The B-52s return to Orlando to Dance this Mess Around

Despite popular belief, B-52s foghorn Fred Schneider does not squawk random thoughts about lobsters, umbrellas and Limburger cheese without paid provocation.

He’s a pretty downbeat guy, to be honest, one who has weathered the safety pins of late ‘70s punk, the fluorescence of ‘80s new wave, the experimentation of ‘90s shape shifting and everything pop thereafter. And he’s done it with a sense of biting humor, something many miss while shaking their asses to “Love Shack” on the wedding-reception dance floor.

In between solo gigs and side projects – Schneider recently joined the coffee craze with his own marketed brew – he still manages to join up with his sister Bs Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson for the occasional high-haired dance-off. We caught up with Schneider, who has direct ties to Orlando, in advance of the band’s Dec. 3 gig at Hard Rock Live.

What would we talk about? Well, you know, the usual: wigs, the Talking Heads and Milli Vanilli. Also, he doesn’t like that you’re using your cellphones at his shows, thank you very much. Join us in our stilted conversation, won’t you?

Down, down, down.

Watermark: It’s funny that we’re doing this interview the day before Thanksgiving, because the first song in my head this morning was “Who Threw That Ham at Me?” courtesy of your side project the Superions!

Fred Schneider: Get ready for some more of that, because the new album comes out really soon. The album’s going to be coming out within a month or two and it makes a great Christmas present! I have a line of coffee with Breyting, my friend’s coffee company (communityroaster.com) and we just got word that the offer we put on a house in Deland went through, so now I have a place there, too.

I’m always interested about the folklore surrounding the beginning of the B-52s: the tiki drink, the requisite madness. I’m sure it was more complex than that.

Well, what we said in interviews is what happened. You can’t make that up. A flaming volcano, or five.

Do you think the camp-punk style that you were pulling off in the late ‘70s was embraced by your peers, or that they were just caught completely off guard?

We had a whole group of friends in Athens, Ga., and they loved it. We did it to entertain them, and it just snowballed, really. We started playing New York, and we had a whole slew of fans develop, and it just happened. We didn’t really realize that one day we would have careers. I certainly didn’t have much of a career!

What were you doing before falling into that flaming volcano?

Oh, I had a great job. I was active meal delivery coordinator for Meals on Wheels in Athens.

When you got to New York, where everyone was pretending to be individuals but making a remarkably similar din, you guys were truly individuals, hair high to the ceilings and kitsch falling out of your faces.

We were individuals. That’s what worked for the band: Everyone brought something different to it. There was no one person leading the band, because we would have rebelled.

Any ridiculous interactions with the CBGB scene? Did Lou Reed ever frown at you or Debbie Harry ever trip you and make you fall down the stairs?

No, because Debbie and Chris [Stein, also of Blondie] were big supporters early on. They would take our record around when they went around on tour. And I got to see all the different bands like Suicide, the Ramones. We would hang out with the Ramones, and they would open for us. And let me tell you, they were a tough act to follow. Their band liked us. And Joey Ramone, what a great guy. If we had any detractors, we didn’t give a shit.

So how did the whole Warner Bros. Records deal come about amongst that legendary black-eyed shambles?

Chris [Franz] and Tina [Weymouth] from the Talking Heads liked us, but unfortunately, we went with their manager, and, ugh, that was a shame. We had to deal with that for six years, and he got the Warner deal.

Did the Warner promotions department know how to handle you right off the bat? You were odd birds.

I think they fired a lot of the people who were really enthusiastic about being there. I mean, even when we got our gold or platinum record for “Love Shack,” they had the custodians and the president of the custodians give us the plaque. And we were like, “Yeah, whatever.”

Were you able to keep yourself at arm’s length from the boardroom cigars of the major record-label mucky mucks throughout the professional parts of the process?

Most of the pressure came from touring or traveling, and that’s just exhausting. I came to music a little later; I wasn’t camera-ready like kids today are. I had other interests; we all had other hobbies. I would see bands and all that, but I didn’t eat, drink and live music, though I’d play records constantly.

So was the “Deadbeat Club” a real thing in Athens, then?

I was living near Atlanta, and I went and hung out with a good friend of mine who was a poet, and his friend or two or three or my friend, too, they called it “coffee club,” and they would just sit around. I thought, this ain’t no “coffee club,” it’s a “Deadbeat Club.” And then that became the title for a song much later on.

