Pixies legend on supporting Pearl Jam, classic album tour and the Aussie band that influenced them

The Pixies have been wowing audiences supporting Pearl Jam and will return for a classic album tour next year, and singer Black Francis reveals the Aussie band that paved the way for them.

Like the Velvet Underground before them, US veterans the Pixies have become as revered for the bands they influenced as they have for their own trailblazing brand of indie rock.

Their famous loud-quiet-loud sound on a celebrated run of five albums in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s has long been seen as a stepping stone to the grunge sound that bands such as Nirvana and Pearl Jam – whom are Pixies are supporting on their rave-reviewed stadium tour of Australia – brought into the mainstream.

But according to founder and front man Charles Thompson – aka Black Francis or Frank Black – it was a cult punk band from Australia that helped set him and his bandmates on the road to becoming out of the most revered bands of their generation.

Just as Thompson and bandmates Joey Santiago, Dave Lovering and Kim Deal, were starting the Pixies, and before they had even played any shows, he used to regularly go to music club The Rathskeller in his native Boston to see Aussie punk rockers The Celibate Rifles play whenever they would roll through town.

And their electric live show and no-frills work ethic on the gruelling US rock circuit made him think that just maybe, by sticking to their vision and paying their dues, his fledging band could go somewhere.

“They came all the way from Australia, were driving around in a van and playing to 50 people, 100 people at the club doing the real DIY punk rock kind of tour,” Thompson recalls.

“And I was always really impressed that they kept coming back and I was like ‘well, that’s what you gotta do’. I understood that they were committed to it. And I was committed to the idea, but they illustrated it.

“Not in a way that was glamorous at all – you could see that they were tired, you could see that they hadn’t bathed in a while, but there they were in full spirit delivering their set, and delivering their sermon, and it was inspiring. I was like ‘f---, if they can do it, I can do it’.”

The first iteration of the Pixies never made it Down Under. Though they toured tirelessly, the full day of travel to Australia from the East Coast of the US always seemed just a bit too far.

“We were doing these very long tours, and then in the middle the manager would say ‘so we got an offer go to Australia in November’ and this is July or whatever, and you’ve already been on tour since February, so I was always like ‘nah, I’m not going – this tour is too long and it’s too far and I’m sorry’ and I would always bail out,” says Thompson. “It was too far and it was always offered at the last minute and I was always tired and cranky and I didn’t want to go.”

Australian rock band The Celibate Rifes inspired the Pixies frontman.

After their initial burst of creativity with the five albums Come On Pilgrim, Surfa Rosa, Doolittle, Bossa Nova and Trompe Le Monde in as many years, creative differences and internal tension saw them break up in 1993 and it wasn’t until the following year that Thompson finally made the trip with his post Pixies band, Frank Black and the Catholics. It was like starting from scratch but he didn’t mind.

“I played some good gigs here but I also played some very, very humble gigs, that is to say to very small audiences,” he says with a laugh. “I remember one in particular I played some working man’s hall, old-school, English style. Like, third floor Johnny and Mary are getting married, second floor, the veterans are getting together for some Bingo and then we’ve got Frank Black playing on the first floor. So I feel all right, like I paid my dues.”

Thompson says he has had an oddly similar feeling of having to prove themselves on the Pearl Jam tour, playing stadiums to crowds of more than 50,000. Although that band’s front man Eddie Vedder has long been a fan and there were plenty who have showed up early to see the Pixies play, Thompson was acutely aware that it’s not his crowd. Nevertheless, he always relishes the challenge of “playing to large crowds that don’t know who the hell I am” because it gives him flashbacks to the naivety of the band’s early years.

Pixies supporting Pearl Jam on the Gold Coast in November 2024. Picture: Simone Gorman-Clark

“With the Pixies we get a lot of one-songers,” he says. “They might know Where Is My Mind or something but (you get) the feeling of ‘I might blow it tonight – I might completely lose them’. If you’re playing to your own crowd, you have to be pretty p***-poor to completely lose your crowd. To have them boo you off or whatever you have to basically be a really just a falling down drunk. And even then they might love that.”

Since reforming in 2004 with a triumphant set at Coachella, the Pixies have been regular visitors here, both performing new material from the five albums they have now recorded since getting back together and recreating their original five albums live in full. In 2010, it was the turn of their biggest success, 1989’s Doolittle – home to classics such as Monkey’s Gone to Heaven, Debaser and Here Comes Your Man – and they returned in 2020 just as the pandemic was about to shut live music down to power through the first two records, Come On Pilgrim and Surfer Rosa.

Now it’s the turn of the fourth and fifth albums, with a tour next year that will see them play two nights in capital cities around the country. In the first show they will play 1990s Bossa Nova from start to finish, followed by 1991’s Trompe Le Monde, and the second night will feature this year’s release, The Night The Zombies Came, as well as a greatest hits set.

As to why those early albums are still in high demand, Thompson says that while he’s proud of the output of the second incarnation of the band, there’s “a certain kind of je ne sais quoi about our first five albums that was kind of precious”.

“I understand why they are held on a little bit of a podium or something,” he says. “It worked out for us. We put out five records then we broke up and people went ‘Yeah, they were really that good’ and so there’s a certain distinction about those records.”

Charles Thompson – aka Black Francis – of Pixies supporting Pearl Jam on the Gold Coast in November 2024. Picture: Simone Gorman-Clark

And he says, even in the era of streaming, there’s still something unique about the long-playing album format that means audiences love to hear them reproduced in full.

“The LP somehow still has a special little distinction,” he says. “It’s a snapshot of a season. That was his divorce record. That was the record where they were hooked on smack. That was the record where it really kind of came together. That was the record where they were all fighting, but still somehow the music shone through that the chemistry was still there.

“We’re not the first band to do a legacy LP tour. I don’t think a lot of people were doing it when we first did it for Doolittle 15 years ago or something but it’s become regular and people like that.”

Pixies play on the following dates in 2025. Fremantle Prison November 8 and 9; Hordern Pavilion Sydney, November 13 and 14; Fortitude Music Hall Brisbane, November 16 and 17; Festival Hall, Melbourne, November 19 and 20. Tickets on sale Tuesday at 1pm. Details at livenation.com.au

Originally published as Pixies legend on supporting Pearl Jam, classic album tour and the Aussie band that influenced them