Mark Mothersbaugh

Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
My guest today is the one and only Mark mothers Boy.
You know him from Devo, you know him from soundtracks. Mark.
Great to have you on the podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Wonderful to be here, Bob.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
Let's start with this documentary. How did this come to happen?
The one on Netflix?

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Well, it was kind of a long process actually, to
be honest with you. Started quite a few years ago
and didn't start off as a documentary.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
At first.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
I thought I was just doing I was going to
archive some recordings of shows like the very first Devo
show where we were sextet Devo, and then and then
a year later another show, and I just wanted to
put those on and I was doing an archival film
and it turned into it to a documentary. It went

(01:02):
through a number of different people and then it worked
its way over to our our man, who took over
and made it what it is.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
So why did you not do it yourself? Why did
you bring in a director?

Speaker 2 (01:20):
You know it there would have been within within the band,
there would have been half a dozen within the band,
and the people that worked with Devo, there would have
been at least a half a dozen totally different documentaries.
So the idea of having somebody outside of us, kind
of having an independent observation of everything, and and and uh,

(01:44):
I'll look at it seemed like a desirable way to go.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Okay, so the guy puts it together. You still have
six different opinions, right.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yeah, yeah, you still have all the opinions, but it's
like it's not any one of them taking over because
we could still end up with Yeah, yeah, you know,
we could still end up with a half dozen more
documentaries if we could talk each other into doing it.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
So are you happy with the final product? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (02:17):
Yeah, relieved. You know, it's it's like, I think all
the most important points were hit upon, and I think
it it's I think it came out really well in
the way that I think it would have. People that
don't know anything about Devo might might find it interesting

(02:40):
and and it might make them curious to learn more
about the band.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
So since it's been out, have you felt any difference?
Have you felt, you know, more acceptance of growing audience
or we live in this modern world. You put it
out there and who the hell knows?

Speaker 2 (02:58):
Yeah, you know, it's a combination of things have been
happening this year. We've been playing a lot of shows,
and we were touring with B fifty two's actually, and
I think, I think just what I've noticed is that

(03:18):
kids seem to be they have a lot more information
than I did when I was a kid. You know.
It's it's like I would go to a record store
and i would go past the Elvis Presley and the
Frank Sinatra stand up cutouts, and I'd work my way
back to the rock section, and then I'd go to
a cardboard box that said other stuff, and then I'd

(03:40):
go in there and I'd find capt'n beef Heart and
Wildman Fisher and things like that. And now kids on
their cell phone, they have so much power and they
have the ability to find out so many things so
instantaneously and easy. It's it's it's impressive. It's it's like
we've been playing shows this year. I'm probably the documentary

(04:02):
had a lot to do with it. We've been playing
shows where instead of just being a bunch of people
my age that were slightly younger that were at the
shows in the past, there was like a lot of
kids there, there's been a lot of kids at our
show and surprisingly they're singing along. So it's like, you know,

(04:24):
leave it to the Internet to help out on some things.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
Okay, if you talk the very late sixties early seventies,
Captain Beefheart starts with Safe as Milk goes on make
records with Zappa, while men Fisher, you're living in Ohio
FM underground rock in Ohio, the snart to start as
early as it does in La and San Francisco. Rolling

(04:48):
Stone comes out in sixty seven, but it's not necessarily available.
How did you know about those records?

Speaker 2 (04:56):
Well, see, that's what I'm saying. It was like a
lot harder back then. You know, you had to you know,
it was like craw Daddy if you saw the rare
copy of a craw Daddy and then finally you know,
like a rolling Stone coming along. But but you know,
it really had to do with radio. Also, DJs were

(05:19):
very important back then because DJs, as you probably remember
on FM in particular, they were given a lot of freedom.
And you know, i'd be I'd go I'd hear something
on the radio where a DJ would say, Okay, tomorrow,
I'm going to play you. There's a band called led Zeppelin,

(05:40):
and I'm going to play their whole album NonStop with
no commercials at eight o'clock tomorrow night, and you'd listen
to the whole album and you'd hear this productions level
that had never been reached before. And you know you
had to depend upon them, you know, you depended upon DJs.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
Okay, let's go back to the beginning. You grow up
in Ohio. You spent a lot of time in California.
Needless say, the Internet and cable television has levined the
playing field. What was it like growing up in Ohio
in the fifties and sixties.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
Yeah, it was a cultural wasteland. We were in an
industrial city Akron. It was you know, gray and overcast,
and everything in the city centered around making tires to
they'd put them on trains and send them up to
Detroit for the cars back in those days, and and

(06:42):
and so like, the whole city just was centered around
this one industry. And you know, there were you know,
one of the things that were good about being an
Akron is that we were insulated, and we were in

(07:03):
a you know, we were in a basement, an actor
and writing music together to entertain ourselves. And and you know,
like if you were a band in New York at
the same time in the the mid or late seventies. Uh,
you know, you'd you'd go, Okay, I saw the drummer

(07:23):
left Talking Heads, and now he's playing with Blondie or whatever.
You know, you'd watch these bands develop. And by being
an acron that whole length of time, we had a
chance to marinate and to to kind of fully form
before we ended up, you know, driving to New York
and and uh performing.

Speaker 1 (07:47):
So how did your family end up the acra? Oh?

Speaker 2 (07:52):
It was they were blue collar, my both sides of
my family. They and they came out of coal mining towns,
one from Pennsylvania and one from West Virginia. And during
the depression, they just needed to be able to get
food for the kids. And so because coal mines weren't
doing anything, so they they all ended up in So

(08:13):
both families ended up in in Akron working for the
rubber industry, working at Firestone and Goodyear, and I was
living in I was you know, I was around those
kind of that kind of lifestyle.

Speaker 1 (08:30):
Then, you know, well, how many generations are your family
in America.

Speaker 2 (08:37):
My grandfather on my mother's side was born in Switzerland,
and my great grandfather on my other side was born
in Germany. I'm pretty sure.

Speaker 1 (08:53):
So you've grown up in the fifties, you're going to school.
What kind of kid are you?

Speaker 2 (09:01):
I was kind of out of place when I When
I first started school, there were five kids in our family,
and I'd walk to this elementary school and I remember
in second grade my teacher saying, Okay, Mark, add up
the numbers on the board, and I go, what's a board?

(09:23):
And every all the other kids would be laughing and
that she'd go, all right, smart guy, go sit in
the corner. And I'd be like, how do the other
kids know the right answer to that? And then at
the end of my second year of school, I was
just turned eight, I think, and and it was almost
second grade was almost over. She was, she said to

(09:44):
my parents. She saw me trying to read a book
from about six inches away, and she asked my parents
if they ever had my eyes checked, and they said no,
and they found out I was legally blind. And I
remember a day where I went came out of an
optometrist office and I looked around me and I saw

(10:06):
clouds and I saw birds, and I saw the sun
for the first time of my life. I'd never seen
telephone wires. I'd never seen the roof of a house
except in pictures and books, and it was astounding. I
saw trees, and I recognized them from books because I
had only ever seen them in books or in photos.
I'd never seen them in real life. And it was

(10:29):
like this amazing experience. And it was my very last
week of second grade, and my teacher was standing behind me,
and I was drawing a tree because I was so
excited about having seen them for the first time, and
she said, you draw trees better than me, And it
was the first nice thing that that teacher had ever
said to me. She'd, you know, corporal punishment was like

(10:53):
accepted back in those days, so she'd paddled me a
number of times in front of the other students and
things for being a smart ass. But I just I
was legally blind, and and I getting glasses was this
amazing thing, but it affected the trajectory of my life
through school. I was the littlest kid in my class,

(11:20):
and I had a big head and a tiny body,
and I had glasses that looked like pop bottles, you know,
on the bottom the lenses were like pop bottles glasses,
So it was like a cartoon character. And I don't know.
I pretty much fought with everybody between you know, first

(11:44):
grade and twelfth grade, and.

Speaker 1 (11:48):
Okay, there are five kids in your family, how many girls?
How many boys? Were you in the hierarchy.

Speaker 2 (11:55):
I was the first one to hit the ground. And
then my brother Bob, who played guitar with Devo to
this day, was was second. My brother Jim, who was
our first drummer and really had a lot to do
with affecting the esthetic of what Devo is and was
because I was looking for sounds even back then in

(12:18):
the seventies, I was looking for sounds that related to
what was going on and in the world. And he
was he was He had kind of an electronic acumen.
And then it was my sister Sue, who as soon
as she got out of school, she was like, I'm
getting out of here and she went to UH, I

(12:39):
think Arizona to become a uh she a park ranger,
and she just she was she she really loved nature
and UH and went there. And then my youngest sister
stayed in Ohio and she's an artist and we talk
at at different times. I see Bob almost daily. And

(13:05):
then everybody else I see less often because they're in
different parts of the country.

Speaker 1 (13:11):
Okay, so once you got glasses that you could see,
did you do better in school?

Speaker 2 (13:22):
Well, yeah, to a certain extent because I could read
things and I could I could read the board. I
knew what a board was after that. But yeah, I
just yeah, I still I still struggled with with my
vision because I had to correct it so that it

(13:45):
was twenty twenty. It also warped it into being a
fish eye lens. So every day I could see things,
and but they were all like like I was looking
through a fish eye ends for quite a few years,
even up until I got cataract surgery about six or

(14:06):
seven years ago. And so school was yeah, school was
something that that I was confused about and and you know,
but I did love art and I loved drawing, and
I really became obsessed with that, and it was kind

(14:30):
of like my main love in life until I saw
the Beatles on Ed Sullivan and then I was certain
I was going to be in a band. I was
absolutely certain. Like I guess, was it sixty four? Yeah, yeah,
So if it was before May, I was thirteen. If
it was after May, I was fourteen, and from then

(14:52):
on I was sure I was going to be in
a band for the up until I got in a band.

Speaker 1 (15:07):
Okay, let's let's just go back do a little clean
up work. Usually the oldest kid all the families hopes
and dreams, and the pressure is I'm the oldest kid.
Is that an accurate description in your case? I think.

Speaker 2 (15:22):
I think it was slightly different with me because they
were also guilty that they that I was eight years
old and they'd never tested my eyes and found out
that it was a miracle that I was able to
walk to school and cross the street and not get
hit by a car for two years. Uh So, so
there was some of that, yeah, But but I also

(15:43):
had stuff like my mom said, you know, when you
were a barn, your head was so large, we were
concerned that maybe you were a hydrocephalic child, and you know,
so I had all those kind of of things to
deal with, and then i'd probably my brothers and sisters
were all smarter than me, if you want to, you know,

(16:05):
I'm a If we all would have taken a test
at the same time, they probably would have all scored
higher than me.

Speaker 1 (16:12):
I just.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
They you know, my dad was kind of like this
very optimistic all America, you know, American guy that believed
in the American dream. And he was like, anybody can
be whatever they want to be in this world. You know,
we were in America. You can do what you want
to do. And you know, he was very he was optimistic,
like Tim Leary who was a friend of mine out here,

(16:38):
and and they were they were maybe my the two
most optimistic people I knew. And and so when I
said I wanted to be a musician, he was like, well, okay,
you know he's thinking, he's thinking, does that mean you'll
be living in the apartment above the Roger? You know,

(17:01):
what does that? What does that mean if you're in
a band. But they were they were supportive of it.

Speaker 1 (17:08):
Okay, you're going to school because of your vision, you
play any sports, you have any friends.

