One Song - THe B-52's "Love Shack" with Don Was

Episode Date: June 11, 2026

How did a personal tragedy influence one of the most essential party anthems in the new wave canon? This week on One Song, Diallo & LUXXURY break down the B-52’s “Love Shack” with legendary Grammy award-winning producer, director and president of Blue Note Records, Don Was. They dive into how the track began as a 10+ minute long jam, outline the influences from classic Motown and Stax records and Don shares the surprisingly emotional story behind the iconic “Tin Roof Rusted” breakdown. Songs Discussed: “Love Shack” - The B-52’s “Walk The Dinosaur” - Was (Not Was) “Numbers” - Kraftwerk “Mesopotamia” - The B-52’s “Tell Me That I’m Dreaming” - Was (Not Was) “Dancing In The Street” - Martha Reeves & The Vandellas “I Love a Man in Uniform” - Gang of Four “Fun House” - The Stooges “Cold Sweat (Parts 1 & 2)” - James Brown and The Famous Flames “Candy” - Iggy Pop “Cool Jerk” - The Capitols “House Of The Rising Sun” - The Animals “Hold On, I’m Comin’” - Sam & Dave “Gimme Some Lovin’” - The Spencer Davis Group “Express Yourself” - Charles Wright & The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band “Express Yourself” - N.W.A. “Cars” - Gary Numan Diallo & LUXXURY Talk About Music on Patreon One Song Spotify Playlist Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Shack is a little place where we can get me. Such a crazy good. Crazy good. Luxury today we're talking about the signature song of the ultimate New Wave Art Pop band. That's right, Diallo. 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 by the B-52s. Visit BetMGM Casino and check out the newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly,

19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, Peace contact connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor, free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ, Diallo Riddle.

And I'm producer DJ, songwriter, and musicologist Luxury, a.k.a. the guy who whispers, 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 slash Diallo Luxury. That's patreon.com slash our names. So as we've mentioned, we have a very special guest with us on the show today. In addition to producing Love Shack, 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 hits like Walk the Dinosaur,

or from his work producing the Rolling Stones, Bonnie Rae, Iggy Pop. We're not done with the intro. He's also worked with Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, John Mayer, Elton, John, Garth Brooks, Leonard Cohen, Ozzy Osborne, Mel Torme, and Frank Sinatra, Jr. And it doesn't stop there. He directed the documentary, Brian Moulson. I just wasn't made for these times. He's an incredible bass player, most recently with the Bob Weird Trio, the Wolf Brothers,

and he's the president of Blue Note Records. Please welcome President Don was, not was. President Don. Thank you very much. That's my favorite President Don right there. That's about the best president we have right now. Don, thank you so much. Not saying much, man.

Low bar, but you cleared it. Dawn, it's so great having you on the show. 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 was spitting fire just got a

blue tie so I watch my end I was just gonna say it's a timestamp it's like a snapshot of the moment what a wonderful time that was though I feel like 1987 88 is like the last time you have like you know horn sections in 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 thought of the Motor City. Yeah, but I think we sounded like the Motor City. I can totally 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 Stooges an MC5, play at my high school. Wow. To, you know, George Clinton. George Clinton actually played a sock hop at my junior high school, ninth grade dance. For those of you who don't know,

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 out of your shoes. Yeah, so you dance in your socks. I didn't know that. I actually did not know. 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 stew-diz, as you mentioned, you've got George Clinton. And this stew of musicians, everyone was listening to each other, and everyone was borrowing ideas from each other. And part of this jambalaya, as you said, is what makes it into this song?

Yeah, and there's a rawness to the music that comes out of the city. I think it comes from being a one industry town. So people, first of all, after World War II, they 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 success or failure

of the auto business. We live in Los Angeles. We don't know what that's going. There's actually no point in put. not any errors there, you know, 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're just saying, what are you pissing your money away on that?

We know who you are. 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, he's almost like the hub of a wheel. I believe so. I think everything, whether it's the jazz, the R&B, or the rock and roll, everything kind of stems from the essence. The black experience and by extension, Eminem, who's speaking through hip-hop. You'd have no M&M, you'd have no white stripes.

