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Q&A With Fred Schneider |
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Fred Schneider:
B-52's Over America
Beehive hairdos and "Love Shack" dance sessions may have positioned them as party people, but the B-52's had opinions on the politics of the era, too. Frontman Fred Schneider reminisces none too fondly about how the Reagan years affected America, and how the band stayed true to its lefty position.
VH1: Do you agree with the perception that in the '80s, people put their ideals on hold in favor of wealth and status?
Fred Schneider: Probably for some groups. We didn't. We found it was easier for us to talk about what we believed in. I thought it was really boring to talk about hair and clothes and wacky whatever, from day one. I would rather talk about the environment and stuff, which probably made me a real bore, but I didn't care. And considering we had Ronald Reagan for president, it was like, oh God.
VH1: Were you aware of Reagan as governor?
Schneider: I heard about the awful things Reagan did and it was like, "Why are people voting for him? He doesn't have a chance." And all of a sudden, oh my God, he does have a chance, and here he is with his nightmare cabinet and whatever, installed the same way we have Bush Jr. now.
VH1: When Reagan appeared to be getting elected, did you worry that he was too much of a zealot?
Schneider: Most of the musician friends I had and people I knew just thought Reagan was awful. They didn't know why he was elected. They couldn't figure out how someone with his scary ideas about the bomb and keeping students in line by using force [could become president]. But then all of a sudden, the right wing takes over.
VH1: What do you think is the legacy of the Reagan presidency?
Schneider: I think that people think they can just destroy the environment if they want to. [Reagan's administration] had the trickle down theory, which I considered the "crap on theory," just crap on the poor and don't let them have any chance to improve their lives. The welfare queen that was [supposedly] sucking up all our tax dollars had never existed, and we spend less on helping poor people than we do on the military. It's the same now. It was the same under Clinton. Things just don't change.
That is the '80s' legacy. I thought Carter was a decent person and tried to do things, but I think he tried to hold a mirror up to what was going on, and people just don't want to look in the mirror.
VH1: You were saying before that it didn't really change in the '90s.
Schneider: People are struggling nowadays to make ends meet. I mean, most families are now one or two paychecks away from being out in the street. So it's hard for people to care about the environment or care about other things when they're so busy trying to feed their kids and keep going. Whereas luckily, young people, as they were in the '80s, '90s, are always motivated, especially in college. Liberal campuses were motivated to keep the fires going and support organizations that helped people and not big business.
VH1: Did you see this change in attitudes manifest itself in the music industry?
Schneider: There's a lot of talk in the entertainment business about people taking endorsements, people who refuse endorsements. I think it's natural for the media to shun people who speak out against things and just give attention to people who go with the corporate flow. It's always been like that.
VH1: How do you define selling out?
Schneider: It's when you change your political beliefs just for money. You know, you go from, say, being an open-minded person to being a conservative because you see there's more money to be made. [Laughs] I think that's despicable.
VH1: Did you see evidence of that either with your peers or outside the music industry?
Schneider: As the petty '80s came to a close, you saw more people becoming more corporate and changing their ideas because, let's face it, you make a lot more money selling out than you do keeping your ideals a lot of the time.
VH1: What did you think of the mid-'80s trend of the benefit concerts?
Schneider: I'm always for artists getting people rallied to do benefits and singles for good causes, as long as the money does go to the cause, or most of it. I mean, you've heard about some singles where the money didn't go anywhere except in one artist's pocket, but anything that gets people's conscience raised, especially after eight years of Reagan and then four years of Bush Sr. Even Clinton, I mean, I don't see where he did that great a job.
VH1: Do you think artists got involved just as a form of self-promotion?
Schneider: I always think how the people talk[ing] about the cause that they're doing a single for or a benefit for has more impact than, say, the single itself. Using the press machine out there, you can generate a lot of interest in organizations. Farm Aid did a great job. This is the age of noise. As long as the artists get the message across, it's fine. I think people might get a little tired of too many [messages], but then that's where the benefits come in. You just play a concert for an organization and that gets people listening.
VH1: How would you compare the way that musicians use their music to promote social change from the '60s to the '80s?
Schneider: The B-52's decided that we wanted to do a lot of benefits. We might not necessarily put political messages in our music, 'cause we weren't that comfortable doing that, and it's a chancy thing 'cause it sounds real pretentious. We decided to put our money where our mouths were and support the causes we believed in, just by bringing groups along on tours with tables to sign people up. And we found it didn't really take away from - you know, people were worried about T-shirt sales and this and that - but it doesn't really affect anything. It just gets people interested in good causes, and I think that's a great thing.
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