Speaker 2 (17:17):
Uh you know, I kind of I made friends with
a couple of the other kind of uh odd odd
characters there was. There was a guy named Ted who
who was a blue baby, and so he was the
only kid that my size. I was really small. I

(17:38):
think I was like eighty some pounds when I graduated
from high school. The only sport I ever got involved in.
Uh was wrestling because baseball, football, basketball. I was not
of the size and shape that I could have participated

(17:58):
in it anyhow. But also my vision and you know,
it's like when you if you imagine, you know, you're
looking into a doorknob and somebody throws up a football
at you throw fifty feet away and it starts off tiny,
it gets big and then it gets gigantic? Is it
is it when it's about two feet away from you?
So it was the whole thing with the with the

(18:20):
fish islands? I where was made sports? Kind of like
something that I never became participant in really?

Speaker 1 (18:30):
So was this public school or parochial school?

Speaker 2 (18:34):
Public school?

Speaker 1 (18:35):
Okay, so you go to high school? Are you so
far off the radar screen? No one even knows you're there?
We are they saying, oh, that's that weird guy, or
that's the yard guy, or people pick on you. Where
were you in the hierarchy in high school? Uh?

Speaker 2 (18:53):
Pretty far down at the bottom. I was like, uh,
I was the Uh you know when I got to
high schoo we had just moved into the suburbs. Well
not even really this it's kind of more like a
rural area just outside of the city limits, and my
dad bought this place. It was like a green acres farm,

(19:16):
you know, tiny. It was like five acres or five
and a half acres, but had a little stable, just
big enough to hold a couple of horses, and had
an orchard, and he grew some stuff there because he
kind of had a romantic notion about farming and farms
and getting out of the city. So I went to

(19:40):
a whole new school system for high school, and it
just started off wrong. I said something to somebody and
they punched me, and then I became the kick me guy,
the guy with the sign okay.

Speaker 1 (19:56):
Prior to the Beatles, was there music in the home?
Did your parents play records? Did anybody play instruments? Take
any piano lessons? Any of that?

Speaker 2 (20:05):
Oh? Yeah, For about five years before I saw the Beatles.
After I had gotten my glasses, I started taking keyboard lessons.
My parents wanted me to be the church organist someday.
They were hoping that, and I just thought music was

(20:27):
something invented to torture me. I really didn't like it
at all, didn't care for it. And missus Fox would
come over once a week for two dollars. She would
give me a keyboard lesson and she sang along while
I played, And so my family would all be in
the next room. I'd be in I think we had

(20:50):
this little small Hammond organ in the dining room. And
then right now I was right between the kitchen and
the living room, and I remember trying to get my parents.
They'd all be sitting there trying to watch the TV
in the next room, and Missus Fox would be singing
while I played, and she sang really out of tune.

(21:12):
It was great, And so I'd played really slow and
loud on purpose, so she'd even sing louder, and she'd
be like the falling le drift by my win. It was.
It was awesome. I would I'd be watching in the
other room and they'd all be huddling closer to the TV,

(21:33):
and I was hoping that they would say you're done,
But instead the Beatles came along and it and I went,
That's why I've spent my whole life being tortured learning
how to play music. And so I entered a new,

(21:53):
a new direction.

Speaker 1 (21:54):
Then, Okay, were you listening to the radio? Will you
muse it fluid or is just your saw? The Beatles
in Ed Sullivan and you go, holy fuck.

Speaker 2 (22:06):
Well, the radio that was being played in my house
was AM Whacker Radio, and they played country music, which
I wasn't interested in. They did play novelty songs, so
every now and then I'd get interested in something like

(22:27):
it's a bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini. I
think that's the first forty five I ever bought. And
then Purple people Eater and stuff like that I was
interested in. But my dad, in World War Two, he
was a radio tech mission and he came back to

(22:47):
the house and he kept a little workshop down in
the basement and he built stereo amplifiers and electronic things.
He built drones. Believe it or not, he built drones
and we'd take them out on the weekend and fly
them and crash them and lose them. But he built
h stereo and I remember he bought these stereophonic albums.

(23:12):
I think it was either Capital or RCA that put
them out back in the day, and they'd had a
hypodermic needle on the front of them because they were
extra pumped up high fidelity and they were stereo, and
they were actually kind of some of them were binaural.
You know, binural was really popular when stereo first came
out because it really separated, you know, like you could

(23:34):
have a voice on one side of the room and
the drums on the other side, and and people use
that a lot. I still listen back to, like, like,
if you ever listened to the Revolver album. On the
original recording of it, they used a lot of binural recordings,
so so like paperback Writer, you can hear somebody going

(23:59):
while they're up to it. You hear him going pay
paper paperback, right, it's so awesome if you ever listened
to Revolver, But don't do the remixes or the re
releases because they corrected the binaural stereo, so don't listen

(24:20):
to that. But my dad would play. He'd set us
on one side of the living room, all the kids,
and then he'd put the speakers for the stereo on
the far end of each corner of the room, and
we'd listen to a train chugging going through the room,
starting on one side, going to the other side of
the room. And he loved all that stuff.

Speaker 1 (24:39):
Okay, you see the beales Sunday Night, February sixty four.
You instantly say that's my gig. What action do you take?

Speaker 2 (24:52):
Well, I looked around for people that were playing instruments,
and there was an accordion shop in Akron where they
were you could also buy guitars like they had Italian
Galante guitars there, and so so kids came in and

(25:15):
they got a guitar and they took guitar lessons and
there was nothing I could do at first. It took
about a year of me persistently pestering my dad for
him to buy me the most inexpensive bottom of the
line for FISA organ but which was a couple hundred

(25:37):
bucks back in those days. But we finally got one,
and that's when I went out looking for people to
be in a band with, and so it started off.
I got in a band with these guys that were
taking guitar lessons at this accordion shop, and that was
the first band I was in. I forget what we
called it. We might have called it Purple Haze, I

(25:59):
don't know for sure, or the Shags or something. We
just took a name that we heard already somewhere. I
didn't even have anything to do with that.

Speaker 1 (26:09):
Okay, for those of us who lived through the era.
We picked up instruments, we got together with other people,
We played in the living room. Then there was always
somebody who said we have to get gigs. Okay, So
did your bands ever play outside the living room, the garage,
basement wherever you're rehearsing rarely?

Speaker 2 (26:31):
I remember we played on Front Street in Cargo Paul's,
which was like a community right next to Akron for
there are one hundred and fiftieth anniversary or something, and
they had a little like foot and a half high
trailer that we all stood on and are. Our concept was, Okay,

(26:54):
here's what our outfit's going to be, because you know,
we couldn't afford like a to go buy suits like
the or somebody, all those English bands, so our our
our concept was we'd untuck our shirts. That was and

(27:14):
I remember it because our bass player, halfway through the
set of his parents showed up and he stopped playing
bass in the song to tuck his shirt back in
and then start playing it. Ah, you went disappointed, but
that was so we did. There were very few places
to play an Akron for for a band that was

(27:35):
as much of a novus as us at first.

Speaker 1 (27:47):
See graduated from high school.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
Then what I'm graduated and by some miracle, uh you know,
I mean my family nobody had ever talked about going
to college. I had never thought about it. I never
thought that was like something I would get to do.
But I had an art teacher that took pity on
me in high school, and she'd put my artwork in

(28:12):
various local you know, like community art shows, and I'd
won first praise a couple times for pen and ink
artworks I'd done. And so there was a program at
Kent State back in the late sixties where if there
were kids that were had some modicum of talent in

(28:36):
some particular area, but they were like probably not going
to go to college, they had a program where they
could give you a fifty percent discount. And she signed
me up for that and didn't even tell me, and
I got it. I got to I got a certificate

(28:56):
them Kent and they put me on this fifty percent
and I could so I could get a job at
night and then during the day I went to school.
And that was night and day different to go to college.
First off, I was not like one in a class

(29:18):
of ninety three kids that were that like all knew
me as the weirdo I was, you know, at a
school with like fifteen thousand kids or something at the time,
and I loved it. I loved it. I could and
I was. I was, you know, there as an art student,

(29:39):
and I didn't know what that even meant, to be
honest with you, I wasn't sure what I was taking
or why. I just was. I knew I was. I
knew it meant I didn't have to go to Vietnam,
and that that made me happy because I remember thinking
about Vietnam and watching it on TV and going there's

(30:00):
not a single Asian person I would ever want to shoot,
you know, especially if it's just because they have a
government I don't like, you know, It's like I couldn't
imagine doing that. And so going to Kent was a salvation.
But I liked school for the first time. I loved school.

(30:22):
And I found out about something called printmaking, and that was,
you know, long before computers. You know, it was like
super high tech, this thing where you could like have
an idea for a piece of art and draw it
and then put it on screens and then print it
and do multiple copies of it. And I was really

(30:44):
fascinated with that. I loved printmaking, and so early on
I found out that that like at three point thirty
when the school bell rang, all the other kids would
run off to their sorority houses and fraternity houses or
wherever they lived, and they'd go to the bars or whatever,
and they'd be done for the day. And that to

(31:05):
me just span that the art department was totally empty,
and I could go into the printmaking department and I
could burn a screen print a color. By the time
I cleaned the screen and burned another screen, the first
color was dry, I could print another color, and I
could by three in the morning, I could have a

(31:26):
finished piece of art. I didn't have to queue up
every day and spend two weeks to do one piece
of art. I could do a piece of art every
single day. And so I got into doing this artwork
at night at Kent, and I did things in a
smaller size because of my vision. The fish eye lens
made it so it was really hard to do to

(31:50):
hold on to perspective, like when I was drawing if
it was a big piece of art, whereas if I
did something smaller and card size, I could hold the
perspective you know, with with my with my glasses, and
so I was printing these small things and I was
in the decals. I don't know, maybe some making uh,

(32:12):
plastic models. When I was a kid, I liked putting
the taking the decals and putting them on the planes
and the cars and the stuff. And and there was
a someone who kind of saved my life in my
high school days was a guy named Guilardi. He was
a TV personality who was on He was a weather

(32:35):
man during the day at w e ws UH in Cleveland,
but at night he had a TV show and he
wore like a fright wig, and he had a pair
of sunglasses with one lens, and he had a mustache
and a goat tea, and he looked like a beatnick,
and he talked like a beatnik, and he made up

(32:56):
his own terminology, like he'd say things like cool with
the boom booms and purple caniff and he had all
these phrases that he made up that if you were
like a kid that didn't have a you know, a
driver's license, because you're fourteen or fifteen and you're sitting
at home by yourself on a winter day, you just

(33:17):
turn him on and he played old B movies, C movies,
and D movies. He played like the most funky, mostly
black and white films. They probably were all black and white,
I think. I don't think we had a color TV.
And and he would sit on a stool in front

(33:37):
of a blue screen. And he must have got this
from being a weather man, because he would do this
thing where like halfway through like fifty Million Years BC
or a movie like that, Gulardi would like jump onto
the blue screen and he'd be in the movie with
caveman that we're trying to pick, yeah, caveman trying to
pick fruit off of a tree, or they be running

(34:00):
from a lizard that had a horn glute on its head,
you know that was giant and chasing them, and he'd
be running with them and he'd fall over right as
the lizard got there, and stuff like that. And to me,
that was like, how's he how's he allowed to do that?
He's he's breaking the rules, he's busting through a wall.