Yeah. You'd have no J. Dilla without John Lee Hooker. You've literally mentioned, like, artists that we've covered on the show. 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 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 in and think, that's a cool snare sound. And I was thinking about behind-the-scenes stuff. And then I was lucky my partner in Wuss and I was a guy named David Weiss, I grew up with. His folks were voiceover actors. So when we were little kids, they'd take us to the studio with them, and go down to United Sound, which is where John Lee Hooker cut bogey chilling, where George Clinton cut the atomic dog. It's an incredible history

to this place. And just to be around a room that had looked like this, had mic cables all over the floor and cool. How old are you? How young are you? Yeah, 11 or 12. Wow. But I just knew I wanted to be in that room. Yeah. And I

ended up in the 70s. They taught a class there. It was a terrible class. 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 hands-on. 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. On a 24 track machine, 24 of the same thing. Yes, exactly. So that was the first thing. And the other thing I learned was that you can learn all about that stuff, but you better have good songs. So those two lessons made it work.

And you're very fortunate, too, 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 the studio with the, 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, it still doesn't guarantee you're going to write a song like a rolling stone. A completely different skill set. Yeah. So it's, and if you, 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, 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, Sergeant Pepper is what kind of illuminated that where production techniques now start. started to dwell in the same things. You started of some awareness that there was a George Martin. That was part of what you were hearing. Yeah, you didn't know.

They didn't give people credit records. So that changed the game considerably. But again, it didn't, why is Sergeant Pepper so great? And why did so many people try to imitate it and fail? Because the songwriting is also great. You got to 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 me. We agree. Like part of the irony of the. show and this conversation is today, just to frame it. It's like as much as we're deconstructing it down to the minutia, you can't take that deconstruction and reverse it as a recipe. It's not a recipe to like make the thing. You can't possibly define it and then redefine it. I work 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. God damn it. That was the line that did him in? That did him in. Wow.

He said, you know, like to be able to say something that, that beautiful and direct to the audience and surrounded 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're, you know, if you're not. listen to Caroline know 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 Bandike Parks. But I'm 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 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 in was-not-was, and we're assigned to a record label, and they said, we don't, no,

marketing nightmares what they told us because we had three black singers but the but the two white guys were a black group for sure right there's a black guy singer walking about walk the dinosaur and i just it's like oh where these guys from yeah well that's it you know i mean but they said it you if you're gonna have if you're going to be a black group you got to do r and 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, right? 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 McDonald record. Now, Michael...

Who is much beloved in the black community, let's be honest. Well, I love Michael McDonald. 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 on 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 about.

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. It dragged on for years, man. And we couldn't make records. We couldn't make records.

We couldn't tour. That's how I started becoming a producer, because people figured out, well, wait, these guys, they really just write and produce and play, but they're not the... So, no sense of kind of did you're 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 enable us to start making our own records again. How did it help the band? Well, they wouldn't let me produce our records, 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 block the dinosaur enabled me to get a different level of artist who was willing to work with me. So shortly after that, I was able to work with Bonnie Rae. I was 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 was a DJ named the Electrifying Mojo. I've heard about this guy. 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 both absolutely true so he He was responsible for breaking Prince, 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 craftwork.

In addition to George Clinton and Chalemar and whatever other. And so he formed this amalgamation of black kids and white kids that was a mark. 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 craftwork, started getting sampled.

Yes. And so Planet Rock is just basically craftwork. With Africa bombata on top. And that was, it was Arthur Baker and John Robey produced that, but it was because Mojo started playing craft work. and then DJs started playing in clubs. Because at the time, by contrast, most radio stations were rigidly 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. What's funny is that I feel like so many hip-hop artists have sample craftwork all through the 80s. Like I was going back through my favorite, you know, Luther Campbell, Two Live Crew, like, in Atlanta, we called it booty shake. It's got a minute.

