the recent departure of Kim Deal.Ī quick recap: Kim went for a coffee with Charles (Black Francis) and Joey and announced she was quitting the band in the middle of their recording sessions in Rockfield Studios, Wales. He’s refreshingly honest, certainly not reluctant to address the huge grey pachyderm in the room, i.e. I ask Joey what the mood in the camp is on this current tour. Maybe it was because we were so badly out of tune!” There was mayhem, I was thinking, ‘What the fuck is going on?‘ We’ve been in this band quite a while, but I really didn’t know that people went so batshit crazy like that. There was one time when we paused between a song as we were tuning up. “Of any of our Irish shows, the most memorable for me is the Doolittle gig in the Olympia,” Santiago beams. This seems a surprising admission from a revered guitarist who supported U2 on an arena tour, performed in front of over 100,000 people in the Phoenix Park with Red Hot Chili Peppers, and surely played every single music festival in existence. There’s a lot more stuff going on, which we’re subconsciously aware of.” At the small shows, you know everyone is paying rapt attention, whereas at a festival someone will be lighting someone else’s joint. “The Brixton concert was a great night in a lovely venue but, strangely, the small shows are the ones we always get more nervous at,” Santiago confesses. Seeing the Pixies transformed me from a casual music fan into an all-out obsessive, as if I had been struck by a bolt of life-changing lightning emanating from Black Francis’ primal screams and Santiago’s mind-altering riffs. They were the first major international act I caught live, in the old Point Depot in 1991. Then, I must confess to having a little bit of previous with the Pixies. In my heartfelt opinion, the Brixton date is a shoo-in for the soon-to-be-compiled gigs of the year list. The guitarist, who has inspired and influenced generations of musicians, is reflecting on his band’s surprise return to the fray with new material.īefore their current European jaunt, which calls to the Grand Old Lady of Dame Street (i.e., The Olympia) for two eagerly anticipated and instantly sold-out nights, Santiago and company played an intimate warm-up at London’s Brixton Electric. In addition to patenting a trademarksound, Santiago christened the band Pixies after stumbling upon the name in a dictionary and loving the definition of “mischievous little elves”. “You put on Surfer Rosa and it sounds like they’re actually in the room with you.” “One of Joey Santiago’s trademarks is playing two notes very close together and bending one slightly outwards, so you feel like your whole body is being bended and contorted,” Harvey contends. “Joey Santiago is one of the most under-rated guitarists of all time,” Pixies fanboy David Bowie once gushed. When it comes to defining alternative guitar rock in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Joey Santiago is the man.

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