The B-52's "Love Shack" with Don Was

♪ The love shack is a little place where we can get together ♪ ♪ Love shack baby ♪ Such a crazy good, crazy good. (funky music) - Lectury today, we're talking about the signature song of the ultimate new wave art pot band. - That's right, Tiallo. This song helped bring the band back to cultural relevance after a two-year hiatus, ending up becoming their first Billboard top 40 hit and their first million-selling single. - But we knew we didn't want to keep all this love to ourselves. So we brought the man behind the board, the producer of the song to help us break it down. So hurry up and bring your podcast money because we're talking one song, and that song is Love Shack. Bye, the B-52s. ♪ Shake, baby love shack, love shack baby love shack ♪ ♪ Love shack baby ♪ (funky music) - Imagine setting your makeup, then forgetting it's even theirs. Meet new groupie setting mist from Mavily New York. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours, with flexible all-day comfy grip. No tightness, no stickiness, no residue. Just clump, dewy, hydrated skin. That still feels like your skin. Try new groupie setting mist from Mavily New York. - Maybe it's Mavily. - I'm actor writer, director, and sometimes DJ Diallo Riddle. - And I'm producer DJ, songwriter, and musicologist luxury, aka the guy who ispers. - Interpolation. - And this is one song. - The show where we break down the stems and stories behind iconic songs across genres and tell you why they deserve one more listen. - You will hear these songs like you've never heard them before and you can watch one song on YouTube and Spotify while you're there, please like and subscribe. - And if you're looking for even more music facts, more conversations, and more of these two guys, we've got a Patreon now, go to patreon.com/DialloLuxury. That's patreon.com/OurNames. (laughing) - So as we've mentioned, we have a very special guest with us on the show today, in addition to producing LoveShag, he has won six Grammys, an Emmy, a BAFTA. That's the British Academy Award. You may know him from his band was not was with his like "Walk the Dinosaur" or from his work producing the Rolling Stones, Bonnie Rate, and he popped. - And we're not done with the intro. He's also worked with Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, John Mayer, Elton John Garth, Brooks Leonard Cohen, Ozzie Osborne, Mel Tormay, and Frank Sinatra, Jr. And it doesn't stop there. He directed the documentary, Brian Wilson. I just wasn't made for these times. He's an incredible bass player. Most recently with the Bob, we are trio of the Wolf Brothers. And he's the president of Blue Note Records. - Please welcome President Don Wands, not Wands. - President Don. - Thank you very much. - That's my favorite President Don right there. The best president. - That's about the best president we have right now. (laughing) - No, thank you so much. - Not saying much, man. (laughing) - Blow bar. - But you cleared it. Don is so great having you on the show. - Yeah. - Before we launch into today's song, we want to talk a little bit about you and your career leading up to this moment in 1988. It's likely that our audience probably best knows you from your solo career from "Was Not Was." Probably the biggest hit, "Walk the Dinosaur." Let's hear a little bit of that. ♪ I'm a spin tie ♪ ♪ Just got with blue lights ♪ ♪ I felt a new tie ♪ ♪ So I watched my end ♪ ♪ But I want the dinosaur ♪ (laughing) - I was just gonna say, it's a timestamp. It's like, it's a snapshot of the moment. - What a wonderful time that was. - Yeah, I felt like 1987, 88 is like the last time you have like, you know, horn sections in major pop songs. Like I feel like by the '90s we sort of moved away from that a little bit. - All synthesized, yeah. - I synthesized but like, so perfect. Can you tell us a little bit about like what it was to work on that song? - It was the way we always worked, which we were primarily a live band. And we come from Detroit. And I-- - Shout out to the Motor City. - Yeah, but I think we sounded like the Motor City. - I can tell you see that. - I think that's what we really tried to do was reflect, it was kind of a jambalaya of our roots, which includes everything from having the stooges and MC5 play at my high school. - Wow. - To, you know, George Clinton. George Clinton actually played a sock hop at my junior high school in ninth grade dance. - Wow. - For those of you who don't know a sock hop, means it's a dance in the gym and they don't want you to scuff up the floor. - So they tell you to get all your shoes in the gym. - So you dance in your socks, just like that. - I didn't know that, I actually didn't know that. - That's fantastic. - And we talked a little bit about this on a previous episode of this show. The George Clinton, the Parliament, Funkadelic episode, go check that out. But late '60s into early '70s, Detroit and that area has an incredible blend. You've got Ted Nugent, you've got the stooges, as you mentioned, you've got George Clinton. And this stew of musicians, everyone was listening to each other. Everyone was borrowing ideas from each other and part of this Jumbalaya, as you said, is what makes it into this song? - Yeah, and there's a ronus to the music that comes out of the city. I think it comes from being a one industry time. So people, first of all, after World War II, it came from all over the world to work on the assembly line and they brought the cultures with them. So it was a really rich musical tapestry. But beyond that, if it's a one industry town and everyone's fate is tied to the successor failure of the auto business-- - We live in Los Angeles, we don't know what that's like. (laughing) - There's actually no point in putting on any errors there. Because everyone's, you just know you're in the same boat. I never knew anyone who, you know, leased a Mercedes to impress their friends in Detroit because no one would be impressed. They'd just say, what are you pissing your money away on that? We know who you are already. So the music kind of reflects that. I'd actually use John Lee Hooker as the epitome of what Detroit music is all about. - He does kind of like come at the easy, like he's almost like the hub of a wheel. - I believe so. I think everything, but it's the jazz, the R&B, or the rock and roll, everything kind of stems from-- - The black experience. - Yeah. - And by extension, Eminem, who's-- - Yeah. - You can do it to have no Eminem. You'd have no white stripes. - Yeah. - No Jade Dilla without John Lee Hooker. - You've literally mentioned like artists that we've covered on the show. So by the way, that song was by Was Not Was. And we could do a whole episode on that. I did want to ask you have, you know, production credits on all those Was Not Was records was producing for others something that you always wanted to do? - I did. I always wanted to produce records. For some reason, when I listened to them, even when I didn't know anything about how records were made, I'd focus it and think, oh, that's a cool snare sound. And I was thinking about behind the scene stuff. And then I was lucky. My partner in Was Not Was a Guy named David Weiss, guy grew up with his folks were voice over actors. So when we were little kids, they'd take a studio with them. We got down to the United Sound, which is where John Lee Hooker cut Bogey Chilling, where George Clinton cut "I'm a Dog," an incredible history to this place. And just to be around a room that had, like, looked like this, had my cables all over the floor. And cool. - How old are you? How young are you? - I was 11 or 12, but I just knew I wanted to be in that room. And I ended up in the 70s. They taught a class there. There was a terrible class. I had no one knew what they were talking about in retrospect. But it got me through the doors and behind the board of this Flickinger console, you know? And Hanson, and I learned, the one thing I did learn was that, well, a couple things I learned. One was that if you look at the big mixing consoles, you think, wow, how does anyone know how to work that? And then you realize, oh, each line going down is the same. So if you learn one, it's not that hard. - 24 track machine, 24 of the same thing, right? - Yes, exactly. So that was the first thing. And the other thing I learned was that, you could learn all about that stuff, but you better