But like these kind of, this kind of music. You always find a craftwork sample in there. There's always a craftwork. It's usually either Trans Europe Express or numbers. You're the main two that everybody goes to. Or telephone call. Telephone call can sample quite a bit too. It is funny because you think of like, oh, why weren't they sampling can?

Because craftwork was just too simple and catchy. And they never heard those sounds before. And they had never been exposed to the rhythms and sounds. Well, is that where you first heard the B-52s? So Moja was playing the B-52, so just as a fan of his show, it got me really into them. So I was a fan. Do you remember the first song he played that you liked by them? Oh, probably Rock Lobster, but he also really banged Mesopotamia because he was in the talk.

Yeah, it's such a great song. Yeah, it's great. What was the path to hearing the band and falling in love with them to hooking up with them to 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 was. I couldn't put out any records of my own. A band, we couldn't do anything.

And I started producing local bands. It was and I was had a bit of a following in England from our first couple of records. So before we were on suspension, we actually had some people who dug the band over there. And we had club hits. You have some great ones. I'm a huge fan of Willem Out. Oh, thank you. That's a great one.

Mine is tell me that I'm dreaming. That's my name. Dream is great, too. All that Z record stuff. So good. 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 we... They came and sought you out particularly because of these records. Yeah, and they wanted to make kind of the sole 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. A band called Floyd Joy was the first one to come, but Boy George and Maryland 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 at a certain 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 the hit with Walk the Dinosaur, which then enabled me to produce Bonnie Raid and B-52s. Well, what's interesting about the B-52's album that Love Shack is on, Cosmic Thing. It has pretty much two producers. You and Niall 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 that guy in the other studio. You don't have to ask why you'd choose Nile Rogers. We're born about four days apart. Really? I myself. Yeah, but he was successful long before I was. And I was just, to me, good times.

is one of the great greatest records anyone's ever made. And I was so thrilled. The first time I was played at the mud club in New York which is our first New York show in 1980. He came. Wow.

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 in there. 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 luxury. What can you tell us about the B-52s?

Well, we're going to take a really quick deep dive. 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. They just brought 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 lobster, 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 kitsy. It's surf rock. got the 60s heredus. And for about four records before this one, they just kind of ruled the new wave idea. I would say them and Devo are like,

when you think of New Wave, you think of the B-52s, Devo and, I don't know. Block of Seagles. Block of Seagles. There you go, the alternate New Wave bands. We should also say that the B-52s got their name from that distinct hairstyle.

Yeah. That sort of tall hairstyle of women where, which itself is named after a B-52 bomber for World War II. This is what March 2. Simpson has technically, right? Yes, absolutely. Is a member of the Vee-FIN. 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. In the earliest incarnation of the band, it 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 used the live bass with her left finger is playing all the one-note bass lines if you ever go back and watch old footage on the Farfiza or the Jupiter 8 or something. So by the time this record, Cosmic Thing is being made, Keith is the primary source. 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? That's a great studio. I just worked there again. I know it's still there. It's an old church.

Yeah. Oh, wow. And it's just got a sound. The sound. The drum Sealing? Is it the... It's, you know, cathedral ceiling, I guess you call it? I don't know. It's just the wood, everything about it is just a great sound in room. And you can hear it in those drums on Love Shack. You know, it's such a powerful echo that comes back. Was it the Led Zeppelin episode where we were talking about recording in the Beatles and drums?

The sound of the rooms. Yeah. It makes a big difference. Big difference, yeah. And before, for pre-production, were you part of the pre-production? at Beresville. Yeah. Right.

Tell us a little bit about that because I think what's really interesting as we were investigating the making of the song is the B-52's writing process. Oh, it's fantastic. I would love to hear it from your mouth.

I was about to say the horse's mouth, but that's, you're talking to the guy. I don't know 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 had put all this down on yellow paper, and then they would put on the wall. Tell us about that. They would just stream a consciousness for half an hour against a groove. And then each one of them, if they'd like the line that they sang, they'd write it on a yellow pen. So you're saying Fred, Cindy, they had three yellow pads. Right. Yeah. Okay. And then they they take the page and tape it up to the wall. And then they'd start building this chain. kind of when they got down to the floor, there must be a song in there, right?

