Interview with Frank Black
First part of interview is inaudible

FB: It’s gonna be fun – we’re all going to go up and ‘Hey here’s my song, perhaps you remember this one.’ I actually know quite a lot of the guys in the house band cos I’ve been making a couple of records in Nashville and they’ve been on by records. They’re all really wonderful players so yeah, I’m really looking forward to the gig.

BB: What kind of stuff will you be playing – your own work or will you be jamming a bit?

FB: I’m really looking forward to playing a few Pixies songs – that’ll be interesting to hear them as they’ve been arranged by Muffle Shoals or Mowtown Sal or whatever. A lot of the guys are from country but there are other genres of course going on in that part of the world; a lot of soul and r‘n’b. So yeah, I looking forward to it, you know, getting groovy with these guys.

BB: Are you rehearsing before you play or are you just waiting until the event?

FB: No, we’re rehearsing in Nashville.

BB: Is it nice to go back to Nashville after having recorded a couple of albums there?

FB: Yeah, I’ve been here a couple of days now. Coincidently I’m in the early part of my tour so we’re taking a few days out from the tour to do this gig. It’s a very pleasant city.

BB: I’m looking forward to going to Tennessee – it’ll be my first time in America.

FB: It’s a great place to visit on your first trip to America. Most Europeans go to Manhattan or Hollywood and it is America but only a snapshot. Like if an American went to Piccadilly and thought ‘Oh, so this is what England is all about.’ Yes, but only part of it, you know. Tennessee is representative. It’s realistic because it’s not just country. It’s at the crossroads of a lot of American styles, you know; soul, r‘n’b. rock, gospel, bluegrass. There’s a lot of all that going on around. It’s kind of in the middle. Well, not in the middle, more East than middle but it’s the old middle – before we pushed all of the Indians out.

BB: It’s your first solo tour for a while. How’s it been going?

FB: It’s been about three years. It’s going good – so far I’ve only really been out and played by myself in acoustic shows I’ve been doing the last few months or so.

BB: Is it quite different from playing with the band? Do you prepare differently? Do you get nervous or do you like having the stage to yourself?

FB: It’s very nerve-wracking but it’s also very casual. If I forget how to play a song I can crack a few bad jokes and people seem to be quiet forgiving.

BB: It must be nice after doing the big festivals to do the intimate gigs again.

FB: Well, it’s all show biz to me, whether it’s a big gig or a smaller one – it ‘s all about entertainment, but yeah, a variety is good. If it’s all one or the other it can get boring. It’s good to have different venues, different bands, different songs.

BB: Will you be taking the guys you recorded with you out on the road as well?

FB: Yeah a couple of them. Two of the guys from the band will be in the Jack Daniel’s band, a guy called Blaine Jarvis, a guy called Billie Block - my drummer on tour, I think he’s the percussionist in the Jack Daniel’s band.

BB: You must have quite a good rapport with the guys seeing as you play with them in both bands.

FB: Yeah, well I like to think so. We’re all just musicians, we don’t want to fight or anything. That’s really the problem with bands – because bands are frequently compared to marriages, which I guess is appropriate, you know. With a band that plays a line-up for years and years there are up and downs. Of course a lot of the negatives linked to a band are not there when you’re playing with people on a less permanent basis – like when you’re just playing with them for one tour, or for a record or in this case just for a gig. In case it’s really nice – it’s a little more pure because in a sense it really is all about the music. Logistically it can be about nothing else. With a band you go through years of experiences together, which has it’s positive sides but of course the negative sides are that you drive each other crazy.

It’s a wonderful opportunity. Technically this gig is a corporate gig – that’s what we would call it in the business. But I’m trying to think of another corporate gig I’ve done and can’t think of one but a lot of corporate gigs really are corporate – like they’re at a convention centre at 4 0’clock in the afternoon with a lot of florescent lights, people with name tags. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s work – and people want entertainment in a variety of situations. I guess what I’m leading up to is that this gig feels less corporate. We’re actually doing out to Nashville to rehearse and we’re gonna be playing for people that have come in from the UK. It feels more like a party.

