Speaker 1: Pushkin. Robert Marglev is one of the most quietly consequential
Speaker 1: figures in modern music, a sonic architect who helped build
Speaker 1: some of the most innovative and enduring sounds of the
Speaker 1: last half century. Together with his partner Malcolm Cecil, Robert
Speaker 1: created Tanto, the world's largest analog synthesizer, and used it
Speaker 1: to co produce a string of air defining Stevie Wonder classics,
Speaker 1: including Music of My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions, and Fulfilling
Speaker 1: This his first finale. He went on to work with
Speaker 1: Jeff Beck the Isisley Brothers in a scrappy art punk
Speaker 1: band from Akron, Ohio called Devo, helping shape the early
Speaker 1: sound and is something that felt like it arrived from
Speaker 1: another dimension entirely. You might remember Robert from his Broken
Speaker 1: Record and Review a few years back. Now he's releasing
Speaker 1: an audio book called Shaping Sounds Stevie Wonder, Divo the
Speaker 1: Synth Revolution in My Life Behind the Music. It's a
Speaker 1: memoir about creativity, collaboration, an artistic courage, told by someone
Speaker 1: who was in the room. On today's episode, I sit
Speaker 1: down with Margolev and Mark Mother's ba, the frontman of
Speaker 1: Devo composer, visual artist and one of the most original
Speaker 1: creative minds of his generation. They recall working together to
Speaker 1: make Devot's Freedom of Choice in the glory days of
Speaker 1: recording at the record plant in Los Angeles in the eighties.
Speaker 1: You can use the code sounds twenty five at pushing
Speaker 1: DOFM slash shaping sounds to save twenty five percent on
Speaker 1: the audiobook. This is broken record, real musicians, real conversations.
Speaker 1: Here's my conversation with Robert Margolev and Mark Mother's ba.
Speaker 2: We were one step ahead of the digital sampling where
Speaker 2: you could like do something like that and then have
Speaker 2: it on a key and play it later. So that
Speaker 2: came a few years later.
Speaker 1: So you guys actually had to crack a Yeah, we
Speaker 1: had a track the whip.
Speaker 2: We had to take turns whipping each other. It was awful.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: The thing is said, really are worthwhile stick out and
Speaker 3: when you think about freedom of choice in general, that
Speaker 3: record really has lasted.
Speaker 1: This is Mark Studio. We're in Mark Mothersbaugh Studio and
Speaker 1: you guys obviously have a history which we're here to
Speaker 1: talk about.
Speaker 3: We have a very long history.
Speaker 1: But I didn't know you had a history with this
Speaker 1: building that oh yes, Mark works out.
Speaker 3: It, although I've never actually recorded in this building except
Speaker 3: with Tonto. Tonto used to live exactly where Mark is
Speaker 3: sitting right now. The instrument was here for about two
Speaker 3: or three years. We didn't get a lot done, but
Speaker 3: we cameven fiddled around with it more than actually got
Speaker 3: serious with it here. But I was off on other
Speaker 3: adventures at that time, and I don't know, Malcolm and
Speaker 3: I never really sort of put our minds to it
Speaker 3: as much as we should have and could have. It
Speaker 3: was a remarkable opportunity that I think, I sort of
Speaker 3: think we missed out on. That we could have done
Speaker 3: more here than he did. But I was off making records.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we were off doing things. Yeah I was. I
Speaker 2: had found out about film and TV scoring and that
Speaker 2: became my love and so I was deep in that.
Speaker 2: But it was but Tonto brought a really great energy
Speaker 2: because also at that time I had the building was
Speaker 2: fairly new, so like a lot of stuff, like these
Speaker 2: racks of tapes, they weren't in this room back then.
Speaker 2: Sokna was kind of had the whole room all to itself,
Speaker 2: and it was It was pretty amazing because a lot
Speaker 2: of people came over and saw Tano and they were
Speaker 2: just like knocked over just to even see it. It
Speaker 2: was such an amazing piece of art, and and it
Speaker 2: had great energy. It was it was kind of like,
Speaker 2: you know, Bob. That was probably Bob when his mind
Speaker 2: was working. The fact. I don't know if that's true
Speaker 2: or not, but you were definitely busy in that time
Speaker 2: period to have created that.
Speaker 3: Uh, that instrument I think was around Stevie time too.
Speaker 3: So our work together we really well, we did. We
Speaker 3: did a freedom of choice before that time, way before that,
Speaker 3: before before the synthesogy, before y.
Speaker 2: Yeah, before yeah Tanto was here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, boy, that was something else. I love making that record.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I have a lot of really good memories
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. That's probably, in a lot of ways, probably the
Speaker 2: best Divo record. Uh and definitely sonically it was. Uh,
Speaker 2: Divo learned a lot from you.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: We when we started off, we just had like a
Speaker 2: little tax four track and and I was like recording, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'll put all the drums on one track based on
Speaker 2: one guitar. One. Then I got to mix it all
Speaker 2: down and then add a vocal and a solo and
Speaker 2: that and that that would like limit esthetically what you
Speaker 2: could do back in those days. So so we were
Speaker 2: used to that world. And then I mean, there's there's
Speaker 2: a lot of good things. We worked with Brian Eno
Speaker 2: and Bowie on our first one, but Ino was new
Speaker 2: to producing and he he in retrospect said, yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: there's I wish I would have known more about how
Speaker 2: to produce a band, you know, when he worked with us.
Speaker 2: And then the next one was Ken Scott, and he
Speaker 2: kind of took our songs apart in a way, in
Speaker 2: a in an unfortunate way because because they were written
Speaker 2: to be played live, we wrote them while we were
Speaker 2: playing in clubs, and then he had us all play
Speaker 2: one at a time to a click and that it
Speaker 2: just didn't destroy the record.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is interesting because I mean he got his
Speaker 1: start with like those early Beatles records, right, and so
Speaker 1: you would you would think his his inclination would be
Speaker 1: to do something live, you know, in the studio.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, maybe he regretted it afterwards. I don't know.
Speaker 2: We never talked again after that, but uh, you know,
Speaker 2: it was like Bob came along and he brought so
Speaker 2: much to what we were doing, and he had the
Speaker 2: right kind of We had the right kind of chemistry.
Speaker 2: Bob was a producer who had been you know, not
Speaker 2: only very successful, but he was always an artist and
Speaker 2: always you know, a technician, and he was the kind
Speaker 2: of guy that it was like magical to work with
Speaker 2: in a way because he had a great person you know,
Speaker 2: he could work with people. He was empathetic in a
Speaker 2: way that was really helpful for us because we were
Speaker 2: like paranoid and negative or were.
Speaker 3: Come off You'd come off of two albums that really
Speaker 3: should have been a lot better and to you artistically, yeah,
Speaker 3: and you knew it, Yeah, and I knew it. My
Speaker 3: secret was to let you be yourselves and to put
Speaker 3: you at a place. And I'm looking back, I'm doing
Speaker 3: some research on perceptive listens now, and I found out
Speaker 3: that by bringing what I was doing naturally, not only
Speaker 3: with Mark but with Stevie and most of my artists
Speaker 3: was to bring them into the control room. And the
Speaker 3: control room was like a musical instrument that you would habit,
Speaker 3: and by bringing them into the control room, we didn't
Speaker 3: have to deal with headphones. With the exception of Alan Myers,
Speaker 3: the drummer, but he had enough leakage out around his
Speaker 3: headphones so that he could hear his drums in space
Speaker 3: as well as what was going on in his head.
Speaker 3: The entire band was in the control room, and by
Speaker 3: listening without headphones, they weren't isolated. I headphones tend to
Speaker 3: isolate people one from the other and separate you from
Speaker 3: the reality. When we brought the band into Howard Siegel
Speaker 3: and I brought the band into the control room and
Speaker 3: ditched the headphones. It's one of the main reasons that
Speaker 3: they were really able to play together.
Speaker 2: I'd say that's true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I know from speaking to you on the
Speaker 1: show previously, you were thinking of freedom of choice. Freedom
Speaker 1: of Choice as DeVos Funk album.