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 Bearsville in the bar in there. We moved over to Dreamland, cut them, 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. And nothing repeated. I would love to see that scroll. Is it lyrics and melody ideas? It's just lyrics. It's just lyrics. It's just the best of what they improvised.

And the groove they played, it reminded me a cool jerk by the Capitals. We were a great Detroit soul record from the 60s. So I could relate to the groove. And I thought, well, it was a cool twist for the, it would be 52s to get that deep in the soul music pocket. 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. Yes. But the grooves were different.

This was a soul music groove. So it kind of spoke a universal language. You played a major role in organizing the chaos because there's a lot of great ideas, but they need to help finding what were Pete's and how do we make it three and a half minutes. They gave me the scroll. Yeah. And I said, I give me 10 minutes. I'm looking at all the great lines, you know, hop in my Chrysler.

It's about to sense. What? We're going to get into them. But there didn't seem to be a common thread. But as 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, all, 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 so interesting to me is that you're only looking at lyrics. There's no melodic ideas necessarily about it. I heard parts of the jam, too. Oh, did they play like a work tape or something? Or you heard of jamming? Yeah, just what they were jamming to, where the thing that they transcribed the lyrics from, just a 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 that was repeating. Yeah, they sent me in the other room and I came back. That's the other thing. I can't wait to get into the stems in the acapella when we listen 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. No. 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. All right, welcome back to one song.

Let's get into the Stems luxury. I bet you want to start with the drums. Well, let's 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? 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 undulating swing

that goes under everything he plays. And he's just a really gifted musician. He's as great on the bass as he is. I've used them 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 fill at the beginning. Yeah, it's very dancing in the streets.

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. 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. And also you can hear what a great room they have a dreamland because those echoes that are coming back into the mics. That's the room, that's the room, yeah. It was right there from the gico. It sounded great. Charlie Drayton has also played with the Rolling Stones, Keith Solo with expensive winos, the cult, Miles Davis, Neil Young, Chaka Khan, it's like you with the crazy list of names. Janet, Mariah Courtney Love. But in the iconic

video, 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 bass and drums. 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. And he was. 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 arrangement, it's 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-cord groove. Here is that pre-chorus, essentially. What he does is build the tension into the chorus. Little old place where we can get together.

Real subtle. Yeah. Yeah, very Motown. Very Motown, absolutely. Let Motown be, basically. That does snare on every beat. Again, Drayton's not doing anything fancy, but it's what the song calls for in its pocket.

It's hard 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 laid down Stone Groove. Sarah Lee was in the band Gang of Four. And she also, if she grew up with you...

I didn't know this. Yeah, 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 Leeds England. So she's British. Yeah.

I was going to say, there ain't no way no American lady found her way to Gang of Four. But she played pretty funky on that. By the way, Ganga Four is my absolute difference. But that is what Sarah Lee is playing in this song. I forgot that the amp was so distorted. It's loud. What's crazy is it actually sounds like the Stooges now. Yeah, exactly right.

I love that. Well, I always felt that there was a very fine line between the Stooges and James Brown. I thought that they listened to him. The law enforcement felt the same way. That's the best joke you've ever called on the show. It's a lot of great jokes. That's why the same joke. I thought the Gary Glitter one was pretty good.

I'll take your, I'll take a compliment. No, you're absolutely right. Iggy's music, we did an Iggy Pop episode. Look, obviously we have shared taste in music because we've done all the people we've been talking about today. But on Iggy, we really reinforced, we did 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. Oh, he said, Detroit guy. He grew up listening to all 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 grip. I think so, too. Like, if you think about the Stooges, it's fun house. Yeah. That doon, doon, do, do, do, do. And then you juxtapose it with, like, doing it to death. Yes.

