From The Archive: Frank Black in Interview

Last summer Ric Rawlins sat down with Frank Black on the eve of his Non Stop Erotik LP to talk songwriting, Pixies, Art Brut and Amsterdam. Here's the never-before seen full transcript...

AR: The record seems to continue your new-found love of 80s synths as explored with Grand Duchy - is that fair to say?

FB: No, because the first two Frank Black records had synths and Trompe Le Monde certainly had some electronic keyboards on it - not a lot - but a bit. I guess I'm not known for that, there's probably fifteen records that just have guitars on them then another five records that have keyboards.

AR: What I was getting at was that your wife was getting you into the 80s with Grand Duchy.

FB: Yeah I guess that was the sort of spin. But one of my favourite records of all time is The Idiot, which is produced by David Bowie as a heavy synth record, or Low - again a very analogue synth sound from Bowie.

AR: Are those your favourite Bowie records, the more experimental ones?

FB: Yeah, I don't know if it's because they're more experimental but I just like them. The first half of Low is like the rock and roll side one then it gets into the expansive landscape-style material. Everything late 70s that's got a bit of darkness and edge to it is pretty great. Whatever genre it is.

AR: Do you know Diamond Dogs?

FB: That was what 1973? I haven't no... I'll have to download that tonight. Good old Bowie.

AR: What I've always found unique about your songwriting is your ability to insert a minor chord at just the right junctures to create a romantic/tragic effect. Is that something you're aware of?

FB: Yeah, it's basic chord writing, it's like the black and the white - not exactly the best analogy perhaps. I remember years ago I had this Best Of The Beach Boys collection and while I pretty much liked everything on the record, I discovered that if I only played the songs that had at least one minor chord in them then that would be the ultimate list from that collection. That's really what I was drawn to. While I even like some chords that don't have any minor chords in them, that is my tendency. What can be slightly jarring is if you go from a major chord to another unexpected major chord - and if you can get away with that transition.... I'm always amazed though, that sometimes you put a minor chord in a song because that's what you feel has to go there, and it won't sound melancholy at all! You can't make too many blanket statements about minor chords! But I do love them.

AR: When I heard the title 'Go Down On You' it seemed like quite a provocative title, but the music actually reminded me of a poetic, sad thing. Was that a misleading title do you think?

FB: It's a grand kind of song, at least that's my feeling. When Eric put his keyboards on the backing track it kind of got elevated - it went instantly from this sub-Credence Clearwater groove to... something like Heroes, speaking of David Bowie! I was looking for a grand statement to go with that, so I sitting there late in the evening trying to find a lyric for this... da da daa da (starts singing) and I found that phrase 'When I go down on you' - and it fit perfectly because it was grand, but it also completely fit the theme of the record.

It wasn't supposed to be a nasty song, or strictly a bass song, or a physical erotic song - the opposite really, the singer in the song isn't saying anything original; "as the universe explodes/as the world goes straight to hell"... he's found a sort of haven and the idea is 'I don't know the answer, I don't even want the answer - all of this is subservient to this.' This is love but it's also sexual love and it's also worshipful... because (lowers voice) when a person is going down on a person, to borrow from Jamaican slang, it's a bow.

AR: As in a graceful worship sorta thing?

FB: Yeah. So it's y'know, it suits my male heterosexual personality to put not just a woman, but her sex on a pedestal or whatever. That suits my very primal male personality.

AR: It's a bit of a sweeping statement, but do you think the world would be a better place if all the politicians were female?

FB: Um... it would be a different place. Maybe it would be better, but Lord only knows what would happen. To paraphrase Ray Bradbury, it's really the boys with their toys that kind of mess everything up. It's men that like to fight. It's men that like to tinker with weapons. They're the ones that really mess everything up, so in theory it would be a better place, but then you don't really know. I guess we could try to theorise based upon whatever primitive patriarchal culture we could observe it in, then maybe come up with some theorems and say, well if this was expanded to the whole planet - what would happen?

AR: Going back to the minor chord thing, alot of your songs for me capture the vivid pain and adrenaline of teenage heartbreak - did you have your heartbroken as a teenager and does that come into your songwriting?

FB: Yeah. I guess I did... I don't know if I've really had my heart broken - I think I was resilient enough that I wouldn't exactly call it having your heart broken - having your heart somewhat disappointed would be a better way to put it! (laughs) Perhaps I was protecting myself from so-called heartbreak. I was perhaps emotionally disconnected enough with the event that it didn't articulate into heartbreak. Perhaps something even more damaging.

