Speaker 1: Pushkin, the lead singer and keyboardist for Devo, Mark Mothersbaw
Speaker 1: is an avant garde new wave pioneer. Although critics often
Speaker 1: classified Devo as a joke band, the akron Ohio art
Speaker 1: punk's ethos was created in response to a very serious event,
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventy massacre at their college, Kent State. Following
Speaker 1: the shooting, the band took on the name Divo, short
Speaker 1: for what they felt was organized society's de evolution. Throughout
Speaker 1: the seventies and eighties, Devo helped lay the groundwork for
Speaker 1: diy anti establishment bands by releasing bizarre and left of
Speaker 1: center music and conceptual films that helped usher in the
Speaker 1: music video revolution. In addition to his work with Devo,
Speaker 1: Mark Mother's Law also had a long and successful career
Speaker 1: scoring for film and TV. His credits include Pee Wee's
Speaker 1: play House, The Rugrats TV Show, and movies, and he
Speaker 1: scored several classic Wes Anderson directed films, including The Royal,
Speaker 1: Tenenbaumbs and Rushmore. On today's episode, I talked to Mark
Speaker 1: Mother's Bop about how he developed his quirky sensibility as
Speaker 1: one of five kids growing up in a chaotic household
Speaker 1: that included exotic animals. Mark also tells a story about
Speaker 1: the time Richard Branson suggested that Johnny Rotten joined Devo
Speaker 1: right after the Sex Pistols had broken up. This is
Speaker 1: broken record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Mitchman.
Speaker 1: Here's my conversation with Mark mothers VA. How you doing,
Speaker 1: I'm good.
Speaker 2: How are you?
Speaker 1: I'm good, Man, I'm really good. Thanks for doing this
Speaker 1: broken record? That's right? Was that like a radio drop
Speaker 1: for us?
Speaker 2: Sure, yo are listening to broken record? You know what
Speaker 2: I used to when I was seventeen or eighteen, I
Speaker 2: used to take my sister's be Gie records and also
Speaker 2: my brother's one of his Pink Floyd records. So I
Speaker 2: apologize to both of them now, but I took and
Speaker 2: I damaged the disc on purpose, so that I mean,
Speaker 2: there was no I didn't have a synthesizer or anything
Speaker 2: in these days. These are like. There was a piano
Speaker 2: and a little portable organ and a guitar in the
Speaker 2: room where I was doing this in the basement. But
Speaker 2: it would go there's a time, there's a time, there's
Speaker 2: a time, there's a tie, and I would jam with that.
Speaker 2: And I didn't have enough technology that I recorded any
Speaker 2: of them, which I really regret. But I used to
Speaker 2: like break my records on my sister's records on purpose.
Speaker 1: How did you discover that as a means of making music?
Speaker 2: Nobody was respectful of the discs in our house. Everybody
Speaker 2: treated them, you know, because there were kids of all age.
Speaker 2: So little kids would go ah, and they'd take my
Speaker 2: record that I liked and they'd scratch it or by accident.
Speaker 2: Then I'd go to play it, and then I go
Speaker 2: little little lip bath, I go fu amy and h
Speaker 2: It made me interested in these other kinds of rhythms
Speaker 2: and sounds and deconstruction of music when I was a kid,
Speaker 2: and it was innocent. I didn't have any school connection
Speaker 2: to it. I had, you know, nobody at school talked
Speaker 2: about that stuff. I just experimenting on my own actually.
Speaker 1: Before you just sort of discovered that and and sort
Speaker 1: of that kind of naturally led you into deconstruction of
Speaker 1: music and these weird, quirky kind of rhythms and things.
Speaker 1: Was your taste more conventional? Were you also into the
Speaker 1: early Beacheese records?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I hated music when I was a
Speaker 2: kid because I had to take piano lessons when I
Speaker 2: was seven, and I'd be sitting there on the piano
Speaker 2: plane the stupid thing that I had to learn, like
Speaker 2: Autumn leaves, you know, which you know, like Roger Miller
Speaker 2: is singing it or something. But i was playing, ah
Speaker 2: the leaves, and I'd look out out the window of
Speaker 2: my friends were like, ha haha, They're out there playing
Speaker 2: and they're they're having fun, and I'm like, hey, little shirks.
Speaker 2: And that started when I was seven, and I hated it,
Speaker 2: and then five years later after I've been doing it
Speaker 2: for five years. My parents too. We had five kids,
Speaker 2: and the only way to keep it from total chaos
Speaker 2: at dinner time is my dad had this little black
Speaker 2: and white portable television and he'd set it on the
Speaker 2: end of the kitchen table or whatever we and we'd
Speaker 2: all like just we just watched TV. And dinner time
Speaker 2: was after dad got home from work, so it would
Speaker 2: be like, uh, you know, we'd be watching Ed Sullivan,
Speaker 2: you know, so it'd be like football, gig O, you know,
Speaker 2: the Little Puppet Mouse and stuff like that, and you know,
Speaker 2: it was it was just something to watch that kept
Speaker 2: us from like hitting each other or like putting our
Speaker 2: fingers in each other's food, and then mom Bob put
Speaker 2: his finger in my food, you know, like that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff. And but one day he goes all right
Speaker 2: and from Liverpool the Beatles, and I saw the Beatles
Speaker 2: Do I want to hold your hand? And I lost
Speaker 2: my mind. I just went, yeah, what is that? That's
Speaker 2: incredible because to me, I didn't listen to the radio.
Speaker 2: Radio and AKRON at that time was like a lot
Speaker 2: of country Western and then and then novelty music, you know,
Speaker 2: so there'd be like gee Wore and it's eve bitsy
Speaker 2: teeny weeny yelloop. So that's the kind So that's what
Speaker 2: pop music was like. To me, it was like novelty
Speaker 2: songs like that and witch Doctor and Purple People Lead
Speaker 2: and stuff like that. But then when I saw the Beatles,
Speaker 2: I went, that's what I've been tortured my whole life
Speaker 2: learning music for so I could do that. I knew
Speaker 2: when I was twelve I was going to be in
Speaker 2: a band, and that was before I got interested in
Speaker 2: like writing stuff. And then I wasn't sure what that
Speaker 2: meant or what I was doing. When I was trying
Speaker 2: to do it, I started write trying to write music
Speaker 2: pretty early on. But I never tried to write something
Speaker 2: like a Beatles song or anything. I didn't really, you know,
Speaker 2: the truth of the matter was, I didn't really. I
Speaker 2: thought a lot of their lyrics were sappy and silly.
Speaker 2: But I was twelve, so I was still growing up.
Speaker 2: I thought the Rolling Stones had great lyrics. I thought
Speaker 2: they had the best looks. I thought Satisfaction was like
Speaker 2: this cool hipster beatnik proclamation and the music, the instruments,
Speaker 2: you know, we're like, we're like genius. I just I
Speaker 2: think they never talk about it, which is but I
Speaker 2: think Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were both incredible lyricists
Speaker 2: and songwriters.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's funny. I was thinking about Satisfaction. It's
Speaker 1: funny brought up. I mean, I guess it's not strange.
Speaker 1: You got Divo also, you know, did a great cover
Speaker 1: of Satisfaction. But I was thinking about Satisfaction of the
Speaker 1: day because one of my streaming services that I watched
Speaker 1: TV on somehow switched over to the version, the lower
Speaker 1: grade version with commercials, and so I was sitting through
Speaker 1: a movie and it kept popping. I was sitting through
Speaker 1: a Charles Bronson movie from the eighties, some random Charles
Speaker 1: Bronson movie. It kept going to commercials, and I realized
Speaker 1: about halfway through the movie I kind of missed commercials.
Speaker 1: And then I was thinking about how Satisfaction was sort
Speaker 1: of this screed against consumerism and people selling to you
Speaker 1: and advertisers. But I've gotten to the point in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three where I kind of miss any level of communal,
Speaker 1: like you know, yeah, and it gives you.
Speaker 2: A relief from whatever the mediocre movie you're watching.
Speaker 1: It was the most random Charles Bronson that's kind of funny,
Speaker 1: hunting down like a Mormon serial killer or something curtzy.
Speaker 1: It was wild to greetd Movies have becoming of equal
Speaker 1: interest to you to music early on.
