How one wacky song inspired a retired legend to keep recording - and galvanized a generation of kids to explore their joyfully weird side.
“I’ve just written the stupidest guitar line you’ve ever heard.”
Imagine being considered one of the world's most prolific songwriters who all but disappeared from the planet five years ago. No new ditties. No new albums — for five long years. Exasperated fans ask,“Will he ever make music again?!’ Then, while vacationing, you find yourself in a random Bermuda nightclub and you hear “the stupidest little guitar line,” and it slaps you out of a creative slumber and sends you immediately back into the studio to write the last great rock album of your life.
That’s what happened when John Lennon heard “Rock Lobster" in 1979. “It’s time to take down the ax and wake up the wife,” Lennon recalled thinking, in a Rolling Stone interview. The peculiar little tune reminded him of his wife, Yoko Ono, and her early music. Lennon thought Rock n Roll had finally caught up to her unique sound. Lennon and Ono would go on to record Double Fantasy, the final album released just three weeks before Lennon was shot and killed by a fan.
Ricky Wilson couldn’t have known when he wrote that “stupid little guitar line” how many people would be inspired by a band of mostly queer weirdos who set out to make party music. Lennon’s ears didn’t deceive him. “Rock Lobster” and the rest of the debut album from the B-52’s was an homage to avant-garde artists including Ono. “Rock Lobster” is like if Ono had written a Peter Gunn-style surf rock song and asked Paul Lynde to sing about ocean animals. It’s absurd, total camp, and damn is it catchy.
Rock Lobster starts off like a cool, New Wave dance song. The first verse is a little odd but doesn’t stop you in your tracks.
We were at a party
His earlobe fell in the deep
Someone reached in and grabbed it
It was a rock lobster
Okay, sure. Crustaceans at a party. Everyone’s welcome. Some guy loses an earlobe. Bummer. The party must go on. The beach blanket beat goes so hard that you’re too busy dancing to notice how weird things get from there. About 5 full minutes into the foot-stomping groove, singer Fred Schneider, whose voice sounds like the Pink Panther on acid, goes into full-on space cadet mode. He’s no longer describing oceanic creatures from this space-time continuum.
There goes a dog-fish
Chased by a cat-fish
In flew a sea robin
Watch out for that piranha
There goes a narwhal
Here comes a bikini whale!
Vocalists Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson — both crowned in beehive wigs (also known as a B52 hairstyle) —begin squawking out what a “bikini whale" might sound like. The song is a sweaty 7 minutes in absolute oddball heaven.
In 1978, the self-proclaimed “tacky little dance band from Georgia” left their college town scene in Athens to find a big break in New York City. Their thrift-store aesthetic and flamboyant tunes won over the most serious leather-jacketed punk purists at famed rock incubators like CBGBs and Max’s Kansas City. New York embraced the B52’s, and they became instant peers with other regulars including Blondie and The Talking Heads. Local fame turned into widespread pandemonium when the band performed on Saturday Night Live in 1980 (scroll to minute 24:15.) Success was instant. Artsy kids, gay kids, indie rock kids all wanted a ticket to explore their joyfully weird side and found a home with the B52’s. A very adolescent Kurt Cobain and Dave Grohl both saw the SNL performance and “had their minds blown,” according to Pitchfork. Their fame put Athens, Georgia on the map as a hatchery of Gen X indie rock icons who came to define college radio coolness, including Pylon and R.E.M.
Once, we were onstage and somebody yelled, 'Is this a queen band?' I think they thought Kate [Pierson] and Cindy [Wilson] were drag queens. So I said, 'Yes, we're a queen band!'
- Fred Schneider from OUT Magazine
Fred Schneider told OUT magazine: “'Rock Lobster' got airplay on college and independent radio, but the bigger stations were told not to play us. Nobody was out then. I mean, our friends knew [we were gay], and we weren't trying to be coy. Once, we were onstage and somebody yelled, 'Is this a queen band?' I think they thought Kate [Pierson] and Cindy [Wilson] were drag queens. So I said, 'Yes, we're a queen band!' What really put us over was performing the song on Saturday Night Live in January 1980. After that, our album flew off the charts.”
