Pixies

Pixies Quotes



"Bassist for band in Hüsker Dü and Peter, Paul & Mary"
(Charles' musician wanted ad answered by Kim Deal)

Here follow some Pixies quotes. Those from Black Francis being numerous, we decided to roughtly sort them by themes.

BLACK FRANCIS

The Man

"Can you smile please, Charles," Melody Maker photographer "True beauty NEVER smiles at the camera"

"I was super horny when I was a teenager"

"When I reached my teens, I discovered rock 'n roll and started getting interested in girls. So I guess that sort of religious/sexual conflict of interests is where a lot of the songs come from. The Bible's got a lot of wild stories in the Old Testament - the incest thing pops up a lot in my songs."

"I wanted to command some faith to the audience. I wanted them to be intrigued, absolutely curious about what I am. That's what makes music attractive to me - it's the hole you get sucked into when you really get into a song."

"I'm making a living, yeah. But I could make a living doing lots of thing. It's not like I went to astronaut school and now I'm going to the moon"

"I like calendars for pictures, especially rock photos! And girls! Ee-hah!"

"Mass murderer Ted Bundy was killed in the electric chair that morning and Jean, my honey, showed off her endurance against electric current on the "Test Your Strength" machine."

"I love to eat. Food doesn't affect you in a spiritual way, but sound does"

"I think I'll open my own Mexican restaurant. Maybe here [UK]. Or in Holland. One day."

"If I could be anyone, I'd be Dr. Doolittle and talk to the animals. We'd shoot some shit"

"I don't know if it's just that I am a fucked up kid or if it's that I appreciate the macabre, the strange or the horrible"

"I'm a wimpy little nerdy guy. Well, not little but... So you know I guess I just want to rock like Iggy and all those other people."

"There was a f**king review in f**king Melody Maker [of the first BOSSANOVA single, 'Velouria'] - 'Sounds like someone's been taking singing lessons'. Like, motherf**king A! I am the singer. Who do sing SONGS. It's like I never sang before; like I was - I don't know - reading PROSE on my previous records and now I sing. EXCUUUUUUSE me for singing"

'I've been kinda influenced by the charismatic Pentecostal thing which my family was into when I was a kid in California. I grew up exposed to a lot of preaching and righteous rage. It certainly left me fucked up, that's for sure"

"I'd like to have been around when the Spanish and the Dutch were mapping out the world. It bums me out that there's no land left undiscovered. Not even the moon."

"Everyone thinks I'm a wimp and even my own band hates me. Oh, well. I guess I'll just flip 'em the bird!"

"Much joy after hearing "Doolittle" has entered the British National Charts at number eight. I've been reading "The Wicked Ways Of Malcolm McLaren and just got to the part where the Sex Pistols' "Never Mind The Bollocks" entered the British Charts at number 11. Three places below could make me grin. John Lydon can suck my dick any time."

"If they don't like my indie rockin' ruckus, I'll flip 'em the bird."

"I need my own pirate TV station. I wanna go to the moon. I wanna do this duet with Morrissey. I wanna keep making good rocking music that takes me. I just wanna be reduced to skin and bone. I want my songs to paralyze me"

"Let me try and clear my head. I think I'm actually having a thought"

"I'm really depressed there are no frontiers left to cross. And we'll be dead probably before people can go out to space"

" If anything is a big influence on me, it's David Lynch. He's really into presenting something but not explaining it. It's just 'This is an image, this is an idea, isn't it cool?'"

"I like David Lynch movies, there's something oddly normal about them. I like Fassbinder too, but miss all the political points in his films because I'm too busy reading the subtitles"

"Ultimately I'd like to release a single once a month, every now and then have a hit and every couple of years put them together as a compilation album. And then retire and run a coffe shop in Rotterdam and play reggae and classic punk records all day"

"Jean and I blew a ton of savings so we could fly Concorde just to see the curvature of the earth. It's something you don't normally get to see, so I figured out, if you can do it, do it"

History

"I remember learning how to scream. The guy who taught me was a neighbor of ours when I was a teenager. He was this guy from Thailand and he ran a tee-shirt and florist shop. I used to deliver flowers for him"

"Both Joey and I went to college to form bands. We dropped out of college to make a go of it"

"I decided I'd either form a band, or travel to New Zealand to watch Haley's comet. I missed the major astronomical event of the century to form The Pixies!"

