Frank Black Black is back

Charles Thompson IV says that "there is no tour or record - it's all one big giant tour, and it's all one big giant record". But the longer he goes on, the easier it is to identify patterns in his life as a musician. There's 1986 to 1993 when, as Black Francis, he fronted the greatest American rock band of the time, the Pixies. Then there’s the ten-year period when, as Frank Black, he released nine solo albums, songs from which were recently collected together on a compilation, 93-03. There’s the Pixies reunion years of 2003 to early 2007, with big festival gigs all over the world. And now, two decades after he first hit the scene, a new era begins with his new album, Bluefinger. For that, he's not only left behind the gently rolling, Nashville sound of his last two albums, he's unexpectedly resurrected Black Francis.

HUCK: How come your new album is a concept album?
BLACK FRANCIS: I don't really know, but this young guy I asked to produce the record [Mark Lemhouse] came around and we were having a couple of glasses of wine and chatting. I said, 'What are you working on, Mark?' and he said he's working on a concept album about this serial killer from Texas. A light bulb didn't go off - it went in one ear and out the other - but I've been wondering whether, psychologically, that triggered something. Suddenly, it all became this Herman Brood thing and it was really exciting for me.

‘For whatever the reason - probably because I broke up the band way back when and just said, 'Fuck you, see you later' - they're still mad at me.’

Does your affection for Herman Brood [the iconic Dutch musician] go back a long way?
No. He was on my list, of course, and one night I'm like, 'What shall I look up on YouTube?' No rhyme or reason, but that night it was Herman Brood. I saw a performance of his, fell in love with it, and decided I wanted to cover this particular song ['You Can't Break a Heart and Have It']. And I was looking at this scrap of an interview he did on a train in '76, and then I found out about how much they loved him in Holland, in the same way that New Yorkers loved Frank Sinatra. For about a week, everything I read about Herman Brood, and all the clips I saw of him, and all the songs I heard, were connected. Every time I stumbled onto a new little piece of information, it was like, 'But of course!' He made sense to me. Every little bit.

Were you picking up parallels between your own life and character and Herman Brood's?
I don't know. I've thought about it - he's the same age as my father, same kind of generation, died about the same age, he's an underdog character and maybe I think of myself as an underdog kind of character... Certainly I feel like I have a lot of empathy for whatever reason, and it's not just the charisma and the music and the art. There's this almost humorous suicide at the end and there's the tragedy of the monkey on his back. I usually don't like to sing about these things because I find them too grim, but there's something about him. His life had all this dramatic, small-time drama because he was a junkie. He was the piano player in a popular band in Holland called Cuby and the Blizzards, and they kicked him out because he was on smack or speed or whatever he was doing. I would kick someone out of my band if they were a junkie, but the writer in me had empathy: I started to feel his own frustration with life and the business and everything else.

Did Herman Brood resurrect Black Francis, or had you already gone back to your Pixies stage name?
I had decided to do that about a month before. In fact, I did it a month before but I'd been thinking about it for longer. I'd got this new manager... the old manager was the Pixies manager and I'd been with the guy for almost twenty years. It was kind of like a divorce - we didn't end very well at all. That was disturbing, and I think probably because I was out with the old band doing these reunion shows and I couldn't get them into a studio, and I was aware of certain criticisms coming from fans, or writers, or even my former band... I felt like, and maybe I've read into it too much, that I could be the most successful guy on the planet right now and they still wouldn't want to make a record. I don't know. With that band, as with any group of people who have known each other for a long time, there's a lot of baggage. So, for whatever the reason - probably because I broke up the band way back when and just said, 'Fuck you, see you later' - they're still mad at me. They're like, 'Hey, this reunion thing, let's keep doing it, let's keep doing it,' and I say, 'Okay, let's make a record,' and they don't want to do it.

There was one new Pixies song, Kim Deal's 'Bam Thwok', and you recorded a Warren Zevon track for a tribute album...
I was excited at the time. It was like, 'Okay, we're back!' and we kind of sounded the same and it felt the same, and certainly a lot of interpersonal relationships slipped back into their familiar patterns. So I guess I was hopeful and, I have to admit, we were selling out places and making ten times more money than we did the first time around... it felt good to be successful, not just to be making money. I thought we could continue, but the only way we could continue to do these tours was to have some new material. We couldn't just keep going out there and doing 'Monkey Gone to Heaven' every night.

