The Pixies' Joey Santiago Reflects on 'Doolittle' 25th Anniversary

The Pixies today (photo: Rolling Stone)

Nearly three decades ago, the Pixies burst onto the alternative rock scene with music that would change the course of indie rock for years to come. Frontman Black Francis, guitarist Joey Santiago, bassist Kim Deal, and drummer David Lovering created a unique sound laden with start-stop dynamics, distinctive basslines, melodic guitar hooks, and Francis’s piercing wails that set them apart from other bands of their era.

Laying the foundation for ’90s grunge and bands like Nirvana, who readily admitted to ripping off their loud-quiet-loud approach, the Pixies’ sophomore album, Doolittle, solidified their place in alternative music as well as mainstream culture.

To mark the 25th anniversary of the seminal album, the band is releasing Pixies: Doolittle 25, a three-disc set that features several previously unreleased B-sides, Peel Sessions, and demos, in addition to the original Doolittle tracks. Yahoo Music caught up with Santiago to discuss the landmark anniversary, being in the Pixies then and now, and the effects of Deal’s relatively recent departure from the band.

After quipping that he and his family baked a cake with 25 candles to celebrate Doolittle’s anniversary, Santiago admits that he never imagined the band would still be a vital entity a quarter-century later, making new albums and playing sold-out shows around the world.

"You never know what’s gonna happen 25 years from now," says Santiago. "I’m not that guy who has a five-year plan. I was just hoping [it would happen], that’s it. But I never thought it would happen."

While Santiago recognizes the Pixies’ influence on other musicians, the most important thing to him is whether they have inspired people to pick up instruments and start their own bands.

"When people say [we’ve influenced other bands] I’m just glad we inspired people to start a band and write a song," he says. "They don’t have to sound like the Pixies. When you’re listening to it and you go to a live show and you say, ‘I wanna do that.’ That’s enough of an influence, [inspiring] people to jam out, start a band. You do it for a love of art."

Doolittle followed on the heels of the Pixies’ debut album Surfer Rosa, which critics praised but never managed to make it onto the charts. Their sophomore release, however, spawned two of the Pixies’ biggest commercial hits, “Here Comes Your Man” and “Monkey Gone to Heaven.” It’s fascinating to listen to the demos of these songs, noting how similar they sound to the album’s final versions but with a more stripped-down, raw edge.

"A lot of those [original] guitar parts and arrangements were kept," Santiago says of the demos. "Some of them were changed, but a majority of them were kept because we had worked them out already. We went to a practice space and [it’s like] we were arranging a flower arrangement, and that’s what we came up with and thought was perfect. And it made it to the albums. That means we were damn good producers. People should perceive that as how natural we sound. When we practiced, that’s what we whittled it down to. We really worked on sounding simple."

It’s been a bittersweet year for the Pixies, who released their first new significant body of work since 1991 in the form of 2014’s Indie Cindy, an album they originally released as a series of EPs. They also played several sold-out shows at major venues around the world. But just before the band dropped the new music, bassist Deal announced she was leaving the band.

"It was a big negative and we struggled to find a silver lining in it," Santiago says of Deal’s departure. "We put our heads down and had this work ethic and it worked out. We have this New England work ethic and it paid off. We sold out the Hollywood Bowl and played four nights at the Sydney Opera House, and it was probably our best year ever. We overcame a very big obstacle, but Kim is a very missed part of the Pixies."

Although Deal never officially gave a reason for her departure, many speculate that it came down to longstanding creative differences between her and Francis. The band went on hiatus in 1992 following the release of their fourth album, Trompe le Monde, which was rumored to be because Francis didn’t want to share songwriting duties with Deal, and she returned to her surprisingly successful side-project, the Breeders, where she had far more creative control.

While frontman Francis and Deal have received most of the attention in the Pixies, Santiago’s melodic guitars and distinctive, angular playing style define the Pixies’ sound and contribute to their greatness as much as anything else. Interestingly, it was on one of the tracks off of Doolittle on which Santiago really hit his stride and found the sound he was aiming for. “I like playing ‘Dead,’” he says. “That’s when I found something – I finally found it. [I thought] ‘That’s one of the formulas I’m gonna stick to.’ It was between that and ‘Break My Body’ on Surfer Rosa. You smash those two together and that’s basically what I gravitate towards.”

In addition to demos and rare B-sides, the anniversary set features the Pixies original Peel Sessions, the famous live recordings the band made for legendary DJ John Peel’s BBC 1 radio show. “During the times of each album we’d go in and reinterpret it with John Peel,” Santiago explains. “We have to attribute part of our success to John Peel. He’s well heralded and we got lucky that we got invited to his kingdom.”

So how does the band manage to keep things fresh playing the same material 25 years later? “You have to look at it from the audience’s perspective,” says Santiago. “The audience is our boss. Especially the new [fans]. It’s a new experience for them and we look at it from their perspective.”