Gary Walker
PIXIES
The Pixies, circa Rosa (l to r): Joey Santiago, Black Francis, Kim Deal and David Lovering
Millicent Harvey
A thrilling wave of mutilation, voyeurism, violence, incest, superheroes, venereal disease, primal screaming, Catholic guilt and topless flamenco dancers… Billy Corgan called it “the one that made me go ‘holy shit’”, PJ Harvey gasped that it “blew my mind” and David Bowie said it was the best music made in the 80s. Kurt Cobain admitted to ripping it off and said of first hearing Surfer Rosa he “should have been in that band”. Pixies’ debut album turned 30 this year and remains as timeless, dark, surreal, unsettling and captivating as it was when four goofy kids emerged from Boston’s Q Division Studios with a scowling Steve Albini and the master tapes in hand, three decades ago.
In December 1987, the old order reigned over the album charts, with Rick Astley, UB40, Michael Jackson, Paul McCartney, George Michael and Fleetwood Mac dominating as Christmas approached. But a new disathected, exciting alternative wave was about to break, led by Charles formpson – aka Black Francis; Philippines-born guitar mangler Joey Santiago; Mrs John Murphy – aka Kim Deal, and drummer David Lovering. It would lead ultimately to Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead and the rise of grunge – a revolutionary breed hell-bent on washing away the cloying excesses of 80s rawk and replacing it with something provocative, urgent and raw.
To uncover the roots of Surfer Rosa, though, we first have to dig back to the 17-song Purple Tape demo produced by Gary Smith and recorded and mixed in a total of just six days in March 1987 at Boston’s Fort Apache Studios, using $1,000 borrowed from Francis’ father. the band’s then-manager, Ken Goes, sent the tape to a string of US and European record labels without sparking interest, before 4AD boss Ivo Watts-Russell bit. Popular legend has it that Watts-Russell was initially unsure, but was encouraged to persevere with the tape by his thengirlfriend. Yet he later recalled of the Purple Tape: “I absolutely adored it from day one, because my day one was marching around New York with it in a Walkman. It was very exciting. It was the obvious things, Joey’s guitar playing and the Spanish aspect to it.”
Surfer Rosa’s iconic album artwork was a collaboration between 4AD’s Vaughan Oliver and photographer Simon Larbalestier
Bassist and vocalist Kim Deal co-wrote Surfer Rosa’s only single, the anthemic Gigantic
WEIRD AT MY SCHOOL
The label’s creative driving force, Vaughan Oliver, was dispatched to a gig at Rhode Island School Of Design to check out Watts-Russell’s potential new charges. Fresh from creating the new edition’s artwork, Oliver tells Long Live Vinyl: “Hearing them for the first time was the Purple Tape, and I didn’t know what Ivo was interested in there. I didn’t get it, and I wouldn’t have signed them, but by chance or coincidence, I was going to the States on a That-swap and I was there just at the time Ivo was considering them. He said: ‘Go and see them’, and I was blown away. then I met them, and I reported back and said: ‘I’m on board’. there started a 30-year relationship.”
The 4AD boss othered to put out his pick of eight songs from the Pur pl e Tape, remastered, as the mini-album Come On Pilgrim, named ather a Larry Norman lyric that reminded Francis of Billy Pilgrim from Kurt Vonnegut Jr’s Slaughterhouse-Five. In a label who’d released albums by Cocteau Twins, Nick Cave’s the Birthday Party and their New England friends flrowing Muses, Pixies found a welcoming home for their uncompromising brand of surreal, sexualised sonic fury. Decompressing on a hotel bed in Des Moines Iowa, two weeks into the band’s current world tour, Francis’ voice fizzes with enthusiasm as he tells Long Live Vinyl: “It was a perfect fit. 4AD was not all about the kind of mainstream popular music that MTV had become. I remember when Vaughan Oliver sent me the Come On Pilgrim sleeve mock-up. I was working in a warehouse, just down the road from the warehouse where Joey worked in Boston Harbour. Opening up the packaging and seeing that sepia-toned photograph of the hairybacked guy… I’d just dropped out of college, I was really into art-film, I’d discovered David Lynch, so I was all about this kind of artsy thing. I didn’t have much of an artsy vocabulary, but I just had an inkling that this is what I am, and the world I want to occupy, so when I got that sleeve, it was art with a capital A, and I quit my job that day. It was perfect. the hairy-backed guy…”
THE 4AD CONNECTION
The connection with the British label was similarly immediate for Santiago: “they were great. I don’t know what would have happened if we’d got into a typical major record label vibe, but they were really artsy and creative, we could tell we were going to get along with them.”