I’m hoping to pick up a complimentary bottle of Jack Daniels for my friend Reed Paley [sp.] who’s opening up for me on the tour.

BB: Going back to your recent album – it’s really calming, which is quite a surprise, and very personal. Is it like a mellowing with age kind of thing?

FB: Yeah. It’s the kind of music that it is. When you’re playing with Spooner Oldham and Steve Cropper it’s not really about aggression, it’s about restraint, and a groove, and subtlety, and grace. So those kind of things tend to be that you sing, perform and even write in a mellow way. So yeah, like I said, it’s not about angst. There may be angst but it’s not angst that leads to frustration but angst that leads to contemplation. Punk-rock is about frustration and anger, that’s not to say it doesn’t exist also in mellow music but then it’s more poignant.

BB: Did you write any of it with the other players in mind?

FB: Well sure, when you hear you’re going to play with guys like that. For me I go into a space when I’m writing. It’s not like I do anything in a conscious way, I don’t change my writing, because I want to stay true to myself. And no one wants that – they don’t want a hack or a fake. Having said that there is a psychological factor with playing with Tennessee guys because you want to be appropriate. You want to give them something that they can hang their hat on. You got to throw them a bone and give them something they can cosy up to. It’s a big part of country music, sorta keeping it real, I suppose.

BB: Was it easier to do this album after Honeycomb?

FB: I don’t know if it was easier. No, it was harder cos there were a lot more musicians involved and complicated arrangements spread out over time, different sections. I guess I found it more challenging to put together. Not any less enjoyable by any means.

BB: And the album you’ve ended up with – is that the kind of album you imagined you’d end up with?

FB: Oh I don’t imagine. If I’m gong to use my imagination I’d use it for other things, which generally have nothing to do with music. It’s much more in the moment. Like if I write a song it’s like after a few minutes I go ‘Oh, there’s a song, that wasn’t there before. Oh, I think I’ll go and record this at the studio’. Some people do think like that but I think it’s also valid to not be like that and not have a lot of vision and analysis. I like to think that some of it has something to do with the year I was born, which according to the Chinese zodiac, makes me a snake. A snake feel’s his way. A rooster can probably see that bit further, or a monkey because he can climb up into the tree and can look way down the road, but a snake just feels his way, sliding on his belly. It’s much more spontaneous and much more about feel. Although I think they do tend to think they’re more intelligent than they are. They’re known to be intelligent – but not as much as they think they are.

BB: We’re you ever surprised by the end product?

FB: Oh all the time. That’s the thing about recording music, even if you go ‘ Oh, let’s make this make this kind of Led Zeppelin-y’, it never turns out like that. I learnt that a long time ago and so I never try to make things sound like this or that. Let’s just play it, decide on a tempo perhaps and take it from there. It allows for musicians to really soar. We’re not following some mathematical, architectural thing where the map says go here and go there. Usually when you play a song you get a little bit of a map, you know, I’m not a jazz player. But it’s loose enough to let the vision or the lack thereof take hold, and the chance for a good musician to soar above it. It’s just a reference point; it gives them a reference point from which they can go beyond to some mysterious space, and it’s in that mysterious space that magic happens. That’s where the muse lives. It’s intangible. It’s in the dimension of pixies and elves – it’s mysterious.

You don’t really know what’s going to happen although there are forces dictating, there are other things leading you on, but it’s that you have to submit to those things. You have to yield to that if you want to get the special reward, which in my business is called ‘rock history’. A lot of musicians will do a studio session before they put down a take. Someone in the room, like an ancient producer may say, ‘Alright let’s just make some history.’ Records that people remember become part of cultural history, and you wanna be that good. You wanna be as good as Little Richard doing Tooty Fruity, you know. You wanna make rock and roll history. You want to ring the bell!

BB: You want to be remembered.