AR: Jesus! Is it something you still think about these days?

FB: I don't know... I think about a lot of things. It's such a jumbled mess up there I'm not sure I could come up with something focused to say, to respond. Maybe two more rounds, then I'll start speaking with some more clarity.

AR: Was it the Bluefinger LP that was based on the life of an artist who went crazy in Amsterdam?

FB: Herman Brood. He didn't go crazy - he was a rock and roll singer and piano player and especially later in his life became a well-known painter. The whole record's about him, and there's a song that he wrote that's on the record also. He finished his life by jumping off the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel.

AR: So with this guy in Amsterdam and now the record Non Stop Erotik - is there a part of you that's drawn to the Soho's, the red light districts of cities?

FB: Not so much... maybe this much (pinches fingers), you know? I suppose that part of my personality would be more interested in something like erotic film making, pornography, or whatever! That probably has more allure to me than a red light district. When I was a young man and I went to the big city I went to a genuine red light zone - a really seedy area - and I went to a strip club every night, several a night, sort of making the rounds of the neighbourhood for about a week. And that was enough public display of nudity to last me a lifetime! So I kind of got my taste of it a long time ago and y'know, heard the slap of flesh on the runway one too many times. I think I find actual strips club a little bit... depressing, or something. These weren't flashy sports bars like you have now in the states, these were really seedy places, they were dark places, they were depressing - you'd be sitting there talking to one of these girls after they danced and it was kind of... sad. And poignant.

When I lived in Puerta Rico there was a guy I used to hang out with and for some reason he'd take me into this brothel - not to consort with prostitutes - there was a bar in the front room and in the back was where all the prostituting would take place. It was right on the port, so the ships would come in and it was generally a very heavy atmosphere. You felt like there was going to be a gunfight any minute - there was all this tension in the room which was very old world, you know? Sailors and soldiers and whores. So we used to just sit at the bar and watch the parade of people - the prostitutes would literally just slither up alongside of you, rubbing your back as they walked by. Most of them were from the Dominion Republic.

It was just this really heavy sleazy lecherous atmosphere! And occasionally when one of the customers had had his drink or whatever and was ready to tap his poke, he would select whoever and go off with them out the back. I actually didn't find that atmosphere too depressing. It was more the strip club.

Anyway, I'm not necessarily drawn to public displays of erotica. I guess usually just because of the context - it's often a sad tale - but if you're just looking at a picture, or reading some erotica... I love victorian erotica. All that stuff that's written in funny and cheap victorian language - you know; "and then he touched my cunny" you know? Ha ha ha!

AR: You played in Amsterdam a few times - arguably the most liberal city in Europe. How did you find it?

FB: I really like it, but I have long since grown out of going to coffee bars to partake in marijuana. I'm not necessarily drawn to that other obvious place - the red light district - although I always find it amusing when I end up there by accident. You turn down the street and suddenly there's this woman all lit up behind glass, and she's got a nurse's outfit on and is on display like a mannequin... and it's like WHOA!

You can get that kind of thing in the countryside, like in Belgium or somewhere, because they occasionally allow that sort of red light window display to go on in small country towns. So you're driving along this long, dark landscape and there's red or purple light in the distance - you're not sure what it is... then you get closer to the village and there she is...

AR: It's kind of like a David Lynch thing - you drive down a highway and there's an angel at the end of it.

FB: It's totally like a David Lynch thing. Sorry, to answer your question I love Amsterdam. I love the no-bullshit common sense of the whole place, I love the museums and the bars, the book shops and the dutch bars, the lovely art cinemas, the way you can walk everywhere... it's lovely.

AR: I wanted to talk a little about Grand Duchy, because it was one of my favourite records of last year...

FB: Thankyou. I'll pass that onto my wife, because she's so happy to receive those sorts of validations from the outside world.

AR: Songs like 'Lovesick', I'm not sure who wrote what on that song...

FB: With Grand Duchy, I wrote the music and she wrote the lyrics.

AR: Did you ever think 'this song's too good to let my wife sing it - I gotta steal it for myself!'

FB: There's a little bit of that... I think recently she sang unexpectedly on some music that I'd written and I didn't know she was going to do that, because I thought she didn't like this particular piece... which was fine with me because I loved it and thought it was great, then it was like "oh! you sang on it!"

