Photograph courtesy of Elspeth Mary Moore
Black Francis ended an onstage interview at Manchester’s Albert Hall last night with an impromptu live performance in front of the five hundred-strong audience.
After the interview, conducted by Dave Haslam, and a short audience Q&A at the newly-opened venue, the Pixies frontman eschewed his guitar, put a lighter to a cork from a red wine bottle and smeared it on his face, before singing ‘New House Of The Pope’, ‘Subbacultcha’ and ‘Six Sixty-Six’ a capella.
During the 50-minute interview, Francis discussed Kim Deal’s departure from the band at length. There were no tears, he said, adding: “We have a really hard time with emotion in the Pixies, we don’t communicate well, it’s always been an orgy of passive aggressive behaviour and now she’s gone it’s still an orgy of passive aggressive behaviour…”
He confessed he’d always thought his vocal delivery could sound a bit like Mark E Smith’s, explaining why the Pixies are currently covering The Fall’s ‘Big New Prinz’ in live shows. The interview also touched on Black Francis’s use of pseudonyms, having dinner with David Bowie, the influence of the first Violent Femmes album in the early days of the Pixies and not meeting Kurt Cobain, even though they’d even stayed in the same hotel a few times. Haslam’s question, “Do you even understand all your lyrics?”, triggered a discussion about whether listeners needed to understand songs, leading to Black Francis impersonating Bruce Springsteen.
Haslam had begun the evening announcing there would be no video recording, saying “I believe in the magic of live events. Please don’t spoil the magic”, leaving only a few grainy iPhone pictures of Francis’ cork-smeared performance, which you can see below, along with Pixies’ recent video for ‘What Goes Boom’:
Photograph courtesy of Jason Brogan
Photograph courtesy of Jason Brogan
