In 2004 and 2005, band reunions became remarkably fashionable. The list of ’80s and ’90s acts who tossed aside their differences for a reunion cash-in includes Gang of Four, Slint, Dinosaur Jr., Bauhaus, and Motley Crue, among many others. In some ways, Pixies were responsible for kicking off the trend. In February 2004, the band announced plans for an international tour, their first in more than a decade. The news spread from traditional news outlets like CNN to music newswires like Pitchforkmedia.com, and tickets began to sell out just as quickly. While some critics wondered how they’d sound and others pondered how they’d get along, Pixies quietly prepared to reintroduce themselves to fans from the old days and a new generation of devoted listeners.
BANKS: Charles carried on working and there was a demand for him to play Pixies songs, which he refused at first, but then he started to play an occasional one here and there, and the crowd went apeshit. When I went to see him in Liverpool in September (2004), I would say the average age of the audience was 19. There was a lot of young kids down there going crazy. These young kids could never have seen the Pixies, so they’ve obviously grown up listening to their brothers’ records and accepted them as a ground-breaking act, an act that opened the doors for so much that came afterwards. And so people went along just to see Charles, to get any tiny little piece of it that they could.
CRAFT: I’ve been Kim’s and Charles’s agent all through the twelve-year period between the Pixies splitting and reforming. So I booked all the Frank Black and the Catholics tours and I’ve booked all the Breeders tours. The subject of Pixies was never on the agenda until very recently. Obviously, I had plenty of offers in that time but it’s always just been, well, there is no chance of the band ever reforming so don’t even bother. As far as I was concerned, the band split and that was the end of it. I was never expecting them to reform.
It was always going to come from Charles. Obviously, it had to be all four members if they were going to reform, but he was gonna be the catalyst for it. Over a very gradual period of time, from not even being able to even mention the word Pixies in his company at all for years, gradually it would pop up in conversation. And then each time that Frank Black came to Europe, he always got asked. And usually he would just dismiss the question or ignore it and then gradually he would maybe actually reply. He would always say, “No,” but he’d at least give some slightly more measured response. And then the breakthrough, I think, is Frank Black and the Catholics started playing Pixies songs. I think it was a gradual acceptance of the fact that he’d written some great songs and people wanted to hear them again. A certain amount of time had to pass for this to become a reality. If you’d said five years ago, here’s ten million dollars to reform the Pixies, it would not have happened. It wasn’t about money. I could’ve gone to Charles at any time in the last twelve years with a heap of money and he wouldn’t have done it.
GEIGER: I think Charles put it out there pretty strongly that it was a nonissue, so it’s not like you could say, “Hey, Charles, let’s talk about the Pixies reunion.” He was completely, vehemently against it in every way. He told me he’d never play a Pixies song. There’s an expression, “Time heals.” I think people got older, they have families, there was a number of forces that came together. The last two Frank Black tours Charles played Pixies material live. I can tell you this: his solo touring started to get better, attendance-wise. You can say it was Dog in the Sand and the other records, or you can say it was because he was doing Pixies songs, but something upticked the attendance both here and abroad. I saw him a couple of times, and hearing the great Frank Black solo stuff alongside Pixies songs made for a pretty impressive show. Joey played with him, David would open up with the magic act, so you’re kind of half there. And the Catholics were a great band, they were tight, so when they played a Pixies song it wasn’t that disparaging.
GILBERT: In terms of us playing Pixies songs, at that point I felt that Charles had already established himself as a solo artist. The Pixies are a band that had chemistry and created the sound of those songs. But at the same time, I felt it was totally valid for him to want to perform songs that he wrote. I felt that when we were playing Pixies songs I was playing another band’s material. You can never recreate another band’s sound, so in a way I would never really try to totally recreate the sound of the songs as the Pixies performed it. For instance, I would never try to play the way Joey played, just because you can’t. I used to feel a funny sense of regret and empathy when we would take Dave Lovering on tour with us as the opening act. He would sometimes do tours with us with his magic show, his scientific illusionist show. And so you’d hang out with Dave, and it was always fun to be around him, and I would always feel so weird and wonder how he felt being in the room whenever we were playing these songs. Because at that point we’d maybe do a half dozen Pixies songs, and we’re playing “Wave of Mutilation” or “Gouge Away” or “Velouria” or “Where Is My Mind?” or “Caribou” and I’m looking across the band at the side of the stage, and there’s Dave. And no disrespect to Scott [Boutier], the Catholics drummer, but I’d just be thinking, oh man, it’s just got to sting a little bit every time for him. Later, when Scott was sick and Dave was doing the opening act, he filled in on a couple of shows.
ANGEL: I used to ask Charles every year, “When are you going to do it?” He’d always hem and haw, and I’d say, “You know you’re going to do it eventually.” He’d say, “No. No.” At one point a few years ago, he said, “Everybody thinks there’s all this money to be made. The offers aren’t that good.”
