Mettler: : Are there some places where you're just singing vowel sounds and not even thinking about forming words where you'll go, "This is an 'ahh,' this is an 'eee,' this is an 'ohh,'" and then you go back into it to figure out the actual words?
Francis: : Sure. Exactly. I may even write in some of those vowel sounds on a piece of paper, or on my phone, and then begin to organize them in sequence of a rhyming scheme—whatever it is. Sometimes those sounds are very important, because they're the one thing I have going on in a song that's solid. I might have just a sound there, but the only thing I have is that. It's not a word and it's not of significance, but it's a sound—a poetic sound. I know it has
strength, poetically speaking. As I'm mentally running over the idea that's starting to come together, I'm already inserting it in a particular locale, you know what I mean? It's already up on a pedestal, a little bit. "Oh, it goes right here—[
sings] 'Da-da, dee-dee'—that's where it goes."
And then, if it's the type of thing where you might be able to determine, as the writer, "Oh, lo and behold—the spot where that comes up is the ultimate line of each stanza," then I know that feels like it's the title of the song. I don't know
why, but it seems like this will probably be the title of the song. Then it has a kind of twofold status. Not only is that sound inhabiting a particular location in my real estate here, but we think potentially it's going to be the thing you're going to see in print as the
title of the song—and that could be very important. That might mean it's what the song is about, maybe. Or it might be that it's completely what it's
not about, and it's just a throwaway reference we're going to utilize as a title. There's still a lot that's undetermined, but the more I can designate something as—"Oh! Now we have a word!"—then we've gotten to the next level.
Now it has become actual language—and it goes on from there. That's how I do it.
Mettler: : Have you ever decided, instead of actually making it into a word, you're just going to keep it as a sound because its feel fits the space in the arrangement, and you'd rather keep it completely nonsensical because it's just a vibe you're going for as opposed to coming up with a literal lyric?
Francis: : Certainly, if it's a nice, Beatle-y "Ohh-ohh / ahh-ahh" thing where you really just use the exclamatory kind of comment, then you don't need to have a little word. Sometimes, you've just got to go, "Ohh." But chances are I'm gonna want a word, though. I'm gonna
want a word.
Mettler: : In a way, that "ohh" thing makes me think of a song like "Tame" on
Doolittle, where you have this hard breathing in/breathing out sequence in the second minute. Was that just because it fit the vibe of the song, or were you ever going to change that to actual words?
Francis: : Yeah, it fits the vibe of the song. I didn't know what the song was gonna be called, but I knew that I liked having that word "tame" in there—and that I wanted that word "tame" to
be there. The breathing is all syncopated—[
speak-sings] "Uh huh-huh / Uh huh-huh"—and it has its own kind of language to it. And that's a good opportunity to have that, especially in a song I would classify as, quote unquote, "a ditty." Those type of nonverbal sounds, they basically underline a sense of minimalist art, or minimalist expression—expressing something in a very deconstructed kind of way. Add a line with a word there? No, let's take away the words. It's just, "Uh huh-huh / Uh huh-huh." And that is not without attitude—well, perhaps not. It just happens to be without an actual English word—or a word that we recognize, anyway.
Mettler: : I like the fact that it gives me the opposite intent of the song title, "Tame," because you seem a lot more intense during that part of the song. It's like something is getting ready to break by the time we've gotten past the "Got hips like Cinderella" portion at the opening, which sounds a little bit dreamy. As "Tame" goes on, we start feeling like, "Uh-oh, what's going to happen at the end of it?" That breathing sequence ratchets up the tension.
Francis: : Well, I guess I would chalk that up to our very basic sense of quiet/loud dynamics. Musically, that song has a deconstructed kind of shape as well. It's three bars of four, and three chords: D, C, and F. The normal kind of squared-out pop thing would be to add a fourth bar there so that we would have four chords, but we're just going to go with three. And then, rather than have separate chords underneath that chorus, we're just going to make the verse part
quiet, and we're going to make that chorus
loud. It's the only musical difference that's really going to happen in those two sections. One's going to be played full-chord, and the other one is just going to be the bass playing the root.
