Pixies Drummer Is A Burlington History Buff

BURLNGTON, MA -- The local history Website Burlington Retro spoke with one of the town's most famous residents. David Lovering, the drummer for the Pixies, grew up on Francis Wyman Road and graduated from Burlington High School in 1980. But before he was playing songs that David Bowie changed "the format for delivering harder rock," he was a kid with a metal detector exploring the woods of Burlington.

"The woods behind my parents’ house on Francis Wyman Road was a treasure trove of a historic yesteryear going all the way back to the Shawshin Indian days," Lovering told Burlington Retro. "Cellar holes from the 17th century, forgotten apple orchards, miles and miles of stone walls, grown-in dirt roads, colorful old bottles and oyster shells protruding from the ground after a winter’s thaw. All this Colonial history had an impact on me to discover more."

When he was 11, Lovering bought his first metal detector and started digging up old coins and artifacts. Simonds Park, he said, was a particularly fertile hunting ground for Colonial-era coins.

Music history buffs are probably more interested in the fact that the basement of the Francis Wyman Road home was where the Pixies started rehearsing when they formed in 1986. Lovering moved to southern California in 1993, shortly after the Pixies broke up (they reformed in 2004 and have mostly stayed together) and says he now owns six metal detectors. But he misses the fertile hunting ground his native Massachusetts offered.

"Gone were the plentiful hunting areas dating back to Colonial times. Now I was faced with pavement as far as I could see and a not so distant past," Lovering said.

For more on this story, see Burlington Retro. Never miss another local news story: Get free local news alerts right to your inbox.

Photo of David Lovering (center) with Pixies co-founderf Black Francis (Left) and Joey Santiago by Pixiesmusic.

Dave Copeland can be reached at dave.copeland@patch.com or by calling 617-433-7851. Follow him on Twitter (@CopeWrites) and Facebook (/copewrites).