Speaker 2: But it wasn't just movies. It was commercials. It was
Speaker 2: random music you'd hear anywhere, just sounds that you heard
Speaker 2: out in the world. When I went to public school
Speaker 2: in Akron, there wasn't really a very robust music or
Speaker 2: or art or anything cultural in the schools because basically
Speaker 2: they were teaching kids how to be farmers. At my
Speaker 2: high school there was like a ninety five kids, you know,
Speaker 2: graduating class, and their parents were farmers. And my dad
Speaker 2: was like a we had like a green acres farm.
Speaker 2: It was like wasn't really a farm. It was like
Speaker 2: this little tiny place. It had had a barn and
Speaker 2: it had a house, and it had like five acres.
Speaker 2: And but he was a salesman and he but he
Speaker 2: always wanted to, you know, to live out in the
Speaker 2: country and he so we were kind of so we
Speaker 2: moved out to to you know, like a suburb outside
Speaker 2: of Akron, and it was a total different world there.
Speaker 2: You know, the people inside Akron were all you know,
Speaker 2: they were gonna end up working on the conveyor belt line,
Speaker 2: you know, they were going to the assembly line at
Speaker 2: Tires because we had like we were the tire capital
Speaker 2: of the world when I was in high school. Still
Speaker 2: and then it smelled when you got near downtown, but
Speaker 2: you knew that was the smell of everybody's paycheck, you know.
Speaker 2: So you know, whether you were actually on the on
Speaker 2: the factory line, or if you were just working at
Speaker 2: the hot Hamburg store right out, you know, or the
Speaker 2: hot dog stand you know, just outside of Goodyear, you know,
Speaker 2: where people came to eat on the way out of work.
Speaker 2: You know, It's like it was all rubber did everything
Speaker 2: with everything did.
Speaker 1: You spend much time because I guess you know your
Speaker 1: your Akron. The closest cities would have been like Columbus, Cincinnati,
Speaker 1: of course still within Ohio, Cleveland, Cleveland.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we were a Cleveland wannabee. We wished we could
Speaker 2: have been like they have a cooler art scene in Cleveland.
Speaker 2: They have bands come to play there. You know, you
Speaker 2: had to go up to Cleveland to go see David Bowie.
Speaker 2: He didn't come down to Akron.
Speaker 1: Did you get any shows in Akron when you were.
Speaker 2: Yeah, occasionally. I I had to miss it for I
Speaker 2: don't remember what reason. But my my younger brothers saw
Speaker 2: Cream at the Akron Civic Theater. And I remember my
Speaker 2: little brother who was in junior high and was a drummer.
Speaker 2: He charged the stage after the show was over and
Speaker 2: before Ginger Baker. He said, Ginger Baker had his drumsticks
Speaker 2: taped to his hands with because because otherwise he would
Speaker 2: have lost him because he was so you know, probably high,
Speaker 2: you know. But he ran up on stage and he said,
Speaker 2: good drumming man, and Ginger Baker just went anxious, you know,
Speaker 2: like that, and that was and he was so excited
Speaker 2: that he exchanged a communication with Ginger Baker and he
Speaker 2: did become a drummer my brother Jim Man.
Speaker 1: I mean, Ginger Baker is an exciting guy. You know,
Speaker 1: even if he's not enough.
Speaker 2: Probably probably would have been dangerous if he would have
Speaker 2: ended up, you know, backstage or something with him. But
Speaker 2: who knows.
Speaker 1: That's a bummer he missed that. I'm sure that must
Speaker 1: have been incredible.
Speaker 2: There were a lot of well shows, you know, because
Speaker 2: if nothing else, they were on their way to Chicago
Speaker 2: or they were you know, Detroit was like the shit though,
Speaker 2: you know, It's like Detroit had amazing bands that came
Speaker 2: from him, you know, and and that's where you had
Speaker 2: to go if you wanted to see like Iggy Pop
Speaker 2: or and.
Speaker 1: Seeing Iggy in Detroit. But I mean before he left Detroit,
Speaker 1: that must have been wild.
Speaker 2: You know where I saw him actually, I saw him
Speaker 2: in Cleveland. I saw him in Cleveland at the Cleveland Tourium.
Speaker 2: He opened up for David Bowie for his Spiders to
Speaker 2: Mars show, and I was like, wow, look at that guy,
Speaker 2: because he was like, he didn't have a shirt and
Speaker 2: he would like throw himself off the stage and people
Speaker 2: would get out of the way and he'd just smash
Speaker 2: on the floor and he'd just bounce up and keep singing,
Speaker 2: and he'd be bloody by the end of his set,
Speaker 2: and I was like, that's pretty hardcore. That was amazing.
Speaker 2: Well was that, you know? And then then Bowie came
Speaker 2: out and that was such an incredible show. The Spider
Speaker 2: Some Mars show was so amazing, and and like Mick
Speaker 2: Ronson had like a blonde page boy poudy, you know, lipstick,
Speaker 2: and he had like on silk blue pants that like,
Speaker 2: you know, went just below the knee with white knee
Speaker 2: socks that came up, you know, like like he had
Speaker 2: like white pantyhose on. And he had like lifted shoes,
Speaker 2: you know, big shoes with a big buckle, and he
Speaker 2: just looked so badass, like a out of a Renaissance painting.
Speaker 2: And they were so amazing. And I remember at one
Speaker 2: point during one of his solos, Bowie gets you know,
Speaker 2: he's dressed like a lizard alien and and he gets
Speaker 2: down in front of Mick and I remember being in
Speaker 2: the Audiens going, oh gosh, I wonder if David knows
Speaker 2: that looks like he's blowing Mick Ronson. He should someone
Speaker 2: should tell him not to do that, because it looks
Speaker 2: like he's blowing him. I you know, I know he's
Speaker 2: just worshiping his guitar playing, but the way he's doing it,
Speaker 2: it looks like he's blowing it. I remember thinking that
Speaker 2: when I was a little.
Speaker 1: Kid, oh Man, to be naive Akron.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, you know, an Akron if anybody, if
Speaker 2: there was anybody there that was gay, it got beat
Speaker 2: out of them. You know, That's the kind of it was.
Speaker 2: It was a rough place to be even, you know,
Speaker 2: anywhere deviant of right down the middle it was. And
Speaker 2: so Devo was so far off to you know, out
Speaker 2: of out of it that we were just we just
Speaker 2: felt like space aliens, you know, like observing the planet
Speaker 2: the whole time.
Speaker 1: I mean that show that you saw with Bowie and
Speaker 1: Iggy and Brox, I mean that must have been maybe
Speaker 1: just before DEVA started. You guys might have even been
Speaker 1: been playing.
Speaker 2: It was probably we might have already been jamming, because
Speaker 2: I don't remember what year it was now now you're right,
Speaker 2: I don't know the exact year that that that album
Speaker 2: came ound though, right around the same time, and you know,
Speaker 2: Bowie was somebody we we really respected as an artist.
Speaker 2: You know. It's like there were people that we kept
Speaker 2: our eye on and it was like, uh, like Eno
Speaker 2: for instance, you know, but even like a much more
Speaker 2: eccentric things like uh, Captain Beefheart. I was a really
Speaker 2: big fan of his.
Speaker 1: I think the first Captain Beefheart record is probably the
Speaker 1: only Captain b Fart record that I have been on
Speaker 1: the wrap my mind around still. I mean it only
Speaker 1: because it only got more and more bizarre from from there.
Speaker 1: You know, that was kind of a conventional record in hindsight,
Speaker 1: save as Milk and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for me, it was trout Mask Replica was the
Speaker 2: one that I thought was his uh masterpiece. Matter of fact,
Speaker 2: there's a song on it called the Blimp and the
Speaker 2: line and it goes did it? Did it? Did it?
Speaker 1: Did it?
Speaker 2: Did it? And anyhow So, when we did our remake
Speaker 2: of Secret Agent Man and played a solo for it,
Speaker 2: I finished the solo at the beginning of the song.
Speaker 2: It has an homage to that goes did it did It?
Speaker 2: I put it in the solo and nobody has ever
Speaker 2: come up to me and say, hey, you you referenced
Speaker 2: a cap'n Beefheart song in Secret As it was too
Speaker 2: obscure for everybody in the world.
Speaker 1: I guess there's too much information on drop masks. I've
Speaker 1: going to synthesize it and be able to recognize it
Speaker 1: else where. I think, you know, it's just two.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's yeah, that's it's a pretty amazing you know,
Speaker 2: it's pretty dense.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So anyhow, that was that was my early influences and
Speaker 2: just but also at the same time of that, when
Speaker 2: I was a little kid, twelve and going up, it
Speaker 2: was the British invasion for me. I loved all that stuff.