Speaker 2: Well, that that was our concept when we went into it.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, you have to understand we were
Speaker 2: pretty far out there if you look at the way
Speaker 2: we dressed, in the way the kind of songs we
Speaker 2: were writing, and we were a conceptual band. You know,
Speaker 2: we were about ideas first. And you know, we weren't
Speaker 2: writing like about sex and drugs and rock and roll
Speaker 2: so much. You know, it wasn't we didn't have any
Speaker 2: lyrics at where I'm snorting whiskey and drinking cocaine think
Speaker 2: I'm going to go insane, and you know, it's like
Speaker 2: we were kind of anti all that. I don't know,
Speaker 2: it just Bob sunk up with with that really well.
Speaker 2: But we were, yeah, we were thinking, how can we
Speaker 2: make our stuff sound more funky? And we were you know,
Speaker 2: like looking around at who did what and where things
Speaker 2: came from. And when we found out about Bob and
Speaker 2: saw well he'd worked with Stevie, which was like, couldn't
Speaker 2: be any better than that, But he was also this
Speaker 2: genius who created this this instrument that was one of
Speaker 2: a kind and had an imprint on pop music at
Speaker 2: the time. You know, it influenced people even more than
Speaker 2: it actually got to be on the records. It's everybody
Speaker 2: knew about it and everybody and you saw the picture
Speaker 2: of it. It was like an incredible piece of sculpture.
Speaker 2: You know. We sought him out and he was interested,
Speaker 2: lucky for us.
Speaker 1: The dichotomy of that, even still in hindsight all these
Speaker 1: years later, still fascinating to me that you have a
Speaker 1: machine as seemingly, at least to me, experimental as Tonto
Speaker 1: and avant garde as Tonto, and an artist as pop
Speaker 1: as Stevie. You know, or as you know, coming from Motown,
Speaker 1: which is very slick and polished. I mean, I love
Speaker 1: all the Motown stuff, but there's definitely many years there
Speaker 1: was a singular Motown sound, you know. Barry Gordy did
Speaker 1: refer to it as a factory, you know, and so
Speaker 1: a formula It was formulaic, but not in a very
Speaker 1: cool way. But then for Stevie to come out of
Speaker 1: that and then to get paired with this sort of
Speaker 1: avant guard machine that you created, you and Malcolm Cecil,
Speaker 1: is its fascinating still.
Speaker 3: You know. I never I never thought it would end.
Speaker 3: We were really in its own space, that's for sure.
Speaker 3: In working with Mark, I really did want to pay
Speaker 3: attention to the R and B bottom end, which is
Speaker 3: I paid strict attention to that in that recording that
Speaker 3: we did. Freedom of choice to us to pay strict
Speaker 3: attention to the bottom end of the record. Being able
Speaker 3: to work in the control room inside and habit the
Speaker 3: musical instrument itself, because a lot of the sounds we
Speaker 3: made weren't sounds until they fell out of the loud
Speaker 3: speaker one way or another. That the control room itself
Speaker 3: we were in howbiting a musical instrument and I viewed
Speaker 3: it like that. But the other thing that was really
Speaker 3: important to me, where I've really had my success in
Speaker 3: music was because of the political overtones that Diva was
Speaker 3: writing about was something that I really got. I mean,
Speaker 3: I was ahead of the curve nineteen fifty eight. You know,
Speaker 3: I remember Medgar Evers, I remember Martin Luther King, I
Speaker 3: remember John Lewis, I remember the Norman Pettis Bridge. I
Speaker 3: remember little black girls being escorted to school by white
Speaker 3: marshalls with guns. So when I came out of high school,
Speaker 3: I was already the school I went to was really
Speaker 3: sort of based around the awareness of civil rights. So
Speaker 3: the things that really attracted me at music were things
Speaker 3: that had something to do with civil rights and with
Speaker 3: the productive, with the sociological effects of civilization on itself,
Speaker 3: how it ways our civilization is eating itself. We're consuming
Speaker 3: our own our own rubbish in some way right now.
Speaker 3: But what attracted me to the to Devo also was
Speaker 3: the content of the lyrics it had. Like Stevie, we
Speaker 3: were doing things like Living for the City and He's
Speaker 3: Mister Noodle, which was about Richard Nixon. For example, Mark
Speaker 3: and Jerry were writing music about the human condition and
Speaker 3: the prediction of the future, and right now here we
Speaker 3: are in twenty twenty six, and what we were singing
Speaker 3: about the boys were doing in the studio in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty three or four, whatever it was, they nailed it
Speaker 3: right on the right, on the head of the thing.
Speaker 3: I mean there was it was predictive. And we see
Speaker 3: it today that the predictions, the Devotian predictions are coming true.
Speaker 3: How do we how do we stop it? How do
Speaker 3: we change the world again? Can we change it through music?
Speaker 2: I wonder, you know what, when I was twenty nineteen seventy,
Speaker 2: I remember thinking, Ah, I wish I was born in
Speaker 2: the nineteen twentiest, you know, I wish I could have
Speaker 2: been in Europe during that incredible period of art where
Speaker 2: they were Bajas and Surrealism and Dadaism and Futurism and
Speaker 2: all those art movements were happening. I said, I wish
Speaker 2: I would have been around for that. I missed out
Speaker 2: on that. But that was a really dark period that
Speaker 2: was between World War One and World War two, and
Speaker 2: fascism was on the rise. And I feel like when
Speaker 2: DeVos started in the seventies, it was kind of like
Speaker 2: it had come back again, and it created things like
Speaker 2: punk and new wave and electronica music and a lot
Speaker 2: of things. It inspired artists, just like fascism inspired artists
Speaker 2: in the twenties thirties. I think what happened in the
Speaker 2: seventies was because Jerry and I were at a school
Speaker 2: where we were protesting the war in Vietnam and they
Speaker 2: just said, okay, just shoot them, and they shot like
Speaker 2: thirty some kids and killed four of them. And they
Speaker 2: did that at other places around the country and it
Speaker 2: shut everybody down. It's like after that, music turned into
Speaker 2: like this like corporate white rock, where it was like
Speaker 2: it was basically, I'm white, I'm a misogynist, I'm proud
Speaker 2: of it, I'm a conspicuous consumer, you know. And that
Speaker 2: was like the politics of music that or it was disco,
Speaker 2: which was like had beautiful sounds, but like the lyrics
Speaker 2: were all stupid. And Jerry used to go, oh, it's
Speaker 2: like a woman with no brain is how we felt
Speaker 2: about disco because it didn't have a political message to it.
Speaker 2: It was like everything was during the period that punk
Speaker 2: and new way was starting. It was like that and
Speaker 2: I don't know, I'm an old guy now, so so
Speaker 2: like I've been around to see it.
Speaker 3: Notice that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's been so it's like, well, then keep
Speaker 2: your prescription that whatever you're wearing just yet. But but
Speaker 2: you know, I feel like it's on another It's like
Speaker 2: I used to just we used to just talk about
Speaker 2: de evolution and things going down. But the reality is is,
Speaker 2: I think de evolution and evolution both exist and they're
Speaker 2: in constant crisis with each other and conflict. And I
Speaker 2: think this time period is going to expec going to
Speaker 2: create young artists that are that are going to take
Speaker 2: take things from what's going on right now in the world.
Speaker 2: They're going to be inspired by that, and they're going
Speaker 2: to take the new technology. You know, it's like everybody's
Speaker 2: oh Ai AI's evil, but it's also like technology was
Speaker 2: back in the seventies. It was like you could use
Speaker 2: it for good or bad. And I think what's going
Speaker 2: to happen is I think technology and what's happening now
Speaker 2: in the world is going to inspire young artists to
Speaker 2: do artwork that you and I are going to go, dang,
Speaker 2: why didn't I think of that? That's amazing. We're going
Speaker 2: to hear stuff from kids. I think it now is
Speaker 2: like a really amazing time to be a young artist.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think, you know, just talking quickly about AI,
Speaker 3: you know the WGA for example, the writer's skills that
Speaker 3: God forbid you should have at AAI and your dialogue
Speaker 3: and your script and you're writing your manuscript, and there's
Speaker 3: a tremendous amount of fear of people sticking their heads
Speaker 3: in the sand and trying to deny its existence. We
Speaker 3: have to really understand that AI is here, it's not
Speaker 3: going away, and if we're going to use it creatively,
Speaker 3: that's a good thing. But we have to learn how
Speaker 3: to use it and understand it. You know, a lot
Speaker 3: of stuff. What I'm hearing now musically is like AI
Speaker 3: slop is what I call it.
