 The Music & Sound Retailer: How did you first get involved in music?
Frank Black: I suppose I professionally got involved in music when I was about 20 or 21. I was living at school in San Juan, Puerto Rico. And I was kind of bumming around there, not really going to class too much, and getting bored with school. Haley’s Comet was going to make its close pass over Earth in that year. I think it was around ’85. I remember reading about people who were traveling to New Zealand to watch it. Anyway, it interested me and it became the catalyst for my wanderlust. I called my father, who was sort of bankrolling a couple of my scholarly adventures. He was going to help me out with a plane ticket and I think I received a camera as a gift to take with me on my trip. After I had tentatively made these plans, I had an epiphany: Wait a minute, I’ve been dreaming about being a rock and roll musician my whole life, since I was a little kid. I don’t need to be dropping out of school and going off on some worldwide adventure. What I need to be doing is dropping out of school, moving to the big city—of course I had the city of Boston in mind. I wrote to a college roommate of mine at UMass Amherst, Joey Santiago. When we were hanging out together in Amherst, we’d taken a couple of minimal steps toward starting a band. It never really turned into anything, but we talked about it a lot. And I knew he was bored with school and had some sort of rock and roll fantasy as well. So I wrote him a letter—this was back in the day when people wrote letters to each other. [Laughs] Joey wrote me back and said “I’ll drop out of school too and we’ll meet in Boston and start a rock and roll band.” [At this point,] my father was still approving, but dubious. I probably felt his concern but neither one of my parents ever discouraged me from playing music. I said, “Give me a year and I’ll have this rock and roll thing up and running.” And that’s exactly what happened. About a year later, I was in a local band that was making some headway, making our first record, and getting ready to tour around the world. I’ve been doing it ever since.
M&SR: How did these rock and roll dreams come about when you were young? Did you play instruments or take lessons?
Black: I did occasionally take lessons. I started off taking drum lessons when I was quite young and I think I took a few piano lessons, and a couple of guitar lessons. But I never really learned any instrument. I never really followed through, so I would say most of my education about music came from just listening to records. At some point I did pick up a guitar and say, “OK, I’ve got to learn how to strum some chords.” So when I was about 12, I started to learn how to play some guitar chords and began to write songs. But I think what I really picked up from records was attitude and the aesthetic of rock and roll, whatever that is.
M&SR: Do you remember your first guitar?
Black: It was a guitar that was just in the house. It was my mother’s guitar that she had bought when I was very young. Probably when I was 14 [I bought my first guitar]. There was a little music store that was connected to a religious book store I used to hang out at. They sold records and things, and they also sold some musical instruments. I don’t know, I think I probably just got what was on sale. I think the next guitar I got through the mail. It was a little better. That guitar carried me through the first couple of years of Pixies touring.
M&SR: These days,
do you have favorite gear
and brands?
Black: I pretty much only play Telecasters. For acoustic guitars, I pretty much only play Martin acoustic guitars. I use these orange Tortex picks. I pretty much play mostly Vox AC30 amplifiers, although I have other amplifiers that I use occasionally for recording. So I have a small collection of amplifiers. I keep it very simple.
M&SR: When you want new gear, do you shop at retailers yourself or mostly go through manufacturers?
Black: I like going to music stores. I will, on the road, go to music stores and buy guitars or amplifiers. I think the last Martin I purchased was at the mall in England somewhere. I didn’t have an acoustic guitar to strum in my hotel room and I was desperate for one, so I just went to the mall and I got one. I was really pleased with it, actually. I’m quite a judge. I don’t say anything but I’m kind of like a music store angel in that I’m there just as as a customer but I’m sort of very pleased when the staff at a music store are helpful. I’m very, very upset if people who work at a music store are not helpful. Fortunately, this doesn’t happen often. I think it used to happen more often when I was a bit younger. You know, you go in to try to buy something and they’re really just these young “dumb-dumbs” who have their own rock and roll fantasies. There they are working at the music store. They think they’re something special, you know, and they think I’m a nobody or something. They don’t really give you the time of day. I don’t like it when that happens. I consider music stores to be sacred ground, because people who go into music stores are excited. They might be, like me, an international touring musician who’s in there to drop thousands of dollars to buy whatever, or they might be a nobody who’s just dreaming about music. That’s who I used to be. It’s very different than other kinds of stores. You go to an electronics store and people are just buying entertainment stuff for their house. You go to a book store and people are buying books. There’s nothing wrong with those stores, but you go to a music store and it’s something special. So I like it when there’s a lot of pride coming from the proprietor, whether it’s a really cool store that has all kinds of hip, vintage guitars of whether it’s some mall store that has whatever the new stuff is. I think they’re very important; that’s where it starts for everybody who ends up being a musician. Sure we hang out in record stores too, which also serve a special function, but the music store is really where you walk in and say, “Wow! Look at that. I want to try that.” It’s nice when music stores encourage people to play instruments and they’re not all Nervous Nellie about the gear. It’s where the dream starts to really percolate. I have a lot of respect for music stores and I like it when they’re run well.
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