"My father had talked about naming a child, if he had another, Black Francis. I thought it sounded good, so I took it."

"I used to always like sort of funny, corny, pompous stage names like Iggy Pop and Billy Idol"

"Busted my acoustic in Joey's room and sliced my strumming midgets wide open. The nurse at the delightful Manchester infirmary gaily administers a bandage, but plays real dumb when it comes to removing the fiberglass shards from my flesh. She tells me she's a girlfriend of a Stone Rose and I wonder if the indie charts have become an amoral battleground."

"I asked my agent how much I could get for a solo show and even with the bad rate of exchange I made out like a bandit. I enjoyed it and I don't think the others minded. I spent the money on a trip back on the QE2 with my babe. It was worth every fucking penny"

Music Industry

"We have to face the fact that there's been a real process of standardization in the music industry. It's all about circuits, about treadmills. Too bad it can't sometimes be a little more...sci-fi you know?"

"Our current alternative music, I mean, come on. People have been making rock records for 30 years, so how weird is it really? How dangerous is it? How rebellious is it? Not at all. From Henry Rollins on down, there's nothing dangerous about it whatsoever. It's very safe entertainment. "

"Rock'n'roll has become an artificial experience. It's got nothing to do with rebellion. Rock music is just a part of mass culture now. It's all acceptable. Nothing is extreme, dangerous or subversive. Nothing is gonna frighten my mother. She loves The Pixies"

"That whole Guns 'N Roses thing. I'd rather hear Guns 'N Roses on radio than a lot of other things but, c'mon, that whole bandanna thing is so fucking tame. American MTV is inundated with all this fake hard rock and HM. Where do all these bands come from? They just spring out of nowhere and they're completely clueless. It's not the lack of real heroism that bothers me. It's not even the music. It's their fucking outfits I can't stand"

"Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm just being nostalgic, but it seems that all the stupid pop songs from yesterday are better than the stupid pop songs of today"

"You get these bands claiming that if they hadn't found rock'n'roll they'd have turned into mass murderers. I'm not so sure about this theory. People who manage to organize themselves to get a band together, hire a studio, pay their studio bill, they 've got their shit together. They don't strike me as the kind of people who would otherwise be chopping up bodies and burying them in the Utah desert"

Pixies

"We're just ordinary guys and an ordinary gal. I'm just Mr. Square, Mr. Nerd, Mr. Normal. I like the fact that none of us are rock 'n roll type people, we're truly naive, so it's pure. There's not a lot of thought."

"It's not very cool to be in a rock band these days. Then again, The Pixies are pretty cool. Ruined cool"

"It would be nice to get into the Top 20 significantly for a year or so. Just so that people would look back and remember. But it would be just as nice to make records on the weekend and be obscure"

"How would I describe The Pixies? Confused..."

"The main point is to get chills down your spine, get goose bumps when you hear music, for me anyway. The best rock music does that for me and that's what we try to do when we make records. We're just trying to be like 13-year-old boys again, and girl. And trying to make cool records. Cool rock songs that other people will just really get off on. We're competing with our favorite records. We want people to still listen to them in ten years, hopefully. "

"Ever talk to Joey? He REALLY doesn't have anything to say. It's like we have an inability to communicate. It's just like we're at odds with everything, so we just make records. "

"David's dream has finally come true. Groupies are starting to appear backstage. I read in a science magazine that global warming is affecting our hormones. What a relief! At last there's a scientific explanation for his increasing obsession with schoolgirls."

"I have nothing to say to anybody, except 'Enter our own little world.' It doesn't necessarily bear any relevance to the real one."

