If you've ever assumed that Kim Deal is the coolest person alive, you're probably right. Nobody would blame a founding member of two of the most important rock bands of the past 20 years for having a big head, but Kim Deal doesn't have a big head. She does have large blisters, however, from playing two band's-worth of catalog.
Kim Deal lives at home with her mom, in Dayton, Ohio, and she likes it. Ask her about the Pixies' stature as rock legends, and she'll tell you that maybe the kids who work at the Dayton Starbucks have heard of them. Being Kim Deal means being cool enough to make self-deprecating cracks, even though the Pixies and The Breeders are both having a huge year.
The Pixies plan to mark the 20th anniversary of their most celebrated record, Doolittle, with a European tour this October. They'll play the entire album and all the related B-sides every night, something they've never done before. October also marks the release of a Pixies box set, Minotaur, which includes all 5 of the band's studio albums, plus all-new artwork by Vaughan Oliver. Oliver's original images for the Pixies are some of the most recognizable in rock history, and his re-imagining of that iconography is at the center of Minotaur.
Meanwhile, The Breeders, Kim's band with her twin sister, Kelley, will be on tour this summer. They've been busy over the past couple of years with 2008's Mountain Battles and a recently-released EP, Fate to Fatal.
We got to chat with Kim on the phone from her basement in Ohio before a practice with Kelley. She's never going to convince anybody that she's bad at rock n' roll, but it's cool as hell that she even tries.
Jay Hathaway: You've got a lot going on right now.
Kim Deal: Yeah. This is the first year that I'm doing Pixies and Breeders shows in the same year...One weekend I might be doing a Breeders show, the next weekend a Pixies show. Like, that close together. So that's kind of strange for me. The blisters are different, and the song lists. My brain's just not big enough to keep all the songs in my head. One band's songs seem like enough to fill my tiny little brain, but now I've got the two bands' songs.
JH: I read what you've been telling people about developing that blister. Is it ready to burst now?
KD: Oh, it's perfect. Except I was doing some ironing for Kelley, and I think I lost the...no, there it is! I still have it. I have the bass blister still. It's great. It's the weirdest thing. You know when you give somebody the bird? It's on my left hand, on my middle finger, and it's on the fleshy inside right side of it. It's the weirdest place to get a blister. Anybody who plays serious music would probably say, boy, they're very, very bad. It's supposed to be on top of the fingers, but I'm just sawing away with my middle finger, sliding it up and down. I go back and forth for like two and a half minutes, and I can feel the finger getting hot.
JH: Which song is that?
KD: "I Bleed." But "Debaser" and "U-Mass" have the same sort of thing. I could actually play the part on a different string, but it just doesn't sound as cool. It sounds way better on the E, the bottom string.
JH: I'm really impressed that you're actually bleeding so you can play "I Bleed."
KD: Yeah, isn't that nice?
JH: Which bass are you going to play for the
Doolittle shows? Are you going to use the bass from the record?
KD: Yeah, I am. I still have that. You know, I started with borrowing Kelley's bass guitar, because I didn't play bass. I played guitar. But hell, bass, that's four fuckin' strings. How fuckin' hard can it be, right? So I started playing bass with the Pixies, but I borrowed Kelley's bass. And Joe actually used my Les Paul Goldtop. I had to get that back from him. He got mad. Now Kelley plays it, and whenever I say something like, "My Les Paul," she just looks at me and I go, "Yeah dude.
My Les Paul." Just because you play my guitar for a period of time doesn't mean it becomes your guitar.
JH: How sold were you on doing another Pixies tour? Did they have to convince you?
KD: I really enjoy doing them. The last [shows] we did were February 2007 in Australia. I think just out of the blue they started up again. The cycle sort of ends, we kind of played everywhere. We get a call saying, "Do you wanna play in Japan?" -- ha, no, I'm doing
Spinal Tap, but people don't know that movie -- we get a call saying, "Hey, there's a festival called The Isle of Wight, and they're looking for somebody to play. It would be blah, blah, blah, blah, Pixies, Neil Fucking Young." Right?
JH: Whoa.
KD: I know! So, it's like, "Oh my god! Yeah, cool." I even stood on the side of the stage. I was allowed to stay on stage to watch the show. He has really long endings. That was my first time I've ever seen him play -- no, that's not true! I've seen him play at Madison Square fucking Garden, with his band... Neil Young and the...
JH: Crazy Horse?
KD: Yeah, Neil Young and Crazy Horse.
JH: So, did you talk to him?
KD: No, and I didn't try, either. He doesn't want to fucking talk to me. He doesn't want to talk to anybody, I'm sure.
JH: I guess when you're Neil Young, you don't have to talk to anybody if you don't feel like it.
