Pixies' Joey Santiago on the Hendrix song that changed his life

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of maximumfun.org and is distributed by NPR.

**Jesse Thorn** (0:20)
It's Bullseye, I'm Jesse Thorn. Time now for the song that changed my life. It's a chance for a guest to talk about the music and specifically the one single song that most shaped them into the artist that they are today. On deck this week, Joey Santiago, guitarist for The Pixies. You know The Pixies, right?
If you made a Mount Rushmore of quintessential 80s alternative bands, I mean, first of all, great work. That sounds like an ambitious but fun project. You're probably good at stone carving or whatever. But anyway, if you were deciding what goes on that Mount Rushmore, you polled your friends, Pixies would probably be near the top, maybe at the top. They've influenced countless bands, Nirvana, Radiohead, Weezer, The Smashing Pumpkins.
The Pixies sound changed everything.
Who was behind it? Well, Black Francis, the lead singer. He'd sort of snarl and shout sometimes, sore and lilt over the melody at others. David Lovering, the drummer, punchy and playful. Kim Deal, the brilliant bassist and singer who would go on to form The Breeders, another legendary alternative rock band. And our guest, Joey Santiago, a guy who's just as glad to lay back in the cut with a nice quiet riff as he is to shred in his signature style. Loud, discordant and wholly unique.
To celebrate the Pixies' 40th anniversary, the band is back on the road. They have dates literally all over the world. If you live, I mean, somewhere, anywhere, odds are the Pixies are gonna be playing a show near you this summer. When we asked Santiago about the song that changed his life, his choice of artist didn't shock us. It was Jimi Hendrix. He said, Hendrix's work on the guitar played a pivotal role in his artistic upbringing.

**Joey Santiago** (2:55)
The first time I heard Hendrix was the song, Fire.
It was probably on the radio, and I bought the record right away, and there was Purple Haze. I learned that, and that's ingrained in me. I will never forget how to play that. And it's such a cool chord, too. That chord that he has, I think people call it the Hendrix chord. And that's always an Easter egg in every Pixies record is I sneak that chord in there. I spelled it out on Is She Weird?
Literally, no, ding, ding, ding, ding, it's like, yep, there's Hendrix.

**Jesse Thorn** (4:07)
And when we learned that Joey had picked a song off of Jimi Hendrix's Are You Experienced LP, I mean, that's not a huge shocker. I mean, like, but what 12-year-old that plays guitar hasn't listened to Are You Experienced over and over. But on a record full of monster hits, fuzzed-out blues standards, and guitar shredding masterclasses, the song that changed Joey Santiago's life is kind of not any of those things. Third Stone from the Sun is a spacey, off-kilter jam. There isn't really any singing in it or shredding. There's a solid drum groove and a bass line, and then there is Hendrix, who, as you are about to hear, is basically pretending to be a space alien?
I'll let Joey Santiago take it from here. Rock me, Joe.

**Joey Santiago** (5:20)
When I got the record, I wanted to hear the songs that I heard on the radio, because sometimes you would just get half of it. You know, you just tune in, and I would listen to it, and just, you know, love it. That's how I listen to records. But I started listening to the record as a whole concept, you know, because that's the way records were done at the time.
The first time I listened to the album, or your experience, yeah, the song didn't really register to me, you know, as a kid. The first time I heard third song from The Sun, when it really settled in, was when I had my headphones on. It just blew my mind. Just the guitar, just the weirdness of it.
What struck me about this song was, I got an electric guitar, and the sounds, the otherworldly sounds he was getting on that song was very inspiring, you know. And I got the guitar, and I started thinking about like, oh, you know, what if I did something with this guitar, that, you know, what if I contributed out there, you know? And I didn't want, you know, I didn't want to do anything like bluesy, even though Hendrix is like blues bass, but he still has a good sensibility of being weird. When the sonic scapes started happening, it's like, that's it. That's what I want to do, is all that like weirdness, all the other things that I ignored, you know? This is so triumphant. Him just hitting the guitar and all that stuff. Pixies do this song called Vamos, and I can do anything I want with it.