"People say we're a peculiar band. But you don't have to be smart to like our band. It's easy! There's enough hooks going down. You can be a complete dumbo and still enjoy us. Still get what there is to get. It's not so surprising we're a success. It's natural people should like us."

"We just went out there and played...with a certain kind of desperation. There was a desperation in trying to come up with a good song. There was a desperation in the way we performed that song. Our biggest fear was to be bad. To embarrass ourselves. That's the worst. We're scared to death every time we record something in case it ain't any good"

"We never thought ourselves as coming from any great rock'n'roll tradition. I mean, I missed out on punk and hardcore. I grew up listening to John Mayall. I didn't see The Pixies fitting in anywhere"

"I just thought it would be good to attain U2 status and be seen as totally weird"

"So you start playing these huge gigs and you pause for a second, look out at the crowd and think, 'Why do these people love us?""

"We're not totally stupid. We're a little fucked up. We're pretty hard. We're kinda sweet. We're dark. We're beautiful. That's enough for anyone I suppose"

"From what I hear about other bands, I think we argue among ourselves very little. We tend to get along just fine. We're all sort of pleasantly mismatched. And it's kind of nice"

"Joey is a guitar GOD, Dave's an amazing drummer, better than he was three years ago. Kim's got a solo record [POD] that made it to the national British charts."

"We haven't been around long enough to say, 'Ok let's really do something DIFFERENT.' Different? We're still trying to figure out if we like these big new Marshall amps we bought. Different? We're just starting to know how to play our guitars and get into it. We're just starting to dig and PLAY. "

Sci-fi

"We've tried to elevate the sci-fi thing, make it more opera-ish, more of a serious rock thing"

"We want UFOs to be an acceptable topic. They're romantic"

Other Bands / Artists

"Someone also gives me one of those reversible Morrissey tour jackets. I look rained on and trodden, yet sharp. I would duet with that guy in a second. No lie."

"I saw Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds for the first time today and I never liked music so much. Joey and I went for a pizza afterwards. Cave and Harvey joined us. Then we took in a movie in Brussels and I was creamin' my drawers."

"Iggy is the only guy I can really trace directly. I can listen to a Pixies record and say, Oh yeah, there is some Iggy Pop impersonating right there."

"I used to listen to Iggy Pop naked cause I'm always naked in my apartment"

"There's a section of your brain that can play any Beatles' song at a moment's notice and replay it perfectly in your head. I can't replay any Sonic Youth song in my head. You start listening to the Beatles when you're like 6-years-old. "

"It's not like we're the Ramones or some band that's rigid, almost one-dimensional. I wish I WAS in a band like that! I wish I was in a band like The Ramones that could be totally in character all the time. Like Batman, always in character. "

"After the show, I get to meet David Bowie (pronounced Bowee) and f***in' loved it. I was so completely impressed and continue to tell all my acquaintances about the historic meeting"

"Some bands are just shit. They don't have any good ideas, their songs are too long. It just seems obvious. Our records aren't the greatest records ever made but we do have a concept of what is and isn't good"

Songwriting

"I write my songs mostly in front of a mirror. When I get tired of the mirror, I stand in the bath tub and draw the shower curtain. Eighty percent of the lyrics are baloney. It's that T. Rex thing of 'it sounds cool'. I write songs by singing a whole bunch of syllables to chord progressions and they become words. A bunch of five words might mean something or stand for something, but the five words after it, or preceding it sure as hell won't have anything to do with them".

"I think up a line, then I work myself up into a frenzy, pretend I'm performing. I wait for the eargasm, that's how I know it's got what I want"

"It's like doing your homework at the last minute and getting A on it. "

"It's hard to sing about pronouns, about he or she or I, without sounding really boring or vague. If you can get away with singing about space or the weather or the ocean it comes off grander, more mystical..."

"People don't give a shit about lyrics. Some people do, critics do, but most people just want to hear rock music. When I was a kid, I never got into lyrics. I just wanted to know is a good song, or a bad song? You always come back to that point."