(34:21):
The fact that he was like that, he was like
you know, like interacting and making fun of Hollywood movies
blew my mind. And I just thought he was the
coolest person that ever existed. And even up until I
met him for one brief second. They in high school,

(34:42):
they did this thing that I would never have gone to,
but it was called donkey basketball, where for charity, the
TV station would send people from the TV you know,
the newsman, the weather cast or blah blah blah. They'd
all come down and they'd dride donkeys in your in
your basketball court. And so so the teachers in your

(35:05):
school would do the same thing, and they'd try to
play basketball on donkeys, which was really stupid. But the
good part about it was that Gulardi came to my
high school, the place I really dreaded to ever go,
and he ever. I hated that high school. But I
remember after the after the game, I was walking down

(35:27):
the hallway to go to where my locker was and
and get my jacket out, and I'm I'm the only
one in the hallway, and then this guy comes out
of the the men's locker room, the dressing room for
you know, that's attached to the gym, and I go, oh,
my god, that's Gulardi. And he's walking towards me, and

(35:49):
he's lit a cigarette and he's smoking it in the
high school and I'm walking that way, and he's walking
towards me and we get like about six feet away
and I go Gulardi and he goes fuck you. And
I remember I was like it was like I had
goosebumps all over me. I went Glardi talk to me.

(36:11):
I was like totally flipped out. I was like, Glardy
talk to me. That was so incredible. I could not
believe it. But yeah, Ernie Anderson. He ended up coming
out to California and becoming a voiceover and he made
a lot of money doing that, doing commercials and voiceover stuff,
and his son became a filmmaker. Why was I telling

(36:34):
you that.

Speaker 1 (36:35):
You were talking about printmaking?

Speaker 2 (36:38):
Oh yeah, okay, so so printmaking. It'd be three point
thirty in the morning at am. This is like nineteen
sixty sixty nine, I think, is when I first found
out about print making. And I made these small decals
and stuff, and I would be so excited about it.

(36:58):
I'd be walking towards the parking lot where my car
was and on the way, I just had to do
something with these decals, and I start putting them up
on like fire hydrants and stop signs, and sometimes on
somebody's bumper and on lockers and on teacher's doors and

(37:20):
stuff like that. I put these up, you know, like
something every day. And one day I think, I'm it's
sixty nine and I'm now a sophomore, first quarter sophomore,
and these two older guys walk into where I'm where,

(37:43):
into the art class I'm in, and this one guy
walks up to me and he goes, are you the
guy putting up pictures of astronauts holding potatoes standing on
the moon? And I go, yeah, what of it? And
he goes, what did potatoes mean to you? And I
was like kind of shocked about it. And then we
started talking and he had this whole theory about, well,

(38:05):
potatoes are like you know, in the vegetable Kingdom, they're
the they're the proletariats. You know, potatoes are asymmetric, and they're
dirty and they lived underground and uh they uh, but
they're a staple of everyone's diet. Everybody eats potatoes every day.
They don't even think about it. They're eating French fries,

(38:26):
mashed potatoes, whatever kind of potatoes. They're a staple of
your diet. They're important, but but they're you know, they're
just they're not elegant or beautiful, like the asparagus or
the eggplant or something. And he says, and also potatoes
have eyes all around, so they see everything. And we
started and we started talking, and then he had a

(38:47):
he was a grad student and he was he was
he had a project he was doing for his grad
class and he said, how do you make those decals?
I said, God, it's easy. I use lacquer inks and
blah blah blah and special paper that's water release. And
he goes, could you make some for me? And I go, yeah,
what do you want? He goes, I want some potato men?

(39:08):
And so I made him potato man decals and for
his senior graduation project, he took the decals and put
them on photographs of people he didn't like them as
high school and that was his grad thesis picture. But
it was Jerry Cassally and the thing that he said

(39:29):
to me that was as important as all of that,
as he said, you know, next quarter beginning of nineteen seventy,
you should take this class. It's a conceptual art class.
He goes, they've never had one kent before and it's important.
It's going to be important, and I think you should

(39:52):
sign up for that class. I go, I'm only as sophomore.
I don't have the credentials. He goes, it doesn't matter.
This is the first year they're using computers to to
assign kids classes. And you can just write in that
you have all the pre records. It's just right you
have them all, and then sign up for the class.
So I did it, and I got signed up for

(40:12):
a grad student class. That was the spring quarter of
nineteen seventy and I was in a conceptual art class
with Jerry and Chuck Statler, who directed the first Devo film,
and John Zabruckie, who came out to California and started

(40:38):
Modern Props, which was one of the biggest prop companies
out here. And it was interesting because after that I decided, well,
I don't even care if I what do I care
if I get a bachelor's degree aout, I'm never going
to be a school teacher. I'd be terrible at that.
I don't even like schools, so I don't want to
go back to high school. So I just started signing

(41:02):
up for all the classes I wanted to take, and
I and when I finally left Kent State, I think
I had a bunch of important classes like tennis and
other sports classes and art history that that I hadn't taken.
So I didn't ever get to officially graduate as a

(41:26):
bachelor degree in art because of that. But I took
a lot of classes that I wanted to take, and
I made sure to take printmaking classes every quarter so
I could continue doing what I really loved.

Speaker 1 (41:38):
Okay, you go to Kent State, do you bring your
fur feast of Oregon?

Speaker 2 (41:44):
Well, yeah, And what I was doing at the time
as I would go through the newspaper, like in sixty eight,
sixty sixty eight and sixty nine, and I was I
was looking for or bands that said, oh, we're a band,

(42:05):
we need a keyboard player. We can supply the keyboard,
and so if they had a keyboard, I could I
could go. Uh And whether it was a jazz band
or even a gospel band. I was in a couple
church bands just because they had the equipment and I
could I could play in them. And then you know,

(42:26):
I got a job in one band that paid my
way through college on my sophomore year. They played at
a strip club, and so so I just had to
show up at the strip club every night and play,
you know, like Sly in the Family Stone and uh
and Deep Purple or whatever they were going to be playing.

(42:48):
And and I was still making music, but I wanted
to make my own music. Uh. When I was in school,
I I I saw movies I'd never seen before, you know,
like I saw things by Enio Morricone his music, and

(43:11):
I just heard all these different artists that were experimental.
And and I saw my first synthesizer when I was
at Kent State, and I thought, I want to write
music for the seventies. You know, I'm going to write
I mean, you know that I was looking back at fifty.

(43:35):
I always wished I was born fifty years earlier. I
wished I would have been a teenager in Europe during
the twenties and early thirties, back back when Bauhaus and
Surrealism and Dadaism and Futurism especially. I mean, although I
didn't like their politics, their concepts about music were amazing.

(44:00):
Remember you know, ballet mechanique and things like that. But
but the Futurists, they were saying, the modern orchestra does
not contain the instruments capable of making sounds to represent
industrial culture. And this is like in the twenties, and
so they were they were using like fog horns and
they would spin a bicycle wheel and and U you know,

(44:23):
play it with a with a drumstick or something, and
they were I love that idea of just saying goodbye
to contemporary instruments and looking for something new, and technology
had brought this synthesizer along. I saw this guy, Morton Sebotnik,
came to Kent State and he played a show and
I just stood there right next to him, mesmerized the

(44:44):
whole time watching him play. And I was like, how
do I get one of those? And I thought it
would never happen, you know, because I had no money.
I mean, I remember at that time. I remember thinking,
like cars, they're just a They're just, you know, a

(45:07):
waste of money. I said, you know, I said, anybody
that spends more than one hundred and fifty dollars on
a car is a sucker. I said, you can get
a car that can drive you anywhere for one hundred
and fifty bucks. And I remember saying that to my
friend and he was like, well, but you don't have
a rear window on the passenger side of your car.

(45:28):
And I go well that's yeah, But I just I
can cover that up with a piece of cardboard when
it's raining, you know. And I said, the car's only
one hundred and fifty bucks. I can drive everywhere. So
I'd been in all these different bands, and I mean
even one of the bands I was in during that
time period was Chrissy Hein. It was the first band
she was ever in. She was singing and there was

(45:51):
an older guy that was writing music and he wrote
the songs and we played them and she sang and
she was very shy, sullen, very sullen and very shy.
And but we were in a band together before uh
start a devo. Okay, So the drummer from that band

(46:21):
that I was in with, Chrissy Hin he called me
up one day. I was like a sophomore, or maybe
I was a junior now, and he said, hey, Mark,
how would you like to have a HAMM and B three.
I go, that's some possible. They cost fifteen hundred dollars.
I don't have any money. He goes, how would you

(46:42):
like to have your own synthesizer? I go, that could
never happen. They don't even have I don't even know
if there are any synthesizers in Ohio, you know, and
he goes, I got introduced you to these guys. I
just I just met these guys. They're Vietnam Vets and
they went to Vietnam and I did. I came over.

(47:04):
I met these guys. They wanted to start a band,
and but they were all sport guys. They were all football,
basketball players, and they they you know, they they they
they didn't wait to be drafted. They they joined up,
you know, because they wanted, you know, they were they
were they wanted to protect America from from communism, and

(47:26):
so they went over to Vietnam. They did a lot
of LSD and they killed people. And they came back
and they were like, what just happened? What did we
just do? And they weren't sure what they had what
that was all about. And uh, they said, well, let's

(47:47):
start a band. But none of them could play an instrument.
But they all were getting money from the government because
they had all been in in uh you know, in
the in the military, and they all had jobs. So
they they were hiring people to be in a band
that they would put together. And so this drummer, they
gave him a house and a car and and me.

(48:09):
They said, well, you can move into the attic. So
I moved into the attic at their at this house
that they had in downtown Akron, kind of a really
funky place. But we went to uh the Mogu, the
original Mogue company in outside of Buffalo. It wasn't that

(48:33):
far from Buffalo, New York. And we drove there and
you know, we stopped and it was a farm with
a gigantic barn. And we went into the barn and
there were these lofts that that looked there were these
tiers of wooden racks that might have held farm here

(48:56):
at one time, or bales of hay. And they had
mini mogush. They had like maybe one hundred minimugs that
were in process of being built by hand right there
and in New York, in this little rural I mean
to me, I thought I was in like an outer space,

(49:17):
you know, laboratory or something. When I saw this electronics
and I saw this stuff, it was like it was
like mind blowing. And we got a mini Mogue and
we brought it back to Akron. Ohio.

Speaker 1 (49:27):
You got you gotta tell me you remember how much
you paid for it?

Speaker 3 (49:31):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (49:32):
It was fourteen hundred bucks they were, which you know,
now you can buy electronic gear cheaper than that, but
those since now, to get one of those since some
you know, the first couple hundred would it would cost you,
I don't know, ten thousand bucks or five thousand dollars
for one of them, but well.

Speaker 1 (49:52):
I guess. So these Vietnam vets laid down the fourteen hundred.

Speaker 2 (49:56):
Yeah, yeah, they bought the synth and and all I
had to do was come home and write music at
the end of the day of going to school. It
was like it was like it was like amazing. I
couldn't believe it. It was. It was great. And so I
was listening to all different kinds of music back then,

(50:17):
and I remember I heard spiders from Mars and that
that to me, was really impressive. I really said, well,
this is what I want to be. I want to
be an artist. I want to be an artist that
makes music. And I kept listening to music, and I
remember hearing the first Roxy album and I'd been playing

(50:41):
with synthesizers for about about a year at this point,
and it was all right. The lyrics were the best
part of the album. I was thinking, you know, and
then you know, songs like Inflatable Dolly and kind of interesting.
It was like Bryan's kind of darkest, most arty album.

(51:04):
And then I got to this throwaway song called the
Editions of You, and it was just like this song
where they gave everybody a solo, like like like if
you were a band playing at a nightclub or something.
They gave everybody these extended solos in the middle of
the song and I'm like, just listening to it. It's okay,

(51:25):
it's and then all of a sudden, the synths started
and this guy's playing a synthesizer, and it was like, definitely,
it was like a moment where I went that that's it.
This guy, whoever this guy is, he knows how to
make synth sounds that are unique and that haven't no

(51:49):
one's ever heard him before, and he was playing it
in a way that was unique and that no one
had ever played it since before or played it because
I mean there was people like Rick Wakeman and Emerson,
you know that we're playing like they made They made
like synthesizers sound like glorified organs or calliopes or something.

