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.
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.'
The B-52s are all about inclusiveness and about celebrating your differences.
There was just one time when the band took a big break, and I did that Nina project in Japan in 1999.
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.
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.
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.'
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.
'Love Shack' is such an eternal kind of song; at karaoke, people do it.
People are making their own records in their houses. It's an exciting time.
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.'
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.
We would go on 'The Voice,' and we'd get kicked off of the first episode, probably.
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.
There's a very collaborative, collective attitude. That's a very female principle. We try to nurture that aspect of the band.
Five people in a Volkswagen station wagon without equipment. Now we tour with six people in a van.
I wrote a whole solo album and recorded some of it, even did a little tour with Sara Lee and Gail Ann Dorsey.
We do benefits for various groups. But the main reason to be B-52's is to have fun and party and go nuts.
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.
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.