DEAL: I had heard that the Pixies had offers. Ken Goes, the old manager, sent a letter once to each of the band members that if we were ever interested this is the type of money they’re looking at for summer tours, that was, like, in 2000 or something. It was a lot of money. ‘Cause for some reason over the decade we got popular. People would be interested in seeing us. So then Joe said when he was visiting family in Massachusetts that Charles had left a message on his machine pretending to be an English journalist and talking about, “So, the Pixies are gonna do a tour.” But then when Joe called him back and thought it was funny, Charles said, “Well, what do you think, seriously?” And Joe goes, “Really?” ‘Cause Joe had wanted to. It never occurred to me. Never wanted to. Never thought about it. So I go, “I don’t know, Joe.” But he goes, “Kim, this is not just a lot of money for me, this is a change of school district for me.” See, I knew he had just had a baby and he could actually go some-place where there’s nice schools. He had a kid now and he had to start thinking about money. And he goes, “Well, Charles wants you to call him.” And Charles and I hadn’t talked in twelve years. April ‘92, and I remember because that was the last Pixies show, the last time we talked was backstage at the last Pixies show.
CRAFT: Since the Pixies split until last fall Charles and Kim had not spoken for twelve years. But Charles and Joey and David had been in constant contact because obviously Charles and Joey had worked together quite a lot and David’s been doing his magic. So it’s only really been Kim that’s been the one that hasn’t been involved with the others.
GEIGER: It was up to Charles and Kim. Like I described, Charles is the leader. If the leader says no, it ain’t happening. What happened with me was, I booked Frank Black, I’ve been with him forever and I love him. The last solo tour before the Pixies he played eight Pixies songs, the attendances went back up, and I kind of could feel it softening a bit. And then one day Ken called me and said, “Hey, Marc, Charles is kind of thinking da da da da da, and would you go out with him?” and Charles and I went out and had a couple of very long business meetings about it, pros, cons, how to do it, what to do. And then I came back and laid out the whole plan and we basically executed it exactly to plan.
THOMPSON: The only reason I considered getting the band back together this time was I sarcastically, humorously contemplated a reunion in a radio interview in England. And I thought it was so obvious that I was being tongue-in-cheek because they’re always asking about that. I forget what I said, but it was like, “Yeah, we get together all the time and jam.” And somehow that got interpreted as “They’re doing it, they’re getting back together!” and suddenly it was on the CNN ticker the next day, it was in the New York Post. Somehow I created this monster by just, like, fucking around on this radio show. And then everyone was calling me like, “Charles, what’s up? Is there a reunion finally?” And I was like, “No, I was just joking around.” And then I was like, “Well, yeah, what the hell.” It seemed like a good time and I had kind of let down my guard a bit, I wasn’t so uptight about it.
LOVERING: There was always talk about a reunion, and we were quietly talking to ourselves, Joe and I. But from day one, I knew it was never gonna happen, impossible. Everyone asked a million times, no way, no, forget it. And it was interesting, ‘cause honestly my life this past year had gone down the shitter. Relationship was absolutely horrible, and I was drinking a lot, everything. It was looking pretty bad. Couldn’t stay in my house, I was kicked out of my own house. Going to the bank, and it must have been the most depressing day I’d ever had. And as I just get in the door, my cell phone rings. It was Joe. “Guess what?” “What?” “The Pixies are getting back together.” Nothing in my life could have been more—it was amazing.*
STEVEN CANTOR (cofounder, Stick Figure Productions): The second [Stick Figure producer] Matthew [Galkin] and I heard the Pixies were reuniting we looked at each other and said, “Holy shit, the Pixies are getting back together, we have to buy tickets,” and in the same conversation we were like, “Wait a minute, we should make a movie about this,” and we started talking with Ken. Ken said there were seventeen people who wanted to do a film, and we just started pestering him, sending him tapes, notes and e-mails, and love letters, and it actually whittled down to us.
The agreement was we could film anything we want. We had total 100 percent access to do whatever we wanted, exclusive. We started with rehearsals in L.A. before they started the tour, which was really interesting because I think they were very different people in the beginning than they were in the end. They kind of had been living for a long time not being stars and towards the end they really had become stars. They dressed differently, they had different confidence levels, there was a whole different aura about each of them.
SANTIAGO: It felt good. Dave, Kim, and I met up first, because we knew Charles knew the songs, so we met up in L.A. to get our shit together before he came over. I was nervous with Dave because he hadn’t been at a set in a while.
DEAL: I went out to L.A. and I moved to the Oakwood apartments on Barham Boulevard in November. And I stayed out there, and me, David, and Joe rehearsed. And then Charles came in from Portland. I went to my sister’s wedding in January, so he came in February, I guess. So we had about four separate rehearsals, four days each. Then we rehearsed in Minneapolis before the tour.
WATTS-RUSSELL: I spoke to Kim before all this happened, and I didn’t think she was going to do it. Last year the three of them were rehearsing, Kim, David, and Joey—she hadn’t spoken to Charles, she was still thinking about doing it, Charles was in Portland. She was testing it out. And even then I didn’t think she was going to do it, but I think she was really enjoying it. I remember saying to her, “Aren’t you terrified of the day that Charles does walk into the studio?” because it’s been sort of stretched out to the last moment, but apparently they kind of walked in, smiled, shook hands, shrugged a few shoulders, and after a few moments said, “Well, let’s play,” and then they did what they do well together—played.
