Black Francis, AKA Frank Black, AKA Charles Thompson – frontman of the Pixies, gave me such a funny, honest, revelatory interview back in 2013. It’s a proper long read. Set aside 20 minutes at least!
This live onstage interview witnessed by an audience of six hundred people at Albert Hall, Manchester, has never been transcribed and shared until now…
Black Francis talks hilariously about sustaining an injury in the Britannia Hotel; very honestly about Kim Deal; and brilliantly, and at length, about his songwriting inspirations. He talks about how it feels to be praised by the likes of David Bowie, and Kurt Cobain. We also talk about Bruce Springsteen, doing DIY around the house, getting old, and about his kids.
As with previous archive interviews – featuring Viv Albertine, Sonic Youth, and Mark E Smith – this is a “paid subscribers-only” post. Clearly, I’d love to write for free, but the real world says “No”! There’s lots of free stuff on my Substack but roughly one out of every five or six posts is behind a paywall. The paywall drops about a fifth of the way through this interview.
This onstage interview had come about after I’d noticed the Pixies had a day off in between Dublin and the Manchester Apollo. And I jumped in there, and wonderfully Black Francis agreed to spend the evening chattering to me onstage. I don’t think it’s something he’d ever done before.
There were questions from the audience – I’ve included a few of them. As a finale he performed three songs acoustically. It was such an excellent evening.
There’s a lot of love for you in this room. A lot of love. I wanted to ask you about something you tweeted. A few weeks ago you said “Manchester is our spiritual home” and I wondered if you can explain the reasons why you said that?
It wasn’t by design it became our spiritual home. We supported Throwing Muses when they were going on a European tour in about 1988, I think it was. And we were in what you guys call a splitter van. And so it was the two bands and our two roadies which we kind of shared on various occasions. And we all shared our amplifiers and that kind of thing. There were two tour managers: they were a husband and wife team from Manchester called Chas and Shirley Banks.
The Pixies graduated beyond this more modest situation to a tour bus and trucks and that kind of thing. And more roadies and more of a production, but the Banks were still at the helm of all of this, so subsequently all of our crew were from around here and we would end up rehearsing here in rehearsal rooms in warehouses round here, stayed in a lot of hotels, and had a lot of downtime here, you know. It was less expensive than London to come here.
The Banks, they’re out of the music business now, but our current manager is also from the area and so most of our crew are still from around here to this day. So there’s just kind of this connection that’s always been there.
And you namecheck Manchester, England in one of your Black Francis songs, ‘The Real El Rey’, which is set in Arizona I think. You’re yearning for Manchester, England.
Yeah, yeah, yes I do. You know, I have my little spots around here. Personal little spots, you know, little things that happened to me. I even got a scar here, I even got a physical scar on my body in Manchester; at the Britannia Hotel.
Would you like to hold it up? {audience laughs}
You can’t really see it. It’s not much of a scar, but I did receive a wound {both laugh}.
Oh! How were you wounded in the Britannia Hotel?
Well, the very first guitar I took on the road is something I brought with me from college. It was a Washburn guitar which is a brand name: not a particularly expensive brand. But it was an OK thing and you could plug it into an amplifier. Acoustic/electric they call it: a combination of the two. And I was at the Britannia Hotel where we always stayed, and this had finally seen enough sweat and nightclubbing and the headstock, the end of the guitar, snapped in the middle of the night while I was sleeping and I woke up. It wasn’t ever going to be worth trying to repair something like that, so the guitar was dead. It was dead to me anyway.
I went to Joey Santiago, the guitarist, to his room to play a prank on him and I knocked on his door and I said Joey I’m really pissed off, really angry about something and he was like “What is it Charles?” And I just took my guitar and I just starting smashing this guitar all over his room and there were splinters everywhere. And he was just standing there going “Oh my god”. He’d never seen me act this way. And he didn’t realise of course that the guitar was already dead. And then I was like “Ah, just kidding” {laughs} and then I realised of course that I’d sliced open my hand.
It was Sunday I believe and so when I went to Manchester Infirmary to get stitched up, and of course it was Sunday morning and everybody was in there from the night before. I didn’t feel very prioritised {both laugh}. And then a guy walked in, his brother-in-law had just bitten off his ear and blood was running down his body like this, and I was like ‘Alright, I’m outta here. I’ll survive with my thing’. And then at the next gig which was in Liverpool, the Banks arranged a boxing doctor to come to the venue, this old guy with a black bag and he stitched me up in the dressing room. Anyway, that’s my little anecdote about the Britannia Hotel and my stitches. So yeah, I’ve shed some blood here {laughs}.
On the current tour you’re doing a cover version of ‘Big New Prinz’ by The Fall; I wondered why did you pick that particular track to cover?
Well, I don’t know where I first heard that band, but I probably occasionally catch myself emulating the kind of vocal delivery that Mark E. Smith does, that he’s known for, especially the extra vowel at the end of the word. Like that-a, you know what I’m saying-a. I’ve always liked that and I’ve always liked them as a band. I don’t know all one thousand of their recordings {audience laughs} but whenever I run into the Fall I like it.
Around when we first started touring, someone from the record company took me to see a ballet put on by Michael Clark and they were of course doing the music; I Am Kurious Oranj. And so it just crystallised, there they were on stage in this kind of fancy theatre in London with ballet dancers. I ‘d never been to a ballet before really.
I just always liked that record, the opening track of that I Am Kurious Oranj record is ‘New Big Prinz’ and and I really wanted to cover the song.
I know Mark will appreciate the royalties.
You know, everyone appreciates royalties {laughs}.
I was reading someone saying “In 1988 The Pixies sounded like no other band. By 1991 every band sounded like the Pixies”. Do you remember that phase happening? Obviously Throwing Muses were allies, but you were probably feeling a little bit out on a limb. And then after your first couple of albums there was a little bit of a gathering around what you were doing, and the sound and the way that you were making your music in America?
I wasn’t aware. I was just living my life and people used to say stuff like “So-and-so likes you”, or “There’s some new band that sounds like you” or something, but it wasn’t like we were really tuned in. Even if we were, we wouldn’t have heard it necessarily, I wouldn’t have heard it, you know, because I’m too locked up in the moment to have these observations that have a lot of clarity or whatever. I’m not that kind of person.