(52:10):
They used really silly sounds with the since they didn't
really know what to do with them. And I heard
the solo by Eno, Brian Eno in this song, and
it was incredible and it totally helped me turn my
world upside down into find a direction to how to

(52:31):
look for sound and how to how to experiment with sense.
And so right about the same time this is all happening,
is right about the same time, there's you know, we're
at Kent State. It's April in nineteen seventy May. And

(52:53):
you know, I felt in Kent State, I felt empowered.
I felt like what I had to say made a difference.
You know, there was a student union and people would
go protest the war, or they would go protest different
things going on in the world, and or they talk
about them, you know, they talk about things. And I
thought what I had to say made a difference. And

(53:16):
so when they started talking about the United States is
now secretly invading Cambodia and we've got to stop that,
We've got to send a message to Washington, d C.
I joined in the protests, and so did my brother Bob,
and so did Jerry, who I just kind of barely

(53:38):
knew at the time, and we were you know, they
shot kids at our school and killed them. They shot
like thirty some kids got wounded, but four of them died.
And I remember after that, and they closed down the school.
And I remember after that, I was saying, what maybe

(54:03):
maybe when I I I think doesn't matter. Maybe you know,
when they just get irritated with you enough, they just
kill you, you know, And that's and protesting is a waste
of time. And that's so Jerry and I we we
got we had met and I was in that class.
I was telling you about the conceptual art class at

(54:24):
the time. And it got uh it got stopped in
the middle of the class, and they closed the school
down for three months during the summer, and Jerry would
come over to where uh my brother and I lived
and play music with us, and we talked about what
was going on in the world. And and you know,

(54:45):
we had some other friends from Kent uh and I
had these people I was working with that were, you know,
Vietnam vets, and some of them, this one guy, Ed
Barger Uh was was working on sound with me. He
was an engineer and and we we were creating sounds
and looking for sounds and ways to make a synse sound.

(55:09):
And you know, we're we're we're working on stuff in
this little room, and we we kind of come to
the decision that maybe, uh, revolt, you know, maybe you know,
that's not the way to change things, you know, because
if because the powers, when they just finally get irritated enough,

(55:31):
they can just mow you down. And but at the
same time we were we wanted to talk about what
was going on, and and we you know, because of
our interest in graphics and design and things we we
loved like sixties and seventies stuff. You know, Spencer's catalogs

(55:54):
cracked me up. I loved the useless things that they
sold in a Spencer Gift catalog, and but I love
the artwork also, for the these little postcard shape things.
And at the time, you know, when I first went
to Kent, when I was back in sixty eight, I
found out about mail art and I started making art

(56:14):
on postcard size because of my vision, and I was
making it then, and so Spencer's Gifts. I would sometimes
add images out of a Spencer's Gift catalog and then
correct them, is what I'd call it, you know, when
I added other artwork to it, and in the process

(56:34):
we found different things. Jerry found a book with a
friend of his, Bob Lewis. They found this book at
a at like a witchcraft store or something called The
Truth about No The beginning was the end how man
came about through cannibalism. And it was a Yugoslavian anthropologist
and you know, he was taking things that the maga

(57:02):
of the the twenties and thirties, I mean of the
thirties who were who were like, uh, you know, reacting
to Darwin and they were like the you know, there
was Christian groups back in the thirties that were like
making fun of evolution and then they said, well, de

(57:23):
evolutions more real, that's that's more likely, and it was
like a joke, but it was like, you know, I
found a reverend B. F. Shaddock from Rogers, Ohio who
had done all these pamphlets, and one of them was
called Jockohomo, and they were basically saying the same. They

(57:43):
were making fun of of science and making fun of
of of you know, evolution, and they were like say, well,
de evolutions really more likely and more possible. And I
remember we were thinking something about we liked the idea
of the evolution. To us, it seemed like what if

(58:05):
you took it serious instead of just use it to
make you know. I mean, it was probably at the
time it was like the equivalent of their eating the
dogs and the cats, you know. And so we took
this this idea and we said, we want to incorporate
it into our art, whatever that is. And we weren't

(58:25):
sure if it was music or maybe it was going
to be like a cabaret because we were you know,
we thought about all the cabarets that were going on
in Europe at the time. But I mean in the
twenties and early thirties, we were thinking about that. I thought, wow,
that wouldn't that be great if we did did like
shows like that? And Jerry and I were both into that,

(58:46):
and so was into it. He just wanted to play
guitar mostly. But we uh, we started writing songs and
my brother was helping me, like look for strange sounds,
and we found this thing by Electra harmon X. It

(59:06):
was a stomp box that only made ugly sounds. It
was called a frequency analyzer. It was incredible. The fact
that they even made it and put it out. I'm
still I'm still so happy for that because I used
that to create so many of the DeVos sounds in
the early days, things like the like the clown horns

(59:29):
and Jockohan with the oh stuff like that, and I
played it on. Jerry was writing these songs that were
kind of like his songs were a little bit like
the Thugs or something, but and I just put these
ugly abstract sounds over top of it, and it gave

(59:50):
it a whole nother feeling. It gave it a whole
nother impetus. And anyhow, so I was writing stuff like Jockohomo,
and it was like in a timing where you couldn't
answer to it. It was like, really, I was thinking
of it. It was going to go on a stage.
We'd be performing it in a in a theater somewhere
and do a show with it. And Jerry was He

(01:00:13):
said to Bob, I mean to Chuck Statler. He said
something like, I don't know about Mark and what he's
doing with sounds. It's kind of stuff's all kind of weird.
I don't know, I don't know if this band's gonna
work or not. And so he he kind of was
thinking about taking a he was thinking about maybe taking
another path. I think he was gonna come out and

(01:00:35):
work on the prop store with John zon Brookie. He
was thinking about starting that company with him instead, and
I said to him, I said, you can do whatever
you want to do, but I'm doing a band and
I'm gonna make sure that this happens no matter what.
And Chuck Statler had left Akron to go to Minneapolis
and to make commercials and a year or so before

(01:01:00):
or that, and he came over right about at that
time period and he U this, this is like seventy
four now, and he had a I think it was
a popular electronics magazine and on the front of it
it had like a like a young couple, a man

(01:01:23):
and a woman, and they're smiling and they're like going
like this. They're they're like going like that with their hands,
you know, like uh, like wow. And they had the
silver disc in their hand that looked like it was
the size of a of a LP but it but
it was like a mirrored surface, silver mirrored surface. And

(01:01:49):
it turns out they had something called a laser disc.
And the magazine on the cover it said laser discs.
Everyone will have him by Christmas. And you know, Chuck
that to Jerry me and we're like that's what we're
making music for laser discs. We're making art for laser discs.
That's what we thought we were gonna We thought that
laser discs. We in our minds we imagined forty five's

(01:02:12):
would now all be silver. They'd be the silver material
and uh LPs would be the silver material. And not
only would you get, you know, like forty minutes or
more of music, you'd get visual image to go along
with it. And Jerry and I said, that's us rock
and rolls over. This is something new, this is something

(01:02:34):
this is the next thing. This is you know, sound
and vision. And that's what we became interested in. But Jerry,
but Chuck, he was worried that that Jerry was gonna
quit the bat was gonna like gonna like stop working
with me because of what I was doing with music.

(01:02:55):
And and he said, hey, let's make a film. And
so Chuck made up a move at seven and a
half minute short film. It had two Devo songs in it,
Jockohomo and then I wrote this song where I ended

(01:03:17):
up taking thirteen words out of a Johnny Rivers song,
and so I called it Secret Agent Man. But I
wrote all the music, all the lyrics, all the melody,
everything except for those thirteen secret Agent man they've given you,
they've given me a number taking away my name. And

(01:03:37):
back in those days, that meant that Johnny Rivers owned
the song. That's how they used to do it in
the old days, if you had an influence like that.
But he made this film and it came out really good,
and we all collaborated on it. Everybody had something to
do with it. Everybody contributed, and Chuck after he did it,

(01:04:01):
it's like, what do you do with that? You know,
there was nothing to do with it. It's years before
MTV was going to come out. So he just put
it in the ann Arbor Film Festival and it won
first prize for Film Short and we were like, what
that's a movie called The Beginning?

Speaker 1 (01:04:20):
Was the End?

Speaker 2 (01:04:20):
The Truth about the Evolution? That won first prize in
the film festival. We were like so blown away by it.
We love that and it just kind of made us
double down. Everybody really doubled down at that point and
we really knew what we wanted to do and that
was that was how it began. Pretty much.

Speaker 1 (01:04:51):
Okay, Jerry connected with you over the potato Jerry brought
the book about the evolution all this from that starting
point he found the book. Yeah, from that starting point.
Is he the king of philosophy in the band or

(01:05:14):
he just brought it? And now the two of you
are more coming with philosophy.

Speaker 2 (01:05:21):
Well, you know, I think we both came up with it,
I think, and there were other people that added things too.
You know. It's like when I found the Jockohomo pamphlets.
I found out that this reverend had done a whole
series of anti evolution pamphlets with artwork and them and
the word de evolution was printed on the chest of

(01:05:46):
a devil in Jockohomo on the second page, and he's pointing.
The devil is smiling, and he's pointing to a staircase
that is the staircase to heaven. And each step is
some human uh, some human wrongdoing like like uh like slavery,

(01:06:07):
World War one, World War two, uh, murder. Each of
the steps had a different night name all the way
up to the top. And we all, you know, I
think we all kind of contributed to it, you know,
and everybody everybody had some piece of it. Uh. I.

(01:06:37):
I got inspired in that time period in like in
seventy five, I wrote a book by Boogie Boy and
it was Dream of Consciousness and it was crazy. It
was kind of like he took this guy that had
that had been tortured in high school and and grade

(01:06:57):
school his whole life and uh disrespected and he just
like it was like it was like that that kid
just took a stick and hit a pinata. It was
his brain and all this stuff came flowing out. Lyrics
for songs, the titles for our first three albums, imagery

(01:07:20):
for our first three albums. Everybody, everybody had something to do.
Jerry was a couple of years older than the rest
of us, a couple of years than me, and then
I was a couple of years older than Bob and
Jim and Alan and Bob Sally and he was our spokesperson.

(01:07:43):
He was definitely our spokesperson, and he was always right
on the mark. He was really good at that, and
we liked that as a band. We liked having a
spokesperson because you know, you'd see the sex pistols on
TV or or even the Who, and they'd be like
acting like school children, you know, misbehaving while they're sitting

(01:08:07):
there doing an interview and like like you know, like
Keith Moon would be like like you know, like trying
to distract you know, uh you know, uh you know
the singer or something from talking and uh where else,
you know, Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten would be like

(01:08:28):
throwing things at each other on on uh you know,
English TV and stuff like that. We wanted to we
wanted to be totally different. We wanted to really we
we considered ourselves uh an art project from the very beginning,
and so we wore matching outfits. But it wasn't like

(01:08:53):
tailored suits like uh all the British bands. It was
like we were wearing matching jen natorial outfits and we
look very you know, we look very blue collar, working class.
And we had one person talking and it would be Jerry,
and rather than nonsensical, he would be talking about the

(01:09:17):
evolution almost every time.

Speaker 1 (01:09:20):
Okay, the late sixties, especially bleeding into the seventies, we're
a time of irreverence. You'd reference the Thugs earlier, but
they're almost lowbrow compared to all this irreverence, and all
the art was based in alienation. Now, granted, we live
in a multifurious world today, but we don't have that

(01:09:44):
today everything is serious and money oriented. How come we
don't have that irreverence today.