CANTOR: At the rehearsal in LA, Kim and Charles were trying to work through songs, and they got to “Where Is My Mind?” and they totally messed it up, they were like, “God, I can’t remember how this song goes at all. How does it end? I don’t know,” and then Charles said, “You know what, I’ll just have to bring in my iPod tomorrow and we’ll listen to it.” Matt had his iPod and obviously had that song, so he was like, “Urn, guys, I have my iPod, and you can listen to it,” and they said, “Okay, great.” So Matt came and took his headphones and first Charles listened to it, then Kim listened to it, and they were like, “Oh, yeah,” and Matt was looking at me like, is this really happening?
THOMPSON: It is a band, but it isn’t exactly like a democracy. At least in terms of the creative stuff, you know, they’ve got a frontman named Black Francis who writes basically all the material and kind of started the band. It was my ad that they answered in the paper, you know what I mean? And I’m not saying they’re not an integral part of it. Hey, I’m not going to go out there and hire three other people and call it the Pixies. I understand the marketability of the original lineup and how people hold that to be precious and dear, so that has value. Every single one of the Pixies has ultimate veto power, they can say, “I don’t wanna participate in it.” At the end of the day, it’s my band and I can’t really have all kinds of terms, business included, dictated to me from other people, even if it’s other people in the band. At some point, I have my own ego, and it’s like, “Eh, fuck off, man, it’s my band. You don’t dig it, whatever. Sorry.” I can’t just totally make it the way that they want it to exactly. And now I’ve been gone for twelve years, the whole time I’ve been swearing I would never do it, I would never get the band back together and what can I say? Because I got a divorce I’ve had a lot of psychotherapy in my life the last year, and I’m older, so I don’t have as much attitude about the whole thing. I’m not as uptight about it. Things that I was uptight about before seem a bit childish and silly to me. I’m kind of more like, hey, yeah, what the fuck? Every year these guys are offering us tons of money to play a few shows. Let’s go do it. I’m fine with it now.
Nobody got ripped off. We all made lots of money. I know everyone’s made a lot of money because I’m privy to how much the checks are for. Everyone did good. For a little indie rock band, we did really good, and I kind of feel we’re having the breakup we never properly had. There was not really much of a breakup the first time we broke up. I just left via fax. The reunion, it was off. And it was only then that we were able to go, “All right, we’re not doing it. So let’s do it.” Maybe we had to go through this whole squabbling thing and everyone yelling at each other on the phone. For me, it’s kind of a healing thing. I’ve been able to put aside whatever bad attitude I’ve had about it and kind of just say, “Hey, you know, I’m sorry about the way things were before, and now we’re older, we’re more adult-like, and let’s go do this and kind of get back to this good place that we were at one point early on in our career.” I’m just talking about the atmosphere between the personalities.
It was just like, “Let’s go play some gigs.” Why can’t we just go play some gigs? That’s what everyone keeps saying, but you have to understand, it ain’t that easy. I knew it was gonna be a can of worms as soon as this thing started out, as soon as someone says, “Hey, let’s talk about renegotiating some stuff from the past,” I was like, here we go. There’s an old saying, “A partnership is a sinking ship,” and right now that has become true. So creatively, aesthetically, it’s a fine ship, but in terms of negotiating business now, too many cooks in the kitchen.
They rehearsed, they’ve rehearsed because I was on tour, and they said, hey, we’re gonna do some practicing to see if we can do this. Because Dave hadn’t played drums in a long time, and Kim, she has her band, but she plays guitar—even before she joined the Pixies she was a guitar player, not a bass player—so she wanted to brush up on her bass chops. So the three of them got together and they said it sounded great, they felt good, they were just missing the singer.
LOVERING: It felt the same, like I hadn’t left. And I think to all of us it was the same feeling, our abilities were there, musically. Nothing changed, there was no time off, it was just the progression continued, we just started off again. It was amazing. It was really nice and everything but we were still walking on eggshells around each other to make sure everything was just nice and easy, going out to eat and everything, it was interesting. But it was fun.
CANTOR: David was probably the one who had the biggest change. He was kind of losing his hair up top and had long scraggly hair and a beard. He’s the drummer for the Pixies and 40 years old, and single and hot girls all over the place are screaming and dying to meet him and go out for a drink with him. It’s kind of a no-brainer.
NORTON: If you would’ve asked me if they were ever going to get together, I would’ve said, “Definitely not.” The day before, I think Joey rang me and said, “You’re not going to believe this.” I was surprised. I’m really pleased for Joey and Dave as well, because obviously Charles has his solo career and Kim’s got the Breeders, but those two, Joey was doing the Martinis and Dave, his magic stuff is amazing, but he wasn’t really playing and it was a bit of a shame.
MURPHY: I thought it was done. I thought Charles was just unhappy with the rest of them, Kim in particular. And last December (2003) I was talking to Jean, we had a little mini-reunion in my neighborhood, and she said, “Yeah, it looks like they’re going to get back together,” and I said, “You’ve got to be kidding me!” And she said, “Nope, they’re practicing, and they are really serious about it.” I think they looked at it from a perspective of, I mean, Charles already said it, it was a good time to cash in on the notoriety. The second thing is, I think they looked at it like, we’re all grown-up now, we don’t have to pretend anything anymore about who’s this and who’s that. Plus, if there’s no drinking going on in the back, the emotions aren’t going to go through the roof, and f-you and f-that. Because sometimes backstage that’s what it would be like.