have good songs. So those two lessons made it work. - And you're very fortunate to point it out in this era, in the era where everyone on their phone has almost the same level of at least technological capability. You can do essentially the same thing with, you know, certainly Ableton and Pro Tools, but even on your phone, that you could do in the studio with these giant machines. But back then, it was very rare and experience and expensive to be able to be in a room and forget about knowing how to learn, like having the ability to learn it, having the time, having the capacity. So you're quite fortunate. - And as cool as the technology is, still doesn't guarantee you're gonna write a song like "A Rolling Stone." - Completely different skills that, yeah. - So if you don't have that, I don't know what you got. - So then is part of what your journey was, understanding that the full process of making a completed record, included both the performing, the songwriting, as well as the technological capabilities. And very early, you were just, there was all kind of one process for you. You were making something. - It was growing up in the '60s, you became aware that the technology behind it was becoming one of the musical colors. Beatles, really, the Sergeant Pepper, is what kind of illuminated that, where production techniques now started to dwell in things. - You started of some awareness that there was a George Martin, that was part of what you were doing here. - Yeah, you didn't, you didn't know they didn't give people credit records, really. So that changed the game considerably. But again, it didn't, why is Sergeant Pepper so great? and why so many people try to imitate it and fail, because the songwriting's also great. Gotta write a day in the life to make "Sergeant Pepper." Good luck. - We did an episode on that one too. - We did an episode specifically on you. - We agree, like, part of the irony of this show and this conversation is today, just to frame it. It's like, as much as we're deconstructing it down to the minutiae, you can't take that deconstruction and reverse it as a recipe. It's not a recipe to like make the thing. You can possibly define it and then redefine it. - I worked a lot with Brian Wilson. We're good friends over the years. And he was talking about the smile album which he started and shelved. And one of the reasons that he shelved it was the Beatles kind of scooped him with "Sergeant Pepper." And he said, "When he got to. " We'd like to take you home with us. We'd love to take you home. It was such a personal statement. When he heard that, he packed it in. - Oh, damn it. - That was the line that did him in. - That did him in. - Wow. - He said, to be able to say something that beautiful and direct to the audience and surround it in such sonic poetry. He was great at sonic poetry. - That's so moving. - And he was actually great at, you know, if you listen to Carolina or God only knows, it's not like he didn't do that, but he wasn't doing it on smile. He was going for something different with band-aid parts. - But I moved by what you're saying. He was moved by knowing his story and his journey and his music making. It sounds like his feeling like an outsider in many ways or not belonging was he's feeling included by this line. - Well, it touched him and he just thought he got scooped and he packed it up and went home. - We'll be talking about the Beatles more on this episode. There's a connection. But yeah, in the meantime, in 1988, around the time that we are moving into for the production of the B-52 song on the docket today. This is kind of your biggest year with Was Not Was and I guess the beginning of your transition into the production chair being your main role. Do you want to walk us through a little bit how that transformation came about? - Well, I was trying to produce records. Actually, we had a group that was deemed to be unmarketable when Was Not Was and we were signed to a record label and they said, "We don't know. You're a marketing nightmare," as one of you told us, because we had three black singers, but the two white guys were-- - Oh, I thought you guys were a black group. - For sure. - For sure. - I think walking about Walk the Dinosaur and I just was like, "Oh, where are these guys from?" - Yeah, well, that's it, you know what I mean? But they said, if you're gonna have, if you're gonna be a black group, you gotta do R&B. In fact, we went to Warner Brothers Records, which put out our first album and they were shocked when two white guys walked in. And they pulled us into a room and they said, "Look, this is how white people do R&B at Warner Brothers," and they put on a Michael McDonnell record. (laughing) Now Michael-- - Who is much belowed in the black community, let's be honest. - Well, I love Michael McDonnell. He's a good friend of mine. I've produced him, I think he's one of the greatest singers ever. But that's just now what we were doing. We didn't grow up to be that. And so we were perplexed. But they ultimately, the label we were, I'm put us on suspension and they said, either become a rock and roll band and get white singers or you guys get out of the picture and just write and produce and be an R&B band. And we said, "Well, that's not what we're bum." We're definitely not changing the singers. So they put us on suspension. I thought that meant, like baseball, you do 30 days. And then you come back and they put your record. (laughing) It dragged on for years, man. And we couldn't make records. We couldn't make records, we couldn't do it. And that's how I started becoming a producer because people figured out, well, these guys, they really just write and produce, play, but they're not the, they can do that for any solid by putting the band in terms of what happened with your blossoming new career. As much as you didn't want it to happen. - Yeah, and by being able to do that, it also helped the band later on too. Those things enabled us to start making our own records again. - How did it help the band? - Well, they wouldn't let me produce our records and basically, so if I started having success with other bands with other artists, then they took us seriously again. But actually, it kind of went hand in hand. Having the success would walk the dinosaur, enabled me to get a different level of artist who's willing to work with me. So shortly after that, I was able to work with Bonnie Rape as able to work with the B-52s, and that changed the whole arc of my life. - Well, let's talk about the B-52s. Do you remember the first time that you met them? And what was your impression of this band in 1988? - Well, I was a fan, first of all. Back in Detroit in the early '80s, there's a DJ named the Electrifying Mojo. - I've heard about this guy. ♪ Mojo loves you so ♪ ♪ Musically ♪ ♪ He wants to take you wherever ♪ - He had, he's so undervalued and overlooked because this man changed the face of music globally, I think. He was on the R&B station in Detroit, but he understood that black kids and white kids could listen to a certain kind of music that had hope. - Absolutely true. - So he was responsible for break and prints, first of all. He was the first radio person in the world to play Prince Records, and he started playing the B-52s, and he started playing Talking Heads, and he started playing Kraftwerk. In addition to George Clinton and Shalimyer and whatever, and so he formed us a malgamation of black kids and white kids that was a market that no one had really tapped before. And he understood the commonality in human beings and in the different styles of music. Now, one of the things that happened was because he started playing Kraftwerk, started getting sampled. - Yes. - And so Planet Rock is just basically Kraftwerk (laughs) with, with. - Absolutely. - After a bombardment. And that was, it was Arthur Baker and John Roby produced that, but it was because Mojo started playing Kraftwerk and then DJs started playing in clubs. Because at the time by contrast, most radio stations were originally formatted to a certain target audience that they thought could only possibly like the kind of music that looked like them, that looked like the audience. - That's exactly right, yeah. - It was funny, it's that I feel like so many hip-hop artists of Sampled Kraftwerk, all through the '80s, like I was going back through my favorite, you know, Luther Campbell, two-live