October 26, 1953– Keith Strickland:
“In 1992, I came out in a New York publication. We just had just released Good Stuff & I remember thinking that I had wanted to come out publicly. I knew at that point it was inevitable; it was going to happen anyways because it was really on the radar then. Madonna was being very outspoken & supportive of Gay Rights & things were just opening up. More people were coming out publicly & I wanted to do that for myself more than anything. & so I did and it was a complete non-event. It was good for me. It was nice to have it out there but it didn’t make headlines. I don’t think anyone was really surprised.”
I had the pleasure of meeting him on the 2012 summer solstice, invited backstage after a concert by his bandmate Kate. He looked really well put together for a gentleman of a certain age. I suppose doing 200 shows a year kept him looking young. Strickland was always “the cute one” in that “tacky little party band from Athens Georgia”.
Their seminal sound still brings back those sensations of the early 1980s, when I was still a kid. The B-52s’s brand of dance music was edgy, fresh, & difficult to resist. I actually wore out the grooves on my copy of their original self-titled album. My friends & I knew all the lyrics to Planet Claire, Dance This Mess Around, & Rock Lobster, & we would sing along as we would shake our thing & shimmy on the dance floor at the local disco.
Strickland, the band’s original drummer, probably really saved the act after the heartbreaking loss of the band’s original guitarist Ricky Wilson was taken by AIDS in 1985. Wilson was not only band vocalist Cindy Wilson‘s big brother in the band but his songwriting & original open-tuned guitar style gave the band its punky, surfy, funky sound.
For the next 4 years, the remaining B-52s somehow pushed past their grief while Strickland taught himself Wilson’s distinctive percussive guitar parts, while creating new riffs that honored Wilson’s sound while pushing the act forward creatively. Strickland, Cindy Wilson, Kate Pierson & Fred Schneider found a way to keep the band together & carry on Ricky Wilson’s musical legacy. What they created became the biggest album of their career, Cosmic Thing (1989).
Strickland also played keyboards on many of the quirky, cutting, dance-a-riffic B-52’s recordings & he sang backup vocals on many of their songs.
About their most famous track, Strickland says:
“We didn’t know we had really written Love Shack after we had written it! We had kinda shelved it. When we started looking for producers, we had lined up Nile Rodgers & Don Was. When we met with Don we played him the demos of our songs & he said: ‘These are great but do you have anything else?’ We said we had this one track, but it was not finished. We had several versions on the unfinished demo & he goes: ‘Are you kidding me? This is great!’ But we had not really found the chorus to the song. He immediately wanted to start working on that, so he just said ‘Repeat this one part,’ which was “The love shack is a little old place where…’. We played it only once on the demo but as soon as we repeated it, it all fell into place. After we recorded though, I knew, I think we all knew that we had hit upon something. It just had a vibe to it. & you know when there’s a vibe but you can’t really put your finger on what it is? You don’t know why it’s working but it really is. Like, ‘My goodness, there’s something here’.”
Like both the other male members of the B-52’s: lead singer Schneider & the late Ricky Wilson, plus Pierson, Strickland is openly gay. He lives with his partner Mark in Woodstock NY, Athens GA, & Key West.
I feel fortunate to have seen the band in their incarnation that summer of 2012. Just a few months later, Strickland announced that he would no longer be touring with The B-52s.On his page on The Facebook he posted:
“Dear friends, I wanted to let you know that I will no longer be touring with the band. This has not been an easy decision for me to make, but it is the path I know in my heart I must follow. I will continue to be in The B-52’s, I will just not tour. My barnstorming days have come to an end, but I wholeheartedly support Cindy, Fred & Kate’s decision to continue. I’m grateful for the music Ricky, Cindy, Fred, Kate & myself created together. I’m thankful for the many opportunities I’ve had to perform, & I’m filled with gratitude for your continued presence, love & support. Together we made something wonderful happen… Follow your bliss, Keith.”
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