Speaker 2: And I remember going walking past the drug store on
Speaker 2: the way home from school because they and they had
Speaker 2: a magazine called Tiger Beat and I never bought one
Speaker 2: because I didn't have a quarter or whatever it was,
Speaker 2: but I would go in and I just look at
Speaker 2: them to see pictures of these and I remember being
Speaker 2: really upset once because it said Dave Clark five versus
Speaker 2: the Beatles, you know, like they like had these like
Speaker 2: their concepts of Battle of the Band, and you know,
Speaker 2: they would then go through and say, whoa, here's what's
Speaker 2: good about them, and here's what and here's what's not
Speaker 2: as good, but it's better by them, and I remember
Speaker 2: in my little twelve or thirteen year old brain, I'm
Speaker 2: going like, well, that's not fair. There's five of them.
Speaker 2: In the day of Clark five, there's only four Beetles.
Speaker 2: I just remember being like, that's my takeaway. When I
Speaker 2: left the drug store that day, I was like really
Speaker 2: concerned about the Beatles, you know, being outnumbered. I thought
Speaker 2: I was the fifth Beatle. When I was a little kid,
Speaker 2: I would go down in the basement. Is the only
Speaker 2: way I could get away from like five kids. We
Speaker 2: had monkeys, flying, squirrels, dogs, cats, every kind of animal. Seriously, yeah,
Speaker 2: we had all sorts of animals. My dad was kind
Speaker 2: of odd in that way, in a great way. But
Speaker 2: I could go down in the basement. I could turn
Speaker 2: my Beatle record up loud, and I would pretend I
Speaker 2: was the fifth Beatle and I and in my mind,
Speaker 2: I'd be watching the Beatles at Shay Stadium on stage
Speaker 2: and I'd be off stage, and then one of them
Speaker 2: would look over, like maybe John would look over and
Speaker 2: he go come on, and so I'd come out and
Speaker 2: he'd they'd be playing in the middle of a song
Speaker 2: and he'd lift his guitar away from his body. So
Speaker 2: this is this is creepy for a twelve year old
Speaker 2: kid to be having this fantasy. But you know, I
Speaker 2: would get in between him and his guitar and then
Speaker 2: I'd take over playing, and then he would slip his
Speaker 2: guitar strap off of his neck out round mine and
Speaker 2: I'd be this little twelve year old kid playing with
Speaker 2: the Beatles and they had their outfits. I couldn't be that.
Speaker 2: I wasn't allowed to have that in my fantasy. I
Speaker 2: just was like in my school clothes and I'm playing,
Speaker 2: and then i'd keep an eye on him, and John
Speaker 2: would like be smoking a cigarette and then he'd put
Speaker 2: it out and you'd go okay, and then he'd come
Speaker 2: back out, and then we'd do that thing again, and
Speaker 2: he'd get in between me and he'd take over playe
Speaker 2: and I'd duck out, and then you know, maybe the
Speaker 2: next maybe next it would be Ringo would look over,
Speaker 2: he'd have to pee or something, you know, and I'd
Speaker 2: i'd I'd like to come out, and I'd be sitting
Speaker 2: there in between him and the and the drums. Then
Speaker 2: then next thing you know, I'm playing and he's gone.
Speaker 2: He's going to the restroom or something or getting a
Speaker 2: glass of milk or whatever Ringo had to do in
Speaker 2: the middle of a song. But it was but it
Speaker 2: was always like in the middle of a song too.
Speaker 2: That was the amazing part of it. It was like
Speaker 2: never like they would finish a song and then I'd
Speaker 2: come out and do it. It was like it was
Speaker 2: better than that.
Speaker 1: That's a way cooler way of doing it though, just
Speaker 1: slipping in the beat never stops, you never, you know,
Speaker 1: just picking right up where one of them left off.
Speaker 1: That's the that's the smooth way of doing it.
Speaker 2: That was my British Invasion fantasy from twelve or thirteen
Speaker 2: somewhere in there.
Speaker 1: Do you still appreciate the British invasion of that music?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, I mean, you know, it's like I got
Speaker 2: kids and a wife that are into Sono's and every
Speaker 2: all the different you know, Spotify's and everything, and I
Speaker 2: just I just work on music all the time, so
Speaker 2: I don't I rarely go back and listen to music.
Speaker 2: But a couple of weeks ago, we were sending Sono's
Speaker 2: system up in our dining room or something, and my
Speaker 2: wife is getting frustrated and she left, and so I
Speaker 2: was like figuring it out and as I was figuring
Speaker 2: it out. Somehow, I started tripping into all these sixties
Speaker 2: era brit songs, and I started listening to him again,
Speaker 2: and I was going like, Oh, the Kinks, that guitar sound,
Speaker 2: nobody's ever gotten that, that guitar sound from Girl, you
Speaker 2: know you really got the car or all the Day
Speaker 2: or all the night. I decided, how did he get those? Yeah,
Speaker 2: they got these sounds that nobody else ever really totally got.
Speaker 2: And and I started listening to all these other songs
Speaker 2: and and I spent a couple hours listening to a
Speaker 2: British Invasion again a couple of weeks ago. Maybe that's
Speaker 2: why I'm talking about it now, because I stumbled on
Speaker 2: it again and then and I found it equally wonderful.
Speaker 1: We have to pause real quick break, and then we'll
Speaker 1: come back with more of my conversation with Mark Mothers BA.
Speaker 1: We're back with more from Mark mothers By. So many
Speaker 1: people have a similar story of, you know, the Beatles
Speaker 1: sort of opening their mind to music and what it
Speaker 1: can be. And I feel like the British Invasion sort
Speaker 1: of became by default the gold standard of music, and
Speaker 1: it's the thing that was always referenced to but if
Speaker 1: you actually go back and listen to it, I think
Speaker 1: there's things are worth going back to, like the guitar
Speaker 1: sound from the Kinks, like to have that distortion sound.
Speaker 1: It's just it's not like overdriven, it's not overpower and everything,
Speaker 1: but it's still just it's so fucking awesome. It's still
Speaker 1: this great raw sound, like you know.
Speaker 2: Okay. So years later, Neil Young was kind of curious
Speaker 2: about Devo, and so we ended up in one of
Speaker 2: his films. But before that, I'd worked with a with
Speaker 2: a director that directed the film Human Highway it's called,
Speaker 2: and I had written off Broadway music nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 2: I'd written this music that he he made. He did
Speaker 2: an off Broadway ian Esco play. I don't know. He's
Speaker 2: a writer from the I don't know what year that
Speaker 2: was forties or fifties or ian Esco. But Russ Tamblin
Speaker 2: did a one man play and Dean Stockwell directed it
Speaker 2: and he needed music, so I wrote music for him.
Speaker 2: And then when he worked on the Neil Young movie,
Speaker 2: they asked Devo to be in their film and we were.
Speaker 2: And then when Neil was scoring it, Dean Stockwell gave
Speaker 2: Neil all this music I'd written for him for this
Speaker 2: off Broadway Plane, And so half of the score in
Speaker 2: Human Highway's Electronics stuff I did, and the other half
Speaker 2: is stuff that Neil did and Neil was And you
Speaker 2: can tell the difference because Neil wrote stuff that sounded
Speaker 2: a little more like Gary Newman.
Speaker 1: And the stuff intef It did.
Speaker 2: It was interesting, and then the stuff I wrote it
Speaker 2: sounds a little more like like eight years earlier than
Speaker 2: pee Wee's Playhouse. When I started scoring Peewa's playoff, it
Speaker 2: sounded more like it was gonna like what pee Wee's
Speaker 2: Playhouse became.
Speaker 1: You guys in Neil A my my is mind blowing.
Speaker 2: Oh the footage is good, you know, It's like, well.
Speaker 1: It's the fucking coolest thing ever.
Speaker 2: When we did the film, we were kind of like
Speaker 2: we were kind of like assholes, you know, and we
Speaker 2: were like it was like the same week or one
Speaker 2: week after the sex Pistols had broke up, who were
Speaker 2: my favorite band at the time, and uh, and we
Speaker 2: hung out the night that the sex Pistols broke up.
Speaker 2: They came over to this house where Devo was staying
Speaker 2: because we were playing at mabuh guards a little punk
Speaker 2: club the night after they played their last show, and yeah,
Speaker 2: I remember I didn't know they were breaking up then
Speaker 2: maybe they didn't even.
Speaker 1: Were you friends with them, or they just happened to
Speaker 1: come over that and.
