“Get out of my way”: the 1993 hit song that broke up the Pixies
Before the 1990s’ grunge explosion and the Lollapalooza heyday, it was Boston’s Pixies paving the way for the alternative rock revolution.
Not that they were operating in isolation. Ever since punk’s meteoric crater, a potent musical underground was alive and kicking across the 1980s while the day’s hair metal was cock rocking on MTV, the likes of Hüsker Dü, Sonic Youth, The Replacements, and REM all scoring an essential soundtrack to rock fans fatigued of the decade’s spandex brigade.
But it was Pixies that forged the most direct link between the college ‘left of the dial’ rock and the later Seattle surge. While faring much better commercially over in the UK, and signing to the country’s 4AD label, Pixies first run of albums laid out a blueprint for future Nirvanas and Smashing Pumpkins to follow, frontman Black Francis’ lyrical surrealism setting the stage for personal, idiosyncratic songcraft as well as pioneering the ‘quiet-loud’ dynamics often shared between Francis and bassist Kim Deal.
Deal was always nagged by her second-fiddle status in the group. While co-writing fan favourites like ‘Gigantic’ and ‘Silver’, Francis ran a tight ship and ensured the lion’s share of the Pixies’ material was under his creative control.
Eager to unleash her own songs on the world, Deal formed The Breeders with Throwing Muses’ Tanya Donelly and cut 1990’s Pod with Steve Albini in the engineering chair, finishing only a month before Pixies’ Bossanova was due to start recording in earnest.
Tensions continued to flare between the two, eking out 1991’s Trompe le Monde and winning several dates as U2’s support band on the North American leg of the Zoo TV Tour the next year, yet, following their final show at Vancouver’s Pacific Coliseum in April, the Pixies decided to hit the brakes and enter an informal hiatus period.
It turned out that Francis held no intentions of returning. It was during the sessions of The Breeders’ biggest hit that news of Pixies’ unilateral dissolution reached Deal after Francis had informed BBC Radio 5 that the band were over without any prior communication, her twin sister, who’d joined the band, sharing the news.
“I was in the studio literally recording ‘Cannonball’ when Kelley came down the hallway and said, ‘Pixies broke up,’” Deal recalled to NME in 2019. “I said, ‘OK, get out of my way.’”
No more Pixies day job and stockpiling songs. Now free to devote full energy to The Breeders, Deal and the band managed to cut 1993’s Last Splash and sell platinum levels of sales, owed in part to the key opening slots for Nirvana post-Nevermind and ‘Cannonball’ enjoying massive rotation on the day’s MTV, winning more mainstream attention than Pixies ever did.
Some reunion dates did take place on and off, and Deal contributed to 2004’s ‘Bam Thwok’ comeback, but declined to return to the fold for the big, Indie Cindy return in 2013. Busy with her own Last Splash reunion tour at the time, ‘Cannonball’s alt-rock hurtle boomed out of The Breeders’ projectile with such force she still didn’t need her own Pixies band 20 years on.