"I'd love to see someone do their doctorate on The Pixies. Then we might discover something. You can extract anthropological and sociological info from everything in the world. I love sitting round analyzing something to death. It's never a waste of time. But it's no good talking to the source. Don't ask me! I don't know! I'm just writing songs! "

"There's this college professor who teaches Freud at some university in America and he uses my lyrics in his classes. I'm supposed to meet him and I'm really curious about what he's got to say!"

"I guess there's been the occasion where I've been stoned, driving around in the car in a relaxed state of mind, and hear music in my head. " Oh, shit hot, that's great, that's great! I'm going to remember it tomorrow. " No way, I'll never see that song again."

"We're not into violence. It's more abstract. I just use hard physical words because people hear them better. It's like throwing bricks out of your mouth instead of airy smoke"

Stage

"I like the limelight. I like to get out in front of 10 or 1,000 people. Electricity just means that that the campfire is a little larger. And that's all that's left after sex and religion, just telling stories and sitting around a campfire"

"I felt like Bon Jovi out there!" (about Reading festival)

"I think, 'I'm just a fat dude with a guitar and I don't want to be here.'" (About being on stage)

"You see these really wimpy stagedivers taking ten minutes climbing up onto the stage then they gloat in their stupid drunken moment. It competes with my act"


KIM DEAL

"I grew up in Dayton, Ohio, where conversation revolves around corn and livestock. Down on the farm, have a shit and feed the pigs. Story of my life"

"I guess my background was pretty normal. I got into a lot of trouble though when I was young. Lots of mischief. Criminal and otherwise. I never ended up in prison. But I think I was put in holding-cell once. I think it was for loitering or something. I was too drunk to remember"

"We're just a stupid little band in Boston" (1987)

"When people ask me what band I'm in and I say The Pixies, they say, 'Oh, it's an all-girl group, right?' I guess the name is pretty wimpy"

"Hey, I'm generally clean, right, I don't usually have anything filthy on my mind. But, for the last five minutes, I've been sitting here thinking that there's nothing I'd like to do more right now than go to my room and take a giant shit"

About Madonna: "Bette Midler with smaller tits"

"First I'm going to piss like a racehorse, then I'm gonna dance like a black woman"

"At first, he'll just scream some stuff over the song, some syllables while he's busy working on the arrangement. He isn't really bothered with the words until he's figured out where the song is going." (about Black Francis' songwriting)

"Actually I don't even know the words to a lot of the songs. And they've never been explained to me. "

" Soooo-eeee! Soooo-eeee!...Oh boy...oh boy...I gotta pee! " (a few minutes before going on stage at Reading)

"Now, we're gonna levitate Charles by the power of thought. All of you put two fingers under him, then repeat after me: 'He looks as light as a feather'."

"Yeah, it is always me who talks to the crowd, isn't it? I don't know why I do that. I dunno why it is. I don't think about what I say. I'm not a one-woman show. I just go out and ramble. Charles never talks and Joey hasn't got a mike."

"I'd like to sing more. That'd be cool. But I started The Breeders to prove I can do that. Do I write the same kind of songs as Charles? No! Get outta here! I don't care about the Bible! I don't care about UFOs! Who wants to know about that stuff? No, I'm joking. Charles' songs are good. "

"You can see from a stage how people are so weird. I love it when people come to see us. It's fellowship. We're like a big campfire they can all sit around!"