‘It felt good to be successful, not just to be making money.’

You did write some songs that you gave to the band in demo form. What happened to them?
They weren't interested. The reunion tours were getting shorter and shorter because we'd played more and more places. About a year ago we were gonna do two or three weeks in eastern Europe and Spain and I was like, 'You know, this is bullshit - we're gonna go out there for two or three weeks and we could be going out and working for two or three months if we just go into the studio and make a mini album or something.' I kept trying to convince them: 'Okay, so you don't want to spoil the legacy of the band...'

...that's the main argument?
That's the main argument and it's a valid argument, but I don't give a shit. We should go and do waltzes or something. It's our band, so who cares? We're not nation building here, we're just making records.

So there are no plans for any more reunion shows?
No.

Was there a point when you felt like taking Bluefinger to the other Pixies?
No, but I was taking it to them psychologically. I was hoping it was gonna sound cool: 'Oh yeah, so you think I can't write rock music? You think I'm just an old fat guy stuck in Nashville? Fuck you!'

But were you thinking of them when you were writing the songs? It's not so hard to imagine Bluefinger as a Pixies record.
Well sure, but just in a friendly vengeful kind of way, sort of like, 'Ha ha ha, this could have been you but you said no, so you blew it.' You know, maybe the record will just be another obscure one in my collection of many obscure records...

Do you think it will be?
I have no idea.

Because it is a bit different, this one.
Yes. You know, I just have more energy now than I've had in a long time. I'm still a fat guy, but I was a fatter guy about a year ago: I started fasting on a regular basis, so I dropped a bunch of weight. When you go from being one size to another, you feel like, 'Aaaah yaaaah!!!' Your energy level totally changes. Now, I don't want to take a nap in the middle of the day - it's just different.

Did you play many festivals this summer?
I played my last one ever in July - I don't give a shit about them anymore. I mean, we're all paid very well at these festivals, even if you're low on the bill. You wonder where all the money's coming from. I'm standing in a field in Switzerland the other day and I'm watching these parachutists come out of the sky, very dramatically over the audience, and there's smoke coming out of their boots, and I'm like, 'Wow, what's going on? Air show or something?’ Parachutes open up and... Nokia! [cracks up] Fuckin' A, man! All these festivals, they're all Nokia, Heineken, Marlboro... all this corporate bullshit. And I've never been offended by the whole corporate thing - it's like, ‘Fuck it, if you can't beat them, join them.’ But I'm playing these festivals and I always forget this. When I first started playing them years ago, they just seemed cooler; it seemed the audience wasn't quite so dumb. I've got nothing against pop music and I've got nothing against people who want to be showmen, but it really bothers me that there's an expectation from the audience now: they don't have any tolerance for something that isn't that. Even some of my own fans have the same attitude: 'I went to a show last night and I have to say I was very disappointed because he didn't even talk to the audience.' Jesus fucking Christ! I didn't even talk to the audience? Where the fuck have you been!? Have you ever listened to a fuckin' Lou Reed album? Have you ever been to a real rock show? Have you ever seen Mark E. Smith? Come on! You want me to talk? Is that all you care about? Having this interpersonal, 'Heeeey!' Fuck you!

‘It's our band, so who cares? We're not nation building here, we're just making records.’

It seems you've always done things on your own terms and often at the irritation of your fans. Many of your solo albums have come in for quite a kicking. Has that upset you?
I don't expect everyone to like all my records – I don't even love all my records - you just make them, and they just come out the way they come out. I figured out a few years ago that I'm a snake in the Chinese zodiac and a snake feels his way - he just reacts to what's right in front of him. In terms of making music, that's exactly how I am and exactly as I've always been since the beginning. And I will continue to make records, because that's what I do and that's what I know.

So no grand expectations for Bluefinger?
There are always the high hopes, but my high hopes are always tainted with the experience of reality. And now, of course, there's this whole thing of, 'The record business is down! Live gigs are up, but records are down!' Great, so now I can sell even fewer records and still struggle in the clubs. For me the business is there, but it's very selective. I don't know what I'm gonna do next, but I know I can't just keep going out on the road the whole time. I mean, I'll still tour, but I've got to do something different too - write a theatre production of something.

Bluefinger is out now on Cooking Vinyl.

The original story appeared in Huck #007.

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Frank Black (text) by Phil Hebblethwaite is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.