CANTOR: They said it very openly, with the possible exception of Kim (because of the Breeders Kim had to be talked into it the most), Dave, Joey, and Charles floundered since the Pixies broke up. They created this legendary thing, they were too young to even appreciate what they had, they made four albums, broke up before they were 23, boom, they were over, 1992. And for twelve years they floundered. Dave gave up drums and became a magician. He says in the film that for a while he was sleeping in ten-dollar flea-bag prostitute motels; Joey was about to have his second baby, living in a very small apartment; Charles as Frank Black and the Catholics really not making it, and a Pixies reunion, just the mention of it had such good buzz about it, it seemed like such an obvious way for them to make money, I think that was a huge motivating factor. Kim didn’t need to, financially, she made more money from “Cannonball” than she did from the entire Pixies catalog. She had to get talked into it. Joey and Dave had to say to Kim, “Please do this for us, it would really change our lives.” I think she did it primarily for them. And I think she started to have a great time with it. After that first show in Minnesota, she came back down to the dressing room and was like, “Oh my God! Wasn’t that incredible? They were so happy to see us! There was so much love there,” just glowing and exploding and couldn’t believe it.
MATTHEW GALKIN (producer, Stick Figure Productions): Kim’s whole thing was she didn’t want to go out there and suck. Charles at least projects this take-it-in-stride attitude. Very few things actually ruffle him. We have a couple of moments in our footage right before they go on in Minneapolis for the first time where he actually says, “I’m going to puke I’m so nervous,” but beyond that he shows very little emotion. In London they were very nervous because they were so well received there back in the ’80s, and their tour manager let us know that this was a very special show, the first night at Brixton Academy. Maybe Minneapolis and Brixton were the two shows they were the most nervous for, but beyond that, they could be in Iowa or New York City, it didn’t matter.
GEIGER: Coachella was part of a plan. Part of the recommended strategy was to launch it with a big festival, and Coachella made a lot of sense. The promoter of Coachella was also a massive Pixies fan, and it was his dream to get the Pixies to play Coachella. The plan was to tour the world in the year 2004.
I think Coachella was the first anchor. And the reason Coachella played a big role was because if you’re talking about one of the reasons to do it is, hey, I have a real life, I need to realize the money from it—not every reason, just part of the reason—I need some validation, I wanted to and had to show them that the market potential was much bigger than what they remembered, and that it could be significant and worth everybody’s time. Coachella was the first one to say in the U.S., where you weren’t ever mega, you guys are mega.
TOLLETT: Standing on the stage at Coachella looking through the Pixies onto the crowd, that might have been my career highlight. Just the feeling of a band playing to this many people is kind of . . . Obviously, they’re not American Idol. Good music prevailed. What was great about it was looking out at the crowd, it was a bunch of 20-year-olds singing along and I’m thinking they haven’t played since these kids were in kindergarten.
GEIGER: It was one of the most dominant performances I have ever seen by any rock band on any festival ever. Maybe a little sweeter because it was America, and watching 55,000 kids leave all the other stages and come and worship every single song the Pixies did, it was incredible. Especially next to bands like Radiohead and Kraftwerk, and others that were brilliant bands, and to see the Pixies be that dominant is amazing.
BECK (musician): Oh yeah, that was the highlight, definitely. Oh, God. It was just . . . you know, it just schooled all the bands in the last ten years. Just cause they’ve been gone for a long stretch to just get a shock of those songs in a row for forty-five minutes, it was kind of stunning. They were one of the few things that was poking its head up above the surface back then in the mid-’80s that was decent, that was a respite from all the crap.
MICO: When I saw them at Coachella last year, it really did not sound dated. And the reason for that is they were so out of joint with what was going on at that time anyway, also with what they were wearing at the time, everything else, everything that they had performed in from their look to the way they spoke was so out of joint with everything around them that it sort of ends up being timeless because it never had a time to tether it. So they can come back ten years later and it sounded as powerful, in some respects more powerful, than when they left. All I kept thinking was, oh, Lord, the poor band that’s going on after them. I guess the strange thing is when I saw them at Coachella people were so impressed that a band like Pixies could dominate a festival of that size, but I’d seen them at so many festivals in Europe, headline and supporting the Cure, various other things . . . they’re used to it. It was only here, the American audience didn’t connect with them the same way. Slow on the up-take, maybe. Americans are not dumb, I think some of the media gatekeepers were asleep, and I certainly think that radio was never their format. And I’m not sure that would change now. I mean, going back to the out of jointness of it all, I don’t think if they were to release stuff now, I don’t think it would make it on the radio, either. The closest radio ever came to playing the Pixies was Nirvana. “Here Comes Your Man” was their salute to pop.