By the J.Bs, that... Bam, bach, dun, down, da, dard, like, both of them just have a groove that goes to the whole thing, and your front man, just has a good time on the line. No, but you're pointing out to me that there's literally a James Brown song where the drum, syncopated drum pattern is the same as on Fun House. I'll give you another connection that Charlie Drayton played bass on candy,

the Iggy Pop song that I produced. Which you produced. Yeah. With Kate from B-52s. Yes. Yeah. And I just said that was probably the first Iggy Pop song that I ever heard in my life. That's wild.

I didn't really 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 it was supposed to do. That was the 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 oarbar 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 Four now. Now that you've said Sarah Lee was in Gang of Four. I totally hear it. This is insane. Yeah. Did not know that. And let's talk, you mentioned before the cool jerk of it all.

Let's listen to a little bit of the Capitals, 1966. Oh, yeah, good, good, yeah. Because this is the moment where that connection might become a little more explicit. That's still with a pickup right there. Gotta bring back fast dancing. I feel like we all dance too slow. You do the Molly Ringwald on that one. Be like this, you know.

This is on the back, on the two and the four on the backbeat. Yeah. But that song, you mentioned, was as a right, reference point for this one, and you really hear it in the groove in the drums and bass. Luxury, let's get into some guitars. I can't wait to hear what you have to. Let's do it. Let's listen to this is Keith Strickland on guitar. Let's listen to the main riff at 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 to play 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, indie rock, which is, you know, just about to break... It's called college rock at the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, those kind of, like, jangly guitars sort of pretend, portend of what's to come next, which I think of, like, Toad the Wet Sprocket and some of these other groups from that period.

But they also harken back speaking of Gang of Four. Yeah. I would be here in this angular guitar stuff in Gang of Four. Yeah, sort of stabby guitar. Yeah, yeah. I could see that too. I also think he worked a lot, still does, I assume in like different tunings.

I don't think that's the standard E-tuning. Oh, really? And when they toured, he had like 30 different guitars. Oh, well, that makes sense. And there were two in case he broke his string. So they had to have two for each tuning. We're going to, again, there will be its own B-52's early days episode because on Rock Lobster, to your point.

Like, that's got a crazy tuning. It's basically a Joni 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 stage. 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 he tuned for this. 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 foreshadowing before it happens in the vocals. We're in C. Mixo-Lidion 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 Staxie mid-60s songs, soul songs. And we'll play a couple that kind of harkens to. Flat three, four, flat six. So subtle, but like it does so much. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, and that buildup, I'm trying to think, it's a House of the Rising Sun.

I think this for all rock and roll garage bands. It's House of the Rising Sun. It's also this one. Oh, there you go, yeah, yeah. Very good. That's 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 Lovin.

Yeah, there's the source. That's the source right there, right? I'm sure. Yeah, comic source, right. Crazy that CB Win was like 17, by the way. Do we think that, not to be a Steve Winwood spoil sport, do we think that him and the Spencer Davis group were copying something they'd heard from a Motown song? Oh, let's be clear.

As we do on every episode of this show where we're like, it might have come from, it might have come from. This is a game that we can wonderfully change. eternally and never gets to the source. And never get to the source. Nobody can own those four chords. Nobody can earn that sequence, but you can use it and evoke it, which is what has been

successfully done in the song Love Shack. We're all thinking of it. Suddenly. And when you isolated, it's like, oh yeah, that's where that's... And to your point, it's also... And there's... Arlines the ground, the rise and sun.

Consistently on this show, fall in love with what the keys are doing so often. 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. A little syncopated stabs. And we believe this is Kate playing keys.

I believe it is, yeah. When I closed my eyes and pictured a session, everyone was singing live. Everyone was in like a circle. But I can picture her stand in front of the organ. 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 one, if not two different keyboards, playing sometimes parts like that in the right hand and also a baseline in the left hand. Incredible. It kind of has to be said. I was a big fan of cartoons because I was the right age for that at this time. and this group more than any other felt like the Archies or Josie and the pussycats come to life because of the prominence of the female musicians and the band.

