To be honest, I don’t remember too much about my first meeting with the Pixies. It was very early in the morning (it always is when you pick up American bands on their arrival in Europe) and all I knew about them was that they were the support band on the tour and that they were managed by the same guy who managed the headlines, Throwing Muses.
The thing I do remember, though, is how polite they were (Charles even called me “sir,” in the way that American kids do as a mark of respect) and how incredibly excited they were to simply be there. It was totally clear to me that they were going to be easy to deal with, and as a tour manager that’s number one on your list of priorities.
Just how easy came as a bit of a shock. During those first few days it became apparent that they were ambitious, focused, and determined to make the best of their opportunity. Of course, my attention was on the Muses, so it was two or three shows into the tour before I even watched them onstage and only then because crew members had been singing their praises.
I could hardly believe what I saw and heard. There was an electricity and a power that you just don’t normally see for support acts. I’ve been on the road for most of my adult life, and it is very, very rare for a support band to make much of an impression. Most of the stories you hear about support acts “blowing away” the headliner are apocryphal at best and bullshit at worst.
As I watched, I looked at the audience and what I saw was myself as a teenager looking up at the Who. A different band, a different time, but the eternal teenager experiencing what I had seen and felt. The feeling that your world would never be the same again, because you’d just seen the best band in the world. Ever.
The next couple of years were a very fast ride. It wasn’t a roller-coaster ride; there weren’t enough downs for that to work as a metaphor. It was more like a volcano exploding or a huge storm. The Pixies’ ascendancy was nothing less than a force of nature: unstoppable and relentless. Crazy at times, but always ridiculously exciting and fun, too. I wouldn’t change one minute of it.
And now, after all those years, the band is back together and better than ever. The really cool part for me is that when I went to see them play last summer, I was immediately taken with how many really young kids there were in the crowd, who no way could have been old enough the first time round.
This was no sentimental last hurrah played out to an aging audience who wanted to relive their teenage years when they still had a full head of hair. Instead, there was a new, (very) young audience, feeling that same feeling that I felt in 1967 when I was 17 looking up at the Who. The same feeling that a young Thorn Yorke had the first time he saw the Pixies. The same feeling that one day my grandson will feel for a band that is probably still at junior school right now.
When I saw that they were headlining some of the biggest festivals in the U.K. again this summer, I felt an enormous sense of pride that me and my wife, Shirley (who played a bigger part than anyone will ever know), played some small role in the history of one of the best bands in the world. Ever.
Life to the Pixies!
With much love,
CHAS BANKS, 2005