‘Private Idaho’: The B-52s’ ode to paranoia
Alongside such artists as Blondie, Talking Heads and The Pretenders, The B-52s emerged in Athens, Georgia, during the late 1970s, riding the so-called new wave. Supplying punk with a much-needed artistic edge, The B-52s prided themselves in bringing progressive ideas to pop music. Early hits like ‘Rock Lobster’ and ‘Planet Claire’ were accessible yet highly original, leaving fans hungry for more.
In a sense, The B-52s’ deft mixture of pop and experimentation could be compared to that of the Beatles a decade prior. It would seem fitting, then, that the band had John Lennon as one of its early admirers. “I like all music, depending on what time of day it is. I don’t like styles of music or people per se,” Lennon told Playboy in 1980. “So I can’t say I enjoy the Pretenders, but I like their hit record. I enjoy the B-52s because I heard them doing Yoko. It’s great. If Yoko ever goes back to her old sound, they’ll be saying, ‘Yeah, she’s copying the B-52s.’”
In another interview, Lennon picked out the frenetic and edgy 1978 single ‘Rock Lobster’ as a particular favourite. “I was at a dance club one night in Bermuda,” Lennon told Rolling Stone in 1980, just a few days before his death. “Upstairs, they were playing disco, and downstairs I suddenly heard ‘Rock Lobster’ by the B-52s for the first time. Do you know it? It sounds just like Yoko’s music. I said to myself, ‘It’s time to get out the old axe and wake the wife up.’”
If ‘Rock Lobster’ and the 1979 debut album it was housed on aroused Lennon to return to the studio for his Double Fantasy sessions, he was likely a fan of the 1980 follow-up Wild Planet. Similarly pacey, propelled by Keith Strickland’s choppy guitar riffs, the album was home to bizarre, often comical lyrics such as those heard in ‘Quiche Lorraine’ and the lead single, ‘Private Idaho’.
While ‘Quiche Lorraine’ hears frontman Fred Schneider grapple with a psychedelic poodle, ‘Private Idaho’ approaches more politically pertinent territory. The title itself is a play on “Private Eye” with the intent of addressing paranoia. It’s worth noting that Schneider got there a year before Hall & Oates’ ‘Private Eyes’ and three years before Rockwell released ‘Somebody’s Watching Me’.
With the topic of paranoia established, the lyrical refrain “get out of that state” has a double meaning: firstly, to get out of the paranoid state of mind, and secondly, to vacate the State of Idaho. But what’s wrong with Idaho?
The Idaho Statesman once asked Schneider to explain the involvement of Idaho in the lyrics beyond sharing a syllable with “eye”. “Idaho is pretty mysterious to all of us,” he said of the state. “I know it’s a beautiful state, but then I know there’s also a lot of crazy right-wingers and all that stuff. The song’s about all different things. It’s not like a parody of Idaho or anything.”
With the mention of “crazy right-wingers”, Schneider confirms a degree of political motivation in the song, suggesting the lyrics target political paranoia. The line, “Swimming ’round and ’round like the deadly hand of a radium clock”, evokes an image of nuclear warfare but more precisely relates to a 1920s legal case in which the manufacturers of glow-in-the-dark watches sought compensation for high cancer rates related to radium based paint.
Listen to The B-52s’ ‘Private Idaho’ below.
