The true story behind Love Shack by The B-52s
- aimeeelkington153
- 3 days ago
- 6 min read
Updated: 4 hours ago
Instantly recognizable from the very first line, the B52s’ “Love Shack” became an immediate classic and propelled the band to new heights.
But where or what exactly is the love shack? Is it even a real place? And - did you know the original runtime for this song was 35 minutes?!
Let’s go through the full story of the song.
The band’s unique style of barely controlled chaos produced an unlikely hit with “Rock Lobster” in 1978 which made them favourites of college radio stations and led to gigs at New York’s top underground clubs, including CBGB’s and Max’s Kansas City, as well as a spot on Saturday Night Live.
Their fifth album, Cosmic Thing, was recorded in 1989 in two locations,
Dreamland Recording Studios in upstate New York near Woodstock, and Skyline Studios in New York City.
Nile Rodgers, who had seen success as the co-founder of Chic, but is probably best known as one of the most prolific producers in the world, working with everyone from Diana Ross to Post Malone, ran the New York City sessions.
The Dreamland sessions were helmed by Don Was, whose band, Was (Not Was) had just had a top-10 hit with “Walk the Dinosaur.”
Was had only produced a handful of records at that point in his career but Cosmic Thing put him on the map and he would go on to work with such acts as Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, and Bonnie Raitt.
But these veteran producers had their work cut out for them with the B52s. While band members would occasionally bring fully fleshed out songs to the studio, more often than not the band would go on extended jams, improvising lyrics and trying different things musically until something stuck.
The idea for the song came from vocalist and keyboard player Kate Pierson. Watch this clip from 1:07 to 1:19 to see what she had to say about it.
“Love Shack” was the last song to be recorded for the album and it fell to Was to shape it into the song it would become.
According to Was, the band initially presented him with a track that was a monstrous 35 minutes long - mainly jamming and gibberish. His job was to sift through the rubbish and find the gold.
Was told Far Out Magazine:
“The way they write songs is they’ll play a groove, and the three singers will just start stream-of-consciousness improvising. They’ll do it for half an hour. They’ll set out yellow legal pads, and when a great line comes by, they’ll write it on the legal pad, and tape it to the wall. When it gets down to the floor, let’s cut this together.”
According to Pierson, within this 35 minutes of gibberish, The Love shack was only mentioned once.
After a long process, the album was finally recorded and mixed. When released, expectations weren’t exactly high. Was told Far Out:
“No one knew that was going to be a hit. I think the record company had kind of given up on them. And then some disc jockey in Chicago started playing it.”
Despite it having nothing to do with what was musically fashionable at the time, it gained momentum … a lot of momentum.
The band had no idea “Love Shack” would become their best selling single of all-time, coming almost 11 years after “Rock Lobster.”
With charts in 1990 revolving heavily around soft rock like Phil Collins and Michael Bolton, the B52s showed there was still a space for a band who was completely original and making a kind of song that was completely joyful and didn’t follow a particular formula.
The band was especially pleased with the results because it was the first album they had recorded since the death of guitarist Ricky Wilson from AIDS in 1985.
After spending almost four years in a self-imposed hiatus as they grieved his death, Strickland moved from drums to take Wilson’s place on guitar and they decided to keep going as a foursome.
The success of Cosmic Thing validated their decision and served as a fitting tribute to their former bandmate.
The song has been the source of much conjecture, starting with whether or not it was a real place.
Pierson, who today is the proprietor of Kate’s Lazy Meadow, a rustic lodge in New York’s Catskill Mountains, still answers that question frequently.
She said several people visit the property every year who are convinced that the Lazy Meadow property is indeed the Love Shack.
And while the love shack is a real place, those Lazy Meadow tourists have missed the mark by about 900 miles.
The first clue is in the third line of the song when Schneider tells us “I'm headin' down the Atlanta highway.”
And before you drop an angry comment, yes there IS an Atlanta, New York. Unfortunately, it’s about 235 miles from Kate’s Cabins and there is no “Atlanta Highway” in New York.
The love shack was actually a cabin located outside of the band’s hometown of Athens, Georgia, and yes, it WAS right off the Atlanta Highway.
Pierson and her then-husband Brian Cokayne, a musician from Manchester, England, whom she met while living in Europe between 1971 and 1973, bought the cabin in the 70s and actually lived there for a short period of time.
To call it rustic, would be an insult to rustic cabins all over the world. It had no electricity or running water,
But that didn’t stop the place from being a favourite hangout for the band as well as some of their Bohemian friends.
They wrote much of their material there over the years, including the song that had been their biggest hit to date, “Rock Lobster.”
And while Pierson’s shack was the main inspiration, it wasn’t the only shack in the Athens area that inspired the band. She told Songfacts in 2019:
“When you’re jamming, everybody is conjuring up their own images. Sometimes we’re all singing at the same time and later you go back and you hear what you’re doing. I personally was thinking about this bar that was out in the country called the Hawaiian Ha-Le. It was a really cool place – a run-down love shack kind of thing, but it was a disco. It was a really interesting place."
Not bad for a band from Athens, Georgia who played by their own rules and was about as far from the pop music that was being churned out in the late 80s and early 90s as you could get.
Their “thrift store chic” look and embracing of a more openly flamboyant celebration of music inspired a diverse list of artists from the Sugar Cubes to John Lennon, who credits “Rock Lobster” as one of the main inspirations behind his Double Fantasy album.
And finally, in case you were planning a trip to Athens to see the love shack for yourself, I have some bad news. The cabin, which was all set to undergo extensive renovations, burned down in 2004.
Now Pierson of course would later appear on REM’s ‘Shiny Happy People’ - a song that many people, Michael Stipe included, aren’t exactly fans of… I’ve made an entire video about that too - click here for that one.
One theory was that the love shack is a place called Kate’s Lazy Meadow.
Kate Pierson and her wife Monica Coleman used to run this rustic lodge motel in the Catskill mountains of New York.
They developed the motel in 2003 and ran it until they sold it in 2021.
According to Kate, many travellers would drop in, certain that this place was in fact the love shack.
The house was in the process of being renovated and the new owners were due to move in soon
The fire inspector said that the fire could not have been caused by faulty electrical wiring or a gas leak because the unoccupied cabin was not hooked up for utilities.
He also said building supplies used for renovating the house had been stolen.
So, most likely… it was an act of arson. Which isn’t very love shack, now is it?
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