Speaker 2 (01:09:52):
I think you're just looking in the wrong places for it, Bob,
I think, And it seems like every fifty years late.
It's like fifty years before before this was was you know,
the unrest and you know, in the Vietnam thing, and
then fifty years before that was what was going was

(01:10:13):
right between World War One and World War two in Europe.
And I think what's happening now is there is a
lot of exactly what you're talking about, but it's you
have to look different places for it. Uh. I don't
I think, you know, like you know, I'm you know,
I'm not casting any aspersions. But I don't think Taylor

(01:10:37):
Swift it is relevant to any of that. She's like,
that's like a whole different kind of what what you know,
music that makes money is is something totally different than
what it was fifty years ago. But I think the
irreverence is there. I think it's on the Internet. I
think the hard part about it is you've got a

(01:10:58):
lot of just plain old stupidity and you've got you know,
if you go on the Internet and you look at
responses to like anything that happened in the news today,
you'll see an extreme left and an extreme right speaker
that are saying things to try to get people upset
or to get them worked up. And they don't really

(01:11:20):
represent the left or the right. They're like just they're
just you know, people that are trying to get attention,
and they're trying to get people to like log onto
their site with outrageous statements. I think kids are maybe
a little wise to that, and wiser than we're giving
them credit for, because I think I think they see

(01:11:42):
a lot of that is nonsensical and it's not really
where people are. I think most of the humans in
the world are somewhere in between those two extremes that
you hear arguing about, you know, you know, accusing immigrants

(01:12:03):
eating dogs and cats and accusing uh uh, you know,
the right of like being out to shoot everybody they
can shoot. You know, there's there's like I think there's
most of us, I think are more about common sense
and about you know, survival. We want to live, you know,

(01:12:25):
we're not trying to to destroy the planet. And but
but I think from an art standpoint, I think there's
even more outlets now than there were before, and that
that's kind of great. I mean, and right at this
this moment, this exact moment we're talking whenever it is

(01:12:46):
when this, when this comes over the air, this thing
with AI has totally raised all the ante and and
the possibilities for what could be considered art and sentient thought.
I'm I'm kind of I wish I was like fifteen

(01:13:06):
right now. I wish I was young enough that this
was I was just starting. I think this is an
amazing time to be alive on this planet.

Speaker 1 (01:13:14):
Tell me more about the AI and your feelings about
wanting to be young, etc. Go deeper.

Speaker 2 (01:13:22):
I see AI as being a way to I mean,
think about how people felt when cars came out and
they were like freaked out and they but my horse
and buggy. I'll never leave my horse behind. I always
have to ride my horse. I'll never ride one of
those stupid loud machines, you know, and people freak out
when stuff happens, but you know, cars are actually a

(01:13:45):
lot more sensible in certain ways than horses and buggies
sort of. I mean, now we've taken it too far. Now,
maybe there's too many humans, but that's another story to
talk about. But as far as ai, I think, I
love the idea. When I was a kid and I

(01:14:06):
wanted to be in a band, and like I told you,
I'd read the newspaper to find out bands I could
play it. I I remember thinking, well, it's cost too
much to buy a keyboard. I can't own a Wurlitzer
electric piano, so I can't be in a band. But
but nowadays a kid can be walking home from school

(01:14:28):
and they could they could have an idea for a bassline,
and they could be going into their phone. They could
go boom boom doom doo doo. Boom boom boom bo
doo doo, and then they could go online and they
could sign it to like you could say, oh, I
want it to sound like the Foo Fighters, and so
then they play that. They'd use an electric bassis sound
like Foo Fighters. They say, oh no, I wanted to

(01:14:48):
sound like John Coltrane, and then there would be an
upright bass playing the part where they say, oh, I
want it to sound like Windy Carlos, And then it
would be a mini mog Since or a moge Since
or something. You can you can do all that and
then if you like that, then you could say, they
can go into the same phone and they can go
boom ba boom boom bah. They can do a drum
beat in the phone and they can pick what kind

(01:15:10):
of drums they want it to sound like what they
are trying to do, change the tempo, the speed. They
can put those two together. They can keep adding instruments
on of whatever kind of instruments you want. I just
picked really basic common instruments that you know, having a
set of drums in my day meant that you had
them down on the basement and after about an hour

(01:15:32):
your parents would be opening the door going stop playing
those things, you know, get off of that, you know.
And now it's like totally different. And if a kid
has an idea for a song, he can put it
all together on his phone. You know. It's like your
phone has more power than the Beatles had when they

(01:15:52):
were recording in London and doing their albums, they had
like these four track tape recorders and then it went
up to eight, sixteen and twenty four. But kids now
they have more power than that in their phone and
they can do it so fast and if they get
something that they like, they don't have to go out

(01:16:12):
and find a record company. I mean, I remember when
I was in out of high school. I remember thinking,
I don't think there's any record companies in Ohio, and
if you did, how would you get them to put
out your record anyhow? And you know, now kids they
can just go right directly to the Internet. They can
put their song up on it, they can make a

(01:16:34):
video to go with it, and they don't have to
ask anybody. And it's like there's more artistic freedom than that,
you know. That's that's how I feel. I feel. It's like,
you know, it's a pretty great time.

Speaker 1 (01:16:48):
Okay, you were speaking of music. You talked about the
two pole or opposites, the left and the right, expanding it.
Since you have a band that was based on DV
so we live in this era, how are things going
to play out on a macro level, not just people
making music?

Speaker 2 (01:17:11):
Okay, all right? I have to admit I've been the
optimist in Devo since the beginning, and that's why I
became the character Boogie Boy. I think I think Boogie
Boy was always the optimist and looked at the bright side.
Jerry is definitely the pessimist and thinks it's all going down.

(01:17:33):
He thinks for this is the Titanic and it's all
going under. I think I think people. I think people
are just learning what their capabilities are and what their
possibilities are, and I think they need to be aware

(01:17:59):
of the fact that humans are the unnatural species, for
better and for worse, mostly in a lot of ways
for worse. I just finished a film with a Pixar
and I can't talk about it too much, but it's
kids film, but it's but it basically that's what the
messages for kids are, like the animals save the humans

(01:18:22):
in the end, and you're like, like, oh, maybe humans
are the one species that are out of touch with nature.
And I think I think some of that's going to
come back. I don't I don't want to move to Mars.
I think anybody that wants to go to Mars, oh
my gosh, go go man. It looks beautiful up there.

(01:18:42):
Have fun, you know. I want to see planet Earth
get restored. And personally, I think maybe it means less
humans or being more careful than just like randomly everybody

(01:19:03):
just making kids. We've been too successful at that. I
think it. I think it's kind of there's a lot
of things to think about and I'm hoping, I'm hoping

(01:19:24):
that we don't blow ourselves up. I mean, it could happen.
I mean, if you put one crazy person in charge
of a nuclear weapon, they could actually they could end everything,
you know, And so that kind of stuff really worries me.

Speaker 1 (01:19:40):
Okay, let's go from thirty thousand feet down to the planet.
We live in an era now that is completely different
from when we grew up. I'm your contemporary, and what
do we know. You have all these tools, generally speaking,
baby boomers, A lot of Gen xers hate them. They

(01:20:01):
think the smartphone is the devil, they think AI is
the devil, etc. So you have all these kids who
live in that world. We have a president who, let's
just say he has authoritarian elements. Okay, we have the
same people who are on smartphones, experiencing AI, living on

(01:20:25):
the internet. Their future economically is not what it was
for previous generations. So do we just stumble along or
is our big bang event? How does this work out? Well?

Speaker 2 (01:20:40):
I think what's happening right now in politics all over
the world is really educating everyone. And I think they're
seeing that there are dangers to stupidity and greed, and

(01:21:01):
you know, it's like I only know a few kids.
I don't know how many are in your life. There's
much less than used to be in my life. I
have a couple of girls in the early twenties, and
I talk to them and talk to their friends that
come over, and it's that's about it.

Speaker 3 (01:21:19):
Really.

Speaker 2 (01:21:19):
I don't get to hang out with a teenager or ever.
So I'm I listen to what they say and how
they're reacting to things, and I think they have a
much healthier attitude than than people that are like panicked
and that are you know, that are to think there's

(01:21:42):
only gonna there can only be a bad outcome to this.
I think I think we're I think we're in a
learning curve right now, learning process.

Speaker 1 (01:21:54):
Think you have these twenty year old girls, where are
they at? More specifically, because you talk to.

Speaker 2 (01:22:00):
Them, they uh, they kind of they kind of they
see technology in a much more realistic way than their
mom and dads do. It's like it's like, you know,
they look at us and and uh, my wife's saying, okay,

(01:22:23):
film h Eddie's film No our show is on tonight
on uh TCM. So we got to like be we
got to be finished whatever we're doing so at eight
o'clock we can see the show and my kids just
roll their eyes, like, why you're you're you like you're
like a slave to the time schedule of the of
the TV set. You know, they don't they think that's

(01:22:44):
that's humorous things like that. You know that they they
do have more sophisticated, uh take on technology than us,
and we're we're always are asking them how to how
to make things work. It's never the other way around.

Speaker 1 (01:23:07):
Well, how about yourself, I mean, you were at the
cutting edge with the mode you're talking about the future.
Are you seeing that when it comes to tech you're
somewhat of alvenite.

Speaker 2 (01:23:19):
I'm saying that there's so much information and there's so
many things that you can be involved, and you can
choose what you want to be involved in. And for me,
I still have I still have a couple of things
I love and one of them is writing music.

Speaker 1 (01:23:41):
That to me.

Speaker 2 (01:23:44):
Is a revelation that that, even more so than with DEVO,
it came. I became aware of it when I started
scoring films and games and TV shows. And I love
doing visual art and I still do it in a
small size, I still do it on postcard size because

(01:24:05):
I was into mail art back in my teenage years
and it meant a lot to me. And then I
started keeping the art because it would have you know,
like lyrics or ideas for album art or costumes, and
so those are still really important to me. And I

(01:24:29):
do incorporate technology, but I can't do everything. It's like
I use my phone and I do work on AI.
I do things like I do. I'm experimenting with like
art for for Devo, and it's i mean even just

(01:24:50):
plain old chat GPT, which is like about as run
of the mill age you can get. When we were
playing at the Hollywood Bowl a couple weeks ago, I
took a couple of pictures that I had made on
my phone while I was sitting on an airplane and
gave them to our lighting director and he put them
on the screen and oh my god, they came out

(01:25:11):
full resolution, fifty feet across, thirty feet high. I couldn't
believe it, and I made it on my phone. I
was like, that's unbelievable. And I just found that out
a couple of weeks ago. So now I'm really investigating
that element because like I do stuff on cards, like
I'll show you something here.

Speaker 1 (01:25:31):
Well, this is audio only, so you're gonna have to
describe it for by audience.

