{"id":587043,"date":"2023-08-15T00:57:47","date_gmt":"2023-08-14T21:57:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/music-is-a-very-healing-thing\/"},"modified":"2023-08-15T00:57:47","modified_gmt":"2023-08-14T21:57:47","slug":"music-is-a-very-healing-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/music-is-a-very-healing-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"#’Music is a very healing thing’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Cindy<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>
Cindy Wilson (Photo: John Stapleton \/ llustration: Victoria Ellis)<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

\u201cJust like what Keith Strickland did after Ricky passed, doing music is a very healing thing. It\u2019s the same with me,\u201d says Cindy Wilson \u2014 best known as one of the iconically bee-hived glamour girl of pioneering new wavers the B-52\u2019s \u2014 as she chats with Yahoo Entertainment about her second solo album, Realms<\/em>, which she recorded with producer Suny Lyons during the COVID-19 pandemic. \u201cI use music as a way of getting my emotions out. I’m kind of quiet as far as my personality goes, but singing has been a way to express myself and grow. It’s been really good for me personally that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cindy says that while making Realms<\/em>, she and Lyons tapp<\/a>ed into \u201cthe disco and new wave influences that would make sense coming from me, what my history was.\u201d But the techno-leaning record is still a bit of a departure for the 66-year-old singer \u2014 who, in a one-door-closes\/another opens sort of way, is releasing Realms<\/em> just as her legendary band is in a \u201cseason of ending\u201d and \u201cwinding things down.\u201d (While the B-52\u2019s are playing a brief Vegas residency this month \u2014 kicking off Aug. 25, the actual date of Realms<\/em>\u2019 release \u2014 and the occasional one-off festival show, they embarked on their official farewell tour last year.)<\/p>\n

Reinvention, renewal, and healing through music-making are of course nothing new for Cindy, who with the B-52\u2019s once pulled off one of the greatest, most against-all-odds comebacks in pop history. Following the tragic 1985 AIDS death of her older brother and bandmate, above-mentioned B-52\u2019s guitarist Ricky Wilson, they returned four years later with fifth album Cosmic Thing<\/em>, a mainstream breakthrough that unpredictably catapulted the band of Athens oddballs to MTV superstardom, thanks to hits like \u201cLove Shack\u201d (the video for which starred a young, unknown RuPaul) and \u201cRoam.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, it was wonderful. It was surprising, and it felt like a great vindication because we thought the record label had abandoned us,\u201d recalls Cindy of that fraught time. \u201cIt felt very healing to be performing again for the fans, and they were right<\/em> there with us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The B-52\u2019s\u2019 pre-Cosmic Thing<\/em> album, Bouncing Off the Satellites<\/em>, was recorded while Ricky was secretly battling AIDS. Only drummer and co-songwriter Strickland \u2014 who would later take over guitar duties for the band, teaching himself Ricky\u2019s distinctive, three-string, spy-movie-sonics style \u2014 was aware of Ricky\u2019s illness at the time. \u201cKeith knew. I don’t know what happened,\u201d Cindy says softly. \u201cKeith and Ricky and I lived together. I was in the basement part of the building, the apartment. We had a garden there and I would see them, but we had a lot of privacy. I didn’t know. I could only guess what Ricky was thinking. Keith said that he meant to tell me, but it just happened so fast. Ricky got sick, and it was in the beginning days of AIDS, and it [progressed] fairly quickly, the disease. It was hard, not talking to Ricky about it, but since I’m older I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s all OK. I mean, I had the chance to have this really cool brother, and he was amazing soul, and we did this amazing thing: being in this crazy band together, getting to tour the world. You know, as far as a sister\/brother thing, that’s pretty hip.\u201d<\/p>\n

The B-52\u2019s carried on Ricky\u2019s legacy with the release of Bouncing Off the Satellites<\/em> 11 months after his death at age 32, but the heartbroken survivors \u2014 Cindy, Strickland, and vocalists Fred Schneider and Kate Pierson \u2014 didn\u2019t tour or do much promotion for the album, and the entire future of the band seemed in doubt. \u201cIt was very depressing days. It was a dark time. It was just so awful with what was going on with the AIDS epidemic and so many lost loved ones and friends. We were all so depressed and didn’t know what was going to happen,\u201d Cindy says. \u201cIt seemed like the end of the world, really. It was really, really tough. But I felt better being with the band \u2014 with Fred, Kate, and Keith. It felt good to be with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