ALBINI: I was at that Coachella performance and it was amazing to see 50,000 people who’d never seen this band before but for whom this band was really important having that experience. But I couldn’t tell you what about their music appeals to so many people. I think they’re one of those bands where they make an impact on their immediate audience and then those people leave their records to their kid brothers when they go away to college and then those people get into the band and then they get all their friends into them and then when they go off to college they leave that bigger pile of records to their kid brothers.
MACKAYE: I saw them at Coachella, and it sounded good. What was interesting to me was that, I mean, they played for 50,000 people—I was really struck by the songs. I don’t even own a Pixies record but I knew so many of those songs, and I don’t listen to the radio, so it made me realize that they really crafted music that kind of got through the filters, they wrote songs that worked. People were emotional, people were crying when they were playing and I was touched by that.
WATTS-RUSSELL: It’s extraordinary, isn’t it? Everyone talks about these songs as if it’s a greatest hits performance now, but it was then, so why has it taken so long? Again I blame this disgusting industry. If anyone had a brain in their heads at MTV they would have been playing the music then, supporting the band, because they are as important as the Beatles. Elektra as a label could have been more committed at the time as well. I will freely say, when has a band ever reformed and it’s been nearly as good or as important as it was before, let alone better? I can’t think of any examples. The brilliant thing that appears to have come from this is first and fore-most that they have healed some wounds, whereas the Pixies within the four of them must have felt some uncomfortable scab, now they truly must be able to celebrate the past as well as what is going on now because they have kind of put it behind them.
THOMPSON: The financial stuff is great, but I really feel like there’s kind of a peaceful, joyous thing about just playing music with people. It’s something that we had when we first started and somehow it got messed up in all of our friendships, or peaceful productivity changed into something that was still productive but that wasn’t friendly and not as joyous, and so I hope that this time around I can make that up. Kind of, “Okay, sorry I used to be such a grouch. I’m not so grouchy now.” And so it doesn’t feel like it’s about the money, it’s about this kind of healing or something. It’s nice. I didn’t expect it to be so spiritual. Nothing’s changed. It’s very anticlimactic. It’s all like, “What do you want from Starbucks?” That’s the main thing we’ve been catching up on. Everything else is the same. I forgot how much I like the sense of humor that we have that we probably had a lot of when we first started and then we had less of that as the band went on for five or six years.
CANTOR: Actually, the entire tour they were very professional and they were together for the music, there wasn’t that much interpersonal communication between them. Once the tour got going they almost never saw each other. The only time they’re a band is when they’re onstage. Onstage, you’re like, wow, they are so in sync, they seem like they love each other, they smile at each other and there seems like there’s so much love in the music, they must be best friends. And then they go home and don’t talk to each other until the next show.
GALKIN: There’s no real band there, there were four people that got back together to play music. They’re consummate professionals in that sense. They’re there to do a job. There wasn’t that much drama because there wasn’t that much emotional immediacy to what they were doing. Charles and Kim aren’t going to get into an argument onstage because they’re past that. All of that stuff seems to have been buried, ail the anger from the past. They’re doing their job, and they did a really good job on the tour. By the end of the tour they were saying “good nights” to each other onstage. More of a wink, wink, like, look, we’re all hugging and getting along and we talk to each other, see?
CRAFT: They sound better than ever because Kim’s playing well and she’s singing well. She didn’t always do herself justice. I’m sure she’d be the first to admit that.
DEAL: Me and Charles were talking after the Minnesota show and then we did another show in Winnipeg, and after the Winnipeg show we were like, man it feels like we’ve been out for a month already. It was so weird at first. Playing bass is weird. Standing on that side of the stage, usually I stand on the right side of the stage for the Breeders. Weird things like that are weird. The green pick and not an orange pick is weird. But then it was like, oh yeah, okay. So we’ve been doing shows ever since. The end.
The first tour was so successful, Pixies announced another round of dates that included a July 2005 performance at the Lollapalooza festival—the event they declined to play in 1991.
MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE ARTICLE BY CHRIS RIEMENSCHNEIDER, APRIL 2004: The T-shirts on sale called it the “Pixies Sellout” tour, but the truth is the Boston band that helped give birth to the early-’90s alternative rock boom could have done a lot more to milk its first public gig in eleven years. Tickets originally sold for $30 were going for as much as $400 on eBay . . . The crowd howled along to obscure oldies such as “Broken Face” and “Levitate Me” as readily as it did to later staples such as “Here Comes Your Man” and “U-Mass.”*
DOLAN: The reunion was weird because the room was full of people who’d never given a shit about them at the time or even knew who they were—people who’d heard Nirvana and went back and retroactively became these college rock people. The sort of black fingernail/army surplus/goth element that I remember standing in line with waiting to see them back in 1991 was gone, or they’d become accountants, which was entirely possible. Their performance was more a vindication than an act of rediscovery. Though I expected something more cynical. They made eye contact which surprised me and even went for the group bow, which was fumbling and sweet. Kim missed a note or two but Santiago and Lovering were still really agile. One thing about Pixies people don’t remember is how tight they were. Lovering was really a spot-on drummer, heavy yet concise and tricky. And they were pros during the reunion, which they could have blown off quality-wise and treated like a 120 Minutes version of the Four Tops play Atlantic City.
