I Was There – Pixies take Glastonbury, 16/6/89 | Juno Daily
Down on the farm with Frank Black and co
If you were to boil down the history of 80s guitar bands to its barest but most essential elements, you’d be left with two very different but strangely parallel careers. In the early part of the decade, you had The Smiths. In the latter part, it was all about Pixies.
Both bands were only together for around five years before the strong personalities contained within them pulled them apart. Both turned music on its head, inspiring countless imitators. Both were ridiculously productive in the short time they were together, leaving us with a recorded legacies that are perversely rich compared to their brief tenure.
The news that 4AD are to reissue Pixies – Live At The BBC, which collects their session work (mainly for John Peel, with Mark Goodier also getting a look in), immediately brought back this writer’s memories of catching the band in action live and particularly the first encounter, at Glastonbury in 1989.
Glastonbury was a very different and altogether wilder prospect in those days to the carefully coiffed, TV-broadcast event it is now. In tune with the times, alfresco sound systems had sprung up all over the site, blasting acid house to the chemically altered crowds that had previously encountered only rock, indie and world music here. One I stumbled across was playing what I later discovered to be ‘French Kiss’ by Chicago producer Lil’ Louis, and as it hit its ‘slowing to a halt’ section, the sound of a panting female voice nearing climax over the top, it literally floored the sound system’s dancers, some of whom didn’t seem at all sure whether it was the tune or merely their perception of it that was melting. It was like the beats alone had been propping them up.
Over in the glorified cowshed that was the old Pyramid Stage, guitar music was going to need to up its game considerably to keep track. Not a problem, not with The Pixies booked for the end of the Friday afternoon anyway.
The conditions for a truly legendary festival set are many but two things are guaranteed to make a big difference. Being a great band with a big cult following, yet undiscovered by the mainstream, is one, because a festival will gather together your bigger-than-expected crowd and elevate you in the eyes of the unconverted. A slot at the end of the afternoon often produces magic, too, ushering those in attendance from the lazy sun of the daytime into the wilder clutches of the approaching night. The Pixies had both of these on their side.
Having spent two years on the road promoting Surfer Rosa, Come On Pilgrim and Doolittle, the band are so well drilled they could probably play their set in their sleep. From their wonderfully dressed down appearance, they look as though they’d been roused from their tour bus bunks shortly before their set. Witness the way Frank Black does a quick tune check even though their opening tune ‘Bone Machine’ has already started. Then his guitar strap falls off. But none of this stops him hitting his first cue. From then on in, the angular, illogical arrangements present no problems for the foursome. If anything, it feels like the music has a momentum of its own, as if all four members could stop playing and it would continue along without them.
One reviewer for the Guardian, writing around that time, joked that if you didn’t like a Pixies song it wasn’t a problem because another one would be along in a minute. This set certainly feels like that – a headlong sprint through a catalogue of songs that were all on the verge of becoming classics, each announced with a minimum of explanation and each perplexingly different from the last, weird lines of lyrics sprouting out in all directions. The bump and grind of ‘Bone Machine’, ‘Cactus’ with Frank Black begging his lover “bloody your hands on a cactus tree/wipe it on your dress and send it to me”. ‘Dead’ with its drums that sound like a herd of elephants charging over a hill. ‘I’m Amazed’, been and gone in space of a minute and half. The anthemic ‘Debaser’, never a single in their initial lifetime but still the soundtrack to indie disco carnage everywhere for years to come.
All that, of course, is only half the story. They’re fond of twisting your ears off with sudden musical outbreaks and time signature switches, rump shaking grooviness mixed up with hardcore raging, Hispanic and English, until you don’t know where you are. Then they’ll move in for the kill with the sweetest, simplest and most devastating pop magic you’ve ever heard – ‘Gigantic’, their ode to “a big big love” or ‘Hey’, about the pain of unrequited love, Black declaring “there must be a devil between us”.
Or, indeed, ‘Where Is My Mind’, almost certainly the most apt song ever sung to a Glastonbury audience as the Friday evening approaches, its arrival heralded by Black taking chunks out of acoustic guitar and Kim Deal’s unforgettable high pitched single note siren song. It’s the singalong anthem to end all singalong anthems and as such, it’s the perfect end to what is surely one of the most perfect shows ever. Watch Kim Deal as it draws to a close and you’ll see a grin of absolute joy breaking across her face – she knows how good it was.
This isn’t a set you ever see mentioned in the same breath as other so-called best gigs of all time – a spruious competition anyway, art cannot be judged like a running race or a multiple choice exam. If anyone ever asks me what the finest live show I’ve ever seen is, that’s what I tell them. But even as I do so, this one is invariably making its way to the front of my brain shouting ‘me, me!
Ben Willmott
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