Speaker 2: We just they knew that we liked them, and they
Speaker 2: liked us as a matter of fact, a really crazy thing.
Speaker 2: About a year or so later, we signed with Warner
Speaker 2: Brothers in the US and Richard Branson for Europe because
Speaker 2: I thought he was cool because he had signed the
Speaker 2: sex Pistols, I thought, and he was our age. We
Speaker 2: were all twenty five, you know, in seventy seven. Then,
Speaker 2: you know, we knew we were gonna sign with Branson,
Speaker 2: and we had like one of the worst snowstorms in
Speaker 2: Akron ever. And at this point, nobody in Devo has
Speaker 2: an apartment anymore because we don't have jobs. We only
Speaker 2: were like now we're just driving to New York to
Speaker 2: play at Maxis Kansas City or CBGB's or we would
Speaker 2: get in our Occonno line and we'd drive out to
Speaker 2: the West coast and we play La San Francisco, San Diego,
Speaker 2: and that was it. That was all, you know. There
Speaker 2: was nowhere in between for us to play except a
Speaker 2: club in Cleveland that we shared with Dead Boys and
Speaker 2: per Ubu. So it's like Bob Caselli and I are
Speaker 2: sleeping in this girls living room. He's kind of in
Speaker 2: this room that's like a off of the living room,
Speaker 2: like it's like like a greenhouse room or something, because
Speaker 2: it had windows all around. But it was cold in there.
Speaker 2: And I remember the morning that we got a call
Speaker 2: from Richard Branson. The window had blown open, and Bob
Speaker 2: Gosally was on this couch out in that room and
Speaker 2: he was covered with snow underneath, and he was trying
Speaker 2: to huddle underneath a blanket. And I was in a
Speaker 2: sofa that was like, you know, twenty feet away, and
Speaker 2: I'm looking and I go, oh my god. And Branson
Speaker 2: called and said, hey, how would you like to come
Speaker 2: down to Jamaica. You know that sounds pretty good? He goes, yeah,
Speaker 2: just come on down for the front of it.
Speaker 1: So did you have passports?
Speaker 2: Yes, we had because we had already recorded the album.
Speaker 2: Branson became interested in us because while we were in
Speaker 2: Germany recording our first album, we had let Stiff Records
Speaker 2: put out three singles and they all charted. They all
Speaker 2: went number one in a different country was crazy, like uncontrollable.
Speaker 2: Urge was number one in Yugoslavia at the same time,
Speaker 2: Mongoloid was number one in France at the same time.
Speaker 2: Satisfaction was in the top ten in England and Social
Speaker 2: Fools was in the top ten in Germany and I
Speaker 2: loved it. Jockohomo was in the top twenty in Scotland
Speaker 2: and I just thought, Chockohomo, that's a perfect country for it.
Speaker 2: For Scotland's a perfect country for Chockoholmo. Anyhow so he
Speaker 2: flew to you know, to Germany where we're recording, and
Speaker 2: talked to us into signing with him, and created this
Speaker 2: whole big problem because Warner Brothers didn't want to give
Speaker 2: us up for Europe. And it doesn't matter now. But
Speaker 2: so Bob Casselli and I fly down to Jamaica and
Speaker 2: you know, we get off the plane and it's it's
Speaker 2: a it's kind of rough. You know, the road between
Speaker 2: the airport and Kingston there was like a I remember
Speaker 2: a dead great Dane that was in rigamortis on the
Speaker 2: side of the road. Nobody had bothered to move it. It
Speaker 2: was just in a riga mortis pose with its legs
Speaker 2: up and we got to this hotel and Richard Branson
Speaker 2: and a bunch of guys Simon and other people that
Speaker 2: you know, South Africans that he'd started virgin with were
Speaker 2: all sitting on the sofa and they were rolling these
Speaker 2: gigantic joints, which you know, I'd never seen that much
Speaker 2: marijuana before. You know, it's like an akron akron. It
Speaker 2: was always like about three fourths oregano. Anyhow, by the
Speaker 2: time it got to you, So he rolled these joints
Speaker 2: and they're passing them around. Everybody's taking hits off of
Speaker 2: these giant joints. And I never was a smoker, but
Speaker 2: I gave it a try. I took a couple of puffs.
Speaker 2: And then Bob Casally was a smoker, so he's just
Speaker 2: doing big hits. And then they'd come back to us
Speaker 2: and we were smoking this stuff, and you know, we're
Speaker 2: talking about nothing, and finally Richard goes, hey, the sex
Speaker 2: Pistols broke up, and you know, now I'm starting to
Speaker 2: get high. I'm like getting talking about Yeah, we hung
Speaker 2: out with them the night that they broke up. You know,
Speaker 2: I Saidancy and Steve Jones, everybody was over at this
Speaker 2: house where we were in the apartment where they made
Speaker 2: the magazine Search and Destroy, this really cool punk magazine
Speaker 2: in San Francisco. If you don't know it, you should
Speaker 2: check it out. And we were sleeping on piles of
Speaker 2: Search and Destroy magazines because they let us stay there
Speaker 2: for freeze because we didn't make enough playing a show
Speaker 2: at a punk club to get a hotel room. So
Speaker 2: we're talking. He goes, we go, yeah, it's really a
Speaker 2: shame they broke up. They were so great. They were
Speaker 2: our favorite band. And I'm like at this point, I'm
Speaker 2: just like blabbing away, and he goes, well, I'll tell
Speaker 2: you why you're here. I've got Reporters, some Melody Maker,
Speaker 2: Sounds and New Music Express, the three English papers, they're
Speaker 2: all in the hotel right now, and Johnny Rotten is here.
Speaker 2: Johnny Rotten wants to join Devo. If you want, we
Speaker 2: can go down to the beach right now and make
Speaker 2: an announcement, uh and signed something on the beach and
Speaker 2: Johnny Rotten can join Devo. And I remember at that point,
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, like I hit this brake and
Speaker 2: I'm like and I'm like, oh, and I'm looking at
Speaker 2: Richard and he's like staring intently at me with this
Speaker 2: crazy look on his face, because even to him it
Speaker 2: must have sounded kind of crazy in a way to
Speaker 2: say that, you know, And he's smiling really wide, and
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh my god, his teeth are protruding like
Speaker 2: a brain eating ape. And I just remember, like I
Speaker 2: started stuttering and sputtering, and Bob is like totally smashed.
Speaker 2: He doesn't even have anything to say about anything. He's
Speaker 2: just so high. He's like whatever, I don't know what
Speaker 2: we're talking about. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa whoao. No, No,
Speaker 2: we love we love the band, and I love Johnny Rotten.
Speaker 2: He's so amating. But but you know, Devo, we're something.
Speaker 2: You know, we're different, and we're we have our own
Speaker 2: thing and we but we love them and we think
Speaker 2: that's and that's that's actually really uh, you know, complimentary,
Speaker 2: that he would even think that, or that you guys
Speaker 2: think that's a good idea. I bet you know. We
Speaker 2: we've worked so hard on what we do and we
Speaker 2: have something that we really know what it is. And
Speaker 2: then they're all looking at me like, oh, they thought
Speaker 2: they were going to do this big crazy stunt. You
Speaker 2: know it was going to be like like the stunts
Speaker 2: that they'd done with, you know, like Sue Catwoman and
Speaker 2: Vivian Westwood and Malcolm and these people. They always had
Speaker 2: these outrageous ideas on how to how to like freak
Speaker 2: everybody out or get their attention. You know. I was
Speaker 2: not up for that at all, and I just remember thinking,
Speaker 2: oh shit, are we Does that mean we don't have
Speaker 2: any place to stay now? Because I don't have any money.
Speaker 2: I can't even afford to take it back.
Speaker 1: But what did happen?
Speaker 2: Did you?
Speaker 1: Did you just crash that? Like they were cool? Like
Speaker 1: what okay? Find Well, we.
Speaker 2: Hung out for a week and they took us to
Speaker 2: these places. They took us to this place called the
Speaker 2: Headonist Club, and I'd never been to anything. I'd never
Speaker 2: been anywhere out of a high out of Ohio except
Speaker 2: for Germany. And then we played three shows in England
Speaker 2: on the way back to the US. But that's all
Speaker 2: all we'd ever done. Nobody had ever been to anything
Speaker 2: like on a Like when we went to the head
Speaker 2: In this club that was for people with money, you know,
Speaker 2: that was more middle class and upper class people. There
Speaker 2: weren't any blue collar workers there except the ones that
Speaker 2: were working.