KD: Exactly. Even a non-famous person who's old doesn't have to fuckin' talk to anybody. My dad doesn't have to fuckin' talk to anybody. He's not even famous. Neil Young's got that, and he's famous. You know what's really cool is that he probably is really nice. Kelley saw Bill Monroe before he died, the godfather of bluegrass, you know? She said he was really cool. It was in Canton, Ohio, and he comes out of his bus and hits the sidewalk. Everybody's there, getting ready to go into the show, and he just comes off the bus and gets on the pavement, stands up, looks around and goes, "Hello, folks." "Hello, Bill," they say to him. He just seems really cool.
JH: Have you ever done anything like that?
KD: I'm pretty talkative. I talk to pretty much everybody. I don't know, because he's so famous! He was like a legend. So that one gets me. At the time, Kelley actually saw Roy Orbison, too, like two days before he died. She saw two shows in one week, and one of them was Bill Monroe, and one was Roy Orbison.
JH: What do you make of all the praise for
Doolittle as one of the best or most influential albums ever?
KD: We live in Ohio, and not a lot of people here know who the Pixies are. Maybe if I lived in LA or Silver Lake or something like that, maybe I'd be listening to it on the radio or something. But they don't play that here. The people don't know that. Some of the kids at Starbucks have heard of the Pixies. Some of them.
JH: Well, them and everybody at every college anywhere in the world...
KD: Yeah. We're not a big college town, here. It's pretty easy to feign modesty in a town where nobody fucking knows who you are anyway. It's pretty easy.
JH: Yeah, and then you leave for Europe and play all these huge shows...
KD: I know! It's weird, right? Actually, in 2005, we were all trying to get shows in our hometowns. Charles got Portland. Joe, of course, got Northampton, which is near Long Meadow. We did Boston. We did Los Angeles. It was like, "Kim, let's get a show in Dayton!" And I go, "Ok! Alright, I know the place. It can be Hara Arena. I think maybe we can play there, that would be so awesome." The Pixies had never played Dayton. The closest we came was Columbus and maybe Cincinnati. We put the tickets on sale. Like 500 tickets sold. We had to cancel.
JH: Do you ever run into Bob Pollard in Dayton?
KD: Never! I don't know even know if he still lives here. Does he? I can't imagine him moving.
JH: Yeah. I think he's just more comfortable there.
KD: I think he enjoys living here. I do too. I like to leave. I gotta tell you, I really enjoy leaving. It's nice. I live with my parents, though. My mom has Alzheimer's, so I'm caregiver with my father. Me and my dad, we stay at the house and hang out with my mother. She's nuts.
JH: And that's why you moved back?
KD: Yeah. I sometimes say it like, "Oh, I live with my parents," and I'm rolling my eyes. But I really like it. If I didn't, I'd live alone. [laughs] They don't know I really like it. It's so stupid. But I actually do leave a lot, so that's nice. Then I fly home, and I fly into the Dayton International Airport. It's so empty! Other people are flying home to LAX. Oh my god, I mean, hours of traffic. And it's so fucking hot there, I can't even imagine. And I can't live in New York City. I'm too immature for it. It just chews me up and spits me out. All I do is go to the basement and do as many drugs as I can find.
JH: New York is really good for a week, when you have a reason to be there, but I can't imagine going grocery shopping in New York City. I mean, I know that people have to do that, but...
KD: I know. But people make it work. I mean, there are 12-year olds who go to school there, and pick up milk for their mothers. They have the skills to do it, to not make it a bigger deal than it is. It's just getting groceries in Manhattan. But it's so beyond me. I'm like, "Oh, shiny objects, loud noises, I'm lost! Where do I live? Where's my key? Where the fuck am I?"
JH: If you grew up there, it'd be different.
KD: It's true. And you know what? They would come out here and make one turn and be lost in a cornfield.
JH: Is it weird to play Pixies songs again when you've evolved as a musician for twenty years since those records came out?
KD: It is weird. But it's not as weird as you think it is. You know what's weird? Imagine one show, you have a set list, and you've got these songs, and you guys are playing them, right? Maybe you have an album out. Maybe you don't. Anyway, a year passes, and you're still in the same band -- hopefully! If you guys can stand each other -- and you've got a new batch of songs. When you go and play the songs, people want to hear a song from a year ago. They really want you to play it, because they know that song, and it means something to them. But you're totally over that song. That's not where your head is at right now anyway. You like the new songs better anyway. It doesn't get any weirder than that moment right there. One year has passed or ten years have passed, it's just the same.
JH: That makes sense.
