Last Thursday, half a century after its founding in Athens, Ga., the B-52s received the 2,861st star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
With Richard Blade of SiriusXM satellite radio as the master of ceremonies and guests including members of the Go-Go’s and the actor and comedian Fred Armisen, the four living founders of the celebrated new wave band were on hand for the ceremony on Hollywood Boulevard, in front of the renowned retailer Amoeba Music.
The B-52s “filter surf music, 1960s pop, vintage soul, and low-budget sci-fi soundtracks through a pop culture kaleidoscope,” according to Mark Deming, a critic and journalist. “Among the first American new wave acts to break through to mainstream visibility, the B-52s became one of the biggest success stories to emerge from the American underground in the late 1970s.”
The band has sold more than 20 million albums and has scored hits including “Rock Lobster,” “Planet Claire,” “Private Idaho,” “Dance This Mess Around,” “Good Stuff,” Love Shack,” and “Roam.”
One of the band’s founding members, Fred Schneider, has been a resident of East Hampton Town for more than 30 years. The ceremony was “something else,” he told The Star on Monday. “The size of the crowd that came, you sort of start tearing up.”
“We started as good friends,” Mr. Schneider said of his bandmates, noting that Halloween marked exactly 50 years since he met Cindy Wilson, who was just 19 at the time. “We’ve had real ups and downs. Cindy and I get along better than ever. I’m just amazed at how good everything is feeling, and feel like we’re really a powerhouse band with the musicians we work with.” The band performed in Chula Vista, Calif., on Friday, and Palm Desert on Saturday.
Also on hand last Thursday were Kate Pierson, a founding vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, and the founding drummer, Keith Strickland, who retired from touring in 2012.
“I first fell in love with their music when I was working on one of my first radio gigs in America,” Mr. Blade, who is from England, said at the ceremony. As program director at KZOZ in San Luis Obispo, Calif., “we were playing Christopher Cross and Toto and Journey,” he said. “And then,” he said as cheers broke out, “I put on ‘Dance This Mess Around,’ ” from the B-52s’ 1979 debut album.
The station’s owner, he recalled, had reservations about the decidedly uncommon sounds, but Mr. Blade was adamant. “I said, ‘Look, we’re a college town. This is San Luis Obispo. The kids will love it.’ He goes, ‘I’m not sure about that.’ He walked out and I thought, ‘Wait till he hears “52 Girls” in 10 minutes.’ ”
The band experienced tragedy in 1985, when Ricky Wilson, its founding guitarist and Ms. Wilson’s older brother, died of AIDS-related complications at just 32. Last Thursday, his bandmates paid tribute to him.
“I’d like to thank Ricky, Cindy, Kate, and Keith,” Mr. Schneider said at the ceremony, “because I could not imagine working with any other people. I’m so happy that I’m in a band, because I had no marketable skills after dropping out of college.”
“I hated high school,” the New Jersey native told The Star. “I had a lot of friends, but it was very clique-ish.” For college, “I didn’t want to live where I’d have to go home on weekends.” After a stint studying wildlife management in Athens, he switched to journalism, but “I knew I was dropping out, because I would have had to go for two more years.” A friend decided to write a book of poetry, “and I said I would, too, because it sounded really easy. But I really got into it.” Some of his works were later incorporated into B-52s songs, he said.
While a student, he met Mr. Wilson and Mr. Strickland, both Athens natives. “They were walking around throwing foam — like, the inside of a couch — at people,” he recalled. “I would always dance, constantly dancing whenever there was a band. They said I looked interesting, so we got to talking, and I became friends with them. Later I met Kate, and then Cindy.”
Monday, or possibly Tuesday, was the 50th anniversary of the first-ever B-52s jam session, which yielded the group’s first song, “Killer Bees.” “I used to read The Weekly World News religiously because it was so hysterical,” Mr. Schneider recalled. “But that was a true story” — about the Africanized honey bees that had been imported to Brazil in 1956 and accidentally released the following year — “so we did a disaster song about killer bees.”
“I don’t think any of us imagined that one day we would get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame,” Mr. Strickland said at the ceremony. “I met Ricky when I was 16 years old in high school, and he invited me to his house one day to hear some music that he had written and recorded on his two-track tape recorder. I realized then that my new best friend was also a musical genius. We miss you, Ricky, and we love you.”
“When we first started making music in a former mortuary on Hull Street in Athens, Georgia, none of us could have envisioned this moment,” Ms. Wilson said to laughter. “Looking at the star, I’m struck by the sheer serendipity of it all, that an unlikely group of friends could come together to high-dive into the stream of consciousness and find a unique sound that would take us on this incredible journey.”
Her brother was “a quiet visionary and a creative genius,” Ms. Wilson said. “But to me, he was most simply my cool, wonderful older brother whom I loved and looked up to and who influenced me profoundly. Although we lost him so long ago, his legacy lives on through our music.”
Wherever Mr. Blade was on the air, “I would make sure they were played every two to three hours,” he said of the B-52s, “because they’re just a part of any radio’s playlist.” He brought forward a recently married couple, for whom he had served as wedding-reception D.J. and who had flown from Northern California for the unveiling. “What was the song you asked me to play as the final track at your wedding, when normally everyone’s mellowing out?” he asked the newlyweds.
“It took me back to my college days in the early ’80s,” said the groom, “and it was ‘Rock Lobster.’ ”
“Even though the people had been there for hours and hours and hours,” Mr. Blade said, “the entire dance floor filled with everyone from 17 to 70 years old. . . . The B-52s have meant so much to me, and you deserve this so much.”
“It’s incredible to be here to celebrate a band that has been part of my musical playlist my entire life,” said Los Angeles Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez. “From ‘Rock Lobster’ to ‘Love Shack,’ this band has given us a reason to ‘dance in the garden in torn sheets in the rain,’ ” she said, referencing the band’s song “Deadbeat Club” from its 1989 album “Cosmic Thing.” “I am just so grateful to be here and celebrating the incredible accomplishments of a band that has transcended so many generations.”
The honor, Mr. Schneider told The Star, is better than induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. “And right in front of a record store,” he said of his band’s star, “even better!”