crew, like, you know, in Atlanta we called it Booty Shake, it's gotta be. But like, these kind of, this kind of music, you always find a Kraftwerk sample in there. There's always a Kraftwerk, boom, boom, boom, boom. - Yeah, boom, boom. - Yeah. - It's usually either trans-heroic express or numbers. (upbeat music) - Yeah, that's a main two that everybody goes through. - That's right. - Or telephone call. Telephone call can sample what it meant to you. It is funny because you think of like, "Oh, why weren't they sampling canned?" Because Kraftwerk was just too simple and catchy. - Yep. - And they never heard those sounds before. - And they never heard those sounds. - Yeah, the rhythms and the sounds. Well, is that where you first heard the beat? - So Mojo was playing the B-52, so just as a fan of his show, it got me really into them. So I was a fan. - You remember the first song he played that you liked by then? - Oh, probably. - Rock Lobster, but he also really banged Mesopotamia 'cause he was in the top. - It's such a great song. - Yeah, it's great, yeah. (upbeat music) - What was the path to hearing the band falling in love with them, to hooking up with them to produce the record? - Well, it was a long, rocky road. It seems like nothing now, but it was those couple of years when I couldn't put out any records of my own band. Couldn't do anything. And I started producing local bands. It wasn't I was had a bit of a following in England from my first couple of records. So before we were on suspension, we actually had some people who dug the band over there and they started, we had club hits. - You have some great ones. I'm a huge fan of Willam Out. - Oh, thank you. - That's a great reminder. - I need to tell me that I'm dreaming. That's what I mean. - It was great. - All that Z-Record stuff. So good. (upbeat music) ♪ Tell me that I'm dreaming ♪ (upbeat music) - Yeah, the Z-Record stuff, yeah. So that was all before this thing. And so English artists started coming to Detroit and let me produce their records. And they came and sought you out particularly. - Yeah, and they wanted to make kind of the soul pilgrimage to Detroit and work with our musicians and take the tour of Motown Studios. And it was cool, you know? And we got to work with some really cool people. Bangkok Floyd Joy was the first one to come, but Boy George and Marilyn and Helen Terry. - What Boy George did you do? - Boy George and I produced a record on P.P. Arnold for a movie soundtrack called Electric Dreams. - So you're building the credits and then a dessert point is there an opening where the B-52 intro gets made? - Doing those records led to getting a record deal out of the UK for Was Not Was. And that's how we had to hit with Walk the Dinosaur, which then enabled me to produce Bonnie Raight and B-52s. - Well, what's interesting about the B-52s album that Ledge Egg is on Cosmic Thing, it has pretty much two. You producers, you, and Nile Rogers, I have to ask, did they give you any insight into why they wanted Nile for some songs and you for others? No. I mean, you're the guy in the other side. You don't have to ask why you choose Nile Rogers. We're born about four days apart by myself, but he was successful long before I was. And I was just, to me, good times is one of the great, it's one of the greatest records anyone said in a long time. And I was so thrilled the first time was I was played at the Mug Club in New York, just I first in New York show in 1980, he came. And I was just thrilled to meet him, you know? So it was a perfectly logical choice to call Nile to produce the B-52s. I was the long shot character, and it was probably, I got to audition on some songs. Well, before we go too deep into the song, let's take a step back and talk just about the B-52s. What can you tell us about the B-52s? Well, we're going to take a really quick deep dive and it'll be very shallow deep dive. There will be another B-52s episode in the future. I promise you such big fans of the band. But in brief, the B-52s originally formed in Athens, GA, roughly around Halloween 1976 when Fred Schneider, Kate Pearson, Cindy and her brother Ricky Wilson and Keith Strickland were jamming in a friend's living room at a party and it just sounded amazing. Wow. But who they were into the mix with no pre-planned anything. And then they took the show on the road to a local Chinese restaurant where they shared a flaming volcano drink, decided to form a band, and literally the rest is history. They were sort of the ultimate new wave band. Again, we will do another episode where we do probably a deep dive into, I want to say Rock Lopster, one of the most incredible, I mean, I have high school dance memories of this song. It's got retro. It's got camp. It's kitschy. It's surf rock. It's got the '60s Herodos. And for about four records before this one, they just kind of rolled the new wave idea. I would say them in divo or like, when you think of new wave, you think of the B-52s divo and I don't know. Block a seagull. Block a seagull, there you go. The ultimate new wave band. We should also say that the B-52s got their name from that distinct hairstyle. Yeah. That sort of tall hairstyle. Which itself is named after a B-52 bomber from World War II. This is what Mark Simpson has technically, right? Absolutely. He's a member of the B-52s. And her sisters. So, racing through the decade, we land around 1989's cosmic thing at this point. Unfortunately, co-founding guitarist Ricky Wilson had recently passed away from AIDS during the making of their previous record. After his passing, the band scattered. They didn't finish the tour for that record for bouncing off the satellites, which was their fourth record. Around 1988, Kate and Keith relocate to Woodstock, New York. And the earliest incarnation of the bandage should be said, they were switching instruments all the time. So Keith Strickland was the drummer and Ricky was the guitar player, but they all sort of played the instruments collectively. In fact, fun fact, Kate Pearson on the earliest records is playing bass live. She's the live bass, but her left finger is playing all the one note bass lines. If you ever go back and watch Old footage on the Far Feeza or the Jupiter 8 or something. So, by the time this record, cosmic thing is being made, Keith is the primary songwriter on the music side of things, but they're working together as a collective. Yeah, that's right. And so, with the new compositions coming from Keith, the band decided to record their next record. And for the sessions with you, Don, they recorded a dreamland recording studios in West Hurley, New York, just outside of Woodstock. Shout out to Woodstock. What can you tell us about this place? What can you tell us about dreamland? Oh, great story. I just worked there again. It's an old church. I know it's still there. It's an old church. Oh, wow. And it's just got a sound. The sound. It's the drum. Is it the drum? It's, yeah, it's, you know, the cathedral ceiling. I guess you call it. I don't know. It's just the wood. Everything about it is just a great sound and room. And you can hear it in those drums and love shack, you know, it's such a powerful echo that comes back. I mean, was it the Led Zeppelin episode where we were talking about recording a couple of the drums? Oh, yeah. The sound of the room. Yeah. It's a big difference. Big difference, yeah. And before, for pre-production, were you part of the pre-production at Berizil? Yeah. Right. Tell us a little bit about that because I think what's really interesting is we were investigating the making of the song is the B-52's writing process. Oh, it's fantastic. We'd love to hear it from your mouth. I was about to say the horse's mouth, but that's what you're talking to the guy. I don't know what it's saying. It's okay. That's all the right thing to say. But I do have a quote from you, which I want to hear you elaborate on where you said they would just jam on a groove. They would sing "Stream of Consciousness" riffs. A lot of it would be unremarkable, but they'd put all this down on yellow paper. And then they would put that on the wall. Tell us about that. They would just just stream the consciousness for half an hour against a groove. And then each one of them, if they'd liked the line that they sang, they'd write it on a yellow pen. And so you were saying Fred, Cindy. They had three yellow