Obviously things got bumpy when Ricky Wilson passed. [Wilson, an original member, was the brother of Cindy Wilson, and lost his life to HIV/AIDS in 1985.] You, as a group, made a choice to not really pursue promotion of a record you had just released. Were there feelings that maybe things had gone too far and you didn’t really want to live a public life anymore?

We had a single out, and “Summer of Love” did really well, but we weren’t about to get a new guitar player; it didn’t even cross our minds. Keith [Strickland] had written the music, and Keith was an amazing musician. He doesn’t get the credit he deserves: a guitarist, drummer and music writer. When he and Cindy were ready, we really had no plan of breaking up or getting together. But they were ready. They called us, and we said, “sure.” We shipped Warner Bros. a record, and they got it, though they didn’t get much of it because they thought it was too weird. Radio thought it was too weird except for college and alternative, which was always our strong point.

We went to No. 1 on college and alternative stations and then finally hit a lot of mainstream stations – and they can’t play anything, because they have to follow a format or some crap. But they started playing it. And we hit No. 3, right behind Paula Abdul and Milli Vanilli, both of them accused of neither singing nor writing a tune. And we were like, “whatever.” That’s the story of us: “whatever.”

It must have been quite a different vantage point from standing onstage at sold-out arenas looking just one decade back to the time when you were wearing plastic bags on tiny stages in dank clubs. Were you glad that you stuck it out so that you could see the high of Cosmic Thing.

Yeah! Otherwise, I’d be broke!

There had to be a lot of pressure when you were on top.

I apparently got dehydrated when we were touring New Zealand, and then they wanted us to go to Japan, and I said, ‘No, way.’ And Cindy said, ‘No, way.’ This was like after 18 months out on tour. And then Cindy wanted to have a family, so she left the band. But, you know, that’s understandable. I think Good Stuff is a really great album.

Your relationship with Kate [Pierson] and Cindy has to be pretty strong at this point, starting as kids and then running the hit parade. Do you speak with each other a lot when you’re not working?

Yeah, because we’re doing shows with symphony orchestras now. We just signed up for four gigs with one next year. Cindy has a solo project now that’s getting really good reviews; her show’s getting really good reviews. I’ll go see that in New York when she performs. Kate has her solo projects. We’re all supportive of each other. We all live in different places, but we all come together – every month, even.

The notion that you seem to be pulling abstract images and building songs around them – “Quiche Lorraine,” “Rock Lobster” – were you pulling impressions out of thin air or were you staring at lobsters?

Well, I got an idea. I went to the 2001 Disco in the late ‘70s in Atlanta, which was empty. Instead of a light show – I guess they had no money – they would show slides of slides of puffy things, lobsters on a grill and I forget what else. I just got an idea of a rock lobster, and it’s sort of like that. Or we’d hear somebody say something while we were listening to talk radio, so it was some crazy creature: “The devil is everywhere; he’s in your house; he’s in your car; he’s in your cigarette box.” In your cigarette lighter? Oh, that’s good: It’s hot.

How do you place the B-52s in that political realm. Are you a party-favor distraction or a subversive inline of commentary?

We get political in our interviews. Sometimes on stage, I’ll trash somebody. It’s like on “Channel Z” at the end, I’ll go, “Donald Trump’s a hack!” Here in Orlando, one dollar from every ticket we sell will go the Pulse memorial. I think that’s a better way to help more causes that really mean something to us.

Does the show change every night?

We change it up a little bit. We have to come together and rehearse. Usually the backing band knows the songs better than we do. We opened for Cher – because it’s Cher, who I really liked in the ‘60s, especially – but the next night it was the exact same show, word for word. I saw Tina Turner do the same in the late ‘70s when she was with the Ike & Tina Turner Revue: exact same show and exact same stage patter. But it was Ike & Tina Turner.

Let’s talk the coffee experiment with Community Roaster. It was an odd development when I saw it cross my transom, mostly because I thought that Fred Schneider was the last person I would expect ever needed caffeine.

My good friend Ric Coven does all kinds of projects out of Orlando; I didn’t realize he had a coffee shop. He asked if I’d like to do a line of coffee, and I said, “Sure.” So he sent me an eight-pack of coffee, and I didn’t like any of them on their own that much, but I put two together and I think I came up with a winner.

What do you make of audiences today?

I’m tired of people filming it and just sort of looking at their cellphones. It just angers me. It’s like, ‘What’s your problem? You can’t move? You’re standing there; get out of the way.’ If you see somebody with there cellphone there, push their hand down, because I don’t want them blocking your view.

Any surprises we should be expecting from the show?

Well, it wouldn’t be a surprise. You’ll see.

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