That's a great comparison too because they're also very funny. Oh, and yes, there's a humor there's a sense of humor to this band. We're going to talk about Fred. We're going to talk about Fred and the importance of Fred in this group. But the organ, I actually thought I heard more organ in the song. There's more. There's more when you get to a couple more parts. 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 mix for context. Oh, nice. Let's listen with some more instruments just for fun. You hear 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. I saw all the Peanuts characters dancing just after that. It was perfect. I wrote down, I don't remember what I wrote down surprising melody moments. 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. 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. Play it again? I'll play it again, then I'll give you context.

It's like, what is that? Yeah. Yes, it's like uptight, like satisfaction. That's what I remember. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or hungry freaks daddy. And it's kind of sci-fi. It's like if Uptight was played on a spaceship.

It's very kitschy. On an episode of Doctor Who. It's kind of like a 60s, like a Farfiza. It is perfect. 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. Or was it a Vox Continental. I was going to say it could be a Vox, too. It could be Vox Continental. Yeah.

I can't remember what was there. Yeah. She plays Farfiza, I know famously in earlier work, but maybe maybe she's also. I can't remember what. We had to. Pat Irwin is probably lip-sinking to that keyboard. Whatever he's playing in the video is probably what she played. Yeah. It should be said in the video. You're right. So in the video we've got, I wasn't, I was going to ask you, is that you in the video or Pat Irwin? People ask me that. No, it's Pat. Okay. Because it could also be like 1988-looking Don was. Yeah. Pre-dread Don was. We want to talk about the horns. And there was something you wanted to tell us about the horns. Well, they're called the Uptown horns. It's Crispin Coe.

CIOE. CIO, yeah. Yeah, the uptown horns, among other things, their New York-based section. They played with the Jake Giles band on Freeze Frame, you know, centerfold and all that. Oh, yeah. And played with Tom Rates on his Rheenogs album.

So these guys know what they're doing when they go. They're great, yeah. All right, let's listen to the horns. That glist at the end is really iconic for this song. Let's listen to that again. That's a really noticeable, like a hook almost in the song. Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Yeah, brilliant. That reminds me a little bit of this. Does anybody else hear? I think the horns are about to come in here. Let's listen. Express yourself. Oh, sure. Yeah, absolutely.

It's just an octave and a stab. James Gadsden playing drums on that. Is that who that is? That is the Express Yourself, Charles Wright, and the Watts 103rd Street band. Right on. Express Yourself. Yeah, what a great record.

By NWA. In a sucking you equal. Don't be another sequel. That glist, so here's another version of the glist. It's a little bit longer. I'll play the end of the riff. Yeah. Which is very funny.

It's like a cartoon noise like you were saying. This is a band with a sense of humor. I think that's why I love Mesopotamia. 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 Sheik has a song like that. We recently talked about Marvin Gay'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 and some 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 this? to all the songwriters and producers out there. If you want your song to be a party song, record a party and put it in the song. It's like a laugh track for music. Right. Exactly. It's true.

The screaming. I love the screaming. Well, I think this is as 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 Haleigh. 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 Haleigh 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 rusty 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, it's not like the song was recorded in the 60s. It's the late 80s. But they used to go there and they used to love how the people would just get down. It was a black bar. You know, Fred Schneider 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 really hard at Hawaiian Hawaii, and they end up with this song. I don't remember that part. That's really cool. That's good to know. It's a fun fact. That's why we do the show. You might be at a party where there are lots of people go, woo, hey, 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 shprekassanger? Well, I think Fred would take issue with that. He was very conscientious about singing in tune. 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. 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, the singing harmonies and being part of the stack. And he can do it. Yeah, he's in there very clearly, there's some of that on this one. Well, I just want to say, I'm a huge Fred Schneider fan, and I feel like a lot of my writer friends were all just like,