pads. Right. Yeah. And then if they'd take the page and tape it up to the wall, and then they'd start building this chain. And kind of when they got down to the floor, there must be a song in there. So they had previously sent me demos of songs. And I think there were four songs. And we got through them early. That's what we rehearsed at Beerusville in the bar in there. We moved over to Dreamland Cut 'em and we had an extra day. So we're set up. You got anything else? Well, we got this one thing. And they pulled out this scroll. Nothing repeated. I would love to see that scroll. Is it lyrics and melody ideas? It's just lyrics. Just lyrics. And it's just the best of what they improvised. And the groove they played, it reminded me of Cool Jerk by the capitals. It was great to try Soul Record from the '60s, so I can relate to the groove. And I thought, well, it was a cool twist for the B-52s to get that deep in the soul music pop. Yeah, I think that's what makes this song maybe different. You know, if I had heard of them before, Love Shack, it might have been Rock Lobster. And this feels like a very different. This is like when Bowie goes from what he was doing early on to, like, some of those late '70s records where his rhythm section soles it up. Yeah. Well, that's exactly. They were always a groove band, but the grooves were different. This was a soul music groove. So it kind of spoke a universal way. And it was like a major role in organizing the chaos, because there's a lot of great ideas. But they needed help finding what were beats and how do we make it three and a half minutes. They gave me the scroll. Yeah. And I say, give me 10 minutes. So I'm looking at all the great lines, you know, "Hopened my Chrysler," it's about to sense. But they didn't seem to be a common thread, but when I was reading through it, I didn't know what it meant. But the thing about the Love Shack, it had different chords, first of all. It seemed, "Oh, maybe that's the thing that holds it together." So it took about 10 minutes to edit 30 minutes down to three and a half. What's interesting to me is that you're only looking at lyrics. There's no melodic ideas necessarily about it. Well, I heard parts of the jam too. Oh, did they play you like a work tape or something? Or you heard a jam? Yeah. Yeah, they're just what they were jamming to. They're the thing that they transcribed the lyrics from, just to cassette. But in about 10 minutes, we had it down. You helped organize it and come up with something to repeat, because there wasn't much to do. Yeah, they sent me in the other room, and I came back with them. Yeah. That's the other thing. I can't wait to get into the stems in the occupying room. We listened to the vocals, because that's what struck me the most in this song is, there are still about a dozen different vocal ideas. Maybe 20. There aren't a lot of things that repeat. There's only a handful of melodies with the same lyric that you hear two, if not three times throughout the whole song. And you never, but that's part of why it's such an incredible composition. All right. Well, we're going to take a quick break. But when we get back, we're going to hear some parts of Love Shack. Like you said, we bet you didn't even know we're in there. We'll hear these incredible vocal harmonies that go throughout the song, isolated. And, we've got Don Was here to tell us exactly what went down in the studio and what we get wrong. So, stick around. We'll break it down. Imagine setting your makeup, then forgetting it's even theirs. Meet new groupy setting mist from Maybelline, New York. Out of Miss technology, locks in your look for up to 24 hours, with flexible all-day-gum V-Grip. Just clump, dewy, hydrated skin that still feels like your skin. Try new groupy setting mist from Maybelline, New York. Maybe it's Maybelline. All right. Welcome back to one song. Let's get into the stem. It's luxury. Bet you want to start with the drums. And we'll listen to Charlie Drayton with that classic Motown sounding pickup. He's just laying it down and you have an incredible sounding drum engineering situation. What do you remember about this on the day of the song? Well, the first thing I remember is Charlie knows how to tune his drums and he knows how to hit him and he's got a great feel and a deep, unrelating swing that goes under everything he plays. And he's just a really gifted musician. He's great on the bass. as he is. I've used him on sessions both as a drummer and a bass player. He's just an incredibly gifted guy, so it starts with him and his touch and how good his drums sounded. I was going to say, I love that feel at the beginning because it's very big. Were you hit or that? It's very dancing in the street. Yeah, it's totally dancing. It's dancing in the streets. I'm sure we could pick another dozen like Motown alone, just on that label, and very much evokes from the get-go, the 60s feel that we're going to be hearing throughout the song as we go through the instruments. There's a little bit of art, a little stacks over here, a little soul over there. But Charlie got that intuitively about the song. And by the way, this is the first take. Is the band playing together? The band is, yeah, and singing together. So everybody's in one room. Everything we're about to hear is that same first take. Yeah, we might have punched some vocals. A little more shine for Charlie Drayton, who you're saying. Obviously, we hear what a great session is. And also you can hear what a great room they have a dream line because those echoes that are coming back into the room. That's the room. That's the room. Yeah. It was right there from the get-go. It sounded great. Charlie Drayton has also played with the Rolling Stones, Keith Solo with Expensive Linoes, the Colt Miles Davis, Neil Young, Shaka Conn, it's like you, with a crazy list of names, Janet Mariah Courtney Love. But in the iconic video, he's actually, that's actually not him playing. It's actually Zach Alfred, who was B-52's touring drummer at the time. So just to give them both their equal but different shine, what you're hearing is performance by Charlie Drayton. Yeah. And I called Charlie because I'd seen him play with Keith Richards band. It was before I'd met Keith. And I just thought, man, he and Steve Jordan would switch off. I was going to say they both have a similar really hard hitting snare sound too. Yeah, but Charlie just has a little different feel. And I thought he was just perfect for this, anyways. Let's hear a little more of Charlie Drayton on the drums. This is from that pre-chorus. So just a really quick overview of the arrangements. Pretty simple. This song is a groove. And it has a couple of moments where there's a four bar build basically where it changes. But the rest of it is just literally jamming on a two-word groove. Here is that pre-chorus, essentially. What he does is build the tension into the chorus. Real subtle. Yeah. Yeah. Very, very, very Motown. Very Motown. Absolutely. That Motown B basically does snare on every beat. Again, Drayton's not doing anything fancy, but it's what the song calls for and it's pocket. It's it's heart and the feel and swing. It's got that real subtle swing. It's barely even noticeable, but it's there. What can you tell us about the bass? All right, let's listen to Sarah Lee lay down stone groove. Sarah Lee was in the band Gang of Four. And she also, if she grew up, I didn't know this. Yeah. Sarah Lee played bass on one of your favorite Gang of Four songs. Which one? I love a man in uniform. She went to high school with my wife in lead England. Yeah. So she's British. Yeah. I was going to say there ain't no way no American lady found her way in a Gang of Four. That was a bad one. But she played pretty funky on that. No she didn't have it, by the way, Gang of Four. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. But that is what Sarah Lee is playing in this song. I forgot that the amp was so distorted. Yeah. It's loud. What's crazy? It sounds like it sounds like the Stooges now. Yeah. I love that. Well, I always felt that there was a very fine line between the Stooges and James Brown. I thought that they they listened to him. And they law enforcement felt the same way. That's the best joke you can ever fall on the show. That's a lot of great jokes. I thought the Gary Glitter was pretty good. I'll take care. I'll take a compliment. Now you're absolutely right. Iggy's music. We did an Iggy pop episode. Look, obviously we have shared taste in music. We've done all the people we've been talking about today. But on Iggy, we really reinforced, we did a lust for life. And we talked a lot about how he's groove oriented, not just musically, but how he sings is percussive more than it is melodic. It's more James Brown than it is. No, he's a tetraka. He grew up listening on that. And it's just the feel of the groove is a little different. But I know that they were listening to that. I love that. There's a hardness to it, I would say. Maybe that's the Detroit great. I think so too. Like if you think about the Stooges' fun house. Yeah. And then he juxtapose it with like doing it to death by the J.B. that there's both of them just have a groove that goes the whole thing. And your frontman just has a good time on that. No, but you're pointing out to me that there's literally a James Brown song where the drum, think of it a drum pattern is the same as on fun house. I'll give you another connection that Charlie Dreyton played based on Candy, the Iggy Pop song that I produced. Which he produced. Yeah. From the 52s. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I just said that that's probably the first Iggy Pop song that I ever heard in my life. That's cool. Really. I have exposure to that stuff. I heard Candy. I was like, this guy looks weird, but this is a really catchy song. That's what he was supposed to do. That was a mission statement. Let's listen to a little more of what Sarah Lee did on this track. So this is remember before during the drums I mentioned there was that Warbar breaking up of the groove build. Let's listen to that and then let's talk about what might have inspired it. I hear the Gang of Florida. Now that you've said Sarah Lee Gang of Florida, I totally hear it. This is insane. Yeah. And let's talk. You mentioned before the cool jerk of it all. Let's listen to a little bit of the capitals 1966 because this is the moment where that connection might become a little more explicit. With a pickup right there. Got to bring back fast dancing. You do the Molly Ringwald on that one. You do like this. This is on the back on the two and the four on the backbeat. But that song you mentioned was as a reference point for this one and you really hear it in the drums and bass. Let's get into some guitars. I can't wait to hear what you have. Let's do it. Let's listen to this is Keith Strickland on guitar. Let's listen to the main riff. It's just a two bar cycle. And then I'll bring in some other stuff. Yeah. Remember, he was a drummer. Yeah. He's playing rhythmically. Yeah. It comes naturally to him. Yeah. rhythmically, doesn't it? Yeah. But can I also say this is like a period in I would say like for the lack of a better term, Indy Rock, which is, you know, just about to break. It's called College Rock. College Rock, yeah. Sure. Sure. Yeah. Like those kind of like jangly guitars sort of pretend portend of what's to come next, which I think of like to the wet sprocket and some of these other groups from that period. But they also harken back speaking gang of four now. I would be here in this. Oh, yeah. Guitar stuff in gang of four. Yeah. Sort of stabby. Yeah. Yeah. I can see that too. I also think he he worked a lot still does. I assume in like different tunings. I don't think that's a standard E tuning. Oh, really? And when they toured, he had like 30 different guitars each. Oh, well, that makes sense. And there were two in case he broke a string. So they had of two for each tuning. We're going to again, there will be its own B 52s early days episode. Because on rock lobster to your point, like that's got a crazy tuning. It's basically a Johnny Mitchell song. There's it's tuned to C, I think, and then F. And then I think one or two strings are missing. So incredible. I can't wait to do that separate episode. But you're right. It would make sense that he having to play that song in addition to the rest of the repertoire would have a bunch of different guitars on this. You should have him come in and talk about it because he knew exactly what Ricky was doing. And he was emulating that and the way to him for this. Yeah. Let's listen to what Keith does during that four bar pre-build. And it's an interesting moment. This is kind of a little foreshadow before it happens in the vocals. We're in C Mixolydian this whole time. But when we go into the pre-chorus, we're hearing it's going from the one to the flat three to the four to the flat six. And that's important because it's really evoking a handful of those R&B kind of staxi mid-60s songs, soul songs. And we'll I'll play a couple that kind of harkens too. Flat three, four, flat six. Those subtle, but like it does so much. Yeah. That's great. That build up, I'm trying to think it's a House of the Rising Suns. I think this is for all Rock and Roll Garage bands. Yeah, it's also this one oh there you go. Yeah. Yeah Very good that Sam and Dave hold on. I'm coming But another song that uses all four chords. This is from 1966 Spencer Davis group give me some love in That's the source right there right that's yeah, right, yeah, crazy that CB when was like 17 by the way when he did Do we do we think that not to be a Steve when with spoil sport? Do we think that yeah, I mean a Spencer Davis group were copying something they'd heard from a Motel song. Oh, let's be clear as we do on every episode of the show We're like it might have come from it might have come from this is a game that we can wonderfully chase eternally and never got as a wrap. Yeah, never goes to this there's nobody can own those four chords Nobody can own that sequence, but you can use it any vocate. Yeah, which is what has been successfully done in the song love shack Right, yeah, we're all thinking of it. Yeah, yeah, suddenly and when you isolated it's like oh yeah, that's And to your point it's also and there's no Lines Consistently on this show I fall in love with what the keys are doing so often. Yeah, and I hear an organ on this song And I can't wait to hear it isolated. I'm anxious to hear it too. Okay, let's listen Little syncopated stabs And we believe this is this is Kate playing keys. I believe it is. Yeah When I closed my eyes and pictured the session everyone was singing live Everyone was in a like a circle, but I can picture her stand in front of the organ And by the way unsung hero perhaps of this band is Kate Pearson who in addition to being the vocalist Co-writer co-creator of everything she's up there watch any footage of her from the 80s especially She's up there doing all that doing all that crazy singing and sound making But she's also got one if not two hands on what if not two different keyboards playing sometimes parts like that in the right hand And also a bass line in the left hand. Yeah, incredible. Yeah, unsung hero It kind of has to be said. I was a big fan of cartoons because that was the right age for that in this time and This group more than any other felt like the Archie's or Josie the pussy cats come to life because of the prominence of the female musicians and the man. That's a great comparison too because they're also very From the 60s. Funny. Oh, yeah, there's a humor there. There's a humor about this man We're gonna talk about Fred. Oh, yeah, and the importance of Fred in this group But the organ I actually thought I heard more organ in the song. There's more Let's talk about more parts. I think here's our break from the groove the build that we keep referring to and I'll play that for you and then put it in the next for context Listen to it. Yeah, let's listen with some more instruments just for fun Here those stabs that are going in between little syncopation since the drums are just a straight up groove You get to have little syncopated moments in other instruments. Yeah, I saw all the peanuts characters dancing I wrote down I don't remember what I wrote down surprising melody moment. So it'll surprise all of us. Let's listen to what I meant. I don't know what I meant by that. Let's listen to it Kind of a mistake a little bit. That sounds very Kate Pearson though like it's the kind of thing she plays in like Planet Claire or something like that plan again. I'll play it. I'll play it again. Then I'll give you context as like what is that? Yeah, it's like a tight like satisfaction