MURPHY: Kim and I were married in Ohio, ‘85, and ‘89 it came to an end. I had seen David running around the auditorium in Lowell, so I ran up and he said, “How are you doing!?” When they were onstage, probably two thirds of the way through the show, Kim walked up to the mic and said, “I’d like to say hello to Mr. John Murphy,” so she knew I was there. And since she was traveling with Kelley, when people were invited backstage Kelley was down there looking for me. I was a little nervous, actually, my wife was with me, and my sister and her husband, so it was like the first people who went to the first show, that was kind of cool. I saw Charles and David first, and gave them big hugs, and then Kelley said, “Do you want to go see Kim? She’s in the back, she doesn’t like to hang around in the meet and greet area,” so we went back and there she was. I gave her a big hug and everything was great, sort of like picking up where we left off in a kind of cousins way. So it was a lot of big hugs and how you doings, but it was so anti-rock show because a) there’s no booze in the back, b) we’re talking about each other’s parents and kids. It was pretty funny. And then the rest of the Pixies ended up coming in when the meet and greet was over, and that was the first time I got to see Joey. It was really cool to see everybody.
GALKIN: Kim looked so great by the end of the tour, it was remarkable. Compared to six months earlier, she’s glowing, she cut her hair off, she looks beautiful. She turned the clock back ten years by the end, as if this was something that was really good for her, physically. She looks great onstage, she’s got this great energy about her. She’s a cool rock chick. The fact that she smiles through the shows really helps a lot. It’s a great thing to watch. To my knowledge, Kim was completely sober the entire tour, and seemed to get healthier and healthier as the tour went on. I witnessed her working out a couple of times, she seemed really good.
CANTOR: She has got fans that absolutely worship her. She would sign people’s arms and people would fall over themselves to meet her, get to the show early to stand in the section where she is playing, particularly female guitarists and bassists, and young, 16-, 18-year-olds, just worship her.
LOVERING: What was funny, when we put out the word we were getting back together, we thought it would be a legitimate reunion tour, but I don’t think any of us realized how big it’s been going, how well it’s been received. The adulation that we’ve been getting, it’s been unbelievable. And what’s amazing is every show, they’re all kids in it. They’re kids that were 9, 8 years old [during our career], that never saw us in the day. In every venue, I’ll have a beer, I’ll walk out front where everyone’s coming in, I’ve never had anyone stop me. Because no one knows who I am, they’re all kids. The Pixies only had maybe one picture on an album, plus, I shaved my head. All the pictures, I had long hair. So I think that’s part of it, but still, nobody knows who we are. They know the ‘music, they know all the words and everything. But it’s amazing, I’ll see maybe two people my age at the whole show. Just the amount of love, it’s insane.
DONELLY: I love the fact that they’re doing this tour and they’re back together for this, mainly because from a sociological standpoint, I think they’re really important and I think that people need to see them, especially young people, because they don’t have a hell of a lot right now. And I think that nothing but good will come of this, to see this band that started so much and never really got the props they deserved on a widespread level. The world cites them, but that never really translated into the historical place they deserve. So I think it’s great that they’re back together, but I also think that when they broke up it was the right thing.
BANKS: After Kurt died I think everybody realized what an incredible influence they’d been, and then all these bands that had been 17, 18, 19 when the Pixies became successful started being successful themselves, and started listing Pixies as an influence. And everyone started talking about them in the same way as the Velvet Underground, a band that never sold that many records, but almost everybody involved in their records formed a band, or joined somebody else who formed a band, you know, so very influential.
DEAL: Sometimes people come up and say, “Oh, I started playing bass because of you.” It’s like, oh, cool. I don’t think Velvet Underground charted, you know what I mean. It again goes back to people finding people by doing their own research because they’re so passionate about music.
THOMPSON: The records are still in print, people like them. It’s the snobby rock kids who have developed snobbish tastes in rock music. Kids like me, kids like you, over the years bought those records. And they were too young to see the band when the band was around. “But of course! They’re back for a reunion? We’ll go out to see them!” There’s at least two generations of rock kids coming out to see us because they heard we were good and they like our records. That’s what it’s all about—or that’s what I think anyway.
For me, that whole repertoire of Pixies records, especially the first three records, it’s partially about the songs. It’s one third about the songs, another big chunk of it is about the band and how they play it, and another part of it is where we were at that time. No game plan as far as what the art was supposed to be like. It’s kind of got this naivete to it, it’s got this charm. The band has some kind of charm. That’s what people react to. They like the band, and even our lesser songs, people still like it. They like the band. That’s why we could never have a reunion without the original members of the band. That would not go down. It has to be these four people. I realize it now in a reunion situation, I suppose. I had sort of ignored that aspect or put it out of my mind that there was this band sense of humor or band chemistry that was there, and I maybe had focused on negative memories in my mind, of being in the band in the early ’90s.
