The classic Pixies song that Frank Black wrote as a teenager
Frank Black had plenty of time to mull over whether or not he wanted to record ‘Here Comes Your Man’. The classic Pixies track, which was released as a single from the band’s 1989 sophomore album Doolittle, was close to mainstream as the pioneering alternative rockers ever got. With twangy lead guitar riffs and a bubblegum pop chorus, ‘Here Comes Your Man’ could have been featured on the very first recordings that the Boston band ever made.
That’s because Black originally wrote the song when he was a teenager. The future singer managed to scoop together enough tips working at his father’s bar that he was able to buy his own guitar at the age of 11. Almost immediately, Black began to write his own material, with ‘Here Comes Your Man’ coming out while he was still in the early stages of learning how to write songs.
“I’ve been writing songs since I was 12,” Black told Spin in 2014. “There are a couple of songs like ‘Here Comes Your Man’ which I wrote when I was 14 or 15, so some early Pixies songs had their roots in my teen years. But they didn’t crystallize into something until I heard a Violent Femmes or Iggy Pop record, and then I was like, ‘Oh, okay.’”
Picking up images from his fascination with alternative lifestyles, Black also tapped into the boxcar imagery that R.E.M. conjured up on their Chronic Town cut ‘Carnival of Sorts (Box Car)’. “I probably liked the word ‘boxcar’ because I heard it on the R.E.M. song, from their first record,” Black later recalled, as quoted in Ben Sisario’s 33 1/3 book on Doolittle.
“It’s about winos and hobos travelling on the trains, who die in the California Earthquake, peeing their pants,” Black also explained to NME. “Before earthquakes, everything gets very calm — animals stop talking and birds stop chirping and there’s no wind. It’s very ominous.”
“I’ve been through a few earthquakes, actually, ’cause I grew up in California,” he added. “I was only in one big one, in 1971. I was very young and I slept through it. I’ve been awake through lots of small ones at school and at home. It’s very exciting actually — a very comical thing. It’s like the earth is shaking, and what can you do? Nothing.”
Check out ‘Here Comes Your Man’ down below.