Hungry freak steady And it's sci-fi It's like if uptight was played on a spaceship It's very kitsch on an episode of God or who? Yeah, it's kind of like a 60s like a farfisa. It is for is it literally the farfisa? Yeah, okay. This is an old 60s keyboard and by using that keyboard in the late 80s you're evoking more That's another way to evoke 60sness. Yeah, just like pickups and or was it a box continental? I would think it could be a box. It could be a box continental. Yeah, I can't remember what was there. Yeah She plays farfisa. I know famously. Yeah, I'm an earlier work, but maybe maybe she's also I can't remember what we had there Pat Irwin is probably lip-syncing to that keyboard whatever he's playing in the video is Prompting which he played. Yeah, it should be said in the video. You're right. So in the video we've got I wasn't I was gonna ask you Is that you in the video or pat Irwin? People ask me that knows Pat. Okay, because it could also be 1988 looking done was. Yeah, pre-dread done was. Yeah, we want to talk about the horns and there was something you wanted to tell us about the horns, but they're called the uptown horns of Crispin Co. C I O E. Yeah, the uptown horns among other things their New York based section They played with the J. Guiles bands on freeze frame, you know centerfold and all that. Yeah, and played with Tom Rates on his rain dogs album. So guys know what they're doing. Yeah, they're great. Yeah, all right. Let's listen to the horns That glistens at the end is really iconic for this song. Yeah, listen to that again. That's a really noticeable like a hook almost in the song Yeah, oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, brilliant. That reminds me a little bit of this does anybody else here I Think the horns are about to come in here. Let's listen Oh sure, yeah, absolutely. It's just it's just an octave in a staff James Gadson playing drums on that Who that is? Yeah, that is the expressed yourself Charles Wright and the Watts 103rd Street band right on Rest your self. Yeah, we'll say goodbye in w a That glistens here's another version of the class. It's a little bit longer. I'll play the end of the riff Yeah, which is very funny. Yeah, it's like a good it's like a cartoon noise Thank you for saying this is a band with a sense of humor. Yeah, that's I think that's why I love Mesopotamia like it's it taught so much History and some fake history that was like perfect. I love Mesopotamia Well one thing that this song has that I always love is party noise I love it when people bring in multiple people even if it's just the band members You know like a she has a song like that we recently talked about a Marvin Gaye's got to give it up Which famously recorded a Don Cornelius party. I want to say this is how we do it another recent episode had Montel Jordan He brought in all his friends and they set up a keg on one side It's a liquor on the other and you hear the party noise this song has party noise so luxury What can you tell us about the party noise and the percussion on less into the all the song writers producers out there If you want your song to be a party song. Yeah, record a party and put it in the song. It's like a lav track for music Right The screaming I love the screaming. Well, I think this is good a part as any to talk about that We believe that this song was you know inspired by a place that they would go in Athens a place called Hawaiian Hale and The building is still there really apparently. Yeah, and if you look at a picture of it like just if you just look up Hawaiian Hale and do an image search you can see this beat down old place They said it looked like a shack with a tin roof that had gone way resty a long time ago Yeah, you can find those pictures of it and you can even do a Yelp search and I don't know if the current Hawaiian Hale is a rebuild Or if it's the original physical building, but it wouldn't be too I mean like this not like the songs according to the 60s It's the late 80s. Yeah, but they used to go there and they used to love how the people would just get down as a black bar Mm-hmm. Now fresh neither says it's a black bar and him and city were like yeah You know we used to go there and people just used to really get loose on the dance floor They were trying to do a song that they thought would hit it really hard at Hawaiian Hale and They end up with this song. Yeah, I don't remember that part. That's just really cool. Let's get you know That's kind of it's a fun fact. That's why we do the show You might be at a party where there are lots of people but whoo, yeah What's up, man? And then you could be like, hey, I've got a fun fact for you because that's what nerds do We don't hit on anybody and we barely dance, but we come with the facts We've come to the part of the show these vocals. They're so classic play us a little bit And by the way male and female vocals who's singing on the song Well We've got Kate Pearson. We've got Cindy Wilson and we've got Fred Schneider two of whom are singers and one of whom I would say might be a shpreck a songer Well, I think Fred would take issue with that He was very conscientious about Singing in tune and he is to be fair a singer to be fair the way he sings is very difficult to emulate He's got a very distinct style. Yeah, and as I was trying I was sort of going through like on a keyboard with the melodies if you try to play on any instrument what he's singing It's incredibly challenging if not darn near impossible because he is hitting notes But in a way that an instrument can't possibly do only a human can do on the record we did afterwards which is called good stuff He really wanted to be part of like that singing harmonies and being part of the stack and he can do it again. He's in there very clearly. There's some of that on this one. Well, I just want to say I'm a huge fresh nighter fan and I feel like a lot of my, a lot of my writer friends were all just like, fresh nighters like he almost sings, I think he sings beautifully, but there's a, there's a level of humor there. He's fantastic. I mean, you can't talk about the B 52 songs without sort of, you know, saying like, and mess up patemi, you know, like you get, you just have to say it like he would say it. And I think Fred starts off this song. Let's start off with the Fred vocals. If you see a faded sign at the side of the road that says 15 miles to the blue shark, love shark. The contrast, so it's incredible that how genius to start this on with both of those because you're hooked. I mean, the, the real club they base this on is apparently in the middle of nowhere. And I always like this, the, the story telling nature of if you see a faded sign at the side of the road, it's just 15 miles to the love shark. Like it's a very unorthodox way to, to intro a song. But can I talk about the very next, the very next lyric that just stuck on my mind because I'm a kid in Atlanta. And you never hear anybody work the word in Atlanta into a song ever. Can you play us the next part of the world? Is there an Atlanta highway? Is that a thing? You know what's funny? I think the highway, they're talking about a 78 because if you're in Athens and you're heading south, you know, it'll say highway 78, it'll say Atlanta. So I think they just showed it that, you know, it's the same way we'll say that the 10 is the Santa Monica. If you're driving from downtown, it says the 10 in Santa Monica. I think the Atlanta highway is just the, is 70, Route 78. It's a small anthem. It's on highway. Yeah. It's not an interstate. You got to take you from one to the other. Interesting. I think we're about to hear Kate and then she's going to be joined very quickly by, by Cindy on these like, the most distinctive harmony duo outside of the Everly Brothers. Yeah. Yeah. I'll go with that. I'm heading down the Atlanta highway, looking for the love, get away. Hate to cut it off there. We have, like I said, we're, there are 20 ideas linearly from one to the next across the song. One idea, next idea. And they're all great. And pause it anywhere. You're like, I wanted to hear the next idea. You know, in the, in the pantheon of guys who weren't rapping, but it felt like they did at the time. I think about the pet shop boys on Western girls. This isn't that group for me because I just, you know, like, they're singing clearly. And even though he's kind of singing, it felt