The guitarist David Bowie considered “terribly underrated”
From day one, David Bowie was always interested in music outside the usual top 40 formula. As much as he could play the game of the music industry in the 1980s with albums like Let’s Dance, ‘The Starman’ usually gravitated to the music more avant-garde than the usual pinups, fawning over the music of artists like Lou Reed of the Velvet Underground while everyone else was indulging in flower power. Once he started reaching his pop apex, Bowie kept his ear close to the ground on the indie scene.
Then again, the idea of Bowie going mainstream wasn’t exactly a case of selling out. Considering how much he had shifted from his glam rock roots by indulging in krautrock and inventing the sounds of post-rock on records like Low, the most outlandish thing Bowie could do in the 1980s was go mainstream, hooking up with disco producer Nile Rodgers to create some of the most infectious grooves of his career on songs like ‘Modern Love’.
As Bowie started to strut his stuff across the MTV stage, the indie rock movement slowly popped up from the heart of America. Although R.E.M. would become one of the first major indie rock acts to break through to the mainstream, the city of Boston spat out a different take on rock and roll with Pixies.
Fronted by Black Francis, the band were known for taking the basis of pop and rock songs and intentionally making them dirtier. Pioneering the dynamic contrast of soft verses and loud choruses, many of the band’s classics like ‘Where is My Mind’ would become anthems years later, influencing Kurt Cobain to toy with dynamics on ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’.
Although Francis was responsible for the lion’s share of the vocals alongside Kim Deal, Joey Santiago had his own vocabulary on lead guitar. Partway between surf rock precision and reckless abandon, many of the band’s greatest hits include Santiago engaging in a battle with his instrument, including a handful of solos that sound like the guitar is about to explode in his hands.
While the rest of the world was still following in the footsteps of artists like Eddie Van Halen, Bowie recalled finding this new approach to rock guitar wildly refreshing. Even though he was working with rock giants like Stevie Ray Vaughan on his own records, Bowie would later reminisce on how much of a breath of fresh air it was to hear Santiago’s playing.
In an interview years later, Bowie recalled being transfixed when hearing the band for the first time, saying, “The first time I heard the Pixies was in 1988. At the time, I felt it was the most compelling music outside of Sonic Youth…they were a sound band, [like] the colours that Santiago provided. As a guitar player, I feel that he is terribly underrated. It’s much more about texture, and he has extraordinary texture”.
Bowie would also single out the song ‘Debaser’ as one of the finest examples of every element of the band working at its best. Alongside Santiago’s inventive guitar parts, Francis’s screeching vocals and relentless energy makes for a sonic fireball that starts with a bang and sustains its momentum to the end.
Even though Pixies may have been enormously influential on the shape of rock to come, they wouldn’t stick around for the afterglow, eventually breaking up a few years into the alternative revolution. While they may not have seen the fruits of their labour pay off as much as the Nirvanas of the world, it probably doesn’t hurt to have the endorsement of one of the biggest rock giants.