KD: Yeah. It's still weird to play a song that isn't the newest song that you wrote. It doesn't matter if it's a year ago, or five years ago, or fifteen years ago. It's not the newest thing you wrote, so it's weird. But I am just fucking so Middle America that if a fucking band comes on fucking stage -- I'll tell you this right now -- if I like your stuff, and you don't play the songs that I fucking like, then tell me that before you fucking sell me one of your tickets. You better tell me in big fucking print: "I"m not going to play a fucking thing you know!" Tell me that and I won't buy a ticket. We've got a nice agreement. It's cool, you can play whatever crazy new stuff you want, but if you come into town, I'm assuming that you're going to be playing something that I know. Hopefully, stuff that I like. 'Cause I'm Middle America. That's what I like.
I saw a Van Morrison concert once. He didn't play one single thing I knew. Now I realize that he's so eccentric and such a consummate performer that the whole idea that he might play "T.B. Sheets" or something that somebody might know is completely beneath him. Dude, I didn't know this. I thought I was just buying a fucking stupid ticket to Van Morrison. I had no idea I wasn't. I was buying a ticket to what this man felt like playing that night. Then, at the same time, Bill Monroe, Ray Charles, Aretha Fucking Franklin, right? Those are the people I would listen to and pay, and they don't have to play a single thing I know. I would just pay to be in the room that they're in. They don't even have to fucking play anything. But no, these are the people who actually play everything you fucking know. They play it all. And they're happy to do it; That's what they're being paid to do.
JH: When was the last good Van Morrison album? Does anybody care about his latest album?
KD: People do, I guess. I think because he's supposed to be such a high-quality performer that his musings on music nowadays are considered very relevant, even if it's not a ditty that you can snap your fingers to and that you like. I think maybe we're the idiots for thinking that he should be a monkey and play "Brown-Eyed Girl" for us so we can enjoy ourselves that evening.
JH: So many trends have come and gone since you started making music, and it happens even faster now. You've managed to transcend a lot of the temporary bullshit in music over the past couple of decades. How do you accomplish that?
KD: By never being particularly popular in the first place, probably. One song got particularly popular. I know a lot of people know us from
Fight Club. The only thing that got remotely popular was a song called "Cannonball," and that was a Breeders song. That was like Top 20, just that song. A lot of people don't even know it nowadays, that sort of thing. So that's how to remain...
I'm so bad at being in rock music. There's people that are so much better at it, that are just born for it. I looked at Madonna when she was doing a shoutout to Michael Jackson, and she was using that speak-from-the-diaphragm voice from the stage. The same rock talking voice that Celine Dion might use. I can't even do the accent. I can't do the rock voice. I don't get it.
I'm really bad at doing rock music, actually. I was watching Lollapalooza, before the version in Chicago, the cool version. It happened to be in Chicago, but it was one of the summer runs, not at Grant Park, it was at some shed. Anyway, I'd just watched Queens of the Stone Age. Nick was still with them, and they were really good. I was waiting for Chris Cornell's band, Audioslave. Chris Cornell had stepped on two amplifiers, with his legs in a V position. He had his shirt off, and his back was to the crowd. Before the curtains opened, he had a mic in his hand, and he had both his hands up above his head. So when the curtain opened, all you would see is his beautiful back. He's a gorgeous man, cool voice. I like the heavy metal voice, you know. I just thought, "God, I'm so bad at what I do!"
JH: Just at the spectacle of it? Because you write some great songs.
KD: Well, I think it's form over function.
JH: Maybe it's form follows function.
KD: I would hope, but it doesn't seem like it. It seems like people see a bike painted red, and they think it's a faster bike! [laughs] I never got it at all...It's like when there's a big band around and everybody loves them, but you know they suck.
JH: Well, maybe they're trying to make good music. Maybe not...
KD: I think they're trying to be successful.
JH: But being successful now means you make something that people like for a weekend. Everything changes so quickly. You don't have to write a song that people like for 20 years, that's still on the radio.
KD: [laughs] It is different. It's really different.
JH: What do you think about the future of the album? Do you think people will continue to make them?
KD: I don't know...Like you said, that kind of celebrity doesn't exist anymore. Maybe there won't be an album. There'll be a different type of success. Whatever drives people to do it. Isn't it getting laid? Whether you're a guy or a girl or gay or not, you still want to get laid. Whatever helps that, I guess. Which is always a good thing, probably.
Back in the day, there would be people who would quit their jobs for bands. It wasn't a lifestyle, it was actually what you did, and that was it. It does seem strange that somebody might do all of that to be pummeled for the next six months on the internet. I'm not talking about celebrity worship, 'cause that's creepy, but reading the shittiest things on a bathroom wall about oneself for like, the next six months. After having tried to do something musically, that doesn't seem like much fun. And there's no money in it, either, so your life hasn't changed at all. You just get a bunch of grief all the time. Also, how can people actually go and play in front of people? I guess they don't. We are.
