Loveshack Burned Down
12-17-2004, 09:32 AM
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Story last updated at 11:47 PM on Dec. 15, 2004 Allen Sullivan/Staff
Sections of tin roof lie in front of a burned house at 705 Jefferson River Road Wednesday. The house, where B-52's member Kate Pierson once lived, is rumored to be the inspiration behind the band's hit song, "Love Shack."
Fire destroys alleged B-52's 'Love Shack'
Fabled home burned
By Joe Johnson
joe.johnson@onlineathens.com
"Well it's set way back in the middle of a field/
Just a funky old shack and I gotta get back."
It's still set back in a field off Jefferson River Road in northern Clarke County, but the tin-roof house thought by many to have been the inspiration for the B-52's hit party song "Love Shack" is now just a burned-out shell.
Athens-Clarke County fire officials are investigating the possibility that the early Monday morning fire that destroyed the house, where band member Kate Pierson once lived, was intentionally set.
The quirky band, deemed precursors to the alternative music scene, formed in Athens in 1976 and exploded onto the pop charts in the 1980s with a musical style that defies categorization. Its members lived in various Athens locales, and there are competing claims of properties here being the "little old place where we can get together."
But according to Atlanta resident Allisa Huestis, who had planned to move next week into the renovated five-room house on 80 acres near the Jackson County line, "It is the original Love Shack."
"I just was in touch with the B-52's, and there are pictures throughout the book they just came out with," Huestis said. "It's where Kate Pierson lived when she was going to the University (of Georgia). They said it was the original Love Shack and was where they created (the hit song) 'Rock Lobster.' "
Indeed, "The B-52's' Universe," published in 2002, includes photographs of the group outside both the wood-framed dwelling before it was renovated by Kate and Rob Huestis and the nearby outhouse, now used for storage.
"I remember Kate telling me about how many of the early songs were jammed on in the cabin, things like the sea creature sounds in Rock Lobster and many different guitar riffs and assorted lyrics" the book's author, Mats Sexton, said Wednesday. "She spoke very fondly of that little place. In many ways, I think it was a symbolic part of the song Love Shack."
The band's publicist, Bradford Cobb, said Pierson was unavailable for comment and that he had no idea what inspired the lyrics, "I'm headin' down the Atlanta Highway lookin' for the love getaway ..."
In the 1991 book "Party Out of Bounds: The B-52's, R.E.M. and the Kids Who Rocked Athens, Georgia," Rodger Lyle Brown wrote about how after Pierson and her husband moved to Athens in 1973, they rented the house on a Jefferson River Road dairy farm for $15 a month, where they "drank homemade blackberry wine and danced in the field, while cattle lowed and nodded their heads in time with the African pygmy folk music from the tape recorder."
The book recounts how after the band formed, its members spent hours in Pierson's digs, putting on makeup and wigs, trying on the used threads bought on the cheap at the Potter's House, partying with friends and making up the songs that would later make them famous like "Love Shack:"
"The whole shack shimmies when everybody's/
Movin' around and around and around and around!
Everybody's movin', everybody's groovin' baby!
Folks linin' up outside just to get down
Everybody's movin', everybody's groovin' baby
Funky little shack! Funk-y little shack!"
Mack Elder, whose late mother-in-law had owned the dairy farm, said the dwelling Pierson rented once housed farm hands, and since it lacked both plumbing and running water, he would occasionally bump into Pierson when she'd go to the main house to fill up buckets of water.
"It's really sad that it burned down, and I hope it wasn't because of mischief," said Karen Middendorf, who lives on the adjoining property. "Athens has such a strong music history it would have been nice to keep it standing."
It appeared to have been more than mischief, however, according to Athens-Clarke Fire Inspector Reginald Hunter, who labeled the fire as "suspicious." The 4:30 a.m. fire was suspect because the house was unoccupied, not yet hooked up to utilities - which ruled out an electrical or gas-related accident - and building supplies used for the renovation had been stolen. "A lot of times when people commit arson they do it to cover something up," Hunter said.
Huestis, an IBM employee, and her husband, an Atlanta attorney, said they bought the property to turn it into a horse farm on which to raise their 10-month-old daughter. She said they plan to re-build, but not on the site of the fabled "shack."
Except for the charred frame and chimney, about all that remains of Pierson's former house is that feature about which bandmate Cindy Wilson shouts after "Love Shack's" final refrain: "Tin roof. Rusted!"