Speaker 2 (01:25:35):
Okay, So this here, that's a picture that I found
online of a potato. And instead of just starting out
with a blank card, which I've done for decades, now
I can put a potato on a card really easy
that I find online. And then I'm using, like, you

(01:25:56):
know that really irritating those ad camp means that like
just to just like get in your way when you're
trying to like read the news or or do something
on the internet, even just use texting or use any
or use your Google or something. There's all these horrible ads.
But then I've started finding the artwork on them. I

(01:26:18):
started finding it entertaining and and so I take some
of the other artwork and I do the same thing
I did with the Spencer Gifts art and I, you know,
I just take these things off on my phone and
I can just put them in a printer when I
come to work here. I'm I've been writing music in

(01:26:38):
this same building on Sunset Strip for thirty five years,
and I have a printer here, so I could just
throw these in the printer and print them up. And
I'm not doing the most sophisticated AI work out there
by any means. I'm doing this the most run of
the mill, easy to do stuff. But what's exciting to
me about it is if you're a conceptual artist. And

(01:27:02):
this is what I've been talking to Jerry about this,
because I do art all the time, I do physical
art all the time, but he doesn't. And I said,
you really got to investigate AI. I said, you really
just got to try it out, because he's really good
with ideas. He loves to, you know, come up with
an idea for something, but he doesn't like to go

(01:27:23):
through the you know, the the all the toil that's involved.
So so I just I just think I'm going to
start We're going to start seeing things from people. And
it's just so early on. You know, AI hasn't been
around that long and it and it's getting bigger and

(01:27:44):
bigger all the time. I just love the idea that
that kids could make films, that we all could make films,
and you know, why not. Why shouldn't everybody be allowed
to make films? Why should it only be like those
that that a film company is willing to invest in.
I love the idea of letting everybody make something, and

(01:28:06):
then I think that's going to raise the level of
quality and that you'll find things that then there'll be
even more. I think they'll be more great art. That's
what I think.

Speaker 1 (01:28:18):
Okay, in the seventies, Divo is toiling in obscurity. Then
you get even before the Warner Brothers deals, you were
in the Metropolis, they would play at Los Angeles on KOQ.
This is the old free format chocube for the Rocket
of the nineties, so you were aware. Then you have
an album on Warner Brothers, so that people kind of

(01:28:39):
paying attention know what's going on. Then you're on TV.
Anybody with a modicum of hypnis knows who Divo is
and know if nothing else that we make of satisfaction,
then you're on ASSNL, and then you're on MTV. So
the people who are completely not paying attention or aware

(01:29:01):
of you today, that's an impossibility. The initial hurdle that
Divo had, which was recording a national distribution, that's easy.
Gaining the attention is difficult even at this laid date.
For yourself. You create something, the ripples are not going

(01:29:22):
to go as far. Is that frustrating?

Speaker 2 (01:29:24):
For you. I think it's a trade off because you know,
back when I was doing it, or before I was
doing it, and I was just a fan, Like I said,
I would go to the record store and there would
be a dozen or less albums in that box. There'd

(01:29:47):
be one sun Raw album, there'd be one Zappa album.
And now, if you go on the Internet and there's
something you want to hear, you just throw a few
words into you know, into Google or Amazon, and and whila,

(01:30:08):
there's something anything you say you want to hear. If
you want to hear a space age, hillbilly croquet music,
if you put those three words in there, there's some
band that does that. And I kind of love that.
I think it's a trade off. And you're right if

(01:30:28):
you want to be like, if you want to be
a rock star, you know, maybe you missed your opportunity
to be a rock star. I mean you can there
are some. I mean there's Taylor Swift. You know, she's
still out there and she's she's bigger than ever. She's
bigger than anybody ever was, you know, the Beatles. She's
probably sells more records in one year than the Beatles

(01:30:50):
sold in their whole lifetime. But I don't know that number.
I just made that up. But you know what I'm saying,
it's like you're training for something that might be better,
and that is that more people have access to the
ability to be artists and the ability to make a statement.
And because of that, the best stuff you can find.

(01:31:13):
You're you're thinking that the best stuff gets lost, But
I don't think that totally is the case. I think
there's a lot of great music that there's people that
that's what they're searching for, and so they put together
a collection of White Mice or whoever the bands are
that they like that are doing some certain kind of

(01:31:34):
electronic music. And if you find one of those, if
you if you even just say what it is you're
looking for, there's these people will show you know, these
sites will show up that will have that music and
help you find it. And I think we're in a
really nice time because of that. You know, if you
got if you want to get into rock and roll
because you want to get rich, well good luck. You know,

(01:31:57):
that's another story. It's hard to be Taylor's whoever. Those
people are, all those people that are getting to make
all that money. But if you're doing it because you're
an artist, or because you have something to say, or
because you just love making music. Now's the best time ever.

Speaker 1 (01:32:15):
I just want to make a comment on Taylor Swift.

Speaker 2 (01:32:18):
I know I said her name a few too many times.

Speaker 1 (01:32:20):
No, since you mentioned it. The example I always uses,
I can sing every lick of Louis Armstrong Slo Dolly,
not because I liked it, but because I was waiting
for the Beatles or British invasion. Whereas today, without making
a judgment whatever, the average person can't mean to Taylor

(01:32:42):
swift songs, never mind seeing them. She's making a lot
of money, but even Taylor Swift doesn't have the ubiquity
of acts Billy J.

Speaker 2 (01:32:51):
Kramer, Okay, maybe yes, maybe no. I think if you
were the same age that you were when you were
singing Hello Dolly or or Beatles songs for the first time,
I think those people might know more about Taylor Swift

(01:33:11):
than you think. And it doesn't matter if they do
or don't. But I'm just saying you're in an age
that doesn't need Taylor Swift.

Speaker 1 (01:33:20):
Okay, let's leave that aside for now. You and Jerry.
He comes from the conceptual art world, you're an independent thinker.
He's a few years older, which makes a difference when
you're twenty, doesn't make a difference when you're seventy. Okay,

(01:33:41):
and you he was a spokesman. So in this fifty
odd years, how have you and Jerry gotten along?

Speaker 2 (01:33:51):
Very spinal tap But you know, it's like, to tell
you the truth, I really respect what he did and
who he is, and and we are quite different. You know,
we are quite different as artists. But you know it's
like I think, if we wouldn't have both been there,

(01:34:13):
it wouldn't have been devo. And so I'm really thankful
for that.

Speaker 1 (01:34:20):
Okay, let's go back to the silk call. Well, the
early days, you formalize you have this movie that wins.
You know, it's not you're a movie, but you're in
it whatever, blah blah blah. You're on the path. But
the breakthrough comes years later. How did you maintain optimism

(01:34:42):
and say this is gonna work or maybe you didn't
think it was gonna work. Maybe times you're going to
give up. What was going on in your mind in
those years?

Speaker 2 (01:34:52):
Well, I I just loved it, you know, I was
enjoying it the whole time. To me, the idea of
writing more music and coming up with more artistic ideas
and making what we were doing bigger and better. I
think Jerry was I love the idea of like working
on it too. I we we both did, and and

(01:35:17):
you know, it did take years for things to change.
And you know, there were times when I thought, well,
maybe this is as good as it gets. But I
do remember, uh when Whip It became a hit, and
all of a sudden, you know, like little kids would
stop when I was walking down Wilsher Boulevard going to

(01:35:38):
a print store or something, and like a little kid goes, hey,
did you sing on that Jermaine Jackson song?

Speaker 1 (01:35:44):
You know?

Speaker 2 (01:35:45):
Or whatever? And I remember thinking, I'm going to always
remember this time. This might be as good as it
ever gets, and if it is, I want to I
want to remember it forever and enjoy it.

Speaker 1 (01:36:00):
In that initial period prior to the first breakup and
you moving into visual entertainment and making music, that did
you guys make any money?

Speaker 2 (01:36:14):
Uh? When we signed a record deal, we were concerned
about that, uh, And we decided we would rather than
you know, you'd get your money from the record company
and publishers, you know, in big chunks, you know, and

(01:36:35):
we said, well, rather than like hand it out to
everybody at once, we kind of wisely decided we're gonna
pay ourselves the same amount of money as Los Angeles
school teachers get. And that's basically what we did. We
gave each other. We gave us ourselves enough so we
could make our car payments, make our our our rentals,

(01:37:00):
you know, for our house, and pay for our food.
And uh, we didn't take all the money in one chunk,
which a lot of bands did, and then they blew it,
you know, like like in six months and they'd have nothing.
And so we were we never uh you know, we didn't.
We weren't the band that went out and bought mansions
and Cadillacs in the first the first time, you know,

(01:37:23):
with our first paycheck. So we were always and we
always felt like, well, maybe we will never you know,
maybe it'll never be bigger than this, and so we
have to be. And the truth of the matter is,
you know, it's like, you know, we're not anywhere near
like the size of like somebody like the food fighters

(01:37:43):
who followed you know later. You know, it's like those
kind of bands are tight or even so much bigger
than us and play much bigger venues than us. But
you know, I think we kind of I don't know, personally,
I'm pretty thanks for what I've gotten to do.

Speaker 1 (01:38:02):
Just to make a side comment here, however big the
Foo fighters are in terms of playing arenas and regenerating revenue,
they've had less cultural impact than DEVO period.

Speaker 2 (01:38:15):
Well I take that as a compliment, thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:38:17):
So it's beyond the compliment because it's not a mathematical thing.
It's a conceptual thing. There was a lot of thought
that went behind DEVO. There was a lot of thought
about how the audience would or would not react. There
was an art background. It wasn't as simple as let's

(01:38:38):
you know, do verse chorus verse, Let's get all these people,
get the company behind it and running up the chart
and you know, get guarantees. You know that all comes
in for everybody. But just jumping you know forward a
few steps at this late date, are there devot royalties?

Speaker 2 (01:39:01):
Yeah? Yeah, you know, I don't think it's an an enough.
We could live off of just the royalties, to be
honest with you, but but that's why we play shows.
So we're playing shows this year. I mean we had
a few anomalies every now and then. Uh Ridiculousness made

(01:39:22):
a deal with us. When they started that they thought
they were only going to do one season and then
go away, and then they've done like three hundred episodes
and they kind of their lawyers out tricked themselves when
they did the deal. And so we've we've gotten like
nice payoff off of that show, off of that uh

(01:39:45):
uh you know, Royalty Stream. But you know it's like
for the most part, you know, we're playing, we're going out.
We're already planning on shows we're gonna play next year,
and uh.

Speaker 1 (01:39:56):
Well are you going now? You personally, you have a
star studied career as a composer. Are you going out
for the money? Are you going out because you want
to play? What is the motivation because for a long
time you weren't working live.

Speaker 2 (01:40:14):
Yeah, I think I'm just I'm enjoying it more and
we've I found ways to enjoy it. You know, it's
like touring when you start off, you know, like when
you know, when you're in your twenties, mid twenties and
somebody comes downstairs and goes, oh my god, all these

(01:40:35):
people were in my room last night. And they flooded
the bathroom and the pillows are soaking wet, and blah
blah blah, and everybody's laughing. And you go to the
car and now it's like when you're in your mid seventies.
It's like everybody's standing there at the curtain. I go,
the car was supposed to be here three minutes ago.
You know, it's like everybody's got it. You know, you've

(01:40:56):
already done it, You've been you already know that you're
going to go to you know, Minneapolis tomorrow and you're
going to check into a hotel. You're going to have
an hour or two before you go to soundcheck, and
then you're at the venue all day and then you
play your show and then you come back to the
hotel and you pack everything up because the next morning

(01:41:20):
you're taking off for another city. And so it's not
as exciting as it was at one time. But I
found ways like where I can do both art and
I write music. Like I was working on scoring a
film on our last tour, and that so I was
in different cities every day and I'd set up my

(01:41:42):
computer and my keyboard and I could I could write
for a film and that was that was kind of
taking up my time making it enjoyable. And everybody loves
the hour and a half you're on stage, you know.
The time you're on stage is like, you know, it's
kind of like as close as you get to be
in twenty five again when you're seventy five, you know,

(01:42:05):
and uh, we enjoy that, and then it's like then
you just figure out ways to enjoy the other hours.
Jerry has his thing. He he loves food. He's a foodie,
so he's already booked restaurants and is concerned about if
we're going to get done in time, if there's enough
time for him to make it over to the restaurant

(01:42:26):
before it closes, and and he's got his own thing.
And for me, it's it's I it's like I draw
on these cards and I've I'm that they're they're they're
that that makes me happy. They're they're like my therapy
and my simple, inexpensive way to uh to enjoy the world.