JH: Yeah. What was the last really good show you saw?
KD: Hmmm. I liked the Neil Young show. That was probably the last show I saw. Although I don't like "Rockin' in the Free World." I really don't like that song. It really annoys me. Other than that, I liked the show.
JH: That's the kind of song people do at karaoke, 'cause everybody knows the chorus, at least.
KD: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. A lot of people now are just using loop pedals, I guess. Which is better than a laptop. At least it's actually present, everything there is actually happening at that moment. It's not just somebody hitting spacebar. I don't understand, if there's nobody to buy any records, how is a band from North Carolina even going to go to Illinois to play? There's no way they'll rent a van and pay for gas, and get days off from their jobs. But free doesn't seem like the right idea. Something should happen. Maybe it's the end of the band as we know it. Maybe it'll just be people taking previous songs and making mashups for the weekend.
JH: What's the plan for The Breeders? You had an album out last year, you have an EP out now. What are you working on next?
KD: We haven't played in the States since last summer, so we thought we'd play a few weeks this summer. So we're renting a van and going to the bars and playing. I'm getting more of the EPs made, too. We're not going to hand screen them, because then it doesn't seem like it would be a limited edition anymore. They're going to look nice, though.
JH: How was All Tomorrow's Parties?
KD: The new one's going to be really good. We were there in April, and we saw a lot of really good bands. Shellac was really good there, which was weird. Deerhunter was really good, I really like them.
JH: Yeah, I like Deerhunter. They make actual legitimate albums. It's not just a singles collection or something.
KD: Yeah. You know what's weird, too, is that a lot of the celebrity thing that's happening now. For me, the main thing was music, and if anybody did anything else, it was just kind of stupid. Some people would dance, like Janet Jackson or something, but whatever. I never even paid attention. Whatever. Mainly it was just music. But Kid Rock now has a beer out, and Jessica Simpson has the shoes, and people have perfume out. So, I think that's what a lot of people are doing now...I think that's what people are doing to line their coffers, because music is free. They use records to promote the perfume. Download a free song with one bottle of "Curiosity." [laughs]
JH: Did you ever want the Pixies to be the biggest band in the world?
KD: Fuck no! 'Cause you can see what you have to do to do it. First of all, you have to write lyrics that have some sort of suggestion, not completely, but some sort of suggestion about a universal theme. Hopefully, something about flying and love. "Your Flying Love," is perfect. Something like that. Then you have to say things like, "Ok, everybody, lift your hands up in the sky!" in that weird rock voice that I can't even get. Hell no. I just assume that if you're doing something that 30,000 people want to see, it's probably something that I don't. [laughs] I don't know what's wrong with me!
JH: Do you think Frank Black ever wanted the Pixies to be the biggest band in the world?
KD: You know, maybe. I'd like to think so. It'd be nice if I was able to hang out with somebody with some ambition, for fuck's sake. It'd be great if he thought that. I actually don't know. Maybe Joe [Santiago] thought that, maybe David [Lovering]. Drummers think that, don't they?
JH: How much does your chemistry as a band depends on your chemistry as people?
KD: It depends. With the Pixies, we don't have to actually work out a part on a song, like "Do we do that twice, or three times? Is this song sounding good?" or whatever. We don't have to do that. We just have to know how the song goes. That doesn't require a whole lot of cooperation or a moment of vulnerability or anything. When you're writing a song, it's way different than just rehearsing a set. Your brain's half off in rehearsal. You're wondering if this is the right pick for the song or whether you have to turn the treble down. When you're writing a song, you get those music headaches. "Oh my god, I can only go four hours. Oh my god, I don't know anymore, this sounds like shit!" It's two totally different heads, I think.
JH: Ok, this is kind of a weird question, but did you really do your hair with mayo before a Breeders show?
KD: Oh, mayo, let me see...Butter, a piece of ham, anything that was greasy. Yeah. I used beer. Beer's not the best, though, 'cause it doesn't have a lot of grease in it. I don't do it all the time. It was when my hair was a certain length, and I'd just washed it. It would just be all over the place, so I'd grease it down so it would stay in place. Also, I hate the sound of brand new guitar strings, so I'll dump whole ashtrays on my hands, and spit in it, and hopefully I'll have grease on my face -- I'm serious when I say this -- and I mix it all together to make this disgusting sticky stuff, and I go up and down the fretboard, trying to dirty up my strings. I just can't stand the sound of new strings.
JH: I know you have this famous quote, where you said, "We were overweight and ugly when we started, and we're overweight and ugly now." Are you fucking kidding me? You're a sex symbol! Do you know this?
KD: Right! Yeah, right, I'm beautiful. Well, that's good to know. Thank you for saying it.
I sure do.
