049: Pixies Guitarist Joey Santiago

Wheels Off with Rhett Miller

Rhett Miller

Music, Performing Arts, Arts

4.9 • 609 Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 2020

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Joey Santiago, composer and lead guitarist for The Pixies, joins Rhett to talk about what he’s been up to during the pandemic, his renowned career and friendship with Pixies lead Charles Thompson, aka Frank Black. Joey tells Rhett about the first time he saw a live guitar performance and why it inspired him to learn to play. They discuss the benefits of seeing cover bands and that time at Largo when Joey was due to perform with Rhett (but didn’t show up). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to Wheels Off, a show about the messy reality of the creative life.
0:05.5	I'm Rhett Miller.
0:07.0	That's when it got wheels off.
0:10.2	We started up and we ain't going to starve.
0:13.2	Oh, I like you.
0:14.2	I could have not.
0:15.7	That's when they got wheels off.
0:23.6	Joey Santiago created an iconic style of guitar.
0:28.4	In the mid-80s, when the Pixies came together,
0:34.6	his sound, it's complicated to describe, but it's very simple.
0:46.2	Like it's this buzzsaw that's built on these weird sideways melodies,
0:56.7	but he's not, you know, hammering on the fretboard.
1:01.9	He's not fingers flying lightning fast across, you know, up and down the neck of the guitar.
1:09.9	He's building these weird little structures,
1:14.6	these sonic structures that are bent and angular and weird and fantastic.
1:23.2	He's one of my favorite musicians, and he's a great dude.
1:27.9	I'm lucky that I've gotten to be friends with him for a bunch of years now.
1:31.8	It's been a fun thing watching him go from a guy that used to be in the Pixies.
1:38.1	He had a bunch of years where they were not a thing from, you know, 1993 to 2004 to when they reformed in 2004, getting to watch
1:49.4	Joe have a sort of second life as the pixies finally got to cash in on the, the incredible
1:58.7	love that the public had held on to them for all these years.
2:05.5	And I don't mean cash in.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Rhett Miller, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Rhett Miller and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.