Speaker 1: Even if it's not.
Speaker 3: It's mindless.
Speaker 2: But yeah, but there are people who are.
Speaker 3: Using it creatively in ways that it would not have
Speaker 3: even dawned on me. And I celebrate that. I I
Speaker 3: think that that's a good thing. I think we got
Speaker 3: to take our head out of the sand, understand that
Speaker 3: it's here. I mean, AI does good things in medicine.
Speaker 3: AI does good things in research. It helps me write
Speaker 3: when I'm doing research and I need to know something,
Speaker 3: I have a I have my copilot there. It gives
Speaker 3: gives me information, it educates me. But I think we're
Speaker 3: also you know, the problem with AI and music is,
Speaker 3: you know somebody who wrote one song a month maybe
Speaker 3: or one song every six weeks and sweat it over
Speaker 3: the lyrics and really, you know, did something that was
Speaker 3: heartfelt and poetic. That same guy sitting in his kitchen
Speaker 3: table at the laptop with the headphones on and writing
Speaker 3: five hundred songs in a month and then putting him
Speaker 3: up online and then you know, polluting the atmosphere with
Speaker 3: what I call AI slop, you know, and there's tons
Speaker 3: of it. How do you sort the good, the wheat
Speaker 3: from the chaff after all of that. The other problem
Speaker 3: is that it totally lacks roboto and feel. I mean,
Speaker 3: when you think about it, If you think about it,
Speaker 3: a great conductor coming out on the stage and a
Speaker 3: guy comes out dressed like a penguin with a stick
Speaker 3: and starts waving it around, and suddenly an entire orchestra
Speaker 3: is performing as one instrument. He's deciding where the music
Speaker 3: speeds up, where the music slows down, which is called roboto,
Speaker 3: or where it gets louder and where it gets softer.
Speaker 3: And you begin to realize that that whole orchestra's focused
Speaker 3: on the end of the stick that he's waving around,
Speaker 3: and that his whole emotion is being transmitted to the orchestra,
Speaker 3: and they're playing with tremendous empathy. And that's what we
Speaker 3: connect with. Whether it's that or it's Taylor Swift in
Speaker 3: front of a huge audience or a devo in front
Speaker 3: of two thousand or five thousand people, it's that exchange.
Speaker 3: It's that vibe that we need to have. That is
Speaker 3: the current of sound that we inhabit. I think that
Speaker 3: that really what's going circling way back. But I think that,
Speaker 3: in a way, was what really made that record successful
Speaker 3: was the effect that was played as one instrument. It
Speaker 3: was five people playing together as one instrument, everyone playing
Speaker 3: their place on the keyboard, so to speak.
Speaker 2: You know, Bob, I totally agree with you, especially about
Speaker 2: the orchestra, because I score movies and I score a
Speaker 2: lot of animation, and animation no matter how great it looks,
Speaker 2: it's like if they show a picture of a field,
Speaker 2: there's millions of things happening out in that field, like
Speaker 2: little insects you can't see, but you and the wind
Speaker 2: blowing and leaves growing. If I just write, you know,
Speaker 2: when I write the music, and it's just on my
Speaker 2: sense and using my libraries of like orchestral sounds, and
Speaker 2: it's a real orchestra going rare. If you hear the
Speaker 2: same chord over and over again, everybody, even people that aren't,
Speaker 2: you know, very sophisticated musically, they all can say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's that's electronics. That's that's not real people. Whereas when
Speaker 2: people come into a room, like whether I'm at Abbey
Speaker 2: Road or if I'm in Sony Studios or Fox or wherever,
Speaker 2: these people are coming off the streets and if it
Speaker 2: was raining outside, they're taking off raincoats and setting them
Speaker 2: beside them, and they're setting down their newspapers and their bags,
Speaker 2: and they play and it's like you never know exactly
Speaker 2: what it's going to sound like, because they've all got
Speaker 2: blood going through their veins, they're breathing, they're they're either
Speaker 2: bowing up or down, or they're blowing at different rates
Speaker 2: and things, so it's never the exact same and it's different,
Speaker 2: and it makes the anime looks so much better now
Speaker 2: to me. That's why I don't worry about AI because
Speaker 2: I remember when technology invented electronic drums and synth sounds,
Speaker 2: and we loved all that stuff. But there were people
Speaker 2: that were going to the mall and they would buy
Speaker 2: a portable home Morgan, and they'd hit a button and
Speaker 2: we'd go boom di de boom di di boom, and
Speaker 2: they'd be go, oh, look, and then they'd hit a
Speaker 2: baseline a boom boom, boom boom, and then they'd play
Speaker 2: something over top of it, and they go, look at this,
Speaker 2: I just made up a song, you know, And then
Speaker 2: they go, let's make another one up tomorrow, you know.
Speaker 2: And so I feel like you and I already went
Speaker 2: through that, and we saw that, and we were taking
Speaker 2: that same equipment and we were looking for artistic ways
Speaker 2: to use it.
Speaker 3: I wonder what hop music is going to sound like
Speaker 3: in twenty years. I mean, we're as far away from
Speaker 3: Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman as you can get. Okay,
Speaker 3: Somehow music has evolved over the fifty sixty seventy years
Speaker 3: since Glen Miller, you know, Tommy Dorsey or Bing Crosby.
Speaker 1: I think even you know, you think, you know, go
Speaker 1: back to It's like Louis Armstrong's Hot fives and seven.
Speaker 1: You think about what just happened, that could.
Speaker 3: Think, Yeah, the interesting thing that happened though, it's the
Speaker 3: microphone changed everything. When Bing Crosby could walk out on
Speaker 3: the stage at Radio City Music Hall with a twenty
Speaker 3: five piece dance band orchestra of the big horn section
Speaker 3: and everything else, and they would record it and Bing
Speaker 3: could get to the mic like this and he would
Speaker 3: sing ba ba boo, ba ba boo like that, and
Speaker 3: suddenly that was as loud as the entire orchestra because
Speaker 3: we rearranged the reality right.
Speaker 1: You didn't have to, and we've been and we've been
Speaker 1: re arranging.
Speaker 3: That reality ever since, you know. Uh, But that one microphone.
Speaker 3: That's why the girls were all like going crazy for Bing,
Speaker 3: because suddenly Bing was sitting right next to you and
Speaker 3: you could hear his breath and his teeth and his
Speaker 3: all of that stuff. You could. Suddenly it was like
Speaker 3: an emotional connection, and that whole orchestra blowing their brains
Speaker 3: out in the background was big, was louder than they were.
Speaker 3: And suddenly we discovered the ability to rearrange reality with
Speaker 3: a microphone in recording, and what we were doing in
Speaker 3: the studio. By the time we got to DEVO was
Speaker 3: we were rearranging reality and making sounds that never even
Speaker 3: ever existed in the real world at all. And to
Speaker 3: get Mike to get Mark on the microphone this close,
Speaker 3: you know, whip it good to make that as loud
Speaker 3: as the whole orchestra, the whole band that was us
Speaker 3: rearranging reality.
Speaker 1: DEVO has a very you guys have a DEVO has
Speaker 1: a very unique philosophy in terms of I think your
Speaker 1: view view of the human condition and the way you
Speaker 1: guys presented things, And Robert, I think you also have
Speaker 1: a I'm curious, would you guys consider yourselves technologists or
Speaker 1: humanists or a blend of book because in one way,
Speaker 1: you guys are you both took advantage of technology in
Speaker 1: very unique ways and in very forward thinking ways. But
Speaker 1: in other ways, I think of both you also as
Speaker 1: being deeply concerned about the human condition and experiment.