FB: It’s not so much about you – yeah, you get a lot of the glory, it’s your mug on the record or whatever but it’s also just about that mysterious space that you want to show everyone else. That little record is proof to everyone else that you got into that space.

BB: You’re talking about wishing to inspire other people but are you at all surprised about how referential musicians still are to both The Pixies and to yourself?

FB: Well I’m appreciative but I’m not surprised, that’s not because I’m so full of myself it’s because that’s the way it works. One person inspires another. If you make a good record hopefully other people will listen to it and hope to do the same thing too.

BB: How did Loud, Quiet, Loud come about?

FB: I don’t really look for this stuff – I’m just a songwriter; I write songs, I play gigs, I do recording sessions. Everything else comes by way of a phone call from a manager saying ‘Hey, someone wants to do this with you. I think it’s a bad idea or a good idea.’ So you just go ‘Yeah, okay.’ I don’t think we had that response to the film – I think were a lot more suspicious but we eventually conceded, but we gave them a bad time.

BB: Was it difficult to have someone filming you?

FB: It was difficult to have a guy with a big camera and a giant light bulb standing in front of you while you’re doing your stuff, you know.

BB: But it is nice to have stuff captured for posterity?

FB: No, I don’t care about that. You know, if it was for posterity I’d have directed it myself but that’s a lot of work. It’s an opportunity for me to solidify my brand name to support my thing called ‘music’. It isn’t that I view it disdainfully but realistically that’s what it’s about. There’s no spiritual, important reason why there was a film made about me and my band. It’s good publicity and so you do things like that. It may not be totally about your art – like they want to use your music for a commercial. Am I selling out? I’m supporting myself as best as I can, let’s face it, when you’re in the music business you have your good years and your bad, some people only have bad. Nothing’s guaranteed. It’s a snaky little business. I like it but it’s hard to get money off people. There’s people looking to give you publicity but then they’re also looking to cut you down by saying ‘You suck’, you know. You’re dealing with all that criticism all the time. It drives you crazy. But then a lot of people say ‘Well, it drives me crazy but it’s better than my last job.’ And of course there are a lot of perks too, there’s lots of wonderful things that happen in the business too. It’s a great way to live.

BB: And of course the corporate things can help pay for the non-corporate things, the things you care more about.

Well exactly, my entire solo career can be seen that way. With my old band, Pixies, that success way back then has allowed me to stay employed as a musician and I don’t necessarily have to worry about getting a hit or selling lots of records. It’s fun just to make music and to rub elbows with all the other Nashville cats.

BB: Were you worried with the DVD coming out this year that people would think Pixies would be releasing new stuff?

FB: They’re unrelated. They’re just DVDs and if people want to buy them and are interested in seeing video footage of me on stage, or in the case of the documentary picking your nose backstage, then that’s good for me as it represents a revenue stream. People, in a sweet, naive way, are under the impression that all musicians - be they soulful artists, be they rock stars - all musicians, take their baths in champagne. It’s just not like that, it’s a lot of hard work and there are a lot of people taking pieces out of your paycheck. It’s always admirable when artists say ‘You know that’s beneath me, that has nothing to do with my art and I don’t want to participate in it.’ I applaud that sort of thing and if you can be a really pure artist then touché. Most artists find themselves in a position where they say, ‘You know what, it would help my family and friends or whatever if I sold a few t-shirts, if I do that re-mix album… Whoa, whoa, whoa! [pause] my two year old son just literally charged me with two knives. Two sharp knives actually; he must have opened the dishwasher and this is what’s happened.

[Frank disappears to get rid of the knives – you can hear him recounting what happened to his wife while laughing.]

That was really funny, a naked little boy running at you with two bread knives! He loves the dishwasher, if we don’t empty it then I guess it’s our fault when he goes in there.

BB: That’s a bizarre fascination!

FB: He doesn’t really care for toys – just electronics, knives, wires, you know. Soft cuddly things, he doesn’t really care about.

BB: Sounds like you’re in for an interesting childhood with him.