Speaker 1: Was Johnny Rotten around for all that stuff? No, he
Speaker 1: left once.
Speaker 2: What he thought? I think it was like once we
Speaker 2: didn't say, hey, let's get together. It's like he was like,
Speaker 2: fucking Richard, what a jacket?
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like he couldn't he couldn't believe that Richard did that.
Speaker 1: I think what was the vibe in the in the
Speaker 1: apartment of Search and Destroy then I that they broke up?
Speaker 1: Was it weird? Was it cool?
Speaker 2: I mean what it was like there was all sorts
Speaker 2: of people in there, all hipsters, you know, it was
Speaker 2: all the hipsters from San Francisco. Yeah, there was every
Speaker 2: kind of craziness that you could think of was happening
Speaker 2: in that. And luckily I had this one room with newspapers,
Speaker 2: and it was small enough I could just go in
Speaker 2: there and lay on a stack of newspapers. And finally
Speaker 2: about four five in the morning, I got a few
Speaker 2: hours sleep and before we had to play later the
Speaker 2: next night.
Speaker 1: And Man and Sid and Nancy were there, and that
Speaker 1: must have been yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: They were Sid. Sid was like he'd walk up to
Speaker 2: a table or a countertop that had like a beer
Speaker 2: bottle or a glass with liquid in it, you know,
Speaker 2: like half a glass of beer or something or and
Speaker 2: he'd just slowly start moving it on purpose so that
Speaker 2: everybody could see that he was slowly with his finger
Speaker 2: going like this, pushing it closer to the edge of
Speaker 2: the table, and then it would fall him break and
Speaker 2: then he'd look around to see if anybody was going
Speaker 2: to get excited about it, and nobody cared, you know,
Speaker 2: nobody cared that he was doing it, and he just
Speaker 2: kind of was like bummed out. It was. I guess
Speaker 2: that was his idea of a h of icebreaker or
Speaker 2: like like like let's start talking now or something. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it was interesting.
Speaker 1: Wow. Man. You were managed also by Neil's manager, Elliott Robertson.
Speaker 2: Yeah. After that, however, it was kind of wild. You know.
Speaker 2: He had stories, you know about the Rainbow, which was
Speaker 2: right down the street to his office, which is what
Speaker 2: the room I'm in right now is like not that
Speaker 2: far away from where we're talking about, because I'm on
Speaker 2: a sunset strip. I've been here for about thirty years.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just assumed in my mind because Nickelodeon's
Speaker 1: I didn't know if that was like when I started
Speaker 1: scoring Rugrat, I mean, I don't know why that would
Speaker 1: be the reason you moved there, but succurred. Uh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was in my house. I had a bedroom
Speaker 2: in my house that was my scoring room. It was
Speaker 2: an extra bedroom, and I started doing more and more music,
Speaker 2: and then I did a couple I did my first
Speaker 2: Wes Anderson A movie in that house, and I was
Speaker 2: doing commercials and why I ended up moving out of
Speaker 2: the house because I liked working in the house. But
Speaker 2: one day I was doing a Pepsi commercial and the
Speaker 2: Chili Peppers were playing for me and I only had
Speaker 2: him for like three hours, and my neighbors had called
Speaker 2: the police, and the police came over and I go, please,
Speaker 2: let me just do one more take. I need one
Speaker 2: more take. Let me just do one more pass. And
Speaker 2: they wouldn't let me. So I had to like use
Speaker 2: an older take and it worked out in the end.
Speaker 2: But it was like I thought, well, that's you know. Now,
Speaker 2: I know everybody hates me. So I started So I
Speaker 2: started looking for a new place to move to. And
Speaker 2: while I was doing that, I just the neighbors that
Speaker 2: lived closest to me. I bought them bouquets of flower
Speaker 2: once a week. I bought them each a bouquet, and
Speaker 2: you know, it's all like about half dozen houses. And
Speaker 2: then finally I got out of there after about four
Speaker 2: or five months because I found this building that I'm
Speaker 2: sitting in right now, thirty years ago.
Speaker 1: Amazing. How did you end up in La to begin with?
Speaker 1: How did La sort of become your home base?
Speaker 2: Well? We did this film. Chuck Statler directed it. It
Speaker 2: was the first Devo film. It had two songs on it,
Speaker 2: Chock a Home and Secret Agent Man. And the reason
Speaker 2: he made the film, you know, he thought, well, what
Speaker 2: if this band isn't together next year? What if they
Speaker 2: don't stay together? Because Jerry had his concerns about well
Speaker 2: this I don't know, Mark likes this really weird shit,
Speaker 2: you know, so there was something like that going on.
Speaker 2: So he said, well, I'm going to make a film.
Speaker 2: So we did. And then but what do you do
Speaker 2: with a film in nineteen seventy five? Nothing, So but
Speaker 2: he entered it in the ann Arbor Film Festival and
Speaker 2: at one first place for short film, so that put
Speaker 2: it on a tech traveling tour before seventy six was out.
Speaker 2: It was on a tour of cities and somebody who
Speaker 2: had just signed Tubes saw that film with us in it,
Speaker 2: and they went, oh, wait a minute, is this another Tubes?
Speaker 2: And so he gave us two thousand dollars to drive
Speaker 2: out there in our occonoline ban and he put us
Speaker 2: up for a month and we rehearsed. Then we at
Speaker 2: a showcase and we decided, you know, since we were
Speaker 2: in the film, that maybe, I mean, I thought we
Speaker 2: were going to go to New York because to me,
Speaker 2: I felt really a kindred spirit with New York.
Speaker 1: But I assume if you're an art student and you
Speaker 1: know you're into sort of experimental thing, you're just gonna
Speaker 1: go to New York and skip l A.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Why.
Speaker 2: Well what happened was is just just the film industry
Speaker 2: was out here, and we thought, well, maybe they'd do
Speaker 2: a film with us, you know, because we had ideas
Speaker 2: for films, and Jerry wanted to direct films. He really
Speaker 2: wanted that, and so that's how we ended up here.
Speaker 2: It was and it was cheaper. It was cheaper.
Speaker 1: You know, it'd be interesting to view an alternate timeline
Speaker 1: where you did.
Speaker 2: Stay and we went to New York, yeah, yeah, or
Speaker 2: one where we stayed in Akron and we were just
Speaker 2: like there wasn't like a receptive atmosphere in Ohio. Let
Speaker 2: me put it that way. It's like like there were
Speaker 2: very few places that we could perform, and nobody wanted
Speaker 2: to hear original music and Akron at that time. They
Speaker 2: wanted They came to clubs to hear their favorites. And
Speaker 2: so what we even started doing is we would like
Speaker 2: call clubs up and ask them if they need a band.
Speaker 2: They go, well, what are you guys doing. We'd lie
Speaker 2: and we'd say we were a cover band. Then we
Speaker 2: come out and we'd be in like Janitor outfits, and
Speaker 2: then we'd play like, all right, here's another one by
Speaker 2: fog At it's called Uncontrollable Urge. And then you know,
Speaker 2: after the first set, you know, oftentimes more often than not,
Speaker 2: we never got to finish our second set or third set.
Speaker 2: And at a place they would tell us we had
Speaker 2: to leave, or they would pay us to leave. They say, well,
Speaker 2: here's your money. Now, you can have your fifty dollars,
Speaker 2: and we go, no, but we've got more. Two more
Speaker 2: hours were the music for you, and they go, that's okay,
Speaker 2: that was enough.
Speaker 1: It's cooler to be doing that in an environment like that, though,
Speaker 1: there an environment with everyone is just trying to out
Speaker 1: weird with another. You know, I like that. You know
Speaker 1: that you guys were truly the just complete odd boss
Speaker 1: of the area. You know clearly wasn't to be popular.
Speaker 1: You guys weren't.
Speaker 2: There wasn't much of a music scene back then, and
Speaker 2: there was no camaraderie. I was in before I was
Speaker 2: in Devo. I was in a band with Chrissy Hine.
Speaker 2: It wasn't our band, so we were in it for
Speaker 2: like we I think we played one or two shows
Speaker 2: at the most and then it split up. Is But
Speaker 2: other than that, I experimented with a lot of different
Speaker 2: musicians and I kept looking for the sound that I
Speaker 2: wanted to do. And then I had already known Jerry
Speaker 2: from school. We had collaborated on visual art projects before,
Speaker 2: and then we started talking about music together. And then
Speaker 2: he and this friend of his who was like this
Speaker 2: guy Bob Lewis. To me, bob Lewis was like, I
Speaker 2: felt like it was Peabody and Sherman when we were together,
Speaker 2: because he seemed like a human encyclopedia. I like that guy.