Speaker 3: I think it's about two things. It's about humanity and empathy.
Speaker 3: It's about the ability to connect your feelings with something
Speaker 3: poetic that means something to people around you that you
Speaker 3: could change the course of their lives by virtue of
Speaker 3: your message. And I think that is about empathy and
Speaker 3: it's about the human condition, and I think that's what
Speaker 3: poetry and art is about, really.
Speaker 1: And taking the advantage of technology in pursuit of that
Speaker 1: is Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, technology to us is a musical instrument. It's no
Speaker 3: different than any other musical instrument in a lot of ways.
Speaker 3: The thing that's different is when Mark plays keyboards or
Speaker 3: synthesizer or keyboards of any kind of massages the medium
Speaker 3: he uses his fingers like this, and the fingers you
Speaker 3: have to have a certain amount of physical dexterity to
Speaker 3: connect your mind to your extremities. Now we're getting to
Speaker 3: a place where we don't need to have physical connection.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you think of Elon and Nouralink, for example,
Speaker 3: Suddenly people are playing video games and we'll start expressing
Speaker 3: themselves purely by thinking exactly. And I think that we're
Speaker 3: beginning to see that starting to happen in a lot
Speaker 3: of ways. Good, it's a bad, I don't know what
Speaker 3: it is, but it's there. We cannot deny the existence
Speaker 3: of the reality of where civilization is going. All we
Speaker 3: can do is hope to do the best we can
Speaker 3: in terms of being a human being, having empathy and
Speaker 3: joy and trying to reach people and touch them in
Speaker 3: some kind of a tender, more than just intellectual way,
Speaker 3: but in some kind of humane embrace.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree with you on that. You know, it's
Speaker 2: like I think the real message of Devo more than
Speaker 2: just things are going down, which it was, you know, now,
Speaker 2: I feel like it's it's part of a yin yang
Speaker 2: of reality. Uh. I feel it was more like humans
Speaker 2: were the one species out of touch with nature. And
Speaker 2: what I think is really important is AI whatever you know,
Speaker 2: medium you use to make your music, if it's just
Speaker 2: you know, like like one rubber band that you're strumming
Speaker 2: or anything in between. I think it's about people need
Speaker 2: to learn how to mutate and not just get stagnated
Speaker 2: and just get frozen, like so many people are frozen
Speaker 2: by the thought of AI. And like social media now
Speaker 2: it's like what's left and what's right are like extreme
Speaker 2: they don't even really represent most of the people that
Speaker 2: lean either direction. They're like the extremists and they're just
Speaker 2: shouting at each other and the rest of us are
Speaker 2: all kind of in the middle, and we're all craving
Speaker 2: common sense.
Speaker 3: There's no common sense that the extremes that's the problem
Speaker 3: we have politically as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so so I just feel like that's part
Speaker 2: of what you know, this this turnover when it when
Speaker 2: it's you know that artists are going to be addressing
Speaker 2: that issue. I feel they'll help lead the way. I think,
Speaker 2: you know, like as it's happened in the past, art
Speaker 2: has has informed people where where politics and you know,
Speaker 2: other mediums. You know, I'm kind of ready for maybe
Speaker 2: it's been a long time, it's been thousands years, but
Speaker 2: maybe white men could just stand over to the side
Speaker 2: a little bit and I'm waiting for women to kind
Speaker 2: of take over the planet. I'm looking for a feminist
Speaker 2: planet that would you know.
Speaker 3: We need some peace and quiet and a hug.
Speaker 2: And we need the part of humanity that's connected to
Speaker 2: nature and that can reconnect. Because I mean, the whole
Speaker 2: idea of like, well we'll just use up everything on
Speaker 2: this planet and then we move to Mars. I'm like, well,
Speaker 2: you better love your your cell phone, because if you
Speaker 2: haven't looked at pictures of Mars, it's very boring there
Speaker 2: and there's not a good reason to want to go there.
Speaker 2: You're going to be in a giant parking lot. We
Speaker 2: need humans to connect more with the natural world.
Speaker 3: The real issue for music now is how to get
Speaker 3: heard distribution. It's not so much the creation as it
Speaker 3: is getting that message out. These guys have been doing
Speaker 3: it for fifty years. They got the formula. People know
Speaker 3: who who Devo is, just like Stevie too. Everyone knows
Speaker 3: who Stevie is. But Stevie, you go out on the
Speaker 3: road and he will play virtually songs that are fifty
Speaker 3: years old, that were his original material, he'll play. He
Speaker 3: can play a whole albusort of the material. The boys go
Speaker 3: out and play stuff off of freedom of choice. Those
Speaker 3: are the old songs. Where are the new songs? Where
Speaker 3: are we going to hear those? How are we going
Speaker 3: to change the culture again? How do we get heard?
Speaker 3: I mean, you go to a record company now and live.
Speaker 3: Guy says, eh, well this is okay, but how many
Speaker 3: clicks do you have? You know, it's not about the
Speaker 3: music anymore. It's about trying to get heard and to
Speaker 3: do something that's meaningful, to touch people emotionally physically.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after this break. I do wonder
Speaker 1: not I mean, I don't want to get too hemmed
Speaker 1: up by a conversation about technology and AI and things
Speaker 1: like this. But to your earlier point about being a
Speaker 1: little optimistic about AI, I think where I get pessimistic
Speaker 1: about it is around the specific point you're making is
Speaker 1: that sometimes it feels like whereas before, back to bing
Speaker 1: crosby example, the invention of certain kinds of microphones allowed
Speaker 1: crooning to become a style of music and become a
Speaker 1: phenomenon amongst, you know, in popular music. All these years later,
Speaker 1: I almost wonder if we've gotten to the point where
Speaker 1: the tail now wags the dog, where music is in
Speaker 1: service of technology more often than technology is in service
Speaker 1: of music.
Speaker 3: I think that technology is our musical instruments. I think
Speaker 3: technology drives to the RT. I've said it a thousand times.
Speaker 3: If I said at once, our technology really does drive
Speaker 3: how we create and what we create and the space
Speaker 3: that we live in. I mean, we're here in Mark's studio,
Speaker 3: which is a glorious space. You guys got to go
Speaker 3: see it upstairs, but it's a marvel of modern technology.
Speaker 3: I think there's certain things that have come down the
Speaker 3: pike in some ways that have been destructive. I think
Speaker 3: that we moved into dance music, for example, and got
Speaker 3: locked into the sequencer and suddenly everything that had backbeat
Speaker 3: and feel she got transmitted to the kick drum and
Speaker 3: the downbeat versus the backbeat. And I think that that
Speaker 3: really sort of changed music a lot, and I think
Speaker 3: not for the better, because it's turned a lot of
Speaker 3: dance music instead of dance music, it's become militant. Four
Speaker 3: on the floor is kind of militancy, and I find that,
Speaker 3: you know, people want to dance to marching music. But
Speaker 3: I think that really makes a real record happen. Like,
Speaker 3: for example, we're in the studio. When we were working together,
Speaker 3: there was a mark. The band had a marvelous drummers
Speaker 3: name was Alan Myers and I'll never forget them. We
Speaker 3: used to call mister TikTok. That guy could really, you know,
Speaker 3: settle the groove. But when he's but when the band
Speaker 3: was going from a verse to a chorus or to
Speaker 3: a transition to another section, he knew when to hold
Speaker 3: it back, he knew when to speed it up. That
Speaker 3: there was a degree of motion and his playing and
Speaker 3: what separates him from the machine is that motion.
Speaker 1: Just to go back a bit, you first saw Devo
Speaker 1: before that, even their first album came out right.
Speaker 3: I saw them at the Starwood. I was up in
Speaker 3: the balcony with all the executives from the record companies.
