Pixies - Here Comes Your Man

"There is a wait so long. You'll never wait so long."

Album: Doolittle [2nd album]
Recorded: Boston, Massachusetts
Genre: Rock, Indie Rock, Jangle Pop
Album Release: April 17th 1989
Single Release: June 1st 1989 [2nd single]
Length: 3.21
Producer: Gil Norton
Vocalist: Black Francis [age 23]
Label: 4AD Records, Elektra Records

Music Video


Live in London from 1991


Demo version from 1987

Charts, Streams & Sales

Canada (single): Certified platinum
UK (single): Certified silver
UK (albums): #8
USA (albums): Certified platinum
Spotify: 215,000,000 +
YouTube Music: 55,000,000 +
Melody Maker Best Albums of the Year 1989: #1
NME 100 Best Albums: #2
Pitchfork's Best Albums of the 80's: #4
Rolling Stone Best Albums of All Time 2003: #226

Credits

Details

• Recorded on a budget of $40,000 (this figure was the budget for the whole album).
  
• Black Francis first wrote the song when he was 14. He didn't want to release it and made the conscious choice to leave it off the groups earlier efforts. Francis throught the song was too pop. In 1989 he told The Catalogue "we would never play that song live, we're too far removed from it. It's too wimpy poppy." The song is now a regular feature of Pixies live sets. Producer Gil Norton insisted the song be included on the album.
• The band weren't too keen on releasing the song and had, at that point refused to play it live. In the music video Francis and Kim Deal don't sing their parts. In an act of rebellion they just stand with their mouths wide open. They don't want to be known as the pop star sell outs. They refuse to even mime. Instead they shoot expressionless stares at the camera while their heads are humorously distorted by a fish eye lens.
  
• The song is about homeless people traveling by boxcars who eventually die in an earthquake. The "here comes your man" from the chorus is referring to a homeless guy. There are reports of guys who haven't understood the lyrics drunkenly singing to their girlfriends "here comes your man" as they move across the dancefloor for a kiss. It just feels like that kind of song. The music video further contributes to the false belief that the song is romantic by having the band perform on a set decorated with what must be at least a hundred flowers, including two roses rising prominently from the drum kit.
  
  
• "It uses a very common chord change in pop music, going from the D to the G to the A. It’s very singable. It’s got that riff, which I composed on a piano when I was about 14, so the song in different versions has been around since I was a teenager. When it came time to finalise lyrics and things, it goes off into scary hoboville. At some point it feels almost subversive to put things into the music like ‘Here comes your man.’ I don’t even know what that means in the context of the song. I think because it’s talking about sad old men, a sort of sarcastic comment, and it’s a world that’s dark and edgy inhabited by hoboes. It’s like a dark David Lynch movie.
  
  I guess I get a lot of satisfaction when people are pumping their fists in the air and singing like it’s some sort of simple love song, which would be fine, because there’s nothing wrong with simple love songs, but this is not that. Either that or they don’t care or aren’t interested, just like I wasn’t interested when I wrote it. We’re all on the same page. It’s sort of about something, but it’s not at all what it sounds like. It’s misleading." (Black Francis talking to Esquire in 2014)
  
  
• There is a cover version by Meghan Smith that was featured in the film (500) Days of Summer.
  
• The album Doolittle pioneered techniques which would go on to typify the sound of grunge music. The guitars, and other instruments, would drop out leaving only the drums and bass. They would play for a bit until multiple distorted guitars would be added, increasing the volume while simultaneously adding texture and tonality. Kurt Cobain has admitted that Doolittle was a major influence on his seminal smash hit 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'

Artwork