And, as Cindy notes, the B-52\u2019s have \u201calways done things upside-down and inside-out, and wonderful things have happened to us too,\u201d and that is when the \u201cunexpected\u201d happened.<\/p>\n

\u201cKeith, who is an amazing guitarist in his own right, the way he dealt with Ricky’s death was he moved to Upstate New York on a pond in Woodstock and was writing music, and that was very healing for him. And so he contacted Kate, Fred, and I, and asked if we wanted to give it a go and see if we could jam on the music and if we could work together without Ricky,\u201d Cindy recalls. \u201cAnd so, we agreed: \u2018Sure, let’s try it.\u2019 We rented a place near the Wall Street area in New York, a cheap space, and that’s where we wrote Cosmic Thing<\/em>. And it was really about the nostalgia of looking back at our better times in Athens when we were so much happier. If you listen to Cosmic Thing<\/em>with those ears, you can hear that [on tracks like \u201cLove Shack\u201d and \u201cDeadbeat Club\u201d]. We wrote a lot of really amazing, positive songs, and I think people were touched by that. \u2026 And<\/em> we had the record company behind it this time.\u201d<\/p>\n

It’s a fascinating story overall, one that dates back to 1976, when the Wilsons and their bandmates \u201cused to freak people out\u201d in Athens. Ga., and \u201cpeople threw shoes at us, people threw bricks. We had backlash, definitely,\u201d Cindy chuckles. \u201cIt was kind of punk, the way we were doing it. It was a straight kind of college town, but there was a hip element, with a lot of artists here in Athens, so we would go to the parties and dress up and just be freaky. It wasn’t necessarily sexual, but I guess it had just the gay element of just having fun \u2014 hairdos and wigs, just turning stuff on its head.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes you can write off the B-52\u2019s as frivolous, but creatively, it was a pretty good band, how we wrote and came together and how the songs have lasted this long,\u201d Cindy says with no small amount of modesty, noting that the group proved that rock music doesn’t have to be \u201call about hardcore technique, but is also about creativity.\u201d John Lennon was an early fan, even once stating that the B-52\u2019s\u2019 sci-fi surfabilly classic \u201cRock Lobster\u201d was an inspiration for his Double Fantasy<\/em> album. \u201cIt was definitely amazing that he dug what we were doing and thought we were original; we had been influenced by him and Yoko, so I think he appreciated that,\u201d says Cindy.<\/p>\n

Another \u201860s legend, Paul Simon, once had the young B-52\u2019s electrifyingly perform \u201cRock Lobster\u201d in his \u201chokey\u201d 1980 film One-Trick Pony<\/em><\/a> \u2014 a casting which sort of backfired, since the viewing audience was presumably supposed to sympathize with and root for Simon\u2019s character, has-been singer-songwriter Jonah Levin, only for Levin\/Simon to be totally upstaged by the new wave newcomers. \u201cHe picked the wrong band! That was hilarious, the way that happened,\u201d Cindy laughs.<\/p>\n

Decades later, the B-52\u2019s\u2019 music, unlike the washed-up Jonah Levin\u2019s, sounds as fresh and futuristic as ever \u2014 holding up nicely next to the electronic music that Cindy is now creating as a solo artist. (Side note: While Cindy \u201cgot burned out from all the touring\u201d after Cosmic Thing<\/em> because she was \u201cstill kind of mourning the loss of Ricky,\u201d and she took a \u201ctime-out\u201d from the group from 1990 to 1994, she\u2019s feeling energized these days and is hoping to do a solo tour in support of Realms<\/em>.) And the B-52\u2019s\u2019 epic story will soon hit the big screen as the focus of its own film: an anticipated documentary executive-produced by super-fan Fred Armisen. \u201cThere’s a lot of history, and I don’t know how<\/em> they’re going to edit all of it, but it’s going to be really<\/em> interesting!\u201d Cindy promises.<\/p>\n

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