Speaker 3: That you could tell they were executives from record companies
Speaker 3: because they were all wearing these letter jackets, you know,
Speaker 3: and the thing. And they were all honkering around. Think
Speaker 3: this one's good Disband's good disband, isn't you know. Let's
Speaker 3: go have some more dirves in a little and you know,
Speaker 3: And we'd go to the back room at the Starwood
Speaker 3: and they'd honk around. And I was working as a
Speaker 3: chief engineer of the record plant at the time, consulting
Speaker 3: chief engineer. I was more or less a sonic matre d.
Speaker 3: I was taking in what bands. Big bands came into
Speaker 3: the record plant, I kind of hold their hand and
Speaker 3: helped them get situated and so forth. So it was
Speaker 3: an interesting thing. But I also had access to the studio.
Speaker 3: If I wanted to do demos or do something recording,
Speaker 3: I could always get the free time. So I was
Speaker 3: up there in the store. Would always scattered around to
Speaker 3: see what was going on. And that was the first
Speaker 3: time I saw you guys, and I knew then that
Speaker 3: I liked it. And one thing led to another, and
Speaker 3: they arrived in the parking lot and I'll tell you
Speaker 3: something took the studio by storm. They would normally these
Speaker 3: people are non plussed by anything. These guys came in
Speaker 3: the parking lot with hoses up their nose and held
Speaker 3: it on and the coveralls and boots and stuff, and
Speaker 3: the people would completely lost their minds. Right, I said,
Speaker 3: I love this. This is for me.
Speaker 2: We were in the middle of a day of filming
Speaker 2: with Neil Young for his movie Human Highway, and so
Speaker 2: we had our costume. So we just rather than take
Speaker 2: everything apart and clean our faces off, we just came
Speaker 2: over and did it and then went back and we
Speaker 2: were on the set again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but they turned, they turned the studio. We took
Speaker 3: about a tour. Everybody saw it, and everybody lost their minds.
Speaker 3: It was fucking crazy. But you know something, that's what
Speaker 3: it endeared needed, these guys. And here we are. Mark
Speaker 3: and I have been friends now for what fifty.
Speaker 2: Years something like that? Yeah, yeah, maybe more of.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's been a long wonderful journey. You know. It's uh,
Speaker 3: we both d our way in different ways, and we've
Speaker 3: had a good fortune of having a great friendship I'm
Speaker 3: just glad we're still here. I hope I live in another
Speaker 3: twenty years of eighty five now. But if I could,
Speaker 3: well it's gonna go on what I'm ninety five, I
Speaker 3: would wonder where the where our music is? Is it
Speaker 3: gonna still be eight bars of this and eight bars
Speaker 3: of that, three and a half minutes of noise making
Speaker 3: with words over the top? Or are we going to
Speaker 3: go somewhere better, bigger, different? Yeah, that's what I really
Speaker 3: hope to see. Mark is still cutting the front edge
Speaker 3: of it. He's still gnawing away at it. I admire
Speaker 3: that in you. I really do your brave soul. I
Speaker 3: let's say, I.
Speaker 1: Guess who sought out who about it? Did Devo look for?
Speaker 2: We were looking for Margo, for somebody like a margle Off,
Speaker 2: and then we found Margo Off. He became the guy
Speaker 2: that we wanted to meet. And you're talking about business manager?
Speaker 2: Did we have the same business managers?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: We had the same okay, And so he made the
Speaker 2: connection for us.
Speaker 3: Were you I was just bobbing around, bobbing around, being
Speaker 3: bob being bob.
Speaker 1: YEA how aware of like any of those early records
Speaker 1: that he did or the records before he worked with
Speaker 1: you guys, were I mean of the Stevie records or
Speaker 1: the Isley Brothers records, even lowthor in the hand people like,
Speaker 1: were any of those records in your orbit?
Speaker 2: Sure, that's all the stuff that made us want to
Speaker 2: find him, because we'd see his name on all these
Speaker 2: records that were things that we related to, And so
Speaker 2: that's what made us look for him and try to
Speaker 2: figure out, how do we talk to this guy? Would
Speaker 2: he even be interested in working with somebody like we
Speaker 2: weren't sure what he would be like or you know,
Speaker 2: And so we met him and then we were like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is perfect. This is going to be after we'd
Speaker 2: had kind of a couple swinging Missus where we left
Speaker 2: feeling like I wish we could have wish we could
Speaker 2: do that again. This is the album that we never
Speaker 2: felt like that about. Freedom of Choice was the first
Speaker 2: album that we wrote after we had moved to California.
Speaker 2: And Yeah, it was interesting. We were in this little
Speaker 2: room on I think Seward where's SI R It's on?
Speaker 3: Yeah, right around the corner for Motown. Yeah, maybe the
Speaker 3: oral was flicking off and maybe Studio Motown's LA offices
Speaker 3: were directly across the street on the corner.
Speaker 2: Yeah, writing that album was interesting because we did it
Speaker 2: in the room about the size of this. That was
Speaker 2: a storefront that they'd covered up the window and attached
Speaker 2: to that was a big room that was a grocery store,
Speaker 2: had been a grocery store and was later going to
Speaker 2: become Amba Records. And then I don't know what it
Speaker 2: is now because I think Amiba moved out, but apartments.
Speaker 2: We remember what's their name, Pink Floyd. They were They
Speaker 2: had the big room and they were rehearsing for a
Speaker 2: tour and they had three semi trucks and they wanted
Speaker 2: to go down to two semi trucks, and so they
Speaker 2: were throwing stuff away like old anvil cases and and
Speaker 2: lights and stuff, and they set a on dealing on
Speaker 2: top of the trash heap, and I was just you know,
Speaker 2: watching them because you know, they didn't know who we were.
Speaker 2: They were like big and we were just like nobody.
Speaker 2: And when they put it on the trash heap, I said, Hey,
Speaker 2: what are you guys going to do with that? And
Speaker 2: they said, I said you want it? I go yeah,
Speaker 2: And so I got this incredible We ended up using
Speaker 2: it on something. I can't remember which song, but we
Speaker 2: we put it on something.
Speaker 1: Do you know what it ended up on? Do you
Speaker 1: know which song?
Speaker 3: Or don't remember? I probably remember tonight we.
Speaker 2: We you know, we ended up meeting after I think
Speaker 2: we'd already finished writing this stuff, or we were pretty
Speaker 2: far through by the time.
Speaker 3: I went a couple of rehearsals made some suggestions, but
Speaker 3: seeing them in the studio in the rehearsal space gave
Speaker 3: me a lot of ideas on what I knew when
Speaker 3: I saw them that they were the ideal candidates to
Speaker 3: bring into the control room. And because the record plant
Speaker 3: had big quad monitors, so you have to understand this
Speaker 3: was a time when the studios were moving toward quadraphonic
Speaker 3: and that meant speakers in the back. They had come
Speaker 3: up with a system called san sui QS was supposed
Speaker 3: to be able to put quad quadraphonic music quadraphonias. I
Speaker 3: think somebody one artists did, but quadraph and they were
Speaker 3: supposed to be able to put quad sound and vinyl.
Speaker 3: Well that was a miserable failure, but a lot of
Speaker 3: people tried to do it, and of course the record
Speaker 3: plant was very keen being that there were not only
Speaker 3: a fantasy, a psychedel fantasy of Gary Kelgrin's. But the
Speaker 3: technology level at that studio was pretty amazing. They built
Speaker 3: some QUAD rooms, so when we came on board with Steve,
Speaker 3: we had these QUAD spaces, and when I started working
Speaker 3: with the Boys, for example, I was monitoring in QUAD
Speaker 3: in the control room. We could never get it into
Speaker 3: vinyl the right way, and basically QUAD failed. People didn't
Speaker 3: want to buy a separate amplifier for the back speakers,
Speaker 3: and there's a lot of questions about it, and if
Speaker 3: you had a wife used to get the subwuffer out
Speaker 3: of the fireplace and were out from under the piano,
Speaker 3: and it became you know, if you were wealthy, you
Speaker 3: could have quad sound in your home theater. But it
Speaker 3: never really took off. But where really took off and
Speaker 3: where we really used it was monitoring in the control room,
Speaker 3: where I could monitor in QUAD and really self realized
Speaker 3: we didn't need to use earphones because we could be
Speaker 3: we can get all the cross talk, the right stuff
Speaker 3: come out of the right speaker going into your left
Speaker 3: ear and vice versa, and that was really what changed
Speaker 3: Devo's voice. I was able and they were able to
Speaker 3: really hear what was going on. The important thing about
Speaker 3: devo and recording in the studio is to keep it simple.
