Pixies’ Joey Santiago: ‘We got influenced by other people but made it our own’

Before American rock band Pixies took the world by storm, Filipino-American guitarist Joey Santiago spent evenings handing out cassette tapes to random people for a shot at recognition. 

“Some of them are crass,” Santiago recalled. “‘Okay, sure kid,’ [they’d say]. And I hear a clunk. I heard the cassette just thrown in the drawer.” 

While Santiago would often just brush it off, his desire to prove them wrong was a lot stronger than the urge to just leave it be. 

“‘You’ll see! One day, you’re going to regret this,’” he quipped during an online interview with Rappler. 

And clearly, they did. 

It’s not every day that you see a band persist through its lows and revel in its highs for a whopping 40 years and counting. Nobody does that quite like Pixies, and that’s exactly how they were able to go from playing at bars and clubs to having their music reverberate within the walls of large arenas across the globe. 

40 years later

“In Boston, there was such a club scene. I would say [there were] at least five clubs we could hit at any time and it was a booming city for music,” Santiago said of the band’s formative years. “That era, there was just a lot of music. And the way to do it back then was just to play live as much as possible.” 

Pixies have been regarded as the blueprint for many of the bands that would pop up long after their 1986 formation, and Santiago’s punchy, contrast-heavy guitar style were instrumental to the band’s rise to that status. 

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Despite the perceived pressure that comes with having all these musicians across several generations look up to you, Santiago isn’t one to let that bog him down. Instead, he embraces the feeling of once being on the same side.

The only difference is that they approached it with a certain filter that allowed them to put all these influences together to make something they could call their own. 

“You’re in the middle of it. We’re in it. When people get influenced by us, it’s kudos, because we got influenced by other people. We got influenced by the Beatles. But it is nice that Pixies is part of the vocabulary in the musical world right now. The same thing when we use the language to make it sound ‘Beatle-y,’ make it sound ‘The Who-ish,’ or ‘Velvet-y.’ All this stuff is part of the language. And now we’re just part of it. It’s great because we got influenced by other people but we made it our own. So kudos to us that somehow our filter created something new,” he explained. 

Ask any person what they remember when they think about Pixies, and the alternative rock outfit’s “loud-quiet-loud” technique is sure to surface. But even then, Santiago can’t seem to find a way to describe Pixies’ sonic profile. 

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“I don’t know what sound we have. It’s the combination of Charles’ vocals, some of the drumming, my guitar and Charles’ chord progressions, but we don’t do it on purpose. It just comes out,” Santiago shared. 

“But there is growth. Bossanova saw a lot of growth and so did the last record we did,” he added, referring to The Night the Zombies Came. 

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But four decades down the line and 10 studio albums later, Santiago feels they’ve finally settled into their creative process. 

“That means we’re always in constant motion about it. We’re still moving around with it. Creatively, we’re in full stride right now with it,” he said. 

An emotional homecoming

For the first time, however, the legendary group is gearing up to stage what might be one of its most special shows yet: a concert in the Philippines. 

Their Manila show, set for May 10 at the Filinvest Tent in Alabang, was truly a long time coming. It’s been 31 years since Santiago last visited the Philippines — flying to the country in 1995 with drummer David Lovering for a Mt. Pinatubo medical mission.

And so when the opportunity to arrange the locations for their tour finally came up, Santiago floated the idea to his bandmates right away. 

“We were touring with Jack White. We played a few shows with him in South America, and for one of his last shows, he was headed to the Philippines. It occurred to me like, ‘Hey, we should go there.’ I’ve been wanting to go, but the scheduling of tours is hard for us. But we finally made it,” he said. 

The band had never played for a Filipino audience before — and Santiago admits he’s “dying” to know what it’s like. 

But the thrill of facing a totally new crowd aside, their upcoming show is going to double as an emotional homecoming for Santiago, who plans on visiting his old house in the country when he lands. 

“I can’t wait to get there and see where it all started for me. I’m gonna get the address of where I lived. I think it’s right in the middle of Manila. I’m sure I’m gonna get very emotional when I see the old house.” – Rappler.com