But yeah there's a kind of proprietary tug of war that goes on when you co-write with people. It's hard to give up the wheel sometimes - you feel it should be going in one direction, then someone else is "hey how about this!" And I'm like 'well I don't know what you're thinking, but this is not that kind of... I find it hard to compose with other people. I try to do it occasionally - like with my wife - but it is hard.



AR: Some of the Grand Duchy songs sounded quite Pixies - were any of them lined up, originally, for a prospective new Pixies record?

FB: No, we did all that together - it was a total 50/50 collaboration. If you add up who did what... my wife happens to have a feminine voice - she's a woman. In her mind she doesn't sound anything at all like Kim Deal, and I would say that she doesn't so much either, although occasionally I can hear why people might say that. She can sing quite high but... she's not some little skinny woman. And neither is Kim, so body type can effect a voice. So I would say that they don't have dissimilar... like when I look at the shape of their necks, and how broad their chest is and that kind of thing... I can see where there would be some overlap somewhere. But certainly she anticipated the comparison, so we tried not to do that.

But if something came out naturally and sounded a bit Pixie-esque, then we didn't fight it. I mean heck, I'm in the Pixies! How could I not have a little bit of that?

AR: Are there any more Grand Duchy albums on the horizon?

FB: Yeah we're making one!

AR: Sorry if you've explained this a million times already, but why didn't a new Pixies album appear?

FB: Well there isn't one answer - there's different people involved and for each of those people involved there are multiple reasons. Multiple reasons you're sure of, and some you're not sure of! So where do we begin, where do we start?

I can't give you a two sentence response. I could give you one of many reasons - the band wasn't a band for twelve years. It's one thing to go out and do an encore performance of what you once did, although for some bands that would be impossible even. But whatever the reason, the type of musicians that we are, or the type of personalities that we are, when we got back together the old songs just sounded exactly the same. It wasn't exactly a big re-learning curb, it was a day, basically. Then it was like 'OK, it sound exactly like that'. We're used to it, you know?

But to be able to go back in time and re-create all the circumstances that allowed us to be a band in the first place... to re-create that again means you've got a lot of psychological baggage to deal with. A lot of ego, a lot of everything. And of course, the band's reputation only increased after we broke up, so we're dealing with that on top of it! We're dealing with the whole legacy thing!

AR: So if you did a new record it'd have to be one of the best record's of all time.

FB: Right, so getting our head around that was kind of a big deal.



AR: I really enjoyed the box set gig that the Pixies played in Shoreditch.

FB: We all enjoyed that show. Sometimes you're doing your shows and it is what it is, but every once in a while it does crystalise and the feedback that I heard from that show makes me wonder if maybe we did 'crystalise' in that particular set. It felt special among the band, we performed it properly... it had all the je ne sais quoi you'd want.

AR: What I liked as well was that you were walking round saying hi to people - there was no barrier between the band and the crowd.

FB: Yeah, given that it wasn't all about us - we were also there to pay tribute to the artist Vaughn Oliver and the photographer Simon Larbalestier, and it was an art gallery... so there was a sense of decorum wasn't there? People were drinking wine, it wasn't a nightclub. So the audience didn't feel like they owned the floor so much - everyone had a little bit of politeness. So we could walk around and ask people what they wanted to hear... a pretty unusual situation for a band where you almost can't be seen before the show without creating a little bit of a ruckus.

So it was nice. We probably haven't been able to perform like that in 20 years. 23 years. We haven't had that kind of atmosphere since our earliest gigs. Maybe that's the key to get us to be a band together again - get us to play wine and cheese affairs! Where it's not all about us... we may have tapped into something here. I'm going to talk with management about this.

AR: "We'd like to play some more cheese and wine gigs please."

FB: We've got to play several. Well that's the task really - you have to figure out how to become a band again. We haven't figured that out.

AR: I've been in bands and it is difficult to continue after two or three years without... adjusting to people's personalities. Just like any relationship.

With certain lyrics - "slicing up eyeballs" and then certain references, like you showed the 'Un Chien Andalou' movie at the start of your recent Doolittle gig, and then the artwork - were the surrealists of the 1920s era such as Man Ray or Bill Brandt artists who influenced you a lot?

FB: Yeah, because it wreaks of real bohemia. It's pre-rock and roll, almost pre-jazz. So it really is the whole European bohemia. That's a very attractive thing - it may have had the trappings of fashion like we still do, but you don't sense it when you look at the old pictures - l mean look at the men and they've got suits on like everyone else! "I'm in a suit and tie, I'm a radical!"