Speaker 3: Knock off the overdubbing everywhere you can, stop orchestrating it.
Speaker 3: Stop making it a Robert Margoleft record, Make it a
Speaker 3: Devo record. The thing sometimes the producer's best thing is
Speaker 3: to stay behind the fucking curtain.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: I don't want the record to sound like, oh, that's
Speaker 3: a Robert Margolef record. I want it to be a
Speaker 3: Devo record. I wanted to be a Stevie Wonder record.
Speaker 1: I think he succeeded in that and all it almost
Speaker 1: all respects, because.
Speaker 3: You know, looking back on it, I realized how much
Speaker 3: how we listen is how it affects the recordings. And
Speaker 3: that's what separates the men from the boys in terms
Speaker 3: of making great recordings, in my opinion, especially pop records.
Speaker 3: But sooner or later you're going to get away from
Speaker 3: those eight bars of this and eight bars of that.
Speaker 3: I want to see where you go with your film writing.
Speaker 3: That's the interesting stuff.
Speaker 2: Well, maybe I should play some things.
Speaker 3: I'd be I'm all ears all the time for you,
Speaker 3: my friend. Okay, I would love to go back in
Speaker 3: the studio and really create something crazy with you and Jerry.
Speaker 1: That would be great fun with divover make another record
Speaker 1: or is that I'm trying to encourage it and I'm
Speaker 1: using different lures to get us there.
Speaker 2: So we'll see what happens. You never know, Help you succeed,
Speaker 2: hope you succeed. You know. Just when we worked with him,
Speaker 2: it was a time before automation. I still love analog
Speaker 2: sense and all that. But we'd get our settings and
Speaker 2: we'd record them, you know, like on Thursday night, and
Speaker 2: then Friday morning we'd come in and listen to it
Speaker 2: and go, yeah, what if I wish we would have
Speaker 2: done this a little different, you know on the sound
Speaker 2: of the bass and stuff. And that's Bob solved that
Speaker 2: problem by teaching us how to send like a sense
Speaker 2: into three different outputs, for instance, or like put an
Speaker 2: amp up in one room that's clean, a namp up
Speaker 2: that's distorted in another room, and then a board sound
Speaker 2: and then you could the next day you could change
Speaker 2: things just a little bit. And that was one of
Speaker 2: the things that frustrated us with recording was up until then,
Speaker 2: so he was he taught us like really important things
Speaker 2: back then.
Speaker 1: So you would make a distorted speaker, a clean speaker,
Speaker 1: and then have one channel going right into the board.
Speaker 1: You have more of a dry sound and then be
Speaker 1: able to play with the next day.
Speaker 2: After because analogs, since you know, they didn't sound exactly
Speaker 2: the same from day to day. You plug them in
Speaker 2: again and they're warming up and you're playing it and
Speaker 2: it sounds different than when it gets fully warmed up.
Speaker 2: And there wasn't there just wasn't automation back then.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we had what we called what I called armstrong automation,
Speaker 3: which is like doing it by hand. Yeah, that's but
Speaker 3: there's something to be said for that, and I missed that.
Speaker 3: Now you know, we have digitalists, and that I mean
Speaker 3: when we were mixing, for example, and we were at
Speaker 3: six o'clock in the morning and we still weren't where
Speaker 3: we wanted to be, we put a big piece of
Speaker 3: tape across basking tape across the console. Don't touch up nub. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's more than me jobs worth, right, It's that we
Speaker 3: had to come back and we thought we walked out
Speaker 3: of the room and I just headed out to Malibu
Speaker 3: and flying along the freeway at six in the morning. Boy,
Speaker 3: that was fucking terrific. It sounded wonderful. Nothing was touching.
Speaker 3: We'd come back in the room and we put it
Speaker 3: up and I'd expect to be wow. And I said
Speaker 3: to myself, dang, sounds like shit. You know, yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: you know so. And then we'd be juggling it around
Speaker 3: for another six hours.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Before there was then the.
Speaker 3: Jerry Him and Jerry would go out in the parking
Speaker 3: lot and argue with each other this, that and the
Speaker 3: other thing right, And I said, oh, man, what did
Speaker 3: I do this time? You know it was it was
Speaker 3: circus man.
Speaker 2: But you but you taught us away to to bypass
Speaker 2: out with with the multiple multi channel recording. You know,
Speaker 2: there was only five of us and you had twenty
Speaker 2: four tracks on a on a two inch tape.
Speaker 3: I had a wonderful time making that record. I really
Speaker 3: loved it.
Speaker 1: Were you aware of the kind of I guess. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know how truly precarious it was, but it
Speaker 1: seemed like you guys were kind of in trouble a
Speaker 1: bit with the label because of what they felt were
Speaker 1: perceived back of sales in the first two You know.
Speaker 2: I think David Bowie kind of pushed Warner Brothers into
Speaker 2: signing us in the first place because he wanted to
Speaker 2: He wanted to then sign us to Beauley Brothers, which
Speaker 2: was his production company, and we didn't do that because
Speaker 2: it was like a bad It was a terrible deal.
Speaker 2: His lawyer was giving us. It was like we were
Speaker 2: going to give away like fifty percent of everything that
Speaker 2: we'd ever done and to this and I was like, well, no,
Speaker 2: that's not going to work. But he kind of got
Speaker 2: him to sign us, and then you know, the first
Speaker 2: couple albums came out, and although we'd been on Saturday
Speaker 2: Night Live, it was only college stations that were playing
Speaker 2: our music. In the US and Europe it was different.
Speaker 2: We had, like before we even had our first album out,
Speaker 2: we had off of our demos, we had four different
Speaker 2: songs going to the top ten, three of them number
Speaker 2: one in different countries in Europe. But that meant nothing
Speaker 2: in the US because US was the BMF giant monster
Speaker 2: for record sales, and you know, Europe was just tiny
Speaker 2: compared to that, so they didn't They were just hoping
Speaker 2: that something would happen with the with the records, and
Speaker 2: it took the third album for for something to get
Speaker 2: on on the radio in the US.
Speaker 1: Did you feel that the pressure or did you not
Speaker 1: page Like, did you care? Did you not care that
Speaker 1: pressure was coming from the label to yees?
Speaker 2: And though I had to try to not care about
Speaker 2: it because because for me, I was just thinking, you
Speaker 2: know what, I'm living such an amazing life right now
Speaker 2: that I get to write music and put it on
Speaker 2: a record and go out and play places. I just
Speaker 2: felt blessed that I was in the position I was in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know with Stevie, there were a lot of
Speaker 1: interesting interactions with the with the label, with Motown that
Speaker 1: you had stepping into this situation.
Speaker 2: Well, he was feeding Motown, you know, because everybody if
Speaker 2: he had a hit song, that made a difference. You know,
Speaker 2: for everybody that worked at the record company, Divo was
Speaker 2: just so far down the chain that you know, we
Speaker 2: were nobody cared about us.
Speaker 3: But did they know you guys cut a mighty bow
Speaker 3: wave and look how look how their stuff has lasted,
Speaker 3: and how you're still here and still on stage. I
Speaker 3: think that's absolutely remarkable, and I really support you for that.