Speaker 2: But Jerry and Bob found this book called The Beginning
Speaker 2: was the End? How man came into being through cannibalism,
Speaker 2: and it was this crazy book that was basically preaching
Speaker 2: the evolution and saying that humans were the unnatural species.
Speaker 2: And it was kind of like how we already felt
Speaker 2: because we'd been through Kent State where we thought, yeah,
Speaker 2: we shouldn't be over there. I can't think of one
Speaker 2: Vietnamese person I want to kill, so why are we
Speaker 2: doing this? Let's stop it, you know, and and then
Speaker 2: you know, you find out when the government gets irritated
Speaker 2: with you enough, they just kill you. So we had
Speaker 2: this kind of we were kind of pissed off about
Speaker 2: humans on planet Earth and our felt like we weren't
Speaker 2: like a natural species at all, that we were the
Speaker 2: one species at odds with nature in general, you know,
Speaker 2: and we were destroying the planet. You know. It's like
Speaker 2: it wasn't like we wanted to sit there and beat
Speaker 2: a book and you know, say that, and it's like
Speaker 2: that to be part of our esthetic and that people
Speaker 2: would know that that was our you know, our thoughts
Speaker 2: about things that humans were unnatural and humans needed to change.
Speaker 1: Is that where the performing with masks and just the
Speaker 1: different looks came from. Was that a way to sort of.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you what happened with masks is none of
Speaker 2: us had any money. You know, we all had crappy jobs.
Speaker 2: I worked in an apartment building as a maintenance man.
Speaker 2: It was a one hundred year old building, so it's
Speaker 2: like somebody's drain had be stopped up and I'd take
Speaker 2: off the U joint down underneath the you know, the sink.
Speaker 2: My brother and Jerry delivered meat for some meat company,
Speaker 2: and then Jerry had a job at as a janitorial
Speaker 2: supply place for a while, which was actually really beneficial
Speaker 2: because he found in one of the catalogs these hazardous
Speaker 2: waste material outfits that we went, oh my god, that's
Speaker 2: perfect for us. You know. They were like they were
Speaker 2: like our anti superhero out fit, you know, these yellow suits.
Speaker 2: And once we put an elastic waistband around the waist
Speaker 2: and cinched it in, it turned us into who we were,
Speaker 2: which looked like, looked like we could be cleaning up
Speaker 2: you know, nuclear slop where we could be you know,
Speaker 2: like picking through body parts at a plane crash, you know.
Speaker 2: And they were inexpensive. They were like four bucks or
Speaker 2: something at the time to buy one of these plastic
Speaker 2: suits and one of the masks I found at this
Speaker 2: Novely shop in Canton, Ohio, which is close to Akron,
Speaker 2: was this rubber baby face mask, and so I became
Speaker 2: Boogie Boy, who we referred to him as the infantile
Speaker 2: spirit of de Evolution, and that stuck with us, and
Speaker 2: Boogie Boy ended up coming out and still does. He
Speaker 2: still comes out on stage every night.
Speaker 1: And your dad used to come out as part of
Speaker 1: this stuff. General Boy, Oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was totally obsessed with it. He had this
Speaker 2: I think he had this hidden desire to be an artist,
Speaker 2: you know. I think he really wanted to be creative
Speaker 2: in some way. He played clarinet and it even got
Speaker 2: a little overboard at our first when we on our
Speaker 2: first tour, he wanted to go on tour with us.
Speaker 2: He wanted to manage the band, and I'm like, you know,
Speaker 2: mid twenties, I'm thinking my dad go on tour with
Speaker 2: the That's the last thing I want. Yeah, I'm thinking,
Speaker 2: you never want my dad on tour with the band.
Speaker 2: That sounds and it's too bad we didn't. He had
Speaker 2: much better business acumen than any of us.
Speaker 1: There'll be more of my interview with Mark Mothersbaugh after
Speaker 1: one last quick Break, We're back with Mark Mothersbaugh. Is
Speaker 1: it true you guys, Verson of Jockohoma performed Jockohoma opening
Speaker 1: for son Raw.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we opened for son Raw. That was amazing. That
Speaker 2: was like seventy five I think it was in Cleveland,
Speaker 2: and I remember we'd never been around a band that
Speaker 2: a record dealer that was this prestigious as son Raw.
Speaker 2: And so I remember like before we went on stage,
Speaker 2: I was listening to these guys talk that were in
Speaker 2: the band, you know, and they're like saying, yeah, that's
Speaker 2: son Raw. He's like getting a big head, you know,
Speaker 2: he's got such a big head. And he's like, it's
Speaker 2: not cool, man. It's like, you know, he took a
Speaker 2: taxi here from the hotel. Then he says, yeah, the
Speaker 2: rest of the rest of the band all had to
Speaker 2: take the RTD from downtown to wherever this auditorium was
Speaker 2: we were playing at. And I'm like, Wow, that's what
Speaker 2: it's going to be like when I get when our
Speaker 2: band gets a record deal, We're going to take the
Speaker 2: RTD to get to the to get to the show.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I remember thinking that. I thought I thought, oh, I
Speaker 2: thought it was all like David Bowie I thought it
Speaker 2: was all glamorous, but Son Raw was so amazing because
Speaker 2: he played his keyboard like it wasn't like he was
Speaker 2: like playing notes or anything. He was playing clusters of sounds.
Speaker 2: And I was so impressed. Yeah, because it was more
Speaker 2: percussive than it was melody. The songs were just incredible.
Speaker 2: And but when he played like that, I started doing it.
Speaker 2: Boogie Boy started copying him. I started I started playing
Speaker 2: my synthesizer like this. There were songs that I could
Speaker 2: do that on. Yeah, it was interesting. We got in
Speaker 2: a we got in a fight with the with the
Speaker 2: audience at night. They were they were DJs from w
Speaker 2: MMS I think it was, and yeah, we were dressed
Speaker 2: like janitors and then they were all dressed like Dracula
Speaker 2: and vampires and mummies and Frankenstein and where we look
Speaker 2: like the total opposite of like Halloween. And uh, they're
Speaker 2: all doing nitrous oxide and Margarita's and they're getting really
Speaker 2: drunk and aggressive. And at one point, after about three
Speaker 2: or four songs in like My Woman sub Human, she
Speaker 2: can't walk, she can't talk, she just sits by a
Speaker 2: sign that says I love you, and they were just
Speaker 2: driving him crazy. They hated our music and at one
Speaker 2: point some DJ jumped up on stage.
Speaker 3: You're gonna let these people continue to prostitute music like this,
Speaker 3: And they started throwing paper cups with Margarita's in it
Speaker 3: at us and yeah, we ended up getting in fistfights
Speaker 3: with with with them, with DJs.
Speaker 2: You know, it's crazy. And then sun Rack came out.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you can be too abstract for sun rock,
Speaker 1: like these guys are out to the lunch, let's get
Speaker 1: some ron.
Speaker 2: You know, like what. I found an audio cassette that
Speaker 2: our sound man had put in them in a tape
Speaker 2: recorder and he recorded that show and it's really good.
Speaker 2: It's really good.
Speaker 1: You hear it, you hear it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe we should good, but it's but it devolves
Speaker 2: into the fighting and uh, just the insane chaos of
Speaker 2: our set.
Speaker 1: And they were like, oh, you guys should put that out,
Speaker 1: that'd be amazing.
Speaker 2: But we were kind of like, uh, we were kind
Speaker 2: of lightning rods for hostility. We loved it. We would like,
Speaker 2: we think if we're pissing these people off or doing
Speaker 2: something right, Yeah, that was It was kind of that
Speaker 2: kind of approach. But I remember Jockohomo I would just
Speaker 2: keep going up to people and going, are we not men?
Speaker 2: You know we are? Do you are we not men?
Speaker 2: Until they were like sick of it. It was like
Speaker 2: if it took twenty minutes. I would just provoke people
Speaker 2: until they would want to fight with us.