Fred Schneider is like, he almost sings, I think he sings beautifully, but there's a level of humor there. Oh, he's fantastic, man. And you can't talk about the B-52 songs without sort of, you know, saying like, and Mesopotamia. You know, you just have to say it like he would say it. And I think Fred starts off the 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 love, love shack, yeah. That contrast, so it's incredible that, how genius to start the song with both of those, because you're hooked. I mean, the real club they base this on is apparently in the middle of nowhere. And I always like this, the, the storytelling nature of, if you see a faded sign at the side of the road, it's just 15 miles to the love shack. Like, it's a very unorthodox way to intro a song. But can I talk about the very next, the very next lyric that just stuck out of my mind, because I'm a kid in Atlanta, and you never hear anybody work the word Atlanta into a song ever. Can you play us the next part of the book? Is there an Atlanta highway?

Is that a thing? You know what's funny? I think the highway they're talking about is 78, because if you're in Athens and you're heading south, you know, it'll say Highway 78, they'll say Atlanta. So I think they just sort of that, you know, it's the same way we'll say that the tin is the Santa Monica, if you're driving from downtown. It says the tin in Santa Monica. I think the Atlanta highway is just the, is 70, Route 78, which is between. It's a small age on highway. Yeah, it's not an interstate.

I think it just takes you from one to the other. Yeah, 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, I think. Yeah, I'll go with that. I'm heading down a highway. Looking for the light. I hate to cut it off there.

Like I said, there are 20 ideas linearly. From one to the next, across the song, one idea, next idea, and they're all great. So when you pause anywhere, you're like, I wanted to hear the next idea. You know, 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 Weston Girls, this is in 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. light rap a little bit, you know, just that pseudo-up.

It's got a cadence. It's got a cadence. It's got a cadence. It's got notes. Got a melody. Got melody. Okay, now we're going to get to our first hook, which is one of the first, this is the first idea we hear more than once in the song, this next one. This is the pre-chorus. This is the four-chord build we keep listening to in other instruments. The Love Shack is a little place where we can get together. Love Shack, baby.

Such a crazy good, crazy good hook. So you were talking about how when you were looking at the scroll, that's what jumped out to you. This was the Love Shack. 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, Baby, Love Shack. That, baby, baby. I love the slide on that. Do we have any antecedent for the... Well, I was going to say, so here's just a really quick illustration of an interesting musical thing that's happening in this song, because in the verse, we're very clearly in Mixalydian, so we have a major third.

So I'm pet it down. So that's like your class, that's how you know it's Mixalidian, 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 Mixalydian, I always think of Gary Newman cars, which is the same melody. Land a highway here in my car. 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. is 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.

So it's that tritone again. We have a minor third and a minor third on top. Very good. Really cool how all this stuff is happening in this pop song. Can I hear bang bang? Because I feel like this also evokes very much the 60s for me, just this little section in here. You're a what?

What? Well, here's the story. Okay. It was so spontaneous, man. They gave me these lyrics. I went in the other room. Came back in, yeah, great, we'll do this. We talked through 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 it takes.

And no one came in right because of the- Energy just dropped across the bay. It just freaked everyone out. It was so powerful. You know, what does it mean? You're tin row-frusted. It shouldn't, it didn't seem to be invested with that much import at the time. But her older brother had just passed a few years earlier.

Well, the whole week. was emotional for all of them because this was the first time they'd gone back to record without them. And I think it just all came to a head. Because this is the last song you guys recorded. It was the last song, 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 it fell apart.

Let's cut it again, let's cut it again. We did it 30 more times, and each time we got further from the looseness and the carefree thing, the vibe of it. And we went to dinner and everyone was bummed out. And we came back and we'd 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. Your tin roof, rested, punch. Love Shaq! And took it out. I love that. I love that story. Well, obviously, I feel horrible. that there was pain there, but just the fact that, like, 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? Yeah. And then after she says Tin roof rested and you hear a little bit more party sound, then it comes back in. Yeah. Like, I mean, it's just a classic example. If you couldn't have planned it.

You couldn't plan that. But she didn't plan it. That's, look, let me tell you some. 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.

