By Brian Ives
In Not Fade Away, we take a look at the legacy of some of the greatest albums of the past few decades – some iconic, some lesser known – as they celebrate significant anniversaries. Here, we focus on the Pixies‘ 1989 classic, ‘Doolittle,’ which turns 25 today.
Kurt Cobain always used his popularity to bring attention to the lesser-known bands that influenced him. Nirvana may have lived on the top of the pop charts, but to quote the Replacements, they spent their time on the “left of the dial.” One of the bands they name-dropped most, and were most influenced by, was the Pixies, who practically set the template for Nirvana’s loud/quiet/loud dynamic.
“I was basically trying to rip off the Pixies,” Cobain told Rolling Stone for a 1994 cover story. “I have to admit it. When I heard the Pixies for the first time, I connected with that band so heavily, I should have been in that band – or at least in a Pixies cover band. We used their sense of dynamics, being soft and quiet and then loud and hard.”
“The loud/quiet/loud dynamic isn’t just within individual songs,” says Matt Sebastian, the curator and creator of the excellent blog Slicing Up Eyeballs, which celebrates the legacy of ’80s college, modern and indie rock. “It’s also a pretty good metaphor for the mix of music on the record, sliding between ear-pleasing pop like ‘Here Comes Your Man’ and ‘Monkey Gone to Heaven’ and [frontman] Black Francis barking on ‘Tame’ or ‘Crackity Jones,’ then on to something like ‘Hey’ that manages to combine the two.”
“A lot of people, obviously, bought that record on the strength of ‘Here Comes Your Man,'” Sebastian tells Radio.com. “I lived in Southern California at the time, and that single got heavy airplay on KROQ, and they opened for the Cure at Dodger Stadium that year. They were definitely a darling of commercial alternative radio and 120 Minutes. When you play the record, it seems, especially in retrospect, to be pretty accessible.”
When you listen to “Here Comes Your Man,” you can almost hear it as a country-pop hit of the Garth or Travis variety. On the other hand, you wouldn’t confuse it with the pop music of ’89 (Paula Abdul, Janet Jackson, Poison and Milli Vanilli surely weren’t sweating Doolittle).
“I think anyone whose entry point was ‘Here Comes Your Man’ was in for a surprise,” Sebastian says. “That’s a pretty simple, sweet pop song. But it is, to some degree, an anomaly on that record. Quite a leap from songs like ‘Dead.'”
The weirder and more abrasive songs, like “Dead,” “Debaser” and “Tame” were more indicative of Doolittle‘s sound. Still, with multi-platinum albums full of loud, jagged, guitars by Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins and Hole, just around the corner, why wasn’t the album a bigger hit? To this day, it has only been certified gold by the RIAA, for sales in excess of 500,000.
(Doolittle cover, courtesy of the artist)
“I think it’s more accessible in retrospect than it may really have been at the time,” Sebastian says. “In the end, it’s just one of those classic cases of being just a little bit a head of its time. Everyone talks about the Pixies’ sonic influence on Nirvana, but one of the real differences between the two bands is their lyrics. ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ broke big, both because of the way it sounded and what it was saying (‘Here we are now, entertain us’). Black Francis’ lyrics are far more surreal and out there, whether he’s singing about riding the El Niño or slicing up eyeballs. It isn’t the kind of teenage angst that paid off well for Nirvana. I’ve also sometimes wondered if Doolittle would have done better if the singles hadn’t both been the poppiest songs on the album, if, instead, ‘Debaser’ had been pushed hard. It’s one of the band’s standards now, but could it have been a radio hit in 1989? Maybe not, but it also is more representative of what’s on the record.”
There’s also the issue of image. Or, rather, lack of it. Nirvana is credited with heralding in the anti-style of the so-called “grunge” era, but when you saw Cobain, Grohl and Novoselic, there was no doubt that they were a band of some sort.
But the Pixies — guitarist/singer Black Francis, bassist/singer Kim Deal, guitarist Joey Santiago and drummer David Lovering — looked normal, not like rock stars at all. This was part of the appeal to their die-hards: they were really weird, yet looked just like the guys and girl down the street. Rock Radio and daytime MTV approached them with caution, but their fans quickly became die-hards, and many of were inspired to start their own musical projects.
Related: Interview: Pixies Invite Bowie On Tour, Avoid Discussing Kim Deal
As Pixies mega-fan David Bowie said in this interview, “It’s probably a cliché, but somebody said that the Velvet Underground didn’t sell many albums, but everybody who bought a Velvet Underground album formed a band. And I would have to suggest that the same thing applied to the Pixies.” Besides Nirvana, British Sea Power, Weezer, Mogwai, TV on the Radio and Bowie himself have all covered the Pixies. Pearl Jam have quoted “Monkey Gone To Heaven” in their extended live “Daughter” jams, and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke has said that the Pixies are his heroes. Even Miley Cyrus is a fan: she told SPIN, “From the time I was 16 until I was 18, the Pixies is all I listened to.”
Doolittle marked the move away from the abrasive production of Steve Albini and toward a more polished sound, something they’d find more of on the third album Bossanova. For all the pop gems on Doolittle, it remains a macabre album pock-marked with death, sex, and experimental Salvador Dali films. It’s a definitive summation of the eccentricities on Surfer Rosa, a round-up of indie rock throughout the ’80s, a harbinger of what was to come, and perhaps the best way to get to know the Pixies. Hey, they’ve been trying to meet you for over 25 years now.