Speaker 1 (01:42:50):
Have you been in therapy? No, never, I think I'm
in entire life, I've never went to a psychiatrist, therapist whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:43:03):
I think. Yes, I did one time and then it
was it was she was she did something like she
came over while I was sitting on a sofa and
she put her knees on my feet and then leaned
into me and put her arms around my neck. And
I thought, you know, I don't know where this is going,

(01:43:25):
but this is but it's not my style. So I
only went to one session.

Speaker 1 (01:43:33):
Why did you go to a therapist? And why did
you go to see that particular person?

Speaker 2 (01:43:39):
God, I don't remember who she came. Oh, you know,
it's a doctor I used to go to. And we
were just talking about what makes you happy and what
makes you not happy. And this was like I don't know,
twenty years ago or something, twenty years ago or something,
and he said, well, why don't you go see this there?

(01:44:00):
So he just out of the blues suggested I go
to a therapist. So I did.

Speaker 1 (01:44:04):
Well, you know, you're smiling, you're busy, you never get depressed.
You see, you're an optimist, you never get depressed, you
never get down.

Speaker 2 (01:44:13):
Uh, there's things that depressed me. But I'm actually I'm
I uh, I'm probably well, I think compared to other people.
I know, I'm probably a lot less depressed than a
lot of I do have friends that are depressed and
it's that's not a fun thing to be And now

(01:44:37):
I don't I don't think of myself as depressed.

Speaker 1 (01:44:47):
Okay, so what comes first, the breakup of Devo or
your composing career.

Speaker 2 (01:45:00):
Oh well, I mean in a way, I don't ever
see Devo breaking up, because you know, we're an idea
that we did and that it was. I mean, even
my composing career is I think it's I think a

(01:45:22):
lot of the way I think about music when I
write music for films is the same way I thought
about it when I wrote music for Divo. It's just
you have different things you're taking into consideration. So I
don't know, it's like composing for films. Yeah, that probably

(01:45:46):
would go first. I'm pretty sure it would. I think
Devo would be around for a long time.

Speaker 1 (01:45:53):
Okay. You had this crazy bout with COVID nineteen. Tell
us about it.

Speaker 2 (01:46:02):
Oh yeah, I was a guinea pig for COVID when
it first happened. I somehow signed up to be one
of the first people to get it, and they didn't
have any treatment for it. The only thing they had
is they thought they'd put people on ventilators. Well, I
have really strong lungs. There was no reason to put
me on a ventilator, but they did, and somehow in

(01:46:24):
the process. In the first day or so, when they
put this tube down my throat, I got hit in
the eye. My eyes were closed, so I didn't see
it happened, but I got hit in the eye and
it hurt so bad. I pulled the tube out of
my throat. I said, what did you do to my eye?

(01:46:45):
And I was looking at a woman who had a
plastic faceguard on, and I heard a man that I
couldn't see that was like moving me like in my bed,
probably just you know, moving you around like a sack
of potatoes, he said, sedate him and whatever drug they
put me on, I remember before I passed out, I went, hey,

(01:47:08):
this is pretty great. And I don't know what it was.
But I never take drugs. I never was I never
really got into drugs. I don't think I even drank
coffee till I was in my forties. And so they

(01:47:29):
they kept me there way too long. They kept me
there for like twenty days before they let me out,
and they tried to talk my wife into letting them
put me in a coma. And I feel like The
only reason they did that was because they sent a
lawyer down after they woke me up, after they gave
me that first sedation. They woke me up, and this

(01:47:51):
lawyer is like writing things down, saying, so, what are
you saying about your eye? And I go, I don't know,
but my eye's not working and it was totally red
bloated my eyeball basically, so I to this day it's like, ironically,
my vision in that eye is similar to my vision

(01:48:11):
when I was the first eight years of my life
before I had glasses. And it's kind of interesting because
I have one eye like that and then I have
one eye that's twenty twenty. But they, you know, they
just they finally let me out, thankfully, and I've been

(01:48:34):
you know, it's created problems for me, both for singing.
There's a couple notes that are hard to sing, but
I think they're coming back. I think everything's eventually coming back.
I kind of changed some of the melodies and some
of our songs to fit where I can where I
can sing, and nobody notices it. Really, I mean, it's

(01:48:57):
not like Devo Hat, you know, it's not like Harbor
Streisan or something, you know, or Pavaratti. You know, it's like,
you know, I did a lot of ranting when I
was singing, so so it kind of it's kind of
all right. The vision is still a problem. It's like
it's like hard for me to work with computers for

(01:49:19):
long periods of time. My eyes get really tired. But yeah,
that was it. That was my and I think finally
when they did try a drug out on me, it
was the one that they ended up using on Trump
a year later or so. So I was a guinea
pig for Donald Trump.

Speaker 1 (01:49:38):
I guess, so the notes you lost, that's because you
were intobated. Yeah. I saw a picture of my vocal
cords like about eight or nine years before that, when
Devo played somewhere some convention hall or some big place

(01:49:59):
and Enver and and they had a they had a
vocal doctor, and they saw me coughing because we'd been
playing every night and I was coughing at sound check.
And after sound check, the promoter said, hey, why don't
you go check out? Why don't you go see the doctor?
And I went and saw him, and while we're talking,
he put a camera up my nose, down into my

(01:50:22):
throat and he said, oh, you have a acid reflux,
I think. And so I was like, oh, what do
you do about that?

Speaker 2 (01:50:30):
And he says, when he just gave me some ideas
on how to you know, reduce acid reflux. But I
saw what my vocal cords looked like, and they were perfect.
They were like, you know, like this shape and you know,
and they were they were perfect. And then when after
I was in the hospital with COVID, I went and

(01:50:51):
I saw my vocal chords. They did it again to
look because I told him I was having problems singing,
and they looked at my vocal chords and there was
a like a terror, you know, like like a scar
tissue about halfway through on one side. And I don't know,

(01:51:12):
I'm slowly getting that back. My singing in the in
those notes is slowly coming back. So that's the good news.

Speaker 1 (01:51:21):
Okay, when you are on stage, you're amped up. I
wouldn't say you're playing a character, but you're tell there's
a lot of energy different from the average act. Do
you have to get yourself in that space or you
just go on stage and you can get there?

Speaker 2 (01:51:42):
You know, that's kind of us. We kind of do
that anyhow, you know, it's like our drummer has to.
He sits there in the other room, and he's like
going on a on a on a you know, practice pad,
you know, before he goes out on stage. And and
he's got the most physical job of all of us,
so he's doing that. And then afterwards he soaks his

(01:52:03):
arms and epsom salt water and and he's got a
bunch of stuff he has to do. But we're all
kind of we're just kind of programmed. We are who
we are, you know, and it's like we come out
and do it.

Speaker 1 (01:52:19):
Okay. You talk about the era when you were first
touring in the twenty people in your hotel room. You know,
you're from an era with the sex drugs in rock
and roll. To what degree did you participate in that stuff?

Speaker 2 (01:52:37):
Well, now, the drug thing I was never interested in. Uh,
the sex I liked and but but it wasn't long
after we, you know, became popular. Wasn't it long after
whip it before people would say, hey, Mark Harris. Harris

(01:53:02):
just went to the to the doctor with I thought
he had the flu. He checked into the hospital on Friday,
and it would be Monday morning. He says, he died yesterday.
Like what why'd he died of the flu. And this
was like eighty one or eighty two. It was the
beginning of aides. So we were at the very last

(01:53:23):
years of the sex, drugs and rock and roll by
the by eighty two eighty three, it's like you were.
You had to be really careful who you and you
know who who you let in your room and it
but it is crazy. There was a time where people
were like just knocking on your hotel room door or
sticking pictures of themselves underneath the door asking you to

(01:53:47):
let him in. It was a We were part of
that crazy era for a while. Unlucky none of us
ever got sick.

Speaker 1 (01:53:56):
And so what's your everyday life like? Are you working
all the time, you had contact with friends, you watch
in streaming television? What's it like?

Speaker 2 (01:54:09):
Well, now it's sex, drugs and rock and roll every day. No,
I get up. My wife has four small dogs and
we deal with that. And right now we're fortunate enough
that our one daughter, who is an artist, is staying

(01:54:29):
at our house for a little while, so we're enjoying
that that she's around. But I eventually I drive down
the hill and I check into the green round building
on Sunset Strip. And I write music every day, and
I do artwork every day. And my you know, my

(01:54:53):
big thing is grocery shopping. I hate to say it,
but it's like I'll I'll go to maybe three grocery
stores to get the different things that we want for
dinner that night, because there's there's a one grocery store
that has the best produce and one that has other

(01:55:14):
things that we really that my kids like or my
wife likes a lot, and and so I kinda I
kind of enjoy that. I don't really enjoy clothing shopping anymore.
It's like I'm not into fashion that much.

Speaker 1 (01:55:28):
I used to be.

Speaker 2 (01:55:29):
At one time, I was kind of really I was
really intrigued with what was going on in the early
eighties in Japan and in Europe, and but also the
I liked just what designers were doing. And then then
it went into the two low low tech, you know,

(01:55:50):
like jeans and T shirts and and sweaters, and like
now it doesn't matter if you're a billionaire or a lawyer,
or a or a kid in high school or you're
a school teacher. Everybody kind of wears the same thing
more than they ever did. It's pretty rare to see
somebody walking around, you know, in a suit, or at

(01:56:13):
least they still do. But you know, it's it's it's
that number's gone down, and then there's really fashion is
just kind of at a strange place. I'm hoping that
that all the craziness that's going on now is going
to inspire artists and inspire stylists and inspire creative people

(01:56:35):
in every walk.

Speaker 1 (01:56:37):
So, who knows what are the three grocery stores?

Speaker 2 (01:56:45):
Well, there's probably five, if I want to get serious
about the numbers, because they there's five or six, but
they're just they're a couple of them are in West Hollywood,
A couple of them are in Hollywood, Good h I
mostly just there's one in Beverly Hills and then they
all just kind of it just depends on what we're eating.

Speaker 1 (01:57:09):
So the Bristol Farms in Beverly.

Speaker 2 (01:57:10):
Hills, yeah, oh they're okay, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:57:14):
And does Whole Foods or Arawans show up in any
of this shopping.

Speaker 2 (01:57:18):
Of course, Erewon's and uh, well and there's yeah there
there there's more. There's a Gelson's and uh there's one
called Mothers that I just uh, it's a little further away,
but it has different kinds of of My wife likes likes,

(01:57:43):
uh herbal, herbal medicinal things, and so they seem to
have a different, uh they have a different level of
stuff than than arawans or sprouts. They're they're all, they're
all different and they.

Speaker 1 (01:58:00):
As far as the mainstream, the Ralphs, the VODs, you
ever go there, you have an opinion on those.

Speaker 2 (01:58:07):
Well, yeah, I mean Ralphs has there's these I found
out about something. I think it's called Kingston. I don't
know if that's what it is, but they make these
foil bags you can barbecue things in, and it makes
barbecuing on an outdoor grill so easy. And so if

(01:58:29):
we're doing a barbecue, I have to stop, buy a
Ralphs and grab a bunch of those.

Speaker 1 (01:58:33):
So you're in your office, you go home for dinner
every night.

Speaker 2 (01:58:41):
Most of the time. I mean, you know, we eat
out a lot, and then we also we get lazy
and we order in too, So it all happens.