They were living in a different world, a rigid world perhaps, and it's nice to see that they had to get their expression out. They had to be daring and break some rules, create a fuss. And the women are just so incredible looking, with their tomboy haircuts - they don't look so silly compared to modern people.

AR: Like Man ray's nudes - it's erotic but there' substance there.

FB: Some of those Man Ray pictures with Meret Oppenheim - this woman who was a beautiful artist as well - she's just really confident. You don't get the impression she's been taken advantage of or anything. She's just like "yeah I'm gorgeous and this is a great photograph. Enjoy!" There's a great feeling to it.

AR: A lot of people look back to the '60s and the hippies and idolise that era...

FB: Well that was the end of bohemia, the '60s. It's still kind of going on - maybe there's a few people around with folk guitars and bongos, but it all starts to get electrified - it's all stuff that I'm still fascinated by, but the real bohemia kinda goes away. And even radical politics falls away. Art doesn't ever totally go away, but there's a certain flavour to the time before I was born - before 1965 - where the art world, the counterculture, the big city... it all has a certain smell and a look that's just really great.

AR: I had this record called Best of the Beat Generation which had all this old jazz music with the poets of the time doing their thing over the top of it. And you get a smell of that brilliant atmosphere.

FB: Yeah it's wonderful, wonderful. So to answer your question, are the surrealists of the 1920s important to me, yeah! Because it smells of all that. I'm not an expert on it - maybe I know a bit more than your average Joe on the street, but I don't pretend to be an expert in any of those things. And what I do know I tend to forget!

AR: We were really happy to find out that you'd produced Art Brut Vs Satan. Did you enjoy your time with Eddie and the gang?

FB: Yeah I loved it. Because they have a good work ethic, so we dispensed with any notion that we were going to hang out and drink - although we did do one or two nights.



AR: They told me they stole your car?

FB: Yeah sometimes I needed to be alone with the recordings without them in the room so I let them have the car. It's actually my wife's car so I'm glad they didn't total it!

AR: Eddie strikes me as being quite humble, doesn't take himself seriously...

FB: Yeah, the band is charming to listen to - sure it's humourous, but it's also got just enough pathos in it - plenty of comedy but also just a little bit of pathos.

AR: He still thinks about the girls that broke his heart.

FB: Exactly, so that's satisfying. It's a good combination. They have a lot of ideas worked out and a sense of their own identity, but also they start off certain songs in a really loose place, so if they have a combination of tight ideas and loose ideas, as a producer you can take the tight ideas and say - well, I don't have too much to say so just play it and we'll see if we can get a good take, but with the looser ideas, because they're already a good band and can assemble a tight idea, you can go 'well here's what I hear in this', so let's bring out that element. Let's follow me everybody, let's do this.

So it's like - right! They do that and because they're a nice tight band and not short of identity, you get to your destination. It's not like 'wow we don't sound anything like that' or 'what a weird thing' - they stay who they are, but I just teased out a little thing that I heard in their loose idea.
So you get a good result either way: you can just record them or you can work with their looser ideas and get a good result.

It was a good balance - I wasn't always telling them what to do because they had some of their stuff worked out, but sometimes I could totally control them, manipulate them, and I could have satisfaction as producer.

AR: What are the determining factors that make you decide whether to call yourself Frank Black or Black Francis?

FB: I'm starting to get the impression, from being asked that question, that people think I flip flop between them. But I don't flip flop between them: I was one, then the other, then I went back to the original. To me that seems natural enough, I've done it in such a slow motion way that I don't understand what the confusion is? To answer a question with a question.

AR: So it's not like you get out of bed on a particular day and say 'well, today I fell like I'm gonna be Black Francis.'

FB: Certainly not like that. But if I'm over-simplifying your question, then I would say... you only have so much control over your muse. You know what I mean? So all you can do is make psychological suggestions to yourself and hope that, if you have the sense of where you wanna go - 'I wanna be a bit more like I was back in the day, when I was popular! When I was artier!' Maybe there was something back then that I can't just imitate - so all you can do is symbolically don the hat. See if that works.

AR: It's an artistic construct to put you in the place you need to be.

FB: Yeah exactly. So, does it have an effect? I don't know. I hope that it does. If you were to walk across the room like a pirate - you may not be a great actor so you may well do a poor job. But if I put a big hat on you and a costume.... it might be a better experience for all of us, watching your acting! 'Oh yeah, he's got a pirate thing going on! The hook's a bit wonky but y'know... it works.'