Sections of tin roof lie in front of a burned house at 705 Jefferson River Road Wednesday. The house, where B-52's member Kate Pierson once lived, is rumored to be the inspiration behind the band's hit song, "Love Shack."
Fire destroys alleged B-52's 'Love Shack'
Fabled home burned
By Joe Johnson
joe.johnson@onlineathens.com
"Well it's set way back in the middle of a field/
Just a funky old shack and I gotta get back."
It's still set back in a field off Jefferson River Road in northern Clarke County, but the tin-roof house thought by many to have been the inspiration for the B-52's hit party song "Love Shack" is now just a burned-out shell.
Athens-Clarke County fire officials are investigating the possibility that the early Monday morning fire that destroyed the house, where band member Kate Pierson once lived, was intentionally set.
The quirky band, deemed precursors to the alternative music scene, formed in Athens in 1976 and exploded onto the pop charts in the 1980s with a musical style that defies categorization. Its members lived in various Athens locales, and there are competing claims of properties here being the "little old place where we can get together."
But according to Atlanta resident Allisa Huestis, who had planned to move next week into the renovated five-room house on 80 acres near the Jackson County line, "It is the original Love Shack."
"I just was in touch with the B-52's, and there are pictures throughout the book they just came out with," Huestis said. "It's where Kate Pierson lived when she was going to the University (of Georgia). They said it was the original Love Shack and was where they created (the hit song) 'Rock Lobster.' "
Indeed, "The B-52's' Universe," published in 2002, includes photographs of the group outside both the wood-framed dwelling before it was renovated by Kate and Rob Huestis and the nearby outhouse, now used for storage.
"I remember Kate telling me about how many of the early songs were jammed on in the cabin, things like the sea creature sounds in Rock Lobster and many different guitar riffs and assorted lyrics" the book's author, Mats Sexton, said Wednesday. "She spoke very fondly of that little place. In many ways, I think it was a symbolic part of the song Love Shack."
The band's publicist, Bradford Cobb, said Pierson was unavailable for comment and that he had no idea what inspired the lyrics, "I'm headin' down the Atlanta Highway lookin' for the love getaway ..."
In the 1991 book "Party Out of Bounds: The B-52's, R.E.M. and the Kids Who Rocked Athens, Georgia," Rodger Lyle Brown wrote about how after Pierson and her husband moved to Athens in 1973, they rented the house on a Jefferson River Road dairy farm for $15 a month, where they "drank homemade blackberry wine and danced in the field, while cattle lowed and nodded their heads in time with the African pygmy folk music from the tape recorder."
The book recounts how after the band formed, its members spent hours in Pierson's digs, putting on makeup and wigs, trying on the used threads bought on the cheap at the Potter's House, partying with friends and making up the songs that would later make them famous like "Love Shack:"
"The whole shack shimmies when everybody's/
Movin' around and around and around and around!
Everybody's movin', everybody's groovin' baby!
Folks linin' up outside just to get down
Everybody's movin', everybody's groovin' baby
Funky little shack! Funk-y little shack!"
Mack Elder, whose late mother-in-law had owned the dairy farm, said the dwelling Pierson rented once housed farm hands, and since it lacked both plumbing and running water, he would occasionally bump into Pierson when she'd go to the main house to fill up buckets of water.
"It's really sad that it burned down, and I hope it wasn't because of mischief," said Karen Middendorf, who lives on the adjoining property. "Athens has such a strong music history it would have been nice to keep it standing."
It appeared to have been more than mischief, however, according to Athens-Clarke Fire Inspector Reginald Hunter, who labeled the fire as "suspicious." The 4:30 a.m. fire was suspect because the house was unoccupied, not yet hooked up to utilities - which ruled out an electrical or gas-related accident - and building supplies used for the renovation had been stolen. "A lot of times when people commit arson they do it to cover something up," Hunter said.
Huestis, an IBM employee, and her husband, an Atlanta attorney, said they bought the property to turn it into a horse farm on which to raise their 10-month-old daughter. She said they plan to re-build, but not on the site of the fabled "shack."
Except for the charred frame and chimney, about all that remains of Pierson's former house is that feature about which bandmate Cindy Wilson shouts after "Love Shack's" final refrain: "Tin roof. Rusted!"
12-17-2004, 12:05 PM
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Originally Posted by banzaitoyota' date='Dec 17 2004, 09:54 AM
thats too bad
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