THE B-52’S
Five Dali-esque kitsch-punk misfits from Athens, Georgia found themselves catapulted into the new wave spotlight with their debut single Rock Lobster. Their milieu was filled with alien transmissions, gender confusion, panic, filthy backrooms, grunt work
Exploding out of Athens, GA, these thrift store dance-punkers hit big with Rock Lobster in 1978. But what was it like in the eye of the storm? An Eyewitness report tells it straight.
Singer Kate Pierson recalls strange origins, go-go weirdness and strange serendipity.
“There were no other new wave, punk bands happening in Athens [in 1976], just some Southern boogie stuff in Macon. There was really no place to play, except some house parties and we still all had some little jobs otherwise. In a lot of ways, we were very isolated and just doing our own thing. We were definitely an extension of that punk tradition, even though we weren’t technically punky. But there was a wide range left for interpretation. We all loved Patti Smith and early on, we saw her play in Atlanta and met her. We were also influenced a lot by Yoko Ono and of course The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, but we were also into Pérez Prado and a lot of soul music – Booker T., Aretha Franklin – and any kind of dance music. We had also had influences like [soundtrack composer] Nino Rota and eclectic things like pygmy music that we got out of the library. Fred [Schneider, vocals] and Keith [Strickland, drums] would get stoned and Fred would do poetry and Keith would play various instruments and then Ricky [Wilson, guitar] would play rhythm on a couple of strings, and on the upper strings play more of a melodic part. Cindy [Wilson, vocals] and I naturally locked into harmonies. It just happened this one night that we jammed and let this stream of consciousness flow. So this gave way to this unique thing, not being influenced by anything but Martian outer space. Then the B’s came to be. For shows, Fred wore a fake, pencilled-in moustache and a seersucker suit, while Cindy and I had pretty big wigs. We used our own hair then but we kind of got into the wig thing as a joke in the beginning, just to be funny and outrageous. Plus we had thrift store outfits that looked like space-suit costumes. Some people who we played for early on thought Cindy and I might be drag queens. We were also kind of stiff and robotic, never smiling. It was a punk thing but it also was pretty much fear, especially when we played for bigger audiences. Later, we would play clubs with nasty, dirty bathrooms and really horrible dressing rooms. At places like CBGB’s, people would be punky and lean against the walls in their leather jackets, but they would always dance when we came on and just started going wild. Dan Beard [DB Records] put out our single Rock Lobster [in April 1978] and it was totally independent – Danny stuffed those records in the sleeves himself. And that really took off. We were like, Woaaa, this is pretty amazing, ’cos we were courted by record companies when we were still in Athens. As soon as we got the record deal [with Warner Bros], we were thrilled. We didn’t think about the business aspect of it though, or what we signed, or little details like that. I wish we had known a little more about that but I guess ignorance is bliss, for a time. Our manager strongly suggested that we move away from Athens, to be up near him. We found this house in Mahopac [north of NYC] – kind of crazy for a band to live together. We bought it and then went right away to record [the 1979 debut] in the Bahamas. It was like a dream. And then right after that, we went on this national tour where we had maybe half of the second album [1980’s Wild Planet] written already – each time we played New York, we wrote a new song so we had a bunch of songs already. And for the tour, we were with Talking Heads, which was just amazing. We had seen them in New York and we were just thrilled to open for them. They were great to be with and really nice to us. It was like we just took off on a rocket ship. It was mainly fun but it was so much work where we had to set up our own equipment and haul it around everywhere. It was a combination of adventure and a little bit of terror mixed in there.”