The Gloriously Weird B-52’s Say Farewell to the Road - The New York Times

Forty-three years after their first album, the band that brought the world “Rock Lobster” and “Love Shack” is starting a tour for the last time.

When the B-52’s played “Rock Lobster” on “Saturday Night Live” in January 1980, a few months after releasing their debut album, it was a lightning-strike moment for a generation of young misfits and oddballs.

Many of their campy, catchy songs celebrated people who seemed to be happily dislocated or disconnected from known dimensions (“Planet Claire,” “Private Idaho”).

Several of the band’s members were queer and all five considered themselves “freaks.” Over a period of decades, as they grew from a cult band to one with Top 40 hits — most notably “Love Shack” in 1989 — they discovered how many others identified the same way.

“This eccentric, downright lovable quintet,” John Rockwell of The New York Times wrote in 1978, “provides about the most amusing, danceable experience in town.” The B-52’s sustained that vigor through seven studio albums and an EP, as well as the 1985 death of Ricky Wilson, one of rock’s most inventive guitarists.

Culture made by and for misfits and oddballs is now a billion-dollar industry, but it wasn’t when the B-52’s played their first gig in 1977, in their Athens, Ga., hometown.

Schneider dispensed deadpan punch lines, Pierson spoke with hippie beneficence and Wilson talked movingly about the death of her brother, Ricky.

Keith Strickland, 68, a drummer and guitarist who stopped touring with the band in 2012, added his thoughts in a phone interview later.

Why did the band decide to quit touring.

STRICKLAND A band was just something to do, because in Athens, there was nothing else to do.

We didn’t even have the money to buy guitar strings.

SCHNEIDER Because we were like nothing they’d ever seen.

At what point did you start to think, “Maybe this band is more than just a hobby”.

SCHNEIDER When we played Max’s, someone yelled, “Is this a queen band?” I misheard, and I said, “Yes, we’re a clean band.” I guess nobody wore wigs in New York.

PIERSON They thought we were from England, because they couldn’t imagine a band coming from Athens.

I played keyboard and bass, and played guitar on two songs.

SCHNEIDER I played keyboard bass on two songs.

SCHNEIDER I wish I could sound like Wilson Pickett.

STRICKLAND Ricky was my best friend — we were like brothers?

I thought the band was finished, but writing music was a way to console myself.

I wrote on the guitar, and I imagined Ricky sitting across from me?

One of the first pieces I wrote became “Deadbeat Club,” and there are two guitar parts; I played the chords, and in my head, I imagined Ricky playing the other part.

PIERSON Yeah, and the songs just came together in a sort of story?

Why has the band recorded only one studio album in the last 30 years.

SCHNEIDER We wanted to wait until people finally stopped buying albums and CDs.

And it would get contentious at times — you edit out a part and someone says, “That’s my favorite part.” We’ve never been a band that just pumps it out.

Do you think the B-52’s contributed a lot to what people call the queering of American culture.

We look different, our songs are different, so people identified us from the beginning as different.

“When Ricky played guitar, he sounded like two people,” Cindy Wilson said.

Guitar World named Wilson, who often removed one and sometimes two strings from his guitar, one of its 25 All-Time Weirdest Guitarists.

In a phone call, Keith Strickland, the B-52’s drummer who took over guitar duties after Wilson died, explained Ricky’s unique style.

He was writing songs on guitar, very much influenced by Donovan.

The first time all five of the B-52’s jammed, I played guitar and Ricky played congas.

On some songs, like “Rock Lobster” and “Private Idaho,” Ricky played alternating parts.

And he used real heavy-gauge strings, because he kept breaking the thinner ones and we didn’t have guitar techs to change them.

He removed the G string from his guitar, which eliminates some of the midrange frequencies, and he played with only five strings.

When I played the guitar, if I broke a string, I wouldn’t change it — I’d just retune the other strings to an open tuning.

One day, Ricky was annoyed because I hadn’t changed a broken string on the guitar.

He said, “I’ve just written the most stupid guitar riff you’ve ever heard.” And it was the “Rock Lobster” riff, played on five strings in an open tuning