like rap a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. That suit on that. Yeah. It's got a cadence. It's got a cadence. It's got a note. It's got a melody. Got melody. Okay. That's first hook, which is one of the first, this is the first idea we hear more than once in the song. Right. This next one. This is the pre-chorus. This is the four accord build. We keep listening to another instruments. ♪ The love shack is a little place where we can get together ♪ ♪ Love shack baby ♪ Such a crazy good, crazy good hook. Was that? So you were talking about how when you were looking at the scroll. And that's what jumped out to you. This was the love shack. That was in there. And that turned into the hook of the song. But once upon a time, that was just one of 50 ideas. It happened one time during a half-hour jam. Yeah. It just came out once. ♪ Love shack baby love shack ♪ ♪ Love shack baby love shack ♪ That's perfect. That baby. I love the slide on that. Do we have any antecedent for that? Well, I was going to say, so here's just a really quick illustration. I have an interesting musical thing that's happening in this song. Because in the verse, we're very clearly in Mixolydian. So we have a major third. So. ♪ Head it down. ♪ So that's how you know it's Mixolydian. Because it's a major third and a flat seventh. And another place you hear that. Because I always think, when I'm thinking, what is Mixolydian? I always think of Gary Newman-Cars, which is the same melody. Oh, is there a good one? ♪ Plan a highway here in my car ♪ Very good. So it's just a scale. It's just a mode. Nobody owns that. But when we move to this part, we actually. That major third becomes a minor third, which happens all the time in blues and rock music. You're sharing. There's major on top of minor and minor on top of major. It's just characteristic of the genre. But to your question, another place you might have heard that is. Now we've heard that before on this show. ♪ No, no, no, no, no ♪ So it's that tritone again. We have a minor third and a minor third on top. So. Very good. Really cool how all this stuff is happening in this pop song. And I hear Bang-Bang because I feel like this also evokes very much the 60s for me. Just this little section here. ♪ Bang-Bang, bang-Bang, bang-Bang, bang-Bang, bang-Bang, bang-Bang ♪ You're. What? ♪ Ten row, rusted ♪ Well, here's the story. Okay. It was so spontaneous, man. They gave me these lyrics. I went in the other room. I came back in. Yeah, great. We'll do this. We talked to the arrangement. We were already set up. We went out in the room. We cut it. And when we got to the tin roof, rusted line, there was something about the line and the way she delivered it, she went from being super exuberant, like too exuberant, to crying. She actually started. She teared up over the course of whatever, three seconds, whatever takes. And no one came in right. Because. The energy just dropped across. It just freaked everyone out. It was so. You know, what does it mean? Your tin roof rusted. It shouldn't. But it didn't seem to be invested with that much import at the time. But her older brother had just passed a few years early. Well, the whole week was emotional for all of them because this is the first time they'd gone back to record without them. And I think it just all came to a head. Yeah. The last song you guys recorded this last time, the last day, and whatever it was, it threw everybody. So this is before pro tools or any of this kind of stuff, right? Well, that was great. Okay, except to fell apart, let's cut it again, let's cut it again. We did it 30 more times in each time. We got further from the looseness and the care of free thing, the vibe of it. And we went to dinner and everyone was bummed out. And we came back and we listened and we said, "I don't think anything's beat the first take." And then I guess I should have known that you could do this, but I was pretty green myself. We just punched everybody in, but your tin roof rusted, punch, love, shack, and took it out. I love that. I love that story. Well, obviously, I feel horrible that there was pain there, but it's just the fact that that epic historic, if you will, the thing that truly makes, it takes it from being a great song to just a historic song, a legendary song, is that break in there. And then after she says tin roof rusted and you hear a little bit more party sound, then it comes back in. Yeah. I mean, it's just a classic example. You couldn't have planned it. You couldn't plan that. But it was perfect. She didn't plan it. Look, let me tell you something, at the core, the thing that makes recording magical and also terrifying is that when lightning truly strikes the room and something incredible happens, you don't know where it came from, if you don't know where it comes from, how do you make it happen? A producer can make the room conducive to having lightning strike and you can tell the engineer when it strikes, make sure you're in record, it's all over the place and it's great. Yeah. You can do that, but you can't make it strike. And that was an example of something incredible happening that you couldn't plan, that no one for saw, that it's not even necessarily in the writing of the song that that line should have that much impact, but it was the way she delivered it. At one time, that was like who took over her body and made that happen. Something so mysterious. I was going to say there's magic in this song. Something in, it might have meant something to her, that was very personal, it clearly did. Maybe she doesn't even know what it meant. I don't think she knows what it meant. The meetings, brands, rates, even through the mystery of what the literal words mean. We feel the feelings. We feel the emotion. Well, the key thing is, this is why making records is so incredible because you're trying to bottle lightning. And if you don't have it, anybody can make a good record. You know, it's not hard to make a good record, but good is the enemy. You want to be great. And what makes it great is like, well, that's a great moment that no one could have planned, that they couldn't have taught you about in music school, that you have no previous records. What's like that in the 1950s record that she could have quoted? Nothing, man. That's magic. That's, and when that happens, you feel the surge of adrenaline. and it's like going surfing and catching an incredible wave. That's why I'm 73 and I still love making records. Because when that happens, it's the coolest thing. And this is why you're the unsung hero. One of them, if not the unsung hero of this episode of this song, is because your presence now we know at the beginning, making it, first of all, finding that fifth song after you did the four, and helping shape, clearly this is a collaboration between the band, and you ensuring that you found what was the song in their ideas. You helped craft it into something that would be a completed production. And then with moments like this where it needed somebody to say, here's how we're going to finish. Here's how we're going to get to the end, because there's something special here. And the flagging energy, you know, solving that problem. That's what a producer does. A good producer, great producer. And Don was stumbled into it. There's another, there's lightning, man. Happy accident. Well, it's very validating, I would say. I've heard you talk about this recently. I heard your Rick Rubin interview, and it was very validating to hear that even this far along into your career, you were mentioning how you still go into a room to start a new project, not knowing, and maybe fearing a little bit, will there be that lightning you can't plan for it? You can't plan for it, I get a stomachache before every session. And it doesn't matter if it's a 19-year-old making their first record, or Bob Dylan, where the stakes are high, you know. It really doesn't matter. It's just, you don't know. I appreciate that vulnerability, though, because we assume from afar, like, well, you know you've got the secret sauce, you go in with the playbook, but you don't know. Anyone who tells you that is full of shit in my end of it. We'll keep our guard up. We'll keep our guard up, don't believe it, man. Now that you've told your story of that moment, I will never hear that the same way again. From Tin Roof to Rusted, she went from this energy and this