"I'm going to try to get my sister Kelley to quit her job to play on the next Breeders album. She can play tambourine, maybe. It'd be real freaky. Identical twins in the same band! It's real carnival-ish, isn't it? "

"We look like K-Mart rock 'n rollers, you know, the discount clothes stores where all the hicks go"

"Charles makes up all these big movies in his head and spills them out into three-minute songs. This album is more like Spielberg than David Lynch, more like 'ET' and 'Indiana Jones' than 'Eraserhead' or 'Blue Velvet'"

"Whenever we talk to Melody Maker, we always seem to end up talking about shitting or livestock. We must be obsessed with these things. There's no reason to stop now"

"So, one of the guys confessed that he'd had sex with a sheep. Hell, that was something of a conversation stopper. He even showed me how to do it. Wanna see? Right, you just stand up and stick the sheep's back legs into your boots, just like this, and you start pumping away"

"I've been singing less and less in The Pixies. Just oohing and aahing. You can get a synthesizer to do that. But Charles is lead singer. Not only that, he sings every fucking one! Who does he think he is? Mr. Hog! Mr. Bigshot! Shut up Charles! Shut your fucking food-hole for three minutes and give Kim a chance"

"The only problem with The Breeders was that the other two [Tanya and Josephine] always use big words. I had to carry a big dictionary around to find out what they were talking about"

"I don't think there's anything innately erotic about pigs. But, generally, they are sweet, shy, mysterious creatures. Especially the little ones. When they get big, they get kinda gross"

To interviewer: "Hey Jon! You look like Henry from 'Eraserhead'!"

"When you listen to good rock'n'roll, you wanna feel fucking dirty afterwards. You should feel so dirty you have to take a shower. Rock'n'roll should be nasty, horrible, disgusting. Rock'n'roll should be like pornography"

"You put a good record, right. You wanna get high. You wait for a little tickle. Then you get that fuzzy feeling that brings on the goosebumps. Then you're away. Take off your clothes and do something dirty. You go. Like 'Sympathy For The Devil'. You just feel...molested"

"Basically, we appeal to everyone but the criminal insane. They're too busy thinking of their next meal to bother about The Pixies. They're too busy plotting their next breakdown. Getting ready for their next lobotomy. I guess they'll get around to us sooner or later. Hey Charles, can we play some prisons?"


JOEY SANTIAGO

"I just found the word 'Pixies' in a dictionary and it sounded like rock 'n' roll"

"You flip a coin and you lie in bed and that's a long good-bye - you know? "

"Hey - how can I find a head of wild lettuce? Where does it grow?"

"It's easy. You draw a red line on the ground, right? Then you wait for a chicken to come along. When he arrives, he puts his beak right on the line and he's hypnotized! "

"Our first manager was a fellow student from U. Mass who had a nice pair of bazoombas, but not much experience with handling a fledgling band on the hectic Boston scene."

"Here is my theory on this one. If you write things down, if there is a mystery and you try and explain it, once you've written it down for permanent, in due time, it'll be proven stupid"

"When you meet your friends, especially, you notice how different you are. Everything from your clothing to the places you like to hang out. The other night a friend of mine said, 'So Mr. Rock Star how come you haven't been keeping in touch?' And I thought, 'Sod that! You haven't written to me either'"

"It's not an ego thing. It just seems like an interesting thing to do. I'd like to go down to the Philippines and say, 'Hey, it's me, Joey Santiago from The Pixies. Give me a script, I want to be in a movie"

"Am I right in thinking people come and ask us (America) for help or do we just do it? I don't know a lot about foreign policy"


DAVID LOVERING

"Yeah I still watch the Partridge's when I can, they were pretty cool."

"David Lovering: I want to be in a rock band and I want to be an electrical engineer." (Message under David's high school year book)

"She really knew her shit. I asked her if there was anything in music for me and she looked up and said, 'No, nothing at all.' Maybe she was right!" (about a visit to a fortune teller)

"Our first gig was possibly the worst gig in the history of rock. All our friends came to see us and laughed their asses off."

"Okay, do you have a cigarette pack here? Right, count the cigarettes in it...put the pack to your head...and concentrate. Let me see....SIX." Nope. Twelve. "Okay, I was just squaring it"

"The Traci Lords Story, man she was ugly when she was young but she's a knockout now" (comment on former porn star T. Lords, after a 6-hour porn program on tour bus)

Choice of a fantasy: "I'd just get me a girl and get somewhere far away"

"We want to be the best and the coolest, but we'll have to knock down Rush first"



Last Updated 07-07-97