(Credits: Far Out / Discogs)
Wed 10 December 2025 3:00, UK
As unfortunate as it might be, not all great bands are capable of seeing beyond their internal frictions and continuing to work together, and in the case of pioneering alternative rock act Pixies, it only took four albums for things to fall apart at the seams.
The band had changed the shape of indie music with their releases in just a short span of time in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and given their rapid work rate, many may have predicted them to take this mantle and run with it for many years to come, continuing to stay at the top of their game for decades to come.
As hard as it may seem to top an album like the band’s debut, Surfer Rosa, they only went and improved upon it with Doolittle a year later; an album that is regularly cited as being one of the greatest of all time, and hugely influential to future generations of indie rock acts. However, despite this strong start, the problem would come in the form of seeing whether they could remain consistent in their output.
Third and fourth albums, Bossanova and Trompe Le Monde, weren’t quite as good as the first two had proven themselves to be, but they weren’t a complete disgrace to the hard work they’d put into being one of the most celebrated acts of their kind. By this point, they’d also amassed something of a following, with plenty of other bands recognising their unique talent and wishing to invite them on tour as a support act.
However, while accompanying U2 as they crossed North America as the openers for their 1993 tour, at the behest of Bono, no less, things behind the scenes were seemingly fractious. As it turns out, a series of bitter disagreements between Pixies’ frontman Black Francis and bassist Kim Deal made him see fit to end the band, albeit in rather dramatic fashion, and their road would come to an abrupt end.
The tensions had risen to a point where Francis was unable to even face speaking to the rest of the band, and he’d got so frustrated with the inner politics of the band that he chose to break things off via fax – a method so amusingly typical of the era in which it took place.
According to a 2014 interview with Magnet Magazine, Francis doesn’t quite recall the exact phrasing of his fax that severed the band’s relationship in an instant, but claims that it was blunt in its delivery. “I just fucking sent a fax to the manager saying, ‘copy this fax and mail it to everyone, I’m fucking out of here,’” he recalled. “No confrontation, no discussion, no face-to-face, no let’s kiss and say goodbye; none of that. Just total I’m out, I don’t want to deal with this.”
He continued by trying to justify exactly why he came to this decision in such irascible fashion. “I was on tour all the time,” he added. “I was trying to hold on to this relationship I had going on. The constant touring schedule was interfering with that and there was some animosity between Kim and I that had just settled into an icy coolness.”
Related Topics