| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Cheeseman1000 |
Posted - 08/10/2006 : 04:31:45
For the record, I saw the interview via a link at Largehearted Boy. The interview is here: http://suicidegirls.com/interviews/Frank+Black/
Daniel Robert Epstein: What are you up?
Frank Black: I’m just driving my son Julian to camp.
DRE:How old is he?
FB:He’s eight.
DRE:Does he know how cool you are?
FB:Yeah he does [laughs]. He likes to be around sometimes when the press is involved especially photographers. I think he might have ambitions of his own.
DRE:Does he play music yet?
FB:No, we’re going to drama camp today just to give you an idea. He dances and stuff but he is in the Pixies movie.
DRE:I was really surprised when I popped your new album in and found out how mellow it is.
FB:What do you mean? I’ve done mellow before.
DRE:Sure, but I was just surprised that every track seemed mellow. Not in a bad way or anything.
FB:I don’t know, I mean, I’m just, I just feel that you. Well you know…you’re right, it’s mellow. It’s mellow [laughs].
DRE:Did you just not want to put something on there that wouldn’t be as recognizable as a Frank Black song?
FB:No, it doesn’t really work like that. I just write a bunch of songs. The Nashville guys rock more like the Rolling Stones than they realize. But the difference is that they’re all of the same vintage, the same generation. Heck we had Ian McLagan who was almost a Rolling Stone himself. But a lot of these guys, especially the American guys, play with a certain amount of restraint. It’s just the way they play rock music as opposed to people like the Rolling Stones who play things a little more blown out, a little more amped up. So if I like something a bit more restrained or a bit on the mellower side, I think of that situation as extra restrained or extra mellow. But to generalize what they’re actually playing I don’t think it’s dainty or anything like that.
DRE:Right, it is not going to be played on any soft rock stations if that’s what you thought I was saying [laughs].
FB:It is that end of the palette. It has a certain je ne se quoi. Pick something from the really rock end of my career like the record Doolittle. In reference to those records, yes there are songs that are played in an up tempo aggressive style but mixed in among those songs are also mellow songs and songs that are downright silly. So your observation is right, there are not any heavy rock songs on this album. Maybe except a song like Johnny Barleycorn or something but to me a song like End of The Summer is more of a Leonard Cohen-y vibe. Those kinds of songs are truly the heaviest of all. Leonard Cohen doesn’t have to yell at you to get his point across. He just has to say it very calmly and very coolly. It’s macho in a much different way.
DRE:Do you feel like you’re less aggressive personally?
FB:One would hope. One would hope that as a person when you’re 40 years old that you don’t have the same knee jerk spontaneous stupid reactions that you had when you were 25. So hopefully you gain some worldly wisdom and that’s why when you meet an older person and when I say older I mean someone 50 years old and they’re flying off the handle and aggressive and intense, it’s extra awkward [laughs]. You just go “Wow, what’s up with that dude?” If you’re at the mall and you run into some older person who has got all this aggression it feels wrong. As opposed to some younger doofus who belongs to a fraternity. You cut him a lot of slack because you just go, “There’s a guy who doesn’t know a thing about life.”
DRE:For your next project will you swing the other way and do something more aggressive?
FB:Well I don’t have a lot of vision. I just write songs and they come out the way they come out. But I suppose that there might be something in the air before I start to make a record. I might go, “Yeah, I think it’s time to rock out a little bit” or “I think it’s time to not worry about whether or not it’s going to rock and let these dudes play what they’re going to play.” But you don’t necessarily just sit around and make a concentrated effort. You don’t analyze everything that far, you just do it. It’s still rigid and music is still rubbing the muse so you don’t want to pigeonhole the muse.
DRE:I read that you recorded this album in Nashville. Was that important to get certain people to play on the album or did you want a Nashville mindset?
FB:Certainly the engineers and the studios itself have a certain atmosphere which is different than say, LA, London or New York. It is not so much about city but it’s indirectly about the city. Making records is not about ambience. You’re in a room that has four walls and a roof. Frequently it’s an industrial space. In the case of Nashville there are studios in other people’s homes, which is not that uncommon these days, but whatever ambience is at Cowboy Jack’s place is because of Cowboy Jack not because it’s downtown Nashville. Maybe it would be different if I were in New Orleans or something. For me, making records is very much about work. Sometimes the studio will be prepare for your arrival and the assistants will roll out the oriental rugs and start lighting incense and be burning Jesus candles to try to create a vibe, an atmosphere. Some people like working in atmospheres like that but as soon as I arrive, I go “What the heck is going on here? Blow out all these candles and turn on some frigging lights.” I don’t want ambience, I want the ambience to be in my record and I need to see what I’m doing here so I can capture it with my microphone plus the incense dries out your throat. The mood is on the record. It is in the way the people play. It’s not external stimuli, in fact, the less external stimuli you have the better. The less drugs and alcohol the better, maybe some coffee but you don’t want to have lots of stimuli. The muse is a mysterious thing, but then there is also all the practical mechanics of using all of your muscle memory and your knowledge about the way that you play, about the way that the other people play and keeping that heightened. Long gone are the days where the band sits around and says, “Hold on we need another five minutes with the bong here before we can get in the mood to play our art.” That’s just a crock of shit.