Speaker 1 (01:58:50):
I guess you know those hours after work, what are
you filling them with other than eating working on art?

Speaker 2 (01:58:59):
You show me, yeah, working on it. If I told
you that cards that size since the early seventies to now.
Every time I get a hundred done, you know, you
do them one at a time, and every time I
finish one hundred, I put them in these read archival
books that they've been making ever since the sixties. Was

(01:59:24):
at I was a stamp nerd, a stamp collector nerd
when I was in high school, So I knew that
they had these books that held postcards. And so when
I was getting a stack of postcards, I thought, well,
I better get a book to put them in. They
still make that same book all these years later, at
the exact same book, archival book. And so I've been

(01:59:46):
I think I'm up to around seven hundred and fifty
of these books that each have one hundred pieces of art,
pieces of poetry, pieces of collage, were sketches, all different
kinds of things.

Speaker 1 (02:00:11):
Okay, my favorite Devot album is Do Traditionalists. That's the
one where suddenly you're producing it yourself. But it sounds
you know, lots of bands produce themselves, they go off
the rails. So what was it like producing yourself as
opposed to dealing with these other people?

Speaker 2 (02:00:31):
In some ways, it was a lot better because you know,
he was I think he was unprepared for us, and
we were kind of unprepared for him. He really wanted
to I think he wanted to make a bigger aesthetic,

(02:00:52):
have a bigger aesthetic input than he got. About five
years ago, I was transferring over the twenty four tracks
that we had recorded with him to digital, and I'm
looking at He's got his beautiful handwriting of all because
it was before automation when we did this album in

(02:01:14):
seventy eight. It was like his beautiful handwriting of all
the eqs and all the effects and everything. But I'm
looking at I'm seeing things like there's channels and it
says Brian's guitar part. Then I see another channel called
David's vocals, meaning David Bowie. And I'd see these on

(02:01:34):
like almost every single track. There were all these, and
then I remembered that when we were mixing them, he
would he was like trying to put you know, other
things into the songs, you know, synth parts, and and
we did use some of it. I mean, we did
use David and Brian's backup vocals on Uncontrollable Urge, for instance,

(02:01:59):
and he put like monkey chants in Chockohomo and we
tried to like make a tape of that and then
recreate it live, and it was impossible because it was
back before the days of midy and so there was
really no way to sync up with you know. We
were playing in seven four time, you know, and then

(02:02:21):
switching over to four four time, and there was just
no way to get it to match exactly. It always
sounded slightly ugly. So we didn't really do that, but
he said he he once said he was kind of
unprepared to work with us and didn't know how to
talk about it. So I was doing things like, you know,
we'd hit record for recording from the twenty four track
over to the two track stereo master, and everybody'd be

(02:02:44):
looking straight ahead at the speakers, but I'd be standing
next to Brian and I'd just reach up and pull
down the tracks that said Brian guitar and David vocals
and just keeps looking straight ahead and out of my
peripheral vision, I could see his head snap and look
at me. But he never said anything. He never challenged
me about it, and so that was odd. And but

(02:03:06):
Bob Martyloff was great to work with. I have to say,
he was really great and he taught us a lot
about engineering that I hadn't expected. And he also his
concept about how to be a producer was different than
a lot of people. It's definitely different than Ken Scott,
for instance, or or Roy Thomas Baker. So so it

(02:03:28):
was it was I really like him. He keeps saying,
we mark, we have to do something again, and I'm like,
you never know, Bob, you never it could happen.

Speaker 1 (02:03:38):
So what was his philosophy of production that was different?

Speaker 2 (02:03:42):
Well, he understood that, you know, and this was back
before automation, so he realized that there were problems like
if you did a synth sound or a guitar sound
and you record it with just the drums or something,
or everybody records as you start mixed at netting and
vocals and backups and all these things, what you want

(02:04:04):
that guitar bass to sound like changes And he did this.
He taught us this way to record, where you put
your you would record your like a bass or a
guitar into two different You'd send a line into two
different rooms, and you'd record it over two different amplifiers

(02:04:28):
so that it sounded totally different in both rooms. And
then you'd have a direct in also, so you could always,
you know, go back and use the original guitar sound
to adjust that sound. And he was really empathetic. He
was a very empathetic producer. I would recommend him for
anybody that was looking for somebody like that. He was

(02:04:51):
very easy to work with and he was always he
had a good attitude about things.

Speaker 1 (02:04:56):
He was. He was very optimist and a hotted Tony
Basil end up recording It's a Different Name and her albums,
you got a problem. How did that happen?

Speaker 2 (02:05:09):
She was one of the first people we met when
we came out to California. Uh. I was kind of
really interested in all the all the actors, some older films.
I was. When I got a chance to meet Dean Stockwell,
it was totally fascinating to me to meet him and
to think of him as as a little guy, you know,

(02:05:30):
as an actor, and seeing him on screen and then
seeing him in uh blue velvet and stuff, and and
uh Dennis Hopper and Russ Tamblin people like that. I
I really enjoyed joined them and they all had different
personalities and they had all done different films, and you know,

(02:05:52):
I liked hanging out with him, and Tony was Dean
Stockwell's girlfriend at the time, and then somehow her and
Jerry started kind of they hit it off and and
she was one of the early fans of Devo out in.

Speaker 1 (02:06:11):
L A.

Speaker 2 (02:06:11):
And I think I'm correct that she introduced us to
Iggy Pop. Well, well, you know what, Iggy Pop knew
who we were, because we had given David Bowie some uh,
some demo cassettes when he when he was playing an
Iggy's band after they did the first time I think
it was first one was the Idiot, uh and and

(02:06:34):
then he went out on tour with him, and so
he was one of the people that I thought, if
I was going to have a producer, I'd want it
to be either Brian Eno or David Bowie. So we
got those tapes to them to him and Iggy. When
they went back to Germany to record LUs for Life,
h Iggy was digging through a suitcase full of demo

(02:06:55):
tapes and pulled the Devo one out and they listened
to it and they all were laughing. They said, this
isn't a real band and uh. And he says that
that some of the a couple of days while they
were recording. They would just start off the day with, uh,
you know, hunting Tony Sayles and David and Iggy jamming

(02:07:16):
on Devo songs before like uncontrollable urgent stuff because and
and so. Anyhow, so she told Iggy because they were friends,
I guess through Bowie. Uh she told When Iggy came
out to stay in l A for a while, she said, Hey,
Devo's playing this next weekend, you got to come see
him with me, and so so she she brought uh

(02:07:39):
Iggy over to see us, and uh, that's that's kind
of how that happened.

Speaker 1 (02:07:46):
Do you care about Devo's legacy or not?

Speaker 2 (02:07:51):
Well, yeah, you know, I think one of the things
unique about Devo. You know, I would never say I
was the singer that ninety percent of the singers that
sing in bands, you know, at the same time as me.
I would never say that Jerry could play bass as
good as ninety percent of the bass player ninety five

(02:08:13):
percent of the bass players that were putting out records
at that time. But I would say that by being
artists and being conceptualists and thinking about our music from
a totally different angle than most bands ever, did I

(02:08:36):
think I think it gave people. I think it gives
us reason to be to be remembered, to have a
legacy to because people can think differently about how and
why you do a band. I mean, all the bands
when we were first doing it, it was all sex,

(02:08:57):
drugs and rock and roll. Yeah, you know, it was
like I'm snorting whiskey and drinking cocaine. Think I'm going
to go in saying, you know, that's what rock and
roll was when we first got into it, and and
we would already missed you know, we already missed all
the artists that were like you know, like even you know,
like uh one, two three, what are we fighting for?

(02:09:21):
You know, even stuff like that was gone after the
after the government, you know, like shut down all the protests.
It's like things got really strange after nineteen seventy one,
and and music pop, you know, rock and roll music
went two directions that went into like corporate rock. You know,

(02:09:41):
it was like bands that were named after countries and
cities and stuff that, and it was like white guys
that were massogynistic, took too many drugs, were conspicuous consumers
and proud of it, you know, and and the other
the other uh direction, music went at that time was

(02:10:05):
was disco and it was like Jerry said, once, I
thought it was really funny. He said, disco. To me,
it's kind We loved all the sounds in disco because
they use these great synth sounds and it was like
amazing sounds. And he said, yeah, but it's like a
pretty woman with no brain. That was his take in disco,
and I thought that was really good. And then then then,

(02:10:27):
you know, then the punk things started up, and I
was really interested in that because it was it was
rebellion again. But then it was nihilistic and it was
just you know, they just all fell apart, you know,
and they all self destructed. And we thought, well, that's
not what we are. You know. We just really thought
we weren't any of those three things. And that's that's

(02:10:50):
how we hit on on the evolution. You know. There
was a movie from the fifties called Inherit the Wind,
and it's the person first place I ever saw the
word divo, and it was because there was you know,
it was for the Scopes monkey trial. The movie was
about it, and and there was like a it turned

(02:11:12):
into a carnival outside of the courthouse where you know,
people were in this little town were like selling whatever
they could, hawking their wares. And this one guy that
was like a circus barker, he's going he had a
he had a chimpanzee smoking a cigarette sitting on a
on on the table next to him, and behind him

(02:11:33):
it said the de Evolution Man. And at one point
he's like going, e people, do you believe that this
is your uncle up here? Do you believe you're related to.

Speaker 3 (02:11:47):
This this guy sitting on the table here, And he's
like making fun of de evolution. But but like at
one point there's a shot where the monkey's sitting there
smoking the cigarette, and on one side of him you
see the beginning of the evolution and you only see
Devo and it says Divo and on the other side
it says man. For about twenty seconds in the film,

(02:12:10):
and that's the first place we ever saw the word.
We love that. We love the idea of the chimpanzee
being the Devo man.

Speaker 1 (02:12:20):
Well Mark, we bookended the career of Divo. We'll have
to do another time about the records and making and
meeting Eno, but I think we're going to stop here.
This is very insightful, very stimulating. I want to thank
you for taking this time with my audience.

Speaker 2 (02:12:39):
Thanks, Bob. You know I'm kind of inarticulate and a
lot of you know, to be quite honest with you,
I'm like, I like think things and I best express
them through music and art and not words. So I
hope it wasn't too tortuous for you.

Speaker 1 (02:12:58):
I don't think that's inaccurate. First of all, a couple
of questions I asked, I saw you thinking about it.
A lot of people have been interviewed so many times
they just have their knee jerk answer. The other thing is,
I used to have this theory that there were waves
that came in and in the fifties and early sixties

(02:13:18):
it was a beatnix. The wave would go out and
certain people would be left on shore. Okay, you still
have the values of the seventies. What I mean by
that is the perspective which started in the sixties, and
you're true to that when almost I can't think of
anybody else who is so A that's stimulating, and B

(02:13:46):
it's like, yeah, you got the ideas out. Once you
get into your groove and you're starting, I can listen forever.
I'm only cutting it off for now, I say, you know,
as I say, there's a lot of other questions I
had if you and me were like, these are some
of these just basic? Well what really something would really
happen with the draft. I'm sure ultimately if you went
for a physically ye had the eye thing whatever. But

(02:14:08):
you know, digression is a spice of life, and your
digressions were great, So I don't think you were being
fake self deprecating and you really think you're not that articulate,
But once you find your groove, it's pretty good and
it's a lot more meaningful and rich than it is
from the average person.

Speaker 2 (02:14:28):
Well, maybe we'll get a chance to talk about beating
next sometime. I'm I think DEVO has a strong relationship there.
But that's another story.

Speaker 1 (02:14:38):
That opens the door to like twenty five minutes right there,
beating it, culture, et cetera. But we're going to end
it here for today till next time. This is Bob
left six