain song on the radio and you want to listen to it again. Guess what? You can get it right now. Tell me you don’t love this day and age. I dare you.”
Santiago has to sign off and get ready to say goodnight Vienna, but before he goes, he has a quick question for Hot Press.
“I must ask you something,’ he says. “There’s a guy in Ireland that everyone seems to know. Daniel Ryan?” 
A common Irish name, but we suspect Joey might mean the former guitarist in The Thrills and current manager of Little Green Cars and Bleeding Heart Pigeons?
 “Yeah, he’s a very good friend of mine,” Joey answers. “I feel like everyone in Dublin knows the guy. Last time I was there, I played a round of golf with his friend Brian O’Driscoll who got a hole in one. He called me his lucky charm. Great talking to you today and really looking forward to those Dublin shows. See you at the Olympia.” 
Joey, we’ll be there with bells and whistles on.

Pixies play the Olympia, Dublin on November 18 and 19.