Pixies

With seductive pop melodies, distorted surf riffs, extraterrestrial lyrics, a mysterious Latin flavor, and leader Black Francis' deranged shrieks, the Pixies came off like Beach Boys on acid. Quintessential college rockers, the Pixies fared particularly well in England, where they attracted an impressive following and scored minor aboveground hits with singles such as "Monkey Gone to Heaven" and "Velouria"; in the U.S. they remained primarily critics' darlings and a major influence on such bands as Nirvana. When the quartet split up in 1992, bassist Kim Deal went on to greater popular success with the Breeders.

Charles Michael Kitteridge Thompson IV got his first taste of pop-music making as an adolescent living in the L.A. suburbs and messing around with instruments in the garage. However, when his Pentecostal mother mother and stepfather moved the family to New England, rock & roll slipped to the backburner. It wasn’t until the mid’80’s – six months into his stint as a U. Mass exchange student in Puerto Rico – that the astronomy obssesed Thompson gave himself a choice: He would either go to New Zealand to see Halley’s Comet or form a band.

In 1986 Thompson returned to Boston and recruited former college roommate Joey Santiago, who came from one of the wealthiest families in the Philippines, to play guitar. Naming themselves Pixies in Panoply, they took out a newspaper ad for a bassist interested in Hüsker Dü and Peter, Paul and Mary. Ohio native Kim Deal - a onetime biochemist (analyzing blood, no less) - responded and brought along her drummer friend David Lovering. On the advice of his biological father, a biker and bar owner, Thompson adopted the stage name Black Francis.

The Pixies released their debut EP on England’s arty 4AD label in 1987 and followed the next year with the full-length Surfer Rosa. After much domestic college-radio play and critical raves, the band signed with Elektra in 1989 and released the landmark Doolittle (#98; #8 U.K.). But there was turmoil within the band, caused by Deal’s increasing unhappiness with Thompson’s creative dominance. The followup albums Bossanova and Trompe le Monde included no songs written by Deal. During a break in 1990, Deal formed the Breeders along with Throwing Muses guitarist Tanya Donelly and released the critically acclaimed Pod back-to-back with the Pixies’ Bossanova.

For his first solo album under new pseudonym Frank Black, Thompson recruited Santiago, members of Pere Ubu, and various session players. The album found the eccentric songwriter moving closer than ever toward Brian Wilson territory, even doing an edgy, if respectful cover of Wilson’s Pet Sounds classic, “Hang Onto Your Ego.” While promoting the album, Thompson casually indicated to interviewers that the Pixies were over - before informing the rest of the band. For his third album, 1996’s The Cult of Ray (#127), Thompson signed to producer Rick Rubin’s American Recordings. The album sold fewer than his previous solo records, and when American began reorganizing, Thompson and a followup album already recorded were left in limbo. He finally left American and returned in 1998 with Frank Black and the Catholic, released on the small indie label SpinArt. Thompson continued to record and tour, seemingly at peace with his diminishing profile and life as a cult figure.

In 1995 Santiago and Lovering formed the short-lived Martinis. And the Breeders’ second full-length album, Last Splash (#33, 1994) - recorded without Donelly, who left to form Belly - was a critical smash, spawning the single “Cannonball” (#44, 1994). A music video of the song directed by Spike Jonze and Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon became an MTV staple. Deal was joined in the newest lineup of the group by twin sister, Kelley, who was in an early teenage acoustic folk version of the Breeders. But the band’s momentum was stalled when Kelley was busted for heroin and sent to rehab. After her release, she recorded a 1996 solo album as the Kelley Deal 6000 called Go to the Sugar Altar.

Meanwhile, Kim Deal had begun working on what was originally to be a solo album. Instead, she released the 33-minute Pacer in 1995 as part of a band called the Amps. Drummer Jim Macpherson was the only other holdover from the Breeders, as Deal recruited two players from Dayton, Ohio, into the Amps. Two years later, the same musicians toured as the Breeders.

from The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001)