Superlatives
A Vulture series in which artists judge the best and worst of their own careers.
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Devo is an art movement.
And if you dont, well, maybe your de-evolution has begun.
Thank you for the positive energy.
Well see what happens.
Best song
You could ask me on different days and I would have different answers.
But if there was one song that was my favorite out of everything, it would be Jocko Homo.
It was both a theme song and a rallying cry.
It was hard-core what Devo was about.
Jocko Homo is a visual in a way.
Musically at the time, around 1973, my interest was to deconstruct what was considered rock and roll.
For me, it started with the Rolling Stones (I Cant Get No) Satisfaction.
That was ground zero for rock and roll.
We were talking about something specific.
How could that happen?We were doing something that we thought was important.
The idea that we stop dropping bombs on Vietnam.
We didnt feel like that was a good war to be in.
We didnt think there was any reason why we should be over there killing people.
I know I didnt want to go to Vietnam and kill people.
So we started talking about things going backward and going down theyre not going upward.
He plays a scientist whos trying to evolve creatures of animals of the jungle.
The animals were all frightened of him.
And they would all recite the laws: Not to run on all fours.
That is the law.
Are we not men?
We were thinking,Well, you know what?
The music was very radical.
What we were doing was art.
It was sound and vision in a way that talked about what humans are and why we are here.
I was looking for nonrock and roll with Jocko Homo.
I put these four blasts that were like clown horns in the verses.
The one person in pop music I felt a camaraderie with was Brian Eno.
I was like,Hes done it.
This guy, were of common thought.
It was a sound that was more like an aggressive noise that was keeping a rhythm.
I feel thats Devo at its purest, when we were just pure art.
And instead, we didnt.
I felt like it addressed those issues, where we did have freedoms that we didnt even bother using.
That was part of the message for Freedom of Choice.
I thought that was a good message: to use it before you lose it.
Song you wish was as popular as Whip It
It would be the more blatant tunes.
I think you could say just about anything on the first couple of albums.
The lyrics for Whip It were very concealed.
They were kind of like Thomas Pynchon, who we were fans of.
Song that challenges listeners the most
That could be Jocko Homo because of the timing of it.
You cant dance to it in a typical style, or typical disco or funk or pop-music style.
It turns you into more of a dancing ape.
In the early 70s, I painted houses and laid carpets to pay my way through school.
All they were doing was convincing people to eat food that wasnt good for them.
I was thinking,Wow, thats impressive.
But theyre doing it through subversion.
How could we do that?
My first year in college, in 1969, I read a book calledThe Population Bomb.
It still could happen you dont know.
We were more subversive with it and embedded more subliminal messages into our songs.
When Devo slowed down in the mid-80s, I started doing music for film and television.
I was unsure about doing commercials at first.
It was robots dancing along with humans dancing.
It looked like it was based on the Devo live show.
When I met with the ad-agency people who hired me, I played them the commercial at their headquarters.
Sugar is bad for you.
As soon as it was over, the executive went, Yeah!
Hawaiian Punchdoeshit you in all the right places.
He totally missed it.
And it was so easy to do.
I did that in about 30 commercials or so before somebody finally caught me.
We were the dangerous species throwing things out of whack.
I love Uncontrollable Urge, but it was just about energy.
It was just about being young and excitable.
Most perverse album
Oh, shit.
Im thinking perverse in a positive way.
The first time that we had a crew working for us came soon afterSNL.
I remember walking into the venue, and the music starts up while people are coming into the venue.
And Im like,Wait a minute.
Why the hell is that playing?I ran over to the summit and said, Turn that off.
What the hell were you doing playing Tom Petty music at a Devo show?
That makes no sense.
And the sound guy goes, What are you talking about?
I have to play music thatll help me tune the room.
Im not just picking random songs.
Then a Fleetwood Mac song came on after it.
And thats what people listened to before Devo came out onstage!
Kids are coming up to me and they want to buy that tape.
It was just two audio cassettes, I think, and we didnt have any to give out.
It was an immediate no.
They were laughing at us.
So we countered, Do you mind if we put it out onClub Devo?
And they said, Sure, go ahead.
So we made a full cassette ofE-Z Listening Muzakthat sounded like silly and fake700 Clubsongs.
We sold quite a few of those cassettes.
Warner Bros. got angry about it!
They said, You tricked us.
And we said, No, you just turned us down.
Biggest misconception about the band
Oh my God.
What would be the biggest misconception?
We shouldve been marketed as social scientists.
People talked about other things in their songs constantly, but I think they had brilliant lyrics.
I thought there was some kindred spirit between us.
We did our version of Satisfaction on the tenth anniversary of the song.
But it was successful and a fair tribute to Keith and Micks song.
Quite honestly, Johnny Rivers was very unhappy aboutus doingSecret Agent Man.
So we did have to play it for someone in the Rolling Stones.
It turned out Jerry and I went to Manhattan and visited their managers office.
Mick came in from a little private elevator.
I dont know where he had been, but he didnt have shoes.
He just had socks on, and we played it for him.
About halfway through the first chorus, he jumped up and started dancing to it.
That was kind of cool.
He still thinks its the best cover of that song.
you’re able to imagine how we felt.
It was a pretty amazing day.
Legacy of the 1978Saturday Night Liveperformance
Its a testimony to how creativeSNLwas at that time.
Everybody watched that show; people were staying home at night so that they could watch it.
When we first came out to California, there were a lot of people who wanted to manage us.
One particular guy,Elliot Roberts, said he wanted to manage us.
We responded, If you’re able to get us onSNL, well sign with you.
And he did because he knew Lorne Michaels.
We were on a tour at the time and saw that half-filled venues were all sold out after that.
People wanted to know and confirm what they had just seen.
But, in a way, that kind of makes sense.
Ive met a lot of people who study gene mutations.
There was a woman from Harvard University who counseled people who had given birth to monsters.
We wanted to do everything we could to make ourselves look not rock and roll.
Jerry used to work at a janitorial company when we were starting out.
We want lamps like the ones that are hanging in the warehouse at Coca-Cola Bottling Company.
We loved janitorial supplies, so when Jerry found that picture of the yellow suits, they were great.
They were perfect for us because they were around $4 for a full suit at the time.
We have to remake them ourselves now since the company stopped producing them a while ago.
I always loved that yellow suit.
We could tear them apart!
Wed always have black shorts and black shirts and knee socks underneath.
It looked like we were on a 50s high-school basketball team or something.