GILBERT: When the Pixies were going to start getting together, there was even talk back then that it would only go on for a few months, but I kind of always suspected that that wasn’t going to be the reality because I just knew that the audience demand was probably going to be at a fever pitch, and that if they could get along, that they would be getting a great reception. You know, age and maturity and years away from each other, it goes a long way to easing any of that tension that you have when you’re in a band and you’re all, like, 25. I know that the Pixies are booked until New Year’s, and I know that Charles is about to become a father [his son, named Jack Errol Thompson, was born to Charles’s wife Violet on January 7, 2005], and I know that he’s really very excited about this, this is something that he’s been looking forward to, so I know he’s going to want to take some time off for that.
ANGEL: I just did a band reunion myself (The Blackjacks). You think they’re going to be really traumatic and miserable, but they’re simple. On the phone, we’re fighting about the set list, naturally, because we have to fight about something. I’m just like, “God, I fucking hate these people. Why am I doing this?” So I’m talking to Steve Jones about it and he laughed and said, “The same thing happened with the [Sex] Pistols. The moment you get into the room with those guys, everything will fade away. You won’t care anymore. You’ll just start rockin’ and everything will be gone.” And he was right. We love each other now. We didn’t love each other twenty years ago, but we love each other now.
GEIGER: They’re definitely much, much bigger now than they were at their peak. The world caught up to them. They were always that good. I think they’re grown-ups, in general. I think they’re happy. They’re getting huge positive reinforcement every night.
MASCIS: The Breeders seemed bigger than the Pixies, and now the Pixies are way bigger than the Breeders.
CANTOR: Kim goes into this hardware store in the Midwest somewhere, and she’s talking with the guy, orders the things she needs. The guy handed it over to her, she gave him her credit card and the guy said, “Oh, Kimberly Deal, like the Breeders.” She said, “Yeah.” He said, “Do you like the Breeders?” And she was looking at him like he was kind of kidding, and he was like, “Well, do you listen to the Breeders?” and she said, “No.” He said, “Oh, you really should check them out, they’re pretty good.” And he kind of walked off and she looked at the camera and she was like, “Is he fucking with me?” She just doesn’t look like a rock star, I think that’s a big part of it.
CRAFT: Any major guitar band in the last ten years that’s come here has always cited them as one of their major influences and the reason why each year that goes by there’s more people that want to see them is because each year that goes by there’s more kids who become old enough to be interested in that genre of music and that’s as simple as that. Every kid who’s bought any indie guitar band record in the last ten years will know that Pixies are somewhere behind it. And that’s it, I think.
GEIGER: Clearly Nirvana and Radiohead and Bowie and Bono saying how it’s the most important band, that’s one [reason for the newfound popularity]. And over time, especially thanks to Nirvana, they accrued a benefit. The timing’s good because underground music is coming back now. Four years ago nobody cared, right now it’s all good, the Bravery, Louis XIV, the Killers, everything. Let’s call it Nirvana 2.0, even though it’s much smaller in its own way, it was good timing like Nirvana 1.0 was good timing and Pixies 1.0 was not as good timing. It was influential and groundbreaking but it didn’t ride the wave, this one kind of rode a wave. The other thing is, the songs aged unbelievably well and in my arguments with my friends and coworkers, they think that’s the big one. I can’t tell because I’m too close to it, but I’ll tell you that when I went to Minneapolis for the first show I was just stunned that every song sounds like a pop hit, when this is a band that everybody thought was abrasive, screaming, nutty, crazy, whatever. So that may be the big one, and it may just be the credibility was always there, I also think the world wanted something like this at the time, too. The world wanted a Pixies re-union for a while, the world wanted a story that year.
SMITH: And you know what, when they broke up I started thinking, I guess that was just kind of a funny moment just like a lot of the stuff that I liked in the ’90s has now evaporated and nobody knows who Belly is and Throwing Muses don’t sell any records, and it’s like it never happened, that moment in time before the consolidation of radio when music was actually good and Nirvana made a huge hit—that moment’s almost gone right now and then all of sudden the Pixies are the biggest fucking thing since sliced bread! They played to, like, 12,000 people or more in Northampton! It’s insane!
FELDMAN: It’s great idea in terms of the fact that none of them are ever going to have to work again. It’s like seeing them play exactly as they were twelve years ago. The audience doesn’t seem interested in anything they have been doing separately for the last twelve years. When I said to Charles, “Are you going to make a new record?” his initial thing was, “Everyone wants to hear the old songs, why should we record, they don’t want to hear anything new.” I think if they continue to do it, he would reconsider. It’s a story that is still being written and he’s just very prolific. Everything that he has done since the Pixies has kind of shown that he has been able to grow up, there is so much growth and intelligence. That’s the part that bothers me the most about the reunion. There have been so many things that people have been so dismissive about that he has done since they broke up the first time.
