“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.”
― Kate Pierson
“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.”
― Kate Pierson
“There’s nobody like The B-52s. But doing stuff on my own, I can also express more personal songs.”
― Kate Pierson
“Five people in a Volkswagen station wagon without equipment. Now we tour with six people in a van.”
― Kate Pierson
“Cindy had two kids. We did manage to keep playing and doing summer tours with the Go-Gos, the Pretenders, and Blondie.”
― Kate Pierson
“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.”
― Kate Pierson
“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.”
― Kate Pierson
“The B-52s are all about inclusiveness and about celebrating your differences.”
― Kate Pierson
“I want to be the first rock band on Mars.”
― Kate Pierson
“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.”
― Kate Pierson
“There’s this whole split personality thing of being a farm girl and a rock and roll girl.”
― Kate Pierson
“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.’”
― Kate Pierson
“I love Atlanta. I feel really at home in Atlanta. We spent a lot of time there. But Athens is like home to me.”
― Kate Pierson
“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.’”
― Kate Pierson
“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.”
― Kate Pierson
“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.”
― Kate Pierson
“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.”
― Kate Pierson
“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.”
― Kate Pierson
“I like harmonizing with other people, but a lot of times, I do harmonize with myself.”
― Kate Pierson
“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.”
― Kate Pierson
“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.”
― Kate Pierson
“’Deadbeat Club’ means a lot to me.”
― Kate Pierson
“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.”
― Kate Pierson
“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.”
― Kate Pierson
“It’s true. I’m not a spokesperson. But I can say now that transgendered people like to be heard and to be respected.”
― Kate Pierson
“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.”
― Kate Pierson
“I’ve always wanted to be a musician. I love music; like, I probably sang when I was born.”
― Kate Pierson
“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.”
― Kate Pierson
“In a band with humor, it’s easy to be a caricature, especially when you’ve been around as long as we have. But we sing those songs as genuine as we can, always from the heart. When we do the fish sounds in ‘Rock Lobster,’ Cindy and I are pouring our hearts out.”
― Kate Pierson
“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.”
― Kate Pierson
“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.”
― Kate Pierson
“Everyone has that experience in a club where a doorman doesn’t pick you out.”
― Kate Pierson
“No beehive. Beehives – we sort of put them – well, we revive them sometimes.”
― Kate Pierson
“I’ve always wanted to do a solo project. I’ve always known I wanted to be a musician.”
― Kate Pierson
“I always was songwriting in high school, writing songs while I was supposed to be listening to the teacher.”
― Kate Pierson
“The first rock record I ever bought was ‘Great Balls of Fire.’ I was real little, and I went to Atlanta to get it.”
― Kate Pierson
“I rent space on a farm for 15 dollars a month, and I have the use of about a quarter of an acre.”
― Kate Pierson
“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.”
― Kate Pierson
“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.”
― Kate Pierson
“I like looking for things on tour.”
― Kate Pierson
“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.”
― Kate Pierson
“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.’”
― Kate Pierson
“There’s a very collaborative, collective attitude. That’s a very female principle. We try to nurture that aspect of the band.”
― Kate Pierson
“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.’”
― Kate Pierson
“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.”
― Kate Pierson
“I call it the LGBT Q and A community ’cause there’s so many questions and answers.”
― Kate Pierson
“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.”
― Kate Pierson
“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.”
― Kate Pierson
“I wrote a whole solo album and recorded some of it, even did a little tour with Sara Lee and Gail Ann Dorsey.”
― Kate Pierson
“There was just one time when the band took a big break, and I did that Nina project in Japan in 1999.”
― Kate Pierson
“People are making their own records in their houses. It’s an exciting time.”
― Kate Pierson
“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.’”
― Kate Pierson
“It takes incredible fortitude to keep on the road, even though it’s fun and it’s rewarding and you can’t complain – it’s just a great life – but, you know, it takes a lot of energy.”
― Kate Pierson
“I think there are certain genres of music where people are allowed to go on, but there is something about rock and roll, I guess because it originally started out to be a teenage rebellion.”
― Kate Pierson
“’Love Shack’ is such an eternal kind of song; at karaoke, people do it.”
― Kate Pierson
“We have quite a few political songs: ‘Channel Z,’ let’s ‘Keep This Party Going’ on. Our lyrics aren’t too hit-you-over-the-head, but they have political undertones. We’re active politically.”
― Kate Pierson
“We do benefits for various groups. But the main reason to be B-52’s is to have fun and party and go nuts.”
― Kate Pierson
“At some private events, we’ll see the CEO of the company get up and do his ‘Rock Lobster’ dance. The band used to grumble that, ‘All they talk about is hair and don’t take us seriously,’ but I’ve realized that what this band does the best is let loose and let people’s freak flag fly.”
― 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.”
― Kate Pierson
“We all maintained our connections and our friendships, which we’ve maintained over all these years. We still like each other, love each other, and we realize that this was a way to heal and a way to really bring Ricky back into the mix. I think a lot of the songs recalled that time in Athens with Ricky.”
― Kate Pierson
“We would go on ‘The Voice,’ and we’d get kicked off of the first episode, probably.”
― Kate Pierson
“Back in high school, I had this folk protest band, and I used to write all the time. And then, when I got in The B-52s, we began to write collectively, collaboratively – most all of our songs are written by jamming together.”
― Kate Pierson
“When I was little, I used to think, ‘That’s the way people in the future are gonna dress! They’ll be wearing space suits, and it will be all silver, all the time. It’s gonna glitter.’”
― Kate Pierson
“I was doing space girl outfits way before Katy Perry or Gaga!”
― Kate Pierson
“I was named on the worst-dressed list at the Grammys a couple of years ago. I had on Tom Ford, and I thought it was the most amazing dress ever. But I got put on the worst-dressed list. Luckily, at least I was pictured alongside Adele, J-Lo, and whoever – all these superstars who were also called worst-dressed – so that was a good thing!”
― Kate Pierson
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