Speaker 3: I think that you are really a social mover and
Speaker 3: you've brought a lot to music and to people and
Speaker 3: all I want to do is see it continue to happen. Thanks,
Speaker 3: And I absolutely loved writing a book. It was strange
Speaker 3: shaping sounds. I really was shaping sounds. I just felt
Speaker 3: that I was doing something that was important to I
Speaker 3: really have to say it's important, and what I'm really
Speaker 3: enjoying now is giving it away and actually the stories
Speaker 3: maybe change people thinking about the creative act. I'm writing
Speaker 3: about perception and hearing right now. I'm going to write
Speaker 3: a book about it. And it's amazing what goes in
Speaker 3: those little holes in the sides of our head and
Speaker 3: what's really going in going in there, and how it
Speaker 3: affects our brains. We've had music since the cave time
Speaker 3: times I would I just I'm just eager to see
Speaker 3: where it's gonna go next. And I know that I'm
Speaker 3: sort of one of those senior guys. Now I'm not
Speaker 3: twenty years old anymore, although I feel I am in
Speaker 3: my head until I get try to stand up. Then
Speaker 3: I really realize I'm a d five and not nineteen.
Speaker 3: But I'm still a boy in my brain.
Speaker 2: Yeah you know, so are you? Yes, there's a part
Speaker 2: of us that that defies the downward spiral of the
Speaker 2: aging process, the humiliation of getting older.
Speaker 3: I still feel immortal at your age, I'm sure.
Speaker 1: Sort of, sort of, not quite. I still think I'm
Speaker 1: twenty one and I wake up and realize them.
Speaker 2: Well, keep that thought in your head.
Speaker 1: No, well, you know, but then I get my older daughter.
Speaker 1: I like my daughters are closer to twenty one than I.
Speaker 2: That's a little we're we're kind of grousing a little
Speaker 2: bit about AI here, but at the same time, we're
Speaker 2: hoping it makes us twenty one again, aren't we absolute.
Speaker 2: I'm ready for that. I'd tried it out again.
Speaker 3: Mark is doing something really interesting right now. It's defies explanation.
Speaker 3: But the last time I in this room, there were
Speaker 3: fog horns, air horns, compressors, all kinds of things, making
Speaker 3: pneumatic music with the bellows electric bellows like from a
Speaker 3: player piano that would power up all that stuff. And
Speaker 3: he was making music with instruments that were totally foreign
Speaker 3: to what you would consider a musical instrument. It was
Speaker 3: a whole new acoustical kind of living creature. I really
Speaker 3: had wanted to go out there to see him do it.
Speaker 3: But he's going to some really exciting and different places now.
Speaker 3: Because he has the liberty to do it. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: I think that that is a great gift that he's
Speaker 3: earned to be able to do that kind of stuff,
Speaker 3: and I admire it, I really do. I want to
Speaker 3: play in that sandbox. I want to bring my bucket
Speaker 3: and shovel my bib overalls and down and do some stuff.
Speaker 2: Well, careful what you say, because.
Speaker 3: I'm ready, boy. I like this stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, after this last break, we'll be back with more
Speaker 1: from Robert and Mark. I'm thinking about the work you
Speaker 1: guys did, the fact that you guys did whip it.
Speaker 1: You know that you were able to create a signature
Speaker 1: song for the band, you know, I mean I don't.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you guys think it's going to be like
Speaker 1: the hit it was when you created it, right, I
Speaker 1: don't know what.
Speaker 2: We thought it was when we created it. It was
Speaker 2: kind of like the lyrics were kind of directed towards
Speaker 2: Jimmy Carter, but they were also kind of in a
Speaker 2: Thomas Pinsion style. I don't know if you ever read
Speaker 2: Gravity's Rainbow, but there's like, you have this really complicated
Speaker 2: story going on, and then all of a sudden, somebody
Speaker 2: will look out a window and they'll they'll watch some
Speaker 2: little kids playing on the street and they're just singing
Speaker 2: a nursery song that goes on for a couple pages
Speaker 2: in Gravity's Rainbow. Then it goes back into this really
Speaker 2: intense story, and we kind of liked that. I think
Speaker 2: that's what we were thinking about at the time, was
Speaker 2: something like that, and we didn't really we didn't really
Speaker 2: think it would be a hit song. We thought a
Speaker 2: matter of fact, Warner Brothers thought Girl You Want was
Speaker 2: going to be the song that would get on the radio,
Speaker 2: and they put that out first, and then it was
Speaker 2: somebody that programmed discos in Florida that heard whip it
Speaker 2: and thought, oh, that would sound good on a dance floor,
Speaker 2: and they started adding it and everybody picked it up,
Speaker 2: and then it happened that a way.
Speaker 3: It had the energy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it had the right energy. But for me when
Speaker 2: we first came out here, before we came out to
Speaker 2: California and we were first just pure artists creating ideas
Speaker 2: and music, I was imagining something because I was so
Speaker 2: into the twenties, nineteen twenties, nineteen thirties in Europe. We
Speaker 2: were thinking, oh, we're gonna have like a cabaret or
Speaker 2: we're gonna have a club that we play at and
Speaker 2: it'll be theatrical and it'll be you know this extreme music.
Speaker 3: Three penny opera.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it was yeah, and we thought of what
Speaker 2: we were doing was much more extreme. But then when
Speaker 2: we started playing places and we used to sound a
Speaker 2: lot more like Captain Beefheart meets an Italian sci fi movie.
Speaker 2: And in Ohio at that time period in the early seventies,
Speaker 2: people were just like they were coming out of factories
Speaker 2: and they wanted to go to a bar, have a
Speaker 2: drink and listen to the music that they heard on
Speaker 2: the radio live. And they didn't want to hear new music,
Speaker 2: and they didn't want to hear political music, and they
Speaker 2: didn't want to hear weirdo music where things like Jockohomo
Speaker 2: or mongoloid, they didn't want to hear that stuff. And
Speaker 2: so we were thinking, well, what are we going to do,
Speaker 2: and we thought we thought subversion was the way to
Speaker 2: get in, and we thought, yeah, we have to do
Speaker 2: it like Madison Avenue does it, where they they tricked
Speaker 2: people in the eating things and buying cars that are
Speaker 2: terrible and wearing clothes that look stupid, and then people
Speaker 2: feeling proud of it. We thought, well, we'll use their techniques,
Speaker 2: but we'll just have a better product that we're selling.
Speaker 2: And so we were looking for what would be our
Speaker 2: song that would lure people in, and Whippet was exactly that,
Speaker 2: because people would buy the album and then they'd hear
Speaker 2: the song freedom of Choice is what you've got, freedom thrum,
Speaker 2: choice is what you want, and then they go what
Speaker 2: does that mean?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: And so it was the song that got people to
Speaker 2: listen to us that otherwise would have just gone no.
Speaker 1: I imagine though, having a hit like that must have been
Speaker 1: exciting for not only because it seems almost impossible to
Speaker 1: get something a hit of that magnitude, but it also
Speaker 1: seems like it could be a bit a little stifling.
Speaker 2: Well, you know what happens then, is then when you
Speaker 2: do your next album, a record company that had totally
Speaker 2: just we're just waiting for you to up your five
Speaker 2: album deal and get lost, all of a sudden, they
Speaker 2: were like sticking their heads in the door, going, hey,
Speaker 2: how's it going. Yeah, whatever you do.
Speaker 3: The letter jackets as I call them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they go, just make sure you do another whip
Speaker 2: it And we'd be like, okay, Well, We don't even
Speaker 2: know how we did that one, so don't you know,
Speaker 2: it was just kind of it was just kind of accidental. Anyhow, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that was an interesting record.
Speaker 3: I remember recording the whip Crack in the hall Howard Siegel,
Speaker 3: God bless them, she's gone now. But we were working together.
Speaker 3: He was the engineering partner, and he'd be running up
Speaker 3: and down the hall at the record plant. We had
Speaker 3: this big, long hallway between the studios and the canteen
Speaker 3: and stuff. We had microphones down at the end of
Speaker 3: the hall, and I think you and Jerry were cracking
Speaker 3: the whip. I said, let me try it, and I
Speaker 3: cracked it and cracked myself in the face, and I
Speaker 3: sort of gave up. But you know, we weren't making
Speaker 3: There was no such thing as sampling or you cracked
Speaker 3: this whip, or let's do whip crack from this library
Speaker 3: or that louck. We had to do everything ourselves, and
Speaker 3: then we had to fly everything in because there's no stores,
Speaker 3: there's no digital anything, right, right, So I remember us
Speaker 3: flying all those whip cracks and then over dubbing stuff
Speaker 3: on top of it and doing it. It was like a
Speaker 3: crazy bunch of alchemists. Yeah, we were completely nuts.
