Wilson reflects on 40th anniversary of B-52’s The B-52’s 7 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 14. Comerica Theatre, 400 W. Washington St., Phoenix. $39.50 and up. 800-745-3000, livenation.com
It’s been 40 years since the B-52’s did all they could to shape the more eccentric outer fringes of the New Wave era while inviting you to do the coo-ca-choo and 15 other dances as part of a self-titled statement of purpose that still sounds like it dropped in from another, much quirkier planet, wrapped in kitschy day-glo yellow.
As Cindy Wilson prepares to sing “Why don’t you dance with me? I’m not no limburger” in Phoenix on a tour celebrating the 40th anniversary of that iconic first release, she reflects on how it feels to still be doing what she does so well.
“If you had told me 40 years ago that we would still be on the road, I wouldn’t have believed that,” Wilson says. “But a manager once told me that if you’re still having a good time, you could probably tour forever. And so far, it’s really worked for us.”
All they ever really planned to do was have a good time when they first got together to jam at the home of their friend Owen Scott after sharing a flaming volcano drink at a Chinese restaurant in Athens, Georgia.
Wilson’s brother, Ricky Wilson, and his friend Keith Strickland had recently returned to Athens after traveling the world.
“They had both saved up money from working at Keith’s parents’ bus station,” Wilson recalls, “and went to Europe. They both had jobs in Germany, and I think Ricky went to school there for a little bit and then came back to Athens. And when he came back, I hadn’t seen him in a while, so we moved in together — you know, just to get to know each other again, and we started hanging out. Then we met Fred and Kate.”
Fred Schneider moved to Athens from New Jersey to attend the University of Georgia . Kate Pierson had also moved to Athens with a man she’d married while living in England.
“They heard that this area was really interesting, that there was a lot of kind of earthy people here,” Wilson recalls. “Not hipsters but maybe freaks. And, you know, hippies. It had a good, natural vibe. You could get a farm here. And there was a lot going on back then.”
One night, they ended up together at this Chinese restaurant and decided to jam.
“We thought, ‘Oh, this is great. This is really a hoot,’” she recalls. “That kind of stuff happened a lot in Athens, where you’d jam with people. But this was so much fun. We would roll on the floor laughing and having the best time. Fred was like a poet, and he had all these really crazy ideas of lobsters, and we were just having the best time. And so we decided, ‘Well, let’s do this. Let’s get some of these songs that are halfway done and really turn them into something and do a party for our friends. So we did a Valentine’s party. And the rest is history, I guess. It just kept rolling from there.”
After releasing an early version of “Rock Lobster,” a surf-guitar-fueled masterstroke that Rolling Stone would go on to proclaim one of the greatest songs of all time, they took all 16 dances on the road to New York City.
“And we kind of charmed the New Yorkers,” Wilson says. “I think we got in there between scenes when one scene was leaving and another scene was starting. So New York embraced us. And we were very lucky that that happened.”
Signed to Island Records, they decamped to the Bahamas to record a full-length album.
“It was all very exotic,” Wilson says. “Chris Blackwell, who was head of Island Records, wanted to make sure to keep the sound of our live show in the first record, so it was really bare bones. There was nothing fancy going on. Just trying to capture what we were doing on stage. Which it did. And now it’s looked on as if it’s a really important album and a classic. So I think he was right about that.”
The followup, “Wild Planet,” had “a touch more work on it,” she says, “like reverb. But it still remains pretty true to our sound.”
It’s hard to imagine a major label in 2019 going out on a limb with a project as eccentric as what Wilson and her band mates got away with on those first two albums.
“But it was the time,” Wilson says. “They were looking around for a new thing going on. And a new energy. New Wave was starting, and there were a lot of acts under that flag. So we were part of that.”
After experimenting with a more expansive range of instruments on the “Mesopotamia” EP, a 1982 release produced by David Byrne of Talking Heads, they continued to experiment, incorporating drum machines and synths on 1983’s “Whammy!”
It was during the recording of a fourth release in 1985, called “Bouncing Off the Satellites,” that Wilson’s brother, Ricky, died of complications related to AIDS, at 32, a blow that left his band mates too distraught to tour.
They went their separate ways on an indefinite hiatus, regrouping three years after Ricky Wilson’s death to work on “Cosmic Thing,” a quadruple-platinum triumph that became their most successful album, spinning off their first Top 40 singles, “Love Shack,” “Roam” and “Deadbeat Club.”
“We didn’t know if we could pull it off or not without Ricky,” Wilson says. “And didn’t know if we wanted to. But Keith Strickland had moved up to Woodstock, and he was mourning the death of Ricky in a natural place. He lived in this really cool cabin and woke up to birds in the morning out on a pond, and it was beautiful and tranquil. Ricky and Keith had been working on music together. So he ended up writing all the music for ‘Cosmic Thing.’”
Hearing the songs he’d been writing to cope with the loss of her brother proved a cathartic experience for Wilson.
“I’ll never forget when we started jamming,” she says. “I felt like Ricky was in the room. It was amazing. I remember doing ‘Junebug.’ I felt like ‘We can do this. This is gonna work.’ My heart was just so full of joy. I remember, I was walking back to my condo in the West Village, and I saw this key ring store, a little bitty shop that made engravings on key rings and stuff. So I stopped in and found this heart key ring, and I put Junebug on it to commemorate it. I still have it. It’s a lucky token.”
She wasn’t “dreaming of fame or fortune” while working on “Cosmic Thing,” she says. “It really helped with the mourning of Ricky. And being together with the band in a happy way was great. If you look at the songs on ‘Cosmic,’ a lot of the songs are about nostalgic days in Athens and happier times and so it had a very healing effect on us. But Warner Bros. definitely got on the stick and helped us with promoting it, and we were really happy about that, but we had no idea it would be embraced like it was and how enormous it would become. So it was just magical.”
Wilson sat out the next album, “Good Stuff,” but was back on board for 2008’s “Funplex,” the only album they’ve released so far this century.
But they haven’t stopped touring, even after Strickland came off the road in 2012.
Two years ago, Salon ran an article called “No novelty, the B-52s may be the most subversive band America ever gave us.”
Wilson laughs at the mention of the headline, but she definitely understands what they were getting at.
“I mean, we turned things upside down,” she says. “We went against the grain, and we definitely spoke up for what we believed in. And you know, you’ve gotta let your freak flag fly. We showed that to everybody.”
ed.masley@arizona