Golf clubs all over the place and antenna. Right. You can do that, but you can't make it strike. Right. And that was an example of something incredible happening that you couldn't plan, that no one foresaw, 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 that one time that was like, who took over her body and made that happen. There's 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 knew. The meaning translates, 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 the, 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. And when that happens, you feel this 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, at Don was.

Stumbled into it. It's another, it's lightning man. Happy accident. Well, it's very validating. 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. We'll keep our guard up. We'll keep our guard for that phrase. 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. A part of it might have been just that she was amped up singing the bang bangs, right? 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 rust it. Which is crazy to me because I always heard the rest.

It is sort of like a happy like, like, rest it. Like, you know, with like a, like, you hear the sigh in there, but I thought it was like a relief. Right. 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 this sort of like pregnancy. She's pregnant. You're what?

You're only being pregnant. Right. That could only mean pregnant. It's not like you're late to work. No, that's, 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 that 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 you're saying? I don't think anybody did. I told our producer, I was like, it reminds me of that scene and never-ending story when Atreyo goes to the window and he says, scream my name. And he's like, we never knew what he said there. And the Simpsons, it was so famously, like, inscrutable of what he had said,

that the Simpsons 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 proceeded. It should have been the other way around. But did that happen in the take? It was Fred did say that. And then she did say that.

It was recorded that way. And with the band stopping. Yeah. No, that was mapped out. You had worked out in advance that you would get to that point. You can see it's like four. bars, four bars, four bars, four times on each thing in it. And the bill, I'm sure we talked through it. Right, because you have the scroll. 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 through 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 rusted means. And yeah, I love that the band has been like, no, we actually don't really even know what it means. Like, we 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 rested.

Well, hearing. I would liken it to listening to John Coltrane. Yes. You don't need the lyric to feel the emotion. It's the emotion behind it and that and the abrupt change that is 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 want to 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 this 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 love 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 partying again. And then the music comes back in.

And so we play it out. So, you know, thank you for giving you. 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. Pleasure. All right, luxury, now that we hear it 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 4, 25% for Cynthia L. Wilson, Frederick William Schneider, the 3rd, Catherine E. Pearson, and J. Keith Strickland. And they've split it equally amongst the four of them. So even Stephen. We always 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. Bare Naked Ladies comes to mind. You just eliminate the battle over. And you take the economic inequity out of it to everyone. Everyone gets a taste. Everyone participates. It's not like the two people in the band who wrote the song. are living way better than everybody else.

If you're interested in longevity, do that. You spend the money anyway. There you go. Can't 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-52s 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 onion soup.

Let's do it. Don, thank you for bringing this song into our lives. sincerely. An honor and a privilege, man. Don't 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 Domwa's and the Pan Detroit Ensemble. Wow. We're on tour all summer long.

If you go to the Domwa's Instagram page, you can find the gigs. We're going to be opening for Willie Nelson, a big chunk of the summer on the Outgo Country Tour. But we got our own gigs to, some festivals. What's your name on Instagram? Don was. I don't know why you made it so difficult, Ben. B-O-N-W-A-S. D-O-N-W-A-S.

Awesome. All right. Well, thanks so much for coming on our show. Thanks for having me. 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 at Diallo, D-I-A-L-O, and on TikTok at Di-O-R-O-R-Y.

And you can find me on Instagram at L-U-X-X-U-Y and on TikTok at Luxury-X-X. And you can follow our. podcast on Instagram and TikTok at One Song Podcasts, One Song Podcasts. For exclusive content, you can also watch full episodes of One Song on YouTube and Spotify. Just search for One Song Podcasts. We'd love it if you'd like and subscribe. Also be sure to check out the One Song Spotify playlist for all the songs we discuss in our episodes. You can find the link in our episode description.

And if you've made it this far, you're officially part of the One Song Nation. Show us some love. Give us five stars. Keep that four star review to yourself. Leave a review and send this episode to a third. 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 Diallo Riddle. And this is one song. We'll see you next time. This episode was produced by Casey Simonson, mixing and engineering by Eric Hicks.