Speaker 1: And did you find like humor in this stuff? Like
Speaker 1: did you were you a fan of comedy or humor
Speaker 1: or anything like that?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, we took and we took our humor seriously, okay,
Speaker 2: And we were serious about our humor. You know. That's
Speaker 2: why I was attracted to people like SubGenius because when
Speaker 2: they first came out, the Church of the SubGenius, they're
Speaker 2: early pamphlets. They didn't have enough stuff out to let
Speaker 2: you know, oh if they were serious or not. And
Speaker 2: I was just hoping they were serious. And and so
Speaker 2: it was back in the days where like we would
Speaker 2: like read a National Inquirer and we'd read a poem
Speaker 2: by John Hinckley junior, uh for for Jodie Foster, and
Speaker 2: they'd say he's says here he's in the Maryland, but
Speaker 2: does the hospital? And Jerry and I would call it
Speaker 2: Maryland be does the hospital and say we're in the
Speaker 2: band Divo could we talk to John Hinckley And they go, well,
Speaker 2: let me see, and then you'd wait a couple of
Speaker 2: minutes and they go, yeah, he wants to talk to you,
Speaker 2: and uh, we'd get on the phone with John Hinckley goes,
Speaker 2: I have your first album. You know. I remember saying
Speaker 2: to him. You know, we saw we read this poem
Speaker 2: you wrote called I Desire, and uh, we were wondering
Speaker 2: if you would mind if we use those as lyrics
Speaker 2: for a devo song. He goes, let me hear it, okay,
Speaker 2: and so we said, yeah, before we do itnthing, we'll
Speaker 2: let you hear it. And so we wrote the song
Speaker 2: called I Desire with John Hinckley junior lyrics. Of course,
Speaker 2: if you're trying to impress your record company, don't do that.
Speaker 1: Don't do that. Don't don't write a song with the
Speaker 1: would be presidential as sets.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was not. He was not a favorite in
Speaker 2: the country at the time, but the but the his
Speaker 2: poems were so good. His poetry was so good.
Speaker 1: I love it. I wanted to ask you something because
Speaker 1: I got to take photos of you one time, maybe
Speaker 1: ten years ago for something.
Speaker 2: Oh, I was poll dancing at the time to make
Speaker 2: some extra money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, it was there. It was that time and
Speaker 1: you were talking to somebody and I long felt I
Speaker 1: overheard that Joni Mitchell attacked you in a stairwell one time.
Speaker 1: I didn't know if I heard this right or well.
Speaker 2: She didn't attack me, But what happened was was she
Speaker 2: had the same manager as Neil Young and uh we
Speaker 2: did our second album and I was up at his office.
Speaker 2: It's just down the street here, but she's like, hey,
Speaker 2: are you that guy from Divo? I go, I'm that
Speaker 2: guy from Diva. And she goes, I'm going to be
Speaker 2: in a movie and they want me to hold a
Speaker 2: ghetto blaster on my shoulder and put a song on
Speaker 2: on the ghetto blaster. And I was like okay, and
Speaker 2: she goes, I want to put your song on it, Swelling,
Speaker 2: Itching Brain. And I'm like, wow, great, Why would you
Speaker 2: pick swelling? Because I'm thinking that's such a radical song,
Speaker 2: you know, on that album, it's like the most radical
Speaker 2: I go, why would you pick swelling sher brain? Because?
Speaker 2: And she went because it's the most obnoxious, horrible, irritating
Speaker 2: song I've ever heard in my whole life. I said, well,
Speaker 2: be my guest blasted away.
Speaker 1: It was at the end of it that was it
Speaker 1: meant she walked away.
Speaker 2: The only other thing that happened after that is her
Speaker 2: manager who was who was at NILS at that time.
Speaker 2: He stayed managing with her years later after after Ron
Speaker 2: and Elliott split ways, he was still working with her
Speaker 2: and he called me up once and said, hey, this
Speaker 2: is like in the last ten years even I don't
Speaker 2: remember what year, maybe eight years ago, and he said, hey,
Speaker 2: Jonie wants to get into a film scoring. He says,
Speaker 2: do you have any do you know anything I should
Speaker 2: tell Heim? I go, you know what you tell Joni?
Speaker 2: If she wants to come over to my green building,
Speaker 2: come over to this studio. I would love to show
Speaker 2: her while I'm working on something. And if she has
Speaker 2: a film she wants to work on, I will help
Speaker 2: walk her through it. I'll show her you know how
Speaker 2: to do it and make it easy for And she
Speaker 2: was like, what the swelling and chein brain guy, No way,
Speaker 2: I'm not doing that. It was like them, so we
Speaker 2: never She never let go of disliking it.
Speaker 1: She joking, do you know it? Maybe it's better not
Speaker 1: to know. Maybe two notes.
Speaker 2: She's a little bit e centric, you know, she was.
Speaker 2: People would tell you that in some situations she was
Speaker 2: probably very hard to work with. Just super talented. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know that goes without saying, but.
Speaker 1: Yeah, do you still talk to Neil ever or you
Speaker 1: got like the band and Neil as any.
Speaker 2: Actually, there's a chance he might get interviewed for a
Speaker 2: Devo documentary to see what he thought about Devo, because
Speaker 2: that could have because it could be funny, because because
Speaker 2: I don't know if we were exactly what he thought
Speaker 2: we were, but he was he was pretty interesting, you know.
Speaker 2: I think back about it that he was doing hey hey,
Speaker 2: my my, then he gets Devo to come do it,
Speaker 2: and then but we're doing it in a recording studio
Speaker 2: in San Francisco, and all the band has like oompa loompa,
Speaker 2: pinhead hats on and boogie boys singing it sitting sitting
Speaker 2: in a diaper with a minimog on my lap singing,
Speaker 2: and I changed the words to instead of Johnny Rotten,
Speaker 2: I said Johnny the Spud or something. But he crashed
Speaker 2: my playpen. He destroyed my playpen that I used to
Speaker 2: take on stage with me because he was playing and
Speaker 2: he just smashed. He just started falling on it and
Speaker 2: smashing it and I couldn't see very well because I
Speaker 2: had a latex mask on, but I'm like looking at him, going, oh,
Speaker 2: that's kind of crazy. He's like, he's kind of getting
Speaker 2: pretty punk for a Grandpa Granola, which was what Jerry
Speaker 2: used to call him.
Speaker 1: Grafa Granola. Yeah, that's an intense performance of the song
Speaker 1: in the movie. It's in Superno.
Speaker 2: Well, what's funny, I'll tell you something funny about it.
Speaker 2: To pay for our first film, Jerry and I started
Speaker 2: a company called Unit Services in downtown Akron, and it
Speaker 2: was a graphic design shop and mostly what we did
Speaker 2: is we talked people and letting us do the signs
Speaker 2: for their shops in this place because there were like
Speaker 2: thirty other companies coming in and they we'd designed signs
Speaker 2: for him. But we got this one job for a
Speaker 2: muffler company, Midas Muffler, and we came up with the
Speaker 2: logo rust Never Sleeps and they loved it and they
Speaker 2: wanted T shirts. So so they wanted a hundred T
Speaker 2: shirts and I bought like one hundred one just enough
Speaker 2: so we'd have one that we could do a sample on.
Speaker 2: And so I'm in the basement where I lived and
Speaker 2: I'm I'm getting ready to print. I go, okay. I
Speaker 2: tried it on the one extra shirt and it was
Speaker 2: wrinkly looking. I went, oh no, So I changed the
Speaker 2: ink a little bit and cleaned the screen, and then
Speaker 2: I was looking for that. So I found a couple
Speaker 2: of my T shirts and a towel and I started
Speaker 2: printing on them. And then I printed. I had a
Speaker 2: pair of underpants and I just printed it on the
Speaker 2: seat of the underpants, rus never Sleeps. And so that
Speaker 2: was the underpants boogie Boy was wearing in the playpen
Speaker 2: when we were recording together. If Boogie Boy would have
Speaker 2: flipped over, you would have read it. But he never
Speaker 2: flipped over in the movie. But he called me up
Speaker 2: a few weeks later and he said, hey, Mark, that
Speaker 2: rust Never sleeps. Do you mind if I use that
Speaker 2: for the title of my next film. I go, no, No,
Speaker 2: that'd be great, And so that's how. So then he
Speaker 2: made a film called Rus Never sleep based on a
Speaker 2: Midas muffler gig that helped pay for the first debo film.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the connections between you guys are interesting, between the
Speaker 1: Kent State connection and him right in Ohio and and
Speaker 1: then giving him Russ Never Sleeps as the title and
Speaker 1: it's like that, you.
Speaker 2: Know that funny Well he was. He was an interesting guy.
Speaker 2: He was much more interesting guy than then we gave
Speaker 2: him credit for. At the time we were kind of
Speaker 2: punky assholes.
