(Credits: Far Out / Discogs)
Sun 28 December 2025 23:00, UK
Looking back at the original run of the Pixies requires sifting through a lot of baggage that came along later – including the posthumous contextualisation of the band as the single biggest influence on 1990s “alternative rock”, as well as their various additional reunions and break-ups in the 21st century.
If frontman Black Francis, AKA Frank Black, had a playbook he was using for inspiration when it came to dissolving the Pixies in 1993, it would certainly have been the one David Byrne left behind when he unceremoniously imploded Talking Heads a few years earlier. No matter what level of status your band might have achieved, you didn’t owe anybody a press conference or a farewell concert before pulling the plug. In fact, it wasn’t even all that important that you discuss the matter with your bandmates ahead of time.
Instead, Black Francis – real name, Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV – decided to casually mention the situation to a reporter while out promoting his first solo album under the Frank Black name. Up to that point, most people thought his solo project and bassist Kim Deal’s work with the Breeders were simply side projects, but alas, no, there were to be no more Pixies records.
Kim Deal, it’s well worth noting, wasn’t aware of this decision herself until receiving a fax about it, so one could certainly understand if she was more than a tad miffed. Fortunately, though, as she found herself in the midst of the surprising breakout success of the Breeders’ second album, Last Splash, Kim seemed quite low-key and content when asked to comment on Black Francis’s executive decision later that year.
Kim Deal performing live in the 1990s. (Credits: Far Out / Reddit)
“I don’t know what kind of formalities would needed to have been done,” Deal told the Toronto Star in November of ‘93, taking a drag on a cigarette while calmly collecting her thoughts. “What was Charles supposed to do?” she continued, referring to Black Francis by the decidedly less cool name he’d been born with. “I live in Ohio, somebody else lives on the East Coast, and two people live in Los Angeles. Were we all supposed to meet in the state of Oklahoma for a meeting?”
Unsurprisingly, Deal hadn’t spoken to Black Francis since the Pixies had wrapped up a giant tour opening for U2 on their “Zoo TV” stadium trek. For most bands, a slate of gigs like that would have been seen as the ultimate jumping-off point toward mainstream superstardom. For the Pixies, it was the end of the line, a potentially wise recognition that no good fate awaited them on a higher rung of the pop ladder.
“I don’t know,” Deal said when asked if she carried a grudge about the way the band ended. “I had a great time with the Pixies and it wasn’t like we were in the middle of something. It didn’t seem inappropriate.”
Up to this point, a lot of people who’d listened to Last Splash had assumed that Deal’s song ‘No Aloha’ had been her true statement on the Pixies breakup: “No bye, no aloha,” she sings on that track. “Gone with a rock promoter / A rock promoter / I know, I saw / And now may die.”
But Kim denied this to the Toronto Star, saying she’d written ‘No Aloha’ well before those events unfolded.
Interestingly, in a twist quite different from the David Byrne version, Frank Black Francis eventually reversed course on his decision after a decade, and the original Pixies line-up, including Deal, reformed for the typical belated cash-grab reunion tour in 2004. This time around, though, it was Deal who eventually felt like the thing had run its course, and when Francis decided to make new Pixies records, Kim jumped ship, officially exiting the band in 2013. She was replaced on the next three Pixies albums by Paz Lenchantin, but released her own long-awaited debut solo album in 2024, titled Nobody Loves You More.
Related Topics