THOMPSON: I’m not anti-record company, I’m not like, “They’re so evil.” Whatever. It’s just a business. And there are a lot of people out there out to fuck you over, and it’s kind of satisfying in this day and age to be on a successful reunion tour and suddenly have people offering us money to record music, and they’re not even record companies! They’re like, “Oh, we just want some song.” They don’t even care about what the music is—all they know is you’re marketable. That’s all they know and that’s all they care about. They’re so slicker and so much more evil than some old-timey record company. They’re like, “Yeah, whatever, we don’t care who you are, but we heard that you’re hot, and give us some of your mojo, because we’re trying to sell some shit.” We’re dealing with people who are even more corporate, and it’s satisfying because there’s not really any strings attached, or there are very few strings attached. It’s not like saying, “We’re gonna own your soul now.” They’re just like, “Give us your thing for a second.” And we’re like, “Great, sure, here you go.” So it’s nice to have that kind of feel. When the Pixies first started, there were a couple of Boston bands like the Del Fuegos who did commercials, and it was over for them. They had become so uncool. The poor guy was trying to make ends meet, and someone gave him fifty grand to be in a TV ad, and everyone was like, “Oh, have you heard?” Now everyone does it. I’m into it. Sure, corporate still sucks, it always has, it always will. But I don’t give a shit. I don’t care if Clear Channel wants to buy everything. Let them buy everything. I don’t give a shit.
DEAL: So we were rehearsing for these shows. And then Charles was at the airport leaving, so he calls me from the airport: the Shrek people just called the manager. They wanted to see if we want to do the song for the title sequence for Shrek 2. I go, “Oh, that sounds like fun.” You know, Joey has a kid now and stuff. So Charles said, “I’ll try and work up something in Portland, you guys try to work up something.” And Joe has a Pro Tools studio in his basement, and he lives really close by so me and him were getting Starbucks together. So I would just pick up the Starbucks and go to his house. And he got the videotape from it, the title sequence that they wanted us to do. And Joe had done soundtracks, so he had a whole system. So I was playing Joe a couple things, licks that I had. And there was one that we worked up, and when Charles had come down for something he listened to that. He had something, it was cute, I liked his, too. But David and Joe and Charles were all there and they thought mine was a poppier more kid-friendly thing, so we kinda worked it up a little bit in Joe’s Pro Tools thing. And then the Shrek 2 people gave us some money to go into a demo place to demo it. So we did. And that demo is what’s coming out [the iTunes-only single “Bam Thwok”]. And they didn’t take it.
In the late ’90s in New York City I had found this discarded book on the floor and I’m always looking for paper. There was a lot of it that was not written on. It was almost like a black book, like a graph person’s book but it was from a child. That’s how it first began. I was using it to write—Kelley was sitting at the apartment and they told me they wanted to use that piece of music and I thought, oh, crap, now I have to write lyrics, oh, well, here’s some paper, and I kind of looked through some rows and found some of these old words sitting there that I thought were kind of funny and “Bam Thwok” was one of them. It was a story about a party with the monsters or something. On other pages there are some old drawings of a ladybug and stuff like that. But that’s how it started. And then I just wanted to keep it kind of clean, though not too condescendingly stupid and clean. But they didn’t want it.
LOVERING: That was our first studio effort in a while, it was good. And again, I was in the same boat, hearing a song that I had just heard the day before, and it gets frustrating for me, because I like things to be right, and it just grinds on me when I’m put under—I mean, that’s just the way it is, I just have to adapt to it, and I have. But it would just be convenient for me if I really knew the song, it makes me feel better that I know what I’m gonna play and I know I’ll put down what is my best. Not that it wasn’t good, but . . . It’s very unlike us. I mean, it’s a Pixies song but it’s still unlike a Pixies song.
GEIGER: On the second leg of the U.S. tour Charles pulled me aside, it was kind of cute. Everybody was taking it easy, “Let’s see what happens, see how it works.” Obviously, the success was more than even bullish people thought, myself included—it was overwhelming. So we’re all hopeful, but Charles kind of pulled me into the dressing room one day, nobody else was there, and he goes, “Look, I don’t really want to tell anybody, but we are back together.” And I go, “Yeah, and?” And he goes, “No, really back together.” And I go, “Yeah, no shit.” And he was all sheepish, “I just wanted you to know.” I was like, great, it’s fucking rocking. And we’re booking a summer (2005) tour for them. And there’s a lot of good stuff and we’ll see what happens with making a record. And I’m thrilled they’re playing again because I want them to take their time before they make more music. Do things seem different? Yeah, they were happy and sober. Everybody was sober, including Kim, which is the big differentiator, and they’re happy because, again, things happened fast. Well, now you’re away from it, people are either not successful, or in ill health, or financially not successful, or solo career is struggling, and then comes overwhelming success and you’re 40 and you have your loved ones and your family’s set. You’re not being rushed and you have perspective on oh my God, I missed it all as a kid because of all this shit, I’m going to enjoy it and revel in it this time. So the answer is fuck yes.
DEAL: Oh, it’s so good, it’s so nice. So much goodwill comin’ out.
THOMPSON: I forgot how much I like this band, how much I like being in this band.*
In the end, 185,000 people came out to see the Pixies’ reunion in 2004. The fifty-plus-date tour grossed $6.5 million.†
*Marc Spitz, “Life to the Pixies,” Spin, September 2004.
*Chis Riemenschneider, “Concert review: Reunited Pixies Take Wilkins Arena Head On,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, April 14, 2004.
*Marc Spitz, “Life to the Pixies,” Spin, September 2004.
†Jill Kipnis, “Pixies Return to Hit Markets They Missed,” Billboard, May 14, 2005.