Known for her work with A Perfect Circle and Zwan, Paz Lenchantin talks to Sam Wicks about making the transition from touring musician to permanent member of The Pixies.
Photo: Travis Shinn
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Alt-rock trailblazers The Pixies have made an official replacement for founding member Kim Deal, who left the band back in 2013. With their sixth album Head Carrier just released, new bass player Paz Lenchantin speaks to Sam Wicks.
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You've been with the Pixies for three years now. It was announced in December 2013 that you had become the band's touring bassist, but it was only in July this year when you officially became a permanent member of the band. At what point did you make the transition from being a touring musician to a permanent member?
The whole concept of making a record is that you make something and it can live beyond your life. It kind of became realised once we started writing for the record. It just organically became “official”.
To be honest, from day one I felt like [part of the] family with them. I was completely honoured that they even knew who I was. Right before I entered the room, I made sure that even if our relationship ends here – if this is the only time I get to play with the Pixies, or whether I continued, or didn't continue – I already got to play with one of the greatest bands in the world.
When Tom Chapman joined New Order to replace Peter Hook, or Pino Palladino joined The Who and stepped in to play the parts by John Entwistle, both those bass players were faced with the question of whether to play those parts faithfully or make them their own. What was your approach when it came to the Pixies back catalogue?
Definitely faithfully. However, one of the most important parts of the Pixies sound is that Kim [Deal] is an incredible singer and I think that you've just got to be yourself. You only have one voice and I'm not here to mimic her voice. I'm here to also be myself.
I think your voice really does fit with the Pixies and there's this great vocal interplay between yourself and Black Francis on Head Carrier.
He gave me so much freedom to be myself. There was never any pressure to be like Kim or to take vocal lessons to sound like Kim. There was nothing like that, because that's not what the band's about. The band is about people getting together and singing some songs together and being a band together.
Black wrote All I Think About Now for Kim and you sing that song. Can you tell me about how that came about?
We wrote that song together. I showed him some chord changes from a song that I heard wrong that he wrote. I thought it was worthy of another song, and I showed it to him and he really liked it. I said, 'OK, I'll sing on this but I'd like for you to write the lyrics'. And he said 'OK, I'll write the lyrics but tell me what you want to sing about'. And it just seemed right to me – singing my first song by myself – to have a tip of the hat to Kim, like a thank you letter for everything.
The next day he wrote the lyrics and the song pretty much wrote itself, to be honest. It was the quickest song on the record [and] it was the last song on the record. To me it sounds like classic Pixies.
That feels like a gutsy request. You're the newest member of the band, it's going to be the first song that you sing with the Pixies, and you ask Black Francis to pen what will be a thank you letter to Kim. That's bold.
Well it seemed right and it fits well with the record. My ex-boyfriend thought the song was about him, so it's not something where it has to be specifically about anything.
There's a song called I Love My Leather Jacket by The Chills and I love this song. The story is that the original drummer (Martyn Bull) passed away from leukaemia and he was the original member of The Chills. When he passed away, he put his leather jacket on his will for Martin [Phillipps], the singer.
That to me is really chilling and touching, that there's this interplay between the band members. But by the same token, anyone can hear the song I Love My Leather Jacket and it relate to their own leather jacket. It's everyone's leather jacket and you just make it your own. And as anyone who owns a leather jacket knows: I'm wearing this to the grave.
Head Carrier is available now.