Earlier this week, we brought you part one of our exclusive Kim Deal interview, where we discussed the politics of the Pixies, the idiocy of drunk people and why female-fronted bands suck. If you want to catch up, it’s here.

And now onto part two, featuring the internet, people assuming Kim is stupid, why bedroom musicians rub her the wrong way and how they’ll never be as famous as they were with Cannonball…

“The internet is a monster”

“Press is very different now. Quotes are the main thing. There’s no point in setting a situation or an atmosphere. Like it used to be, ‘Down in Brighton, Kim walks on the dock and I walk with her. As she reflects and thinks back about recording the album…’ Now it’s just Q&A, because the web is a web. There’s all these people on the outskirts of the web, shaping it, and all they’re doing is sitting there, waiting for pennies. The web is a content monster. It needs feeding constantly, for people to use their search engines, to make pennies.

“Most of the people in Europe got their information about me and Kelley from Wikipedia, where it says that she has a catering business. Does she? Noooo! I was talking to a lawyer friend recently and he said one of the hardest things they have to do with their new lawyers - because they have to reference a lot of old case files to cite case numbers, which is a lot of work – is to tell them to look up this case in the book. ‘Do not Google it.’ Isn’t that weird?”

“People used to think I was dumb”

”One thing I read about me, which I still remember, is that I’m the only Pixie who never went to college. That’s not true. It makes me sound dumber than a rock! Whatever. OK, I didn’t graduate the full four years, but only David Lovering did. My dad’s a physicist, for fuck’s sake. I did music. That’s why I didn’t graduate.

“One time, there was a journalist, one of the first who had ever interviewed the Pixies, and he flew to Boston – I can’t remember his fucking name. He was English and wrote for Melody Maker or NME. I remember this guy walking into the room and I was reading the Perfect Spy by John Le Carre and he looked at me as if it was above my head, as if he was surprised that I was reading something so weighty. I think he threw the look, ready for my response to be, ‘I don’t know what it says but I like the cover’.

“But I was kinda pleased that this guy thought I was stupid. It was nice in a way, because I thought, I must look like I’m a rock band. It must be working, because he thinks I’m an idiot. I thought, wow, I’m fitting in very well here!”

“If I started out now, I wouldn’t have a website and I wouldn’t ever record”

It’s a weird one, isn’t it? I’m sure there are people who will make music in their bedroom and be really good and obsessed about it, like I am with music, and like you might be, and they’re not going to do anything bad because it would just kill them if it was bad, because it would suck.

“But, you know, I gotta tell you, there’s something about the accessibility that rubs me the wrong way. If before, you and me were going to be in a band, you would have to come over to my house – it’d be really cool, my mom and dad are really going to like you! And you’d have to bring your amp over and we would start writing songs. And pretty much straightaway we’d start listening to stuff, and we’d know we wouldn’t want it to sound like this – we’d never really know what it was going to sound like, but we’d know what it was not going to sound like. We’re writing stuff down, or a tape recorder, and then we’ve got five songs, and we’ll do it in front of my mum and dad, and maybe have five friends over.

“And six months later we’d have a half hour set, and we’d finally have enough nerve to do a show, and I’d make you take the cassette to the bar down the road and we’d get a show, finally, just cos he thinks you’re cute. And it’s Wednesday and we’re the first band and we load up, we go down there, we have our set, we’re shaking, we’re so nervous. We’ve got posters up already but we don’t know what we’re going to wear – the boots look stupid, are our boobs too big? But we do our set and afterwards, our new song was great but we’re really not sure, and did you hear this bit? But we sold enough beer that he’s asked us back two Thursdays from now, cos we have cool friends which will bring the boys in, which will sell beer. The posters go back up, we’ve got a set now, it’s a little tighter, we’re a little better, right? And word goes out that we’re actually good!

“OK. What rubs me the wrong way is that what we’ve just done is different to a person who sits in their bedroom for a half-hour and uses their ProTools to do their fake poster – it’s never been a real poster that’s been hung up, ever – that person has just as much accessibility as we do. And that’s what bothers me. I have to weed through all of that just to find someone like us.

“It’s almost as if there’s so much that there’s nothing. It is weird, isn’t it? If we were gonna start a band now, I’d tell you: we are not going to have a website. We’re only gonna put up a poster. I think that’s what I’d do. And only play live. And have no recorded music at all. I think that’s the only way I would start right now. “

“We’ll never be as famous as Last Splash made us”

“Josephine Wiggs wrote the press release for the new record [Mountain Battles]. She’s a really good writer, too. She’s so fucking funny. My favourite part, of course, is where she talks about Last Splash – I’m paraphrasing how I think her attitude would be, because she’s very elegant and I do a bad English accent – but it’s the bit where she’s saying that when we released Last Splash, she was so famous that her dentist recognised her. I’m sure that annoyed her. Can you imagine your dentist saying, “So, I saw you on MTV?” It must have pissed her off. It’s so awesome.

“But we’ll never have that kind of MTV success again, because I don’t think MTV exists like that any more. You kinda have to have, nowadays, a team of professionals, packaging… But of course, you’ve got YouTube. You can access any band you want to all of the time now. You don’t need to see the videos on MTV. You’re lucky. You can see any video, any time you want. It’s not as fun, is it?”