So, yeah, "Tame" is a good example of us just trying to do very minimalist things to find the journey within our little two minutes of performance. And there's
gotta be some kind of a journey. Do we want it to be a very one-trick-pony kind of a dream? Or, even at two minutes, where it's just loud the whole way, it probably might end up being ... [
pauses]
boring. If it was only 30 seconds long, or 45 seconds long—if you had that kind of a ditty, I think you could get away with more of a singular kind of idea. But as soon as you bring it to the minute-and-a-half, 2-minute mark, you want to start breaking things up—we went
here, we went
there, and then we ended up back over
here—so that there's some kind of a journey.
Mettler: : An early solo track of yours, "Parry the Wind High, Low," (footnote 5) certainly takes us on a journey. On it, you have this kind of weird 3/4 thing going on with the bass line, but the drums are 4/4. It's complicated in terms of the composition—but it doesn't
sound that way.
Francis: : Yeah, and those are just fun things to do within the arrangement that hopefully is
intriguing to the listener, and not annoying. It's never my intention to annoy. Occasionally, these ideas happen in the moment, and you don't have a lot of perspective. You remain committed to an idea, even if it's a little quirky. And then maybe a few years later, you go, "Huh! That quirky idea
was quirky—but maybe it wasn't so
fascinating." I'm hesitant sometimes to do quirky things. I used to feel a lot more free in that, but now I'm a lot more aware of it. So when I do a quirky thing, I try to figure out if it's going to remain a good thing, or if it's going to be problematic, laborious, or something else down the road, you know? We're not really a prog rock band—but we're not really a punk band, either. We're not really a heavy metal band. We're not any of these kinds of bands. We like all of these forms and we like all of these genres, but we're not any one of those genres. We just kind of do these half-assed attempts at all the different genres! [
laughs.]
Mettler: : How about we put "prog" and "punk" together, and call you
prunk? There's a whole new word for you.
Francis: : [
continues laughing.] Prunk! That's one way to characterize it.
Mettler: : Speaking of quirky/prunky things, whenever I hear the opening lines of "Monkey Gone to Heaven" that go, "There was a guy / An underwater guy who controlled the sea / Got killed by ten million pounds of sludge / From New York and New Jersey," they still seem oddly relevant today. When you're singing that song onstage now, do you feel the storyline of "Monkey Gone to Heaven" could be happening in 2024, instead of 35 years ago? (footnote 6)
Francis: : Well, sure. It's not really
meant to be 35 years ago. It's not meant to be now. It's not meant to be any particular timeframe, although I can't always escape that. I can't always leave no clues in the words that are going to lock a song down into a particular time and place. But if I
can get away with not locking it down in a particular time and place, then I will. One of the ways I try to do that is to not make anything be too preachy, or like a warning of something. I try to keep things a little more neutral, a little more open. If I'm gonna do anything that would imply I have some kind of special sort of insight, I might nudge the character into sounding more like they're prophesying, as opposed to speaking [
pauses], "the truth." Well, it
could be the truth. It could be mystical. It could be "Wow." Whatever it is, let's just keep it entertaining, at the very least.
I hope that, by not getting too specific with those things, they don't end up sounding judgmental. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but I feel, personally, that just puts my song into a kind of precariousness. If it's going to be judgmental and wagging a finger or whatever, it's got to be really, really, really
good. [
laughs heartily.] Otherwise, it's just like an argument with a beat, and I'm not here to argue with anyone. I try to move the lyric away from argument if I can. At the end of the day, it's got to
sound good whether it's got all kinds of
words, a thousand words, or not that many words at all. I don't want to say there's any particular method or way to get there, because as soon as you start saying, "Yeah, these are my rules," something comes along and
breaks those rules, doesn't it?
Footnote 5: "Parry the Wind High, Low" appears on his first solo album, March 1993's self-titled
Frank Black (4AD/Elektra). Throughout his solo career outside Pixies, Thompson has alternately used the names Frank Black and Black Francis.
Footnote 6: "Monkey Gone to Heaven" is on
Doolittle, which was released in 1989.