So you start to have a more serious approach. A lot of people say, “Oh yeah, you’ve been recording in Paris. There must be something about that city that really helps it be creative.” I would want it to be that way like it is in the movies but truly when you arrive you could be anywhere. There’s the tape machine, there’s the bathroom, there’s the drum room, there’s the control booth so it’s got nothing to do with Paris. You got to be tuned into the record.
DRE:I read that you did the last Pixies tour to pay for Faster Man, is that true?
FB:No. well I guess in a literal sense, maybe. I make money from a variety of sources but I can’t say I’ve ever done a tour to pay for something specifically. You just try to run around and make as much as you can. Sometimes you have good years and sometimes you have bad years.
DRE:You mentioned the Rolling Stones before and very often it seems they will record a new album just to get out there on tour.
FB:They go through a tour to make money and they don’t necessarily need to make a new record. But if the Rolling Stones don’t put out a new record that maybe just a 100,000 people are going to go buy it’s symbolically bad because you’re not a viable premium band, you’re county fair. That’s what The Pixies have to do at this point, we’re at that junction where we’ve got to decide if we a creative viable force now or are we county fair. Right now we’re still getting away with playing a few gigs under the guise of a reunion. That’s worked great but it can only last so long.
DRE:Can you clarify whether or not The Pixies are doing any new work?
FB:The thing is, I can say things and people can interpret what I say however they usually have some preconceived notion that they want to be confirmed. So if I say “Gee, I don’t know if we’re going to make a record.” Then, The Pixies Will Never Record Again is the headline. If I say we might record then the headline is Pixies to Record a New Album. I’m not a politician or Kofi Annan but you guys or your editors, if you’re in the mood, will just make stuff up. Even if it’s not in the interview. It happens to me all the time.
DRE:I’m sure it does.
FB:The British are the worst of all. The other day I did an interview and they even had the nerve to print the interview in a question and answer format to give the illusion that this is what I said verbatim. They actually printed all my responses verbatim, which would be fine, but the clever part was they didn’t change what I said; they changed what the questions were. That cast my answers in a whole different light. I had been thinking about writing to the editor saying “Shame on you! I know I’m just some rock dude and you’re just some goofy rock magazine, but you’re giving everyone the impression that I’m responding to question x but you didn’t give me question x you gave me question y. You’re deceiving everybody. You could have just asked me the question and now you’ll never know the real answer.”
It could be termed as a “juicy question” but they didn’t say it to me in a really juicy way, they phrased it to me in a dull way. So I gave them a little answer when they could have had the juicy answer to the juicy question. Now they’ll never know because they didn’t have the guts to just ask me the question because they assumed that I would get all thrown in a tizzy and hang the phone up or something. That isn’t true. I’ve only hung a phone up once in my life on a journalist and I’ve never restricted a journalist ever from asking me anything.
DRE:Would you like to do more Pixies material?
FB:I would love to.
DRE:What do the other people in the band want to do?
FB:The main thing the band is wrestling with is that we haven’t put out a record in 12 years but the records that we did put out are held in fairly high esteem. They’re all still in print and you don’t want to mess with that necessarily. You don’t want to screw it up by putting out a bad record or even a record that’s really great but everyone says it’s bad. So there’s a lot of hesitation, if there weren’t a lot of hesitation maybe we would have made a record three years ago. But here it is three years into the reunion and we’re going “Yeah, I think I’d like to make a new record. Should we?” We haven’t had any reason to make a new record until about now.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
 Hail to the king, baby! |
| 7 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Ziggy |
Posted - 08/10/2006 : 15:40:05
Well I presume it was last month's Uncut interview, in the UK. Done in a rather clumsy Q+A style, where as the above article would suggest, the answers and questions weren't exactly in perfect harmony.
And the NME, of course, is the guilty culprit behind the 'Pixies Will Never Record Again!!!!!!!' hyperbole. |
| Broken Face |
Posted - 08/10/2006 : 15:36:08
quote:
Originally posted by hammerhands
The Man is such a great interview(ee)!
'Long gone are the days where the band sits around and says, “Hold on we need another five minutes with the bong here before we can get in the mood to play our art.”'
The art of free dope is gone.
Somewhere, Skatealex is crying (and trying to score some weed).
-Brian - http://bvsrant.blogspot.com |
| Carl |
Posted - 08/10/2006 : 12:28:31
Thanks Cheesy, great stuff!
Join the Cult Of Pob! And don't forget to listen to the Pobcast! |
| hammerhands |
Posted - 08/10/2006 : 11:06:27
The Man is such a great interview(ee)!
'Long gone are the days where the band sits around and says, “Hold on we need another five minutes with the bong here before we can get in the mood to play our art.”'
The art of free dope is gone. |
| toeknee |
Posted - 08/10/2006 : 09:42:27
Which interview is he referring to? |
| fbc |
Posted - 08/10/2006 : 09:09:28
and another fine interview to read, the more frank the merrier round these parts. thanks for the post, cheeseman. |
| Ziggy |
Posted - 08/10/2006 : 05:35:13
Ha, that must be the Uncut 'interview' that Frank is referring to. That question about a 'relationship with Kim' seemed a little odd, at the time.
Nice to see the positive mood about the Pixies. |
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