Most of your interviews in the '80s and '90s didn't have anything to do with the albums. You seem pretty particular about what you talk about, and won't.

Maybe, but I don't know, it's also the person you're sitting down with. Sometimes I talk to journalists that ask the 10 most basic questions there are to ask, and I have a totally great interview with them. It's just sometimes you can tell ... I don't know ... you can tell if they're smart or what their level of interest is. Even though you don't know them, you have some sense of who they are, what their drive or commitment to their craft is ... And other people? You can tell they don't ...

Know you?

No, it's not about me, whether they get me or something like that. It's "Why are you really here? What's your bag, man?" Because with some people you're just like ... [heavy sigh] ... You end up being snotty with them, because it drives you nuts. It's already driving you nuts, even before they open their mouth. Because you're just waiting for it, until you get to "Yes! I knew they were like that!" And I feel bad for them afterwards, because they're trying to be nice -- and you're trying to be nice, but you just can't help it. You want to say, "That's a really stupid question." I mean, I don't say that, but I say that between the lines: "I don't like your question." And sometimes this guy's question is the same as that guy's question, but I can just tell the way that he asks it. Like with fucking Spin magazine -- nice guy and everything, but ...

What?

He wanted to do a follow-up on the whole face-to-face time he spent with us. It's just the way he asked everything -- and he might not even have intended it this way. Maybe I just had an overly knee-jerk reaction to the way he asked it. So after all this hanging out -- where I took him to the laundromat, the coffee shop and everywhere else -- I then have to do a 20-minute follow-up call on my cellphone during a gig. And I don't have a lot of patience as it is at this point, especially since he's asking so many general questions ... And we're literally in the last moments and he's like, "So Frank, you're having a kid." [Laughs] You know what I mean? And it's like, "Yeah, I'm having a kid." I could tell what he wanted, some fucking trite comment on fatherhood, blah, blah, blah. It's just like, goddamn it all, I'm not going to do that. I was thinking, OK, he asked that question. My girlfriend could be reading this article. We're kind of new, so she's not quite used to seeing me misquoted and taken out of context over and over again, or saying something that infuriates her. So I'm going, "Goddamn it, be careful what you say here." After all, we're talking about the being that's in her body right now, so I do something else for this guy and it comes out in print. And I'm like, "Oh, there's the Spin magazine, oh God. No, don't buy it. It's going to ruin our night." She says, "It's OK, Charles, whatever you want to do." And then I thought maybe I'm being too upset about this. So I'm having fun reading it, and she starts reading it and it's [makes an explosive noise]! She's pregnant, know what I mean? So I was like, "I knew it! I knew you were going to read that and think that." I made some comment, just kind of impersonal and not real ...

You're not going to bare your soul about fatherhood.

Exactly. I'm not going to give it to you. You don't deserve it!

Someone from Spin magazine who was probably in sixth grade when the Pixies were around called my manager a year ago and was like, you know, "Spin magazine really wants to do a piece, a cover, full art, all exclusive. We're really, really big fans of the band." And my manager, Ken Goes, answers, "Actually you're not really big fans." She says, "No, no, no, we're really big fans of Frank Black, the Breeders." Ken's like, "Excuse me, you don't know of what you speak. You haven't written about my client in fucking 11 years and you only wrote one piece about his old band, which was not that flattering. So actually you're not fans." I don't know. I mean, whatever. It's all personality exploitation. There's nothing really about music. And that's what's wrong with all the VHI stuff and everything.

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