Speaker 2: We were one step ahead of the digital sampling where
Speaker 2: you could like do something like that and then have
Speaker 2: it on a key and play it later. So that
Speaker 2: came a few years later.
Speaker 1: You guys actually had to crack it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we had to crack the whip.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we had a real whip, but that we had
Speaker 2: to take turns whipping each other. It was awful, you know.
Speaker 3: It's like, yeah, chasing each other around in the parking
Speaker 3: lot with the bowl whip. You know, the things that
Speaker 3: really are worthwhile stick to stick out. And when you
Speaker 3: think about freedom of choice in general, that record really
Speaker 3: has lasted.
Speaker 2: Weren't an interesting time, Bob. It's like, you know, it's
Speaker 2: like kids now they have these phones where they go, Okay,
Speaker 2: I like this band, who did who influenced them? And
Speaker 2: then they go, oh, Nirvana, And then they check out
Speaker 2: Nirvana and then they go, well who influenced them? And
Speaker 2: they go, oh, they did covers of Devo songs and
Speaker 2: they were big fans of Devo and so then when
Speaker 2: they come to our shows they know the lyrics. It's like,
Speaker 2: I got kids out there that are singing along with me,
Speaker 2: and it's kind of it's kind of an interesting time.
Speaker 1: What about the music videos? Was there any at any
Speaker 1: point when you guys were making the albums you guys
Speaker 1: ever talk about how you wanted to present things visually.
Speaker 2: Or always oftentimes we had an idea. We would have
Speaker 2: an idea for something in a film, and then we'd say, well,
Speaker 2: let's write a song so we can do that. Whip
Speaker 2: It was almost kind of like that because we'd found
Speaker 2: some magazine that had some guy that was doing a
Speaker 2: whip tease and he was like, he was from Las
Speaker 2: Vegas and he would whip pieces of the clothes of
Speaker 2: his wife off, and we were like, what the hell
Speaker 2: is that? You know, we thought that was kind of
Speaker 2: but that got us thinking about whip it. Whipping it.
Speaker 3: And Mark is a fine artist as well as being
Speaker 3: a musician, and a highly accomplished fine artist, I might add,
Speaker 3: I think that we saw that see that energy, and
Speaker 3: also Jerry also a filmmaker as well as being a musician.
Speaker 3: I think we see a lot of that kind of
Speaker 3: energy in their work. And it's always been Devo has
Speaker 3: always been a visual, visual band.
Speaker 1: Which would have been really appealing to you. I imagine
Speaker 1: it would have been one of the things that we've.
Speaker 3: Come from photography as well.
Speaker 2: And right you were doing films like with Edi Edgwick.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Chile, Manhattan, Yeah, you were doing like it was.
Speaker 3: It was a psychedelic time, you know that. In the
Speaker 3: studio of the Record Plant was just an amazing place
Speaker 3: to work. It was really a fantasy of Gary Kelgren's
Speaker 3: who just passed away. It was a sort of wrote
Speaker 3: the story of the Record Plant, which was a psychedelic
Speaker 3: adventure par excellence. And inside that's akadelic space, and the
Speaker 3: place was organic and free, and once you got past
Speaker 3: the locked front door, you were in your own space.
Speaker 3: You were you could be who you were. Musicians just
Speaker 3: used to come down there at night, even if they
Speaker 3: weren't recording at that time, just to spend some time
Speaker 3: in the canteen and play with the pinball machine or
Speaker 3: stop into someone's session. It was a very closed and
Speaker 3: very safe place to work. And the boys could really
Speaker 3: be themselves there. And it wasn't a bunch of guys
Speaker 3: running around with short sleeve white shirts with pencil protectors.
Speaker 3: I mean, we're all there. There was a jacuzzi, people
Speaker 3: were easy, the pinballs machine were running. Stevie was learning
Speaker 3: how to play air hockey, and everybody said, oh, man,
Speaker 3: he's playing air hockey. Is he really blind? You know,
Speaker 3: because he could hear the puck moving on the table.
Speaker 3: You know, that's amazing, and he you know, the place
Speaker 3: was just a super permissive and very There were no
Speaker 3: sharp edges at the record Place in anyway, and I
Speaker 3: think it really stoked the boy's creativity.
Speaker 1: It.
Speaker 3: I think the studio itself was a musical instrument inhabited
Speaker 3: by many musicians at the same time. People used to
Speaker 3: walk into each other's sessions and feel perfectly free to
Speaker 3: be who they were.
Speaker 2: We shared our room with we we used the room
Speaker 2: at night when it was cheaper, but during the day,
Speaker 2: little Richard had had our room, and so we'd show
Speaker 2: up and he'd be leaving, and he always had good
Speaker 2: stories like, well, you know who ripped me off? You know,
Speaker 2: I'm black? That he had He was like really funny
Speaker 2: to listen to. But it was good energy, you know,
Speaker 2: to share a room with him.
Speaker 1: Did you ever hear what he was doing in there?
Speaker 2: Yeah? We heard, we heard his music.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what was he up to with that time?
Speaker 3: I'll tell you something. Those are days that it'll never
Speaker 3: be repeated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, boy, were they something else?
Speaker 3: I'll tell you. But here we are with this.
Speaker 1: I want to gloss over a little. You guys said, wait,
Speaker 1: you're sharing a room a little rich insanity to me. Well,
Speaker 1: I got to be phone friends with little Richard right
Speaker 1: before we die. Okay, just talking on the phone was
Speaker 1: bizarre enough, because you would just refer himself as mister
Speaker 1: Pennyman and would refer to Little Richard as a separate entity.
Speaker 2: Oh that's pretty good. I could see that. Well, little Richard,
Speaker 2: it's not an incredible.
Speaker 3: Well you know, wouldn't call him little hey, little How
Speaker 3: you doing you? Oh, mister h.
Speaker 1: Who were some of the other great characters that came
Speaker 1: through there while you were there? Oh?
Speaker 2: Everybody, everybody.
Speaker 3: All the eagles came through The Hotel California is written
Speaker 3: about the record plant that is the Hotel California.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I used to call them the beagles and they
Speaker 3: get all upset with me. That was very sacrilegious.
Speaker 1: It's a wild time at different times.
Speaker 3: I remember when we were recording she get the girl,
Speaker 3: the girl you want, Mark, She's just the girl? Yeah,
Speaker 3: she get the girl, right, Mark, She's just a girl. Yeah,
Speaker 3: she just a girl.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: You would always swallow the sd of just I think
Speaker 3: we did it one hundred times.
Speaker 1: Well, thanks for making the record, guys, and thanks for
Speaker 1: time to talk about it and write about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well it's done now, it's over the edge.
Speaker 1: It's really good. It's really good. And I can't wait
Speaker 1: to hear it, you know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Like the book's great. I'd love I can't wait to
Speaker 2: hear it. Maybe we'll maybe we'll write a score to
Speaker 2: go behind it. How long is the the book?
Speaker 3: The book is about ten hours.
Speaker 2: We could do it.
Speaker 3: Wow, we'll score it.
Speaker 2: We'll score it.
Speaker 1: Amazing.
Speaker 3: I would love to make another DeVault kind of whip
Speaker 3: it with you, guys. You know, you never know one
Speaker 3: record up who knows, don't, don't say nothing of Our
Speaker 3: friendship has lasted a long time, and that's for the
Speaker 3: great reason, and I'm just glad it has.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed that Common Station, be sure to check
Speaker 1: out Robert Margelov's new audiobook Shaping Sounds, Stevie Wonder debo,
Speaker 1: The Sink Revolution in My Life Behind Music, Use Code
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Speaker 1: Our theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond. Shot
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