Even though the band members didn’t speak overtly about their sexuality in the early days, gay kids had found their heroes. In 1981, a book called “Reflections of a Rock Lobster: A Story About Growing Up Gay” was published by 19-year-old author, Aaron Fricke. It recounts how the song and the band gave him courage to come out of the closet as a high-schooler in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Fricke details his rise to fame as a gay rights activist when his plea to take a male date to the school prom became a monumental court case. Fricke v. Lynch is considered one of the first legal victories for LGBTQ students. To this day, it is routinely cited in cases regarding the right of students to bring same-sex dates to school functions.
After two more successful albums, the B52’s suffered a tragic setback in 1985 when guitarist Ricky Wilson died of AIDS-related complications at age 32. His younger sister and bandmate, Cindy Wilson, had only found out about Wilson’s declining health a few months before his death. In fact, no one in the band was aware of Wilson’s diagnosis except for drummer Keith Strickland. "There was just so much fear around AIDS at the time,” Strickland told CBS News. “There was just so much we didn't know. … And Ricky was very private and a very shy person. And he didn't quite know how to deal with it, either." Wilson’s death on October 12, 1985 made him one of the earliest celebrities killed by the pandemic. Actor Rock Hudson, who died only two weeks earlier, is considered the first celebrity to have died of the disease. Cindy Wilson, along with her bandmates, were devastated. The group disbanded for almost three years. It was Ricky Wilson’s “stupid little guitar line” that had started it all. They couldn’t imagine making music without him.
After a three-year hiatus, Keith Strickland had moved to Woodstock, New York and began writing guitar melodies inspired by his idyllic surroundings and the memory of his lost friend. He invited the rest of his bandmates and their collective songwriting sessions turned into collective healing. The result became the B52’s most successful album. Released in 1989, Cosmic Thing was decidedly optimistic. Although melancholy undertones can be detected in songs like “Deadbeat Club” (an homage to Wilson and the group’s younger days in Athens), most of the album is about a group of once joyfully weird queer kids finding catharsis. The most successful single from Cosmic Thing, “Love Shack,” has become so ubiquitous at weddings that one would never know it’s a song born from grief. Even grief won’t stop the party. Kate Pierson said, "Cosmic Thing was really written to heal ourselves, but magically it healed a lot of other people who heard it. Being outsiders or gay or whatever, they felt different, and I guess our message was, it's always, it's okay to be different."
And You’re A Material Girl
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Everybody Play The Game
It’s so easy when you know the rules. It’s so easy, all you have to do is…
Name the celebrity whose career was jumpstarted by the B52’s music video for “Love Shack.”
(Scroll to the bottom for the answer.)
Songs of Our Sexual Awakening
Every week, we’ll spotlight one story from a reader about the song or music video that made them first have THOSE feelings. We all remember the moment that a song sparked a tingling sensation in our swimsuit area.
This week’s submission: “Take My Breath Away” - Berlin
Submission: Natalia
“Two words - Kelly McGillis. Oh wait, four words….Kelly McGillis and Val Kilmer (because I’ve been trying to achieve his haircut my whole life and I think I’m finally winning.)”
Quiz answer: RuPaul. If you watch the “Love Shack” video close enough, you can see the B2’s ushering in the career of the soon-to-be drag icon.
Submit your story (in 300 words or less)
Did you catch last week’s issue?
No.1 "Tutti Frutti" - Little Richard
Did you know the first hit by the “King of Rock n Roll” was originally written about anal sex? No, not Elvis. The true King of Rock — Little Richard — had his first hit single with “Tutti Frutti.”
I lived off the Atlanta Highway in Athens in the 90s. You're bringing back all the great memories!