THEY BLASTED OUT OF NOWHERE WITH A BRILLIANTLY SURREAL SOUND THAT INFLUENCED A GENERATION OF FUTURE STARS, FROM KURT COBAIN TO THOM YORKE. THEN THEY SPLIT BITTERLY, WITH PROMISES TO NEVER REUNITE. SO HOW DID THE GREATEST BAND OF THE LATE '80S BECOME THE HOTTEST BAND RIGHT NOW? HERE'S THE COMPLETE STORY OF THE PIXIES--IN THEIR OWN WORDS.

In Heaven and in the Pixies' dressing room at Paris' Parc des Princes stadium, everything is fine. Last night, at the city's Zenith club, guitarist Joey Santiago totaled his cherished Gibson Gold Top Les Paul reissue during a freak-out solo on "Vamos." But as the sun sets over the 50,000 fans, the 39-year-old is looking ahead-arrangements are already being made to buy an original-and bopping around the plush white space, blasting Donovan's dippy "I Love My Shirt" from the stereo. "Play some Rod Stewart!" barefoot bassist Kim Deal, 43, shouts from the couch, where she's thumbing through a copy of Cat Fancy. Moments later, Deal changes out of her pajama bottoms and does vocal warm-ups: singing the alphabet and blasting her lungs open with an inhaler. After years of heaving drinking, chain-smoking Carltons is now her only vice.

Tour manager Richard Jones has set aside a plate of fish for Black Francis (who signs his autographs "Frank Black," but really only answers to his given name, Charles Thompson); soon the 39-year-old singer/songwriter is picking at it happily. Santiago even dials up some soothing "dinner music" (Brian Eno) for his bandmate's pleasure. As each bit of anti-drama unfolds, 42-year-old David Lovering, the band's drummer-turned-"scientific phenomenalist," performs some sleights of hand. With the exception of one mystifying card trick (Lovering pulls my randomly chosen six of hearts from his wallet, not the deck), the only thing remarkable about any of this is that we are here at all.

Eleven years ago, the Pixies went through the most passive-aggressive breakup in modern-rock history. Nobody died. Nobody sued. They just burned out amid professional jealousy, substance abuse, possible romantic tension, and pressure to deliver on their potential to be the biggest band in rock. Today, the Pixies don't seem like adversaries. They interact with the chummy insularity that first brought the four misfits together in 1986. It's not for my benefit when Thompson offers to place Deal's travel bag in her tour-bus bunk and cheerfully observes, "You look like you got some sun, Kim" (a lyric from their song "Bone Machine," almost verbatim).

Burying the hatchet has its material rewards. Parc des Princes is just one in a series of gigs the band has played since their first reunion show in Minneapolis on April 13. Starting in September, they'll embark on a four-month North American tour-many dates sold out minutes after tickets became available. This, too, is unremarkable for a beloved band's reunion tour until you realize who's buying the tickets. A new generation of fans adores the Pixies as much as aging Gen Xers who fetishized all those beautifully grotesque album covers in their dorm rooms. Young, old, older, they've filled every seat here in Paris, even though headliners the Red Hot Chili Peppers don't go on for another two hours. After the show, there's silence in the dressing room. Deal and Santiago exchange a glance that seems to say, "Something's happening here." And there is.

Unless pressed, the Pixies barely acknowledge their status as not only alternative-rock heroes but also the key influence on anyone who's ever muted a verse and detonated a chorus with a shriek and an effects pedal. Earlier today, construction work in front of our hotel prevented the tour bus from parking, so a van was hired to take us to the show. Upon delivery, the spiky-haired driver turned to Thompson and, in broken English, nearly wept, "Eet has been an honair to drive you here." "Oh, thanks," Thompson said with a shrug, not impolitely, but not too impressed either.

"They're simple songs," he told me earlier that day while folding his underwear at a local launderette. "'Monkey Gone to Heaven'-why does it say, 'Then God is seven?'" he asks. "Because it rhymes with heaven!" Well, yeah, but it's not really that simple, is it? And neither is the story of the Pixies.