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WOODSTOCK, N.Y. – It was Christmas 1989. I was 14 years old when my father gave me my first CD player. The JVC boombox sat on the fireplace mantel, propped up next to my first CD – the B-52s' multiplatinum “Cosmic Thing,” one of the best-selling albums of the era.
It was an obvious choice. After all, I cranked up the volume on "Love Shack" whenever it came on the radio, which was approximately every hour. I'd even recorded the song- off the radio onto a cassette for a mix tape. Ah, the joy of the '80’s.
What was it about this band? Why did I spend years hitting record stores across my hometown of Minneapolis looking for all of their older albums? Why did I blast their music to torment my younger brother?
Kate Pierson, a founding member and a lead singer for the B-52s, answered that question for me in an interview at her private recording studio in Woodstock, New York. She told me how she and her bandmates had been frustrated that their beehives and kitschy get-ups seemed to overshadow their lyrics.
"We felt like everyone's just calling us, 'wacky, wacky, wacky,' and they didn't understand the incredible seriousness of the band," said Pierson, now 66. “I think the greatest legacy of the band, I realized later, is that people are allowed to have fun, to let their freak flag fly. It gives people joy and it actually helped a lot of people get through life.”
Kate Pierson
B-52s singer
That message was core for the B-52s from their start, in a hippie house in Athens, Georgia, after a night of flaming volcano cocktails and Chinese food. When the group threw its first house party in 1977, their friends danced so hard the house shook.
Celebrating differences took on new meaning in 1985, when the band's lead guitarist Ricky Wilson died. Until then, none of his bandmates knew that he'd had AIDS. Heartbroken, the B-52s took a long break.
"Then, we realized, gosh, life is so precious," Pierson said "…Doing new music actually conjures his spirit."
“Cosmic Thing” was the second release of the re-formed B-52s. At that time, I was struggling socially in junior high. I didn’t fit in with the jocks. Some of the popular kids bullied me in the hallways. I even found myself in a few fistfights trying to defend myself. My grades started to fall and I walked through school scared.
It was misery.
But in the eighth grade, I made a decision that changed my life: I switched schools. Within weeks, I found a new group of friends and we bonded over our love for the B-52s. We wore their T-shirts in school and danced to their music after class. My friend Erin Repesh had some Kate Pierson-style earrings. My friend Allison Schlesinger would joke, “My parents are so weird; I’m sure I’m adopted and Kate Pierson must be my biological mother.”
“Never did I expect people to say: ‘You helped me through high school.’ ‘You got me through this hard time. I was a young gay boy or a girl,’" said Pierson. "I think the B-52s' message is definitely just by example: It's OK to be different.”
In 1990, I went to my first B-52s concert at Northrup Auditorium on the University of Minnesota campus. My father, Joe May, was head of security and let a friend and me sneak backstage to catch a glimpse of the band before the show. No matter your taste in music, talk about a great memory from your first major rock concert!
As we danced to “Rock Lobster” and “Roam,” small pieces of something started to fall from the ceiling behind us.
The B-52s almost brought the house down – literally.
“You could see the balcony flexing up and down,” recalled my father, who said he'd never seen anything like it in the 100-plus concerts he'd worked. “It was designed to have some give, but suddenly you could see bits of plaster popping. It was going up and down almost four inches!”
Pierson pleaded with the audience in the balcony to stay seated.
“Dance in your minds,” she implored.
“I remember seeing the balcony, thinking at first, ‘Why are people leaving? Why are they running?’” Pierson recalled, 25 years after the fact. “And then, when I realized the balcony was shaking, that was scary.”
That concert prompted a swift update to the music venue, and landed the B-52s on the cover of Rolling Stone, which proclaimed it “America’s favorite party band.”
For most of my life, I thought it was just fun to be part of the B-52s' excitement. Now, I understand that their music actually helped me become who I am.
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