enthusiasm to something very different. The part of it might have been just that she was amped up, singing the bang-bangs, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, like, it was too quick to, you only had a second to readjust to the other thing. But from your storytelling, it's like she lived 12 lives in three seconds. There was something else that happened, man. And she absolutely had tears in her eyes by the time she got to Rusted. Which is crazy to me, because I always heard the rest of it sort of like, I have to be like, Rusted, like, you know, with like a, like, you hear the sigh in there, but I thought it was like a relief, you know what I mean? I've always heard it that way. There's also something like how Fred Schneider's question, to me always implied the sort of like, she's pregnant. Joe, absolutely. You're not only being pregnant. Right, that could only be pregnant. It's not like you're late to work, no, that's true. But then as a listener, you're like, how is Tin Roof rusted the answer to the pregnancy question? It's like, what? Oh, I thought they totally left us hanging. I was just like, we'll never find out. She's pregnant or not. Can I just say also, thank God for the internet. For years, I had no idea what she was saying. What'd you say? I don't think anybody did. I told our producer. I was like, it reminds me of that scene in "Never Ending Story" when the trail goes to the window. And he says, "Scream my name!" And he's like, we never knew what he said there. At the Simpson's, it was so famously like, inscrutable what he had said. The Simpson's did a whole parody scene of just that moment. But Tin Roof rested, which again, like you said, and you said, it does not answer the question of your what? I don't know why that preceded the, it should have been the other way around. But did that happen in the take? It was Fred did say that. And then he did say that. It was recorded that way. And with the band stopping. Yeah. No, that was mapped out. You had worked out in the band so you would get to that point. Yeah, you can see it's like four bars, four bars, four bars. Or four times on each thing and the bill. I'm sure we talked through it. Because you have this role. What I like to do is not play it all the way through. So you don't blow the first take. Because the first take is so often, something special happens that never happens again. So you talk to each section, maybe you run it, a section at a time, but you don't do the complete thing. It's symmetrical. You can see that it was planned. There are so many people who claim to know what Tin Roof rested means. And yeah, I love that the band has been like, no, we actually don't really even know what it means. Like we've noticed that that place had a rusty Tin Roof. So we wanted to mention that. But I also like the fact that as we said on this show, once you put art out there, people sort of come up with their own meanings. And they're very comfortable with everybody coming up with their own theory on what Tin Roof rest. Well, hearing, I would liken it to like listening to John Coltrane. Yes. You don't need lyric to feel the emotion behind it. And it's the emotion behind it. And the abrupt change that is startling and soulful, whatever she was going through that day, you really feel it. The actual words aren't the point. I have a feeling from your storytelling and the fact that there hasn't been anything more clarifying. Like I think they clearly like the mystery, but I feel a deep connection to the idea that it means something to Cindy about Ricky. And I just like, I wanna leave it there. Like I don't need to know more than that. It sounds like it was emotional. She thought of something on the spur of the moment and it made her feel something about her brother who had passed recently. Well, like I said, I think he was a presence the whole time that we were recording. And just being the last day, I think it released in that moment. You are like as the producer and an unsung hero, you're like the director. And to me, what's interesting about it, like I'll never forget this episode in terms of what it meant for her performing it. I will say as a director, you made a choice and I loved the choice that you made, which is after rusted. I think the reason why I always thought it was a happy rusted is because you immediately come back in with party sounds. Yeah. You know what I mean? So as, you know, like if you believe in the French new wave, form of cutting a film together, you told us the listener that it was happy because everybody's party in again. And then the music comes back again. At the point, yeah. And so we play it out. So, you know, thank you for giving us a party. And now that you've revealed that other side of it, you know, like Luxury said, it can give us an added layer of what's actually going on with the song. Thank you, sir. All right, Luxury, now that we're at the song, tell us how the splits break down. Well, this is a classic example of a collaboration amongst equals. I love that. We have 25 times four, 25% for Cynthia L. Wilson, Fredrick William Schneider III, Catherine E. Pearson, and J. Keith Strickland, they've split it equally amongst the four of them. So, even Stephen. We only say the groups that really get along and manage to love one another, the people who keep it even, even if the breakup of task is not even. I've seen a few other bands do that. Bear naked ladies comes to my. You just eliminate the battle over-- And you take the economic inequity out of it to everyone gets taste, everyone participates. And that's just like the two people in the band who wrote the songs are living way better than everybody else. If you're interested in longevity, do that. You spend the money anyway. There you go. OK, I'll take it with you. So, Don, Love Shack was a massive hit. At this point, it's basically become the B-52's signature song. Why do you think that is? And what do you think the legacy of Love Shack is? Well, it's fun. It grooves. And it's got some heart and soul underneath the funny stuff. It's an irresistible combination of things. Which kind of is the essence of the band? Which is why I think the association with the B-52's-- with that song more than any other song is so prevalent. It's like French cooking. It's got all the different tastes that the band has in one big scoop. Nice. You really made me want to get some French onions soon. Let's do it. Don, thank you for bringing this song into our lives. Yes, it's sincerely. An honor and a privilege, man. Don, thank you so much for coming on one song. Where can people see what you're up to next? Do you want to plug anything coming up? Yeah. Well, a new band is called Don was in the Panditroid ensemble. We're on tour all summer long. If you go to the Don was Instagram page, you can find the games we're going to be hoping for Willie Nelson to take chunk to the summer. I'll go country tour, but we got our own gigs too. Some festivals. What's your name on Instagram? Don was. I don't know why you made it so difficult. DON, W-A-S. DON, W-A-S. Awesome. All right, well, thanks so much for coming on our show. Yeah, thanks for having me. Come on, it's a pleasure to be here. It's good to hear the song too. As always, you can find us on Instagram and TikTok. You can find me on Instagram @dialloDIA-LLO, and on TikTok @dialloRiddle. And you can find me on Instagram @LUXX-U-R-Y, and on TikTok @luxuryXX. And you can follow our podcast on Instagram and TikTok @1SongPodcast. 1SongPodcast. We're exclusive content. You can also watch full episodes of 1Song on YouTube. It's Spotify. Just search for 1SongPodcast. We'd love it if you'd like and subscribe. Also, be sure to check out the 1Song Spotify playlist for all the songs we discuss in our episodes. You can find the link in our episode description. And if you made it this far, you're officially part of the 1Song Nation. Show us some love. Give us five stars. Keep that 4STER review to yourself. Leave a review and send us episode to a fellow music nerd. It helps keep the show thriving. Luxury, help me in this thing. I'm producer DJ, songwriter, musicologist, and KCRW DJ every Friday night from 10 p.m. till midnight luxury. And I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ DialloRiddle. And this is 1Song. We'll see you next time. This episode was produced by Casey Simonson, mixing and engineering by Eric Hicks.