The moment the B-52’s knew ‘Rock Lobster’ would be a hit: “We knew we were on to something”
Athens, Georgia, has seen its fair share of musical luminaries passing through the city, with Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington both performing at the Morton Building. Jimmy Dorsey – one half of the Dorsey Brothers, who were two of the biggest and best-known bandleaders of the swing era, and even had their own TV variety show, which is most famous for being the place where Elvis Presley made his television debut in 1956 – regularly played at the American Legion Hall or Athens YMCA.
50 miles down the road, in Toccoa, Georgia, James Brown took his first steps on the path to becoming the ‘Godfather of Funk’. A little further away, in Macon, Georgia, Little Richard became The King and Queen of Rock and Roll. Ray Charles was born in Albany, Georgia, in 1930 and forevermore had Georgia on his mind.
In short, the people of Georgia have seen plenty of the greats. They know good music when they hear it. If you want to know that you’re on the right path and that you really have something, you could do a lot worse than testing yourself against an audience in Athens, Georgia. That’s exactly what the local group The B-52’s did in the late 1970s.
The group met each other at a Chinese restaurant in Athens and, over drinks, discussed the idea of forming a band. After spending more and more time jamming together, as well as sharing their love of such varied genres and artists as soul music, B-Movie soundtracks, African rhythms, The Godfather composer Nino Rota, Cuban pianist Perez Prado or jazz trombonist Kai Winding with one another, and blending all their influences together, it wasn’t long before the group had written a strange new song called ‘Rock Lobster’.
With lyrics inspired by the projections of lobsters and other animals on the walls, in place of a light show, at the 2001 Disco club in Athens, Georgia, the group didn’t really know if their song would have any wider appeal but suspected that they might be onto something new and groundbreaking.
“We’d been saying to each other, ‘this is so weird; who’s going to listen to this?'”, singer Kate Pierson told The Guardian in 2019, adding, “When we played our first party in Athens, our friends all danced – that’s a really great sign. We knew we were on to something”.
It wasn’t long before people all over the United States and the world were dancing along to this new kind of rock music and getting that infectious surf-rock riff stuck in their heads. Released as the lead single from their eponymous debut album, Rock Lobster climbed to number 52 in the US singles charts, number 36 in the UK and all the way to number one in Canada. It seems that the people at that party in Athens, Georgia, really did know a good thing when they heard it.
