Frank Black – My Life In Music

The Pixies mainman welcomes us to his planet of sound: “You have to embrace the simplicity, the rawness”

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THE BEATLES

The Beatles

APPLE, 1968

This would not have been my first Beatles experience, but it’s probably the first one that connected with me in a more intellectual way. Songs like “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?” or “Birthday” are very minimalist. There’s an attitude of, ‘We don’t need to do a really big, fleshed-out song.’ “Happiness Is A Warm Gun” is more sophisticated, it goes to a lot of different places. But “Wild Honey Pie” is just a stomp with the same phrase over and over again. Not all listeners are going to be necessarily comfortable with that, or at least not right away. You have to embrace the simplicity, the rawness and the minimalism. So I really credit ‘The White Album’ with introducing me to that kind of idea.

CAT STEVENS

Mona Bone Jakon

ISLAND/A&M, 1970

My parents took me to see Harold And Maude when it came out [in 1971] and that’s where I would have heard this music first, before I had a copy of the record. They’re pop music arrangements, with percussion and background vocals and keyboards and sometimes strings, but it’s still dry – not super-fancy, not lush, it’s more about the beauty of the instrument. And of course, the real instrument of beauty on that record is Cat Stevens’ voice. His vocal delivery is very original – it has this beautiful masculine muskiness to it. And one of the things I like about Cat Stevens is that even when he’s being precious in a singer-songwriter kind of way, you really believe him. Whatever he’s selling, it’s so convincing.

DONOVAN

Greatest Hits

EPIC, 1969

This may have even preceded my relationship with The Beatles. I’d decided I wanted to be a drummer, so for my eighth birthday I received a snare drum and a small crash symbol and a pair of drumsticks. “Mellow Yellow” is one of those few great rock’n’roll songs where there’s one simple element of the drumkit that is almost the hook of the song. So even though I didn’t have a hi-hat, I could do a pretty good play-along version of “Mellow Yellow”. I listened to “Hurdy Gurdy Man” and “Season Of The Witch” and all the other songs, but [“Mellow Yellow”] in particular was important to me, because it was the first time I picked up an instrument and participated with what I was listening to.

BOB DYLAN

Greatest Hits Vol II

COLUMBIA, 1971

My cousin used to live with us occasionally. He would sometimes leave records behind, and this was one of them. I would have been about eight or nine years old and I was probably dreaming about being in some kind of a band. So this is the record that would have really given me a notion of attitude. It’s not just a song, it’s not just a performance, but it’s the attitude of the artist, which in Dylan’s case was a little bit flippant: ‘I’m not going to coddle you, you’re not necessarily going to get all this, you’ve just got to come along for the ride and enjoy it as best you can.’ “Watching The River Flow” is probably still one of my favourite Bob Dylan songs.

RY COODER

Paradise And Lunch

REPRISE, 1974

This is another record that got left behind at my parents’ house by my cousin. It’s very well produced but it’s not slick. It’s recorded very carefully, to bring out the rawness of blues and gospel music. Later I would realise, of course, that he is a notable guitarist and he is known for his prowess on the instrument. But when I listened to that record, it was all about the selection of the material and the humour that he brings. As a little kid I didn’t understand all of it, but that’s when I started to get my first whiff of sexual innuendo, double meanings. But it’s done in a very lighthearted, almost vaudevillian kind of way. It’s very charming. To this day, if I don’t know what to listen to, I’ll put on Paradise And Lunch.

JOHN MAYALL’S BLUES BREAKERS

Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton

DECCA, 1966

I’d been given a stack of records by the physical education coach at my school, because he needed another player on the baseball team. It included some Leon Russell records and about five or six John Mayall records. Growing up in the early ’70s, you don’t discover the blues from listening to Lead Belly, but from [the Blues Breakers]. And I really love John Mayall’s voice. It’s unassuming, a bit fragile, not necessarily showing a lot of attitude, just trying to serve the song. It’s not trying to emote and sing to the back of the room. It’s a little more like folk music – it doesn’t have the strut of ’70s hard rock that would eventually become Spinal Tap.

THE JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE

Electric Ladyland

TRACK/REPRISE, 1968

I was starting to listen to music a little on the loud side, and I believe I took this record out of the library. I knew “All Along The Watchtower” already from Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, so for me at that time it would have been a ‘standard’. And then here’s this guitar guy very casually manhandling this song, just dominating it and making it his own. There’s a sort of fearless aggression, like, ‘I don’t care that one of the greatest songwriters of the 20th century wrote this song, I’m gonna do my own fucking version of it.’ That was an early indicator to me, as a musician, [that I had] permission to do thatmyself if I wanted to. Good enough for Jimi Hendrix, good enough for me!

JETHRO TULL

Stand Up

ISLAND/REPRISE, 1969

Jethro Tull was my first concert, when I was 14. It was mostly because of Aqualung, which I thoroughly love. But the record I discovered after that was their second record, Stand Up. It doesn’t have the cleanliness that maybe later Tull records have, where there is maybe more focus on playing things correctly. It’s more of a blur, but behind the blur is something that’s almost a little bit punky, a little impolite. It’s where you really hear Ian Anderson’s flute solos where he’s just spitting all over the thing – you hear a lot of his breath coming out. It’s got the spirit of trying to prove something. It’s got a lot of oomph, and I really appreciate it for that.

A 30th-anniversary vinyl remaster of Frank Black’s Teenager Of The Year will be released by 4AD on January 17; he’ll perform the album in its entirety at the London Palladium on February 6