How ‘Rock Lobster’ Clawed John Lennon Back to the Recording Studio

‘200 Greatest 70s Rock Songs’ Book Excerpt

Frank Mastropolo

Island Records

The beehive was a popular hairstyle of the 1960s; see Priscilla Presley or Marge Simpson for examples. The hairdo was also called the B-52, a reference to the conical nosecone of the military’s Boeing B-52 Stratofortress. Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson wore wigs in the hairstyle that inspired the name of their new wave band, the B-52’s.

“Rock Lobster” charted at №56 in 1978 and became one of the band’s signature tunes. Vocalist Fred Schneider and guitarist Ricky Wilson wrote the surf rock spoof about the discovery of a rock lobster at a beach party. At the song’s end, singers Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson provide the imagined sounds of a litany of sea creatures: dogfish, jellyfish, piranha, and more.

Wilson’s high-pitched sound effects were inspired by Yoko Ono. “All of us really loved her, so it was definitely an inspiration when Cindy did her vocal part and some of the background parts,” Pierson told A.V. Club.

“Those were definitely Yoko-inspired. And we truly loved her as an artist. It wasn’t, like, a joke or anything. We just thought she was a genius. I still think she’s a genius.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRPwOceeLfI

“Rock Lobster” in turn inspired John Lennon to return to the studio with Ono after a five-year hiatus from the music industry. “I was at a dance club one night in Bermuda,” Lennon said in Rolling Stone.

“Upstairs, they were playing disco, and downstairs I suddenly heard ‘Rock Lobster’ by the B-52’s for the first time. Do you know it? It sounds just like Yoko’s music, so I said to meself, ‘It’s time to get out the old ax and wake the wife up!’”

“Listening to the B-52’s, John said he realized that my time had come,” Ono recalled in Songfacts. “So he could record an album by making me an equal partner and we won’t get flack like we used to up to then.”

The result: Lennon and Ono recorded 1980’s Double Fantasy LP. “I had never heard the original audio of John talking about this,” Schneider told Atlanta magazine.

“Of course, we had heard the story over the years but I’d never heard the actual interview with him. We had been big fans of Yoko’s since the early ’70s. I loved her books, her art ideas, the minimalism, and all that.

“To have her embrace us and have John embrace what we were doing was amazing. And he’s right. Cindy was doing an homage to Yoko on ‘Rock Lobster’ for sure. I think it was inspirational for him to learn that Yoko had so many fans and was considered so influential by many of us.”

Frank Mastropolo is the author of 200 Greatest 70s Rock Songs, part of the Greatest Performances series. For more on our latest projects, visit Edgar Street Books.