Kate Pierson
We started in 1976, jamming, and we played our first show on Valentine's Day 1977, so we can mark 40 from there, or we can mark 40 from 1979 when we did our first record.Collection: Valentines
In the B-52s, each of us has our own wacky sensibility, which, when we come together, it's like the four-headed monster. And it's great because we have the same sense of humor.Collection: Humor
I think it really changes things when you're able to get married. I mean, the Marriage Equality Act was super important. I think you cannot believe it happened as fast as it did. For a lot of gay people, it's very surprising. You thought that this is going to be a struggle forever.Collection: Equality
Cindy had two kids. We did manage to keep playing and doing summer tours with the Go-Gos, the Pretenders, and Blondie.
One of my favorite lyrics is 'Clams on the half-shell and roller skate, roller skate.' So they can be just really party-inspiring lyrics or just something brilliant like 'Tutti Frutti.'
I think more people feel like they're outside of the mainstream these days - there's more people who are doing their own thing, feeling that it's not bad to be a weirdo and respecting other people's differences. And all that kind of goes into the big ol' B-52 philosophy.
I used to have a protest folk band in high school, and I wrote all my own songs. Then, in the B-52s, we would write collectively.
Every time I go to Athens, it's not just a trip down memory lane; there's some surprise. I always meet somebody new, or some crazy party happens, or there's some amazing event.
I hope our legacy will be enduring and that people think of us as an important band. But I think Ricky's guitar playing, our style of writing, the fact that we had men and women in the band and gay and straight, I think it's an important band, and the way we wrote by jamming, we really had a different approach.
I've always wanted to do a solo record, and in 1999, I went over to Japan and did a project called NiNa, where I co-wrote with Yuki from Judy and Mary. It just sort of unleashed this realization in me that I could write.
The B-52s, you know, our songs are about volcanoes or lobsters. Cindy and I sing them like our lives depend on them. I feel very emotional when I'm singing 'Rock Lobster,' but I've wanted to sing more about my personal experience.
With 'Love Shack,' once we put that chorus in, it did have more of a song structure. Even though the verses are all kind of different, the chorus was there along with 'The Love Shack' - I think that really made it a hit. Once we heard it in the studio, we played it for R.E.M., and they were like, 'Yes this is a hit.'
I know, being a band that's mostly gay and has women in it, I just think that there are the male icon bands: they are always - and they deserve it - but they are always touted as, 'These guys are heavy-duty.' I think bands, because we have a sense of humor, we are not always taken as seriously.
Usually, when we write in The B-52s, it's quite a collaborative process. We really take hours - and sometimes days - jamming, and then we listen and listen to them and go, 'Oh, let's use this part, and then this part.' It's really like a collage.
I like harmonizing with other people, but a lot of times, I do harmonize with myself.
The Beatles had a huge impact on me. I did 'Strawberry Fields Forever', and we worked it out in an open tuning. That's such a beautiful song, and I think I did it in a different way.
I'm always saying in the studio, 'My vocals are too loud!' or 'My vocals have too much effect on them!' I like some of it, but I'm not a fan of loading effects onto my voice.
I would have loved to have been a broadcast journalist. I'd even love to be the weather girl. I have to watch the weather every night; I'm just obsessed.
In the late '90s, we kind of took a sabbatical, and I got an invitation to play with a Japanese band and formed a supergroup called NiNa. It was Yuki from Judy and Mary and Masahide Sakuma from The Plastics, a Japanese equivalent of the B-52s. It went to No. 1 in Japan.
'Deadbeat Club' means a lot to me.
We have a family dynamic - more like brothers and sisters than friends. So there can be a bit of competition, but there's also love and respect. But there's a thing to not push each other's buttons. You know what the buttons are, so don't push them.
I used to stick my head out the window when I was a kid and sing at the top of my lungs and think no one could hear me.
There's nobody like The B-52s. But doing stuff on my own, I can also express more personal songs.
It's true. I'm not a spokesperson. But I can say now that transgendered people like to be heard and to be respected.
The whole reason to make a solo album is to express what you can't express with the B-52s. The B's are so much about fun and partying and dancing.
Everyone has that experience in a club where a doorman doesn't pick you out.
The B-52s are all about inclusiveness and about celebrating your differences.
No beehive. Beehives - we sort of put them - well, we revive them sometimes.
I've always wanted to be a musician. I love music; like, I probably sang when I was born.
I've always wanted to do a solo project. I've always known I wanted to be a musician.
I always was songwriting in high school, writing songs while I was supposed to be listening to the teacher.
Five people in a Volkswagen station wagon without equipment. Now we tour with six people in a van.
The first rock record I ever bought was 'Great Balls of Fire.' I was real little, and I went to Atlanta to get it.
I rent space on a farm for 15 dollars a month, and I have the use of about a quarter of an acre.
I want to be the first rock band on Mars.
We've known Cyndi Lauper since she was in 'Blue Angel'; we did a TV show with her back in '79 or '80. We don't have any competition; we're complementary.
We've always been a band who wants to put our money where our mouths are. We have political songs, but we don't like to hit people over the heads with stuff. So it's better to do benefits and causes and talk about it later rather than always trying to put it in the song.
I like looking for things on tour.
The inspiration for our vocal harmonies was sort of Appalachian. It's sort of at weird intervals, and it almost has an Appalachian kind of feel to it. The harmonies were really spontaneous. And the way we jammed, we would just get into a trance.
I don't think we were shy so much as we were terrified. Especially when we did 'Saturday Night Live' on live TV. We looked really animatronic because we were scared, but it came off as being this alien sort of attitude, which served us well, because people were like, 'Whoa, this is so weird.'
Sometimes we'd just play acoustic guitar and try out the parts and make a library. We'd use a double cassette player and make little edits.
There's a very collaborative, collective attitude. That's a very female principle. We try to nurture that aspect of the band.
When we first played Max's, people thought Cindy and I were drag queens - we wore these gigantic wigs that sort of his our faces.
We have always appealed to people outside of the mainstream. Constantly, we get people coming up to us and saying, 'I was just the freakiest one in high school. I was the only one who kept playing the B-52's.'
I had really long hair, and we had this hairdresser, Laverne, that was in Athens. And she did my hair up really big. And she said, 'Honey, when you hang your head over the bed and make love, that hair is not going to move.'
I call it the LGBT Q and A community 'cause there's so many questions and answers.
All our friends - so many friends are gay or lesbian and transgender. We're just in that world. We all went through the devastating time of the AIDS crisis, and I think that galvanized us to be more activists - AIDS activists.
I love Atlanta. I feel really at home in Atlanta. We spent a lot of time there. But Athens is like home to me.
I wrote a whole solo album and recorded some of it, even did a little tour with Sara Lee and Gail Ann Dorsey.
There was just one time when the band took a big break, and I did that Nina project in Japan in 1999.