FEATURE:
Groovelines
The B-52's – Private Idaho
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ON 28th February…
IN THIS PHOTO: The B52’s in 1980 (featuring Cindy Wilson, bottom left)/PHOTO CREDIT: Lynn Goldsmith
the amazing Cindy Wilson turns sixty-five. She is best known as one of the founding members of The B 52’s. The band hail from Athens, Georgia (the same area as R.E.M.), and they have recorded some classic albums through the years (most notably 1979’s The B52’s and 1980’s Wild Planet). To honour the approaching sixty-fifth birthday of a fantastic artist, I wanted to feature a song from The B52’s’ Wild Planet. The first single from the album – and written by the band (Fred Schneider, Kate Pierson, Keith Strickland, Cindy Wilson and Ricky Wilson) -, Private Idaho is one of their best-known songs. Even though The B52’s never played in Idaho until 2011, frontman Fred Schneider felt intrigued by the mystery of Idaho. The fact it could be crazy and right-wing but also was not that explored as a state. Not taking shots at it, I love the fact we can puzzle over the song over four decades after it was released. I am going to bring together a couple of features that look at Private Idaho in more detail. The second provides us the lyrics. Not only is the track so dance-worthy and energetic; the lyrics also stand out. In their feature, Classic Rockers start by underlining how The B52’s were not attacking or parodying Idaho:
“Credited to all five members of the band (Kate Pierson, Fred Schneider, Keith Strickland, Cindy Wilson, and Ricky Wilson), “Private Idaho” is – and we cannot emphasize this enough – not in any way a dismissal of or an insult to the state of Idaho. Indeed, the B-52’s had never even played a show in the state until 2011, and when they finally did so, it was a big enough event that a reporter from The Idaho Statesman made a point of interviewing Schneider to ask him exactly what the deal was with the song.
“Idaho is pretty mysterious to all of us," Schneider told the Statesman. "I know it's a beautiful state, but then I know there's also a lot of crazy right-wingers and all that stuff...The song's about all different things. It's not like a parody of Idaho or anything."
As far as the actual composition of the song, Pierson told The A.V. Club in 2011 that “Fred came up with the title [and] started out with 'You’re living in your own private Idaho,’ and I came up with, ‘Underground like a wild potato / Don’t go on the patio / Beware of the pool.’ It’s all sort of dark and mysterious – and silly, too, in a way. But where it takes about ‘watch out for signs that say "Hidden Driveway,"’ and then the pool, I guess it’s really kind of a reference to the subconscious being like living in your own world.”
Pierson also revealed that the reference to the radium clock in the lyrics was tied to a clock factory in Athens with a dark secret.
“[The clocks] had glow-in-the-dark dials, and these women were dying of cancer, and I don’t know when this was, exactly, but I remember it was in the news about how the women who were painting the radium onto these dials, they were licking their brushes before they dipped the brushes into the radium,” said Pierson. “So that was a reference to that, and kind of a reference to, I guess, environmental pollution and toxic things. So it has this dark feeling, in a way. And yet we sing it with such glee!”
“Private Idaho” provided The B-52’s with the second Hot 100 appearance of their career, with the single climbing to No. 74, but the song did far better in the clubs: the tune ascended all the way to No. 5 on Billboard’s Hot Dance Club Play chart”.
When thinking about my favourite songs from The B52’s, Private Idaho comes somewhere near the top. Maybe I have a bit more love for Love Shack (from 1989’s Cosmic Thing), though Private Idaho is terrific. This article reminded me of a great film that took its name from The B52’s’ song. The lyrics, the more I read them, get into my head and provoke all kind of images:
“While ‘Rock Lobster’ from the band’s debut became an underground hit, ‘Private Idaho’ from Wild Planet made its mark a decade later as the inspiration for the title of Gus Van Sant’s 1991 film, My Own Private Idaho.
Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo
You’re living in your own Private Idaho
Living in your own Private Idaho
Underground like a wild potato
Don’t go on the patio
Beware of the pool
Blue bottomless pool
It leads you straight
Right throught the gate
That opens on the pool
You’re living in your own Private Idaho
You’re living in your own Private Idaho
Keep off the path, beware of the gate
Watch out for signs that say “hidden driveways”
Don’t let the chlorine in your eyes
Blind you to the awful surprise
That’s waitin’ for you at
The bottom of the bottomless blue blue blue pool
You’re livin in your own Private Idaho. Idaho
You’re out of control, the rivers that roll
You fell into the water and down to Idaho
Get out of that state
Get out of that state you’re in
You better beware
You’re living in your own Private Idaho
You’re living in your own Private Idaho
Keep off the patio
Keep off the path
The lawn may be green
But you better not be seen
Walkin’ through the gate that leads you down
Down to a pool fraught with danger
Is a pool full of strangers
You’re living in your own Private Idaho
Where do I go from here to a better state than this
Well, don’t be blind to the big surprise
Swimming round and round like the deadly hand
Of a radium clock, at the bottom of the pool
I-I-I-daho
I-I-I-daho
Woah oh oh woah oh oh woah oh oh
Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah
Get out of that state
Get out of that state
You’re living in your own Private Idaho
Livin in your own Private…. Idaho”.
Ahead of the upcoming sixty-fifth birthday of Cindy Wilson, I was eager to include a song from The B52’s in this Groovelines (as she was one of the founding members). Private Idaho is one of the group’s defining moments. A stunning track that sounds fresh and compelling to this day, the 1980 single is a real gem. Go and spin it and, if space and privacy allow, have a dance along! It is a song that, to me, stands out as…
A true classic.