Speaker 4: What can I say real quick, I wanted to ask
Speaker 4: you about Robert Margolef, who, Yeah, as someone who is
Speaker 4: vary into synthesizers, how was he as a person who
Speaker 4: I mean it seems to be I mean the Tanto
Speaker 4: machine and I mean, what a kind of bizarre, strange
Speaker 4: guy and doing all this classic records of Stevie and
Speaker 4: then work with you guys.
Speaker 2: To me, he was the most of all the of
Speaker 2: all the producers outside producers that we used to work
Speaker 2: on debo records, he was the most successful and the
Speaker 2: smartest and uh taught me more than any of the
Speaker 2: other producers did. And yeah, the fact that he went
Speaker 2: between like Stevie Wonder and the original Neotombril Orchestra Tonto.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like, that's why we asked him to
Speaker 2: work with us in the first place, because we were
Speaker 2: don't laugh, but we thought freedom of choice was funky divo.
Speaker 2: We thought that was We thought, okay, what if Devo
Speaker 2: did funk, what would it sound like? And that's what
Speaker 2: we came up with, which wasn't I mean, I can't
Speaker 2: say it's a very funky album, but you know it was.
Speaker 2: It was our attempt at it. And so we wanted
Speaker 2: a guy who was familiar with funk but also familiar
Speaker 2: with electronics. And he was the perfect guy. And I
Speaker 2: still stay in touch with him. He's he's really smart.
Speaker 2: He's really he's really articulate. Still and uh and uh,
Speaker 2: somebody's looking for a great producer. He's a he's a
Speaker 2: good guy to use.
Speaker 1: Is he still experimenting with stuff and sounds.
Speaker 2: And mostly yeah, And lately it's been head phones where
Speaker 2: you feel like you're an Atmost. It's like it's like
Speaker 2: an alternate to the Utmost system, but a headphone version
Speaker 2: of it. And and he can spread sounds all, you know,
Speaker 2: really wide when you're in these headphones. That's the last
Speaker 2: thing stuff. Yeah, spatial audio. Yeah, I guess that's what
Speaker 2: it's called. And that's the last thing I remember him
Speaker 2: calling me about being really enthusiastic about.
Speaker 1: I was listening because Robbie Robertson died recently, and so
Speaker 1: I listened to the first couple of band records, fun
Speaker 1: to back for the first time in a long time,
Speaker 1: and the narrative on the band was that like they
Speaker 1: made everyone want to go back to like roots music essentially,
Speaker 1: you know, like stupid all back. But because of Garth Hudson,
Speaker 1: the organist, there was always really weird sounds you would
Speaker 1: never hear in like a country record or like an
Speaker 1: Americana record. And I just never picked up on that
Speaker 1: when I used to listen to him, I didn't know
Speaker 1: if you listened to them, and you know, that.
Speaker 2: Was the part that I picked up on. I liked
Speaker 2: all the eccentricity. I was not into country. Country when
Speaker 2: I was in high school was the music I got
Speaker 2: my ass. That was a soundtrack to me getting my
Speaker 2: ass kicked by by kids that wanted me to be
Speaker 2: more like them or something or like or to be
Speaker 2: less of a weirdo. So I never was a fan
Speaker 2: of country and but I liked those albums, and I
Speaker 2: loved some of the lyrics like take a load off, Crainy,
Speaker 2: that's to me that was just kind of absurdly hilarious,
Speaker 2: you know, some of that stuff. And I liked Big Pink.
Speaker 1: I thought that was a good big pink that's cool
Speaker 1: right there. Yeah, any other like early like keyboard or
Speaker 1: synth inspirations.
Speaker 2: I loved Walter Carlos's Clockworkgorns soundtrack. I thought that was
Speaker 2: incredibly genius and that probably helped make me even more
Speaker 2: aware of soundtracks then, you know, because that was that
Speaker 2: music was uh it was Beethoven mostly, but it was
Speaker 2: like it sounded so good and nobody's ever used a
Speaker 2: vocorder again the way he did it, and in that movie,
Speaker 2: I would defy you to find something that sounds like that.
Speaker 2: It's so incredible. And then, uh, I think for me,
Speaker 2: I remember listening to a Roxy music album the first
Speaker 2: I think it was the first one, and the lyrics
Speaker 2: were good on everything back then. Uh, I'm less of
Speaker 2: a fan of when it turned into avelon. I loved
Speaker 2: all the I loved all the early stuff like Inflatable Dolly,
Speaker 2: you know, stuff like that was to me, it was
Speaker 2: like it was like creepy and cool. But uh, I
Speaker 2: was listening to the song. It was like a throwaway
Speaker 2: song on Roxy music album called Editions of You and
Speaker 2: and so there's a saxophone takes a solo and goes
Speaker 2: d and then then the guitar player gets a solo,
Speaker 2: and then Eno gets a solo, and I didn't know
Speaker 2: who Eno was, and I hear this Moulton montm motum motum. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he did the solo that I went, that's the best
Speaker 2: electronic music since solo I've ever heard in a rock
Speaker 2: and roll song or a pop song. I thought that
Speaker 2: was incredible. It made me want to meet him. It
Speaker 2: made me want to see see what he used, and
Speaker 2: made me want to talk to him. And that's when
Speaker 2: I just was.
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 2: You know, when people asked me who I wanted to
Speaker 2: produce Divo, I said Brian ENO's first choice, and so
Speaker 2: that's how that happened. But his I just thought he
Speaker 2: was like the early pioneer that did it. I think
Speaker 2: that song is like if you were looking for for
Speaker 2: electronic pop, new wave punk or whatever that music was.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know how to classify it.
Speaker 2: I know his solo it was like very It was
Speaker 2: just totally abstract, that's what was and that was so
Speaker 2: great about it. And it was abstract with electronics. And
Speaker 2: as much as I thought Satisfaction was the episode center
Speaker 2: of rock and roll, is the best song ever, matter
Speaker 2: of fact, that's why we we did our version of it,
Speaker 2: because it was ten years later, and I thought, well,
Speaker 2: it's about time to reinterpret and update that song, you know,
Speaker 2: to match what's going on now. And I mean Bob
Speaker 2: Casally actually was the started playing that riff out of nowhere,
Speaker 2: and within an hour we'd put the song together, and
Speaker 2: then I was singing on it, Satisfaction. But I had
Speaker 2: always I thought Satisfaction was perfect because I thought, well,
Speaker 2: it's ten years it's time to reinterpret what pop music is.
Speaker 1: Was Jerry into your you know, because early on, I
Speaker 1: mean Jerry listening to the sounds can be very bluesy
Speaker 1: and very I mean if I had like almost like
Speaker 1: a garage rocky thing. Was he into your experiment doing sounds?
Speaker 2: And I think maybe less than I was into the
Speaker 2: blue thing. I loved having a blues a blues progression
Speaker 2: underneath things I was writing because it gave me a
Speaker 2: chance to do really distract things with great rhythms to it,
Speaker 2: you know. And and I could take really abstract sounds
Speaker 2: and you know, mortar blasts, ray guns. I could put
Speaker 2: like ray gun sounds, you know, like in uh Space
Speaker 2: Girls for instance, and these warbly sounds moll and you know,
Speaker 2: so what he was doing kind of worked with that
Speaker 2: pretty good.
Speaker 1: Like automodown, you know, it would be and then.
Speaker 2: The synth was like that's automodown. Is a good example
Speaker 2: of like that's the sun raw approach because that was
Speaker 2: he oh, don't boot bo't. It was like it was
Speaker 2: like playing it like so that they were so that
Speaker 2: they were noises and they were like more percussive with
Speaker 2: a little bit of with a little bit of you know,
Speaker 2: like uh melody, and you know in the sound, you know,
Speaker 2: because you'd hear notes in it, but they'd be you know,
Speaker 2: like in to mow Down, they were kind of like
Speaker 2: car horns. They sounded like three or four It sounded
Speaker 2: like three or four car horns hitting at the same
Speaker 2: time in different pitches.
Speaker 1: That's a song I've returned to you a lot. That's
Speaker 1: such a question.
Speaker 2: That's a good song and that has and that has
Speaker 2: Jerry's rhythm, his bas rhythm going on in it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I love that song. I love that song too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's an incredible one. Do you have an opinion
Speaker 1: on the sort of progression of electronics in music the
Speaker 1: way it's evolved over time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, uh, pop music is on some levels stupid.
Speaker 2: You know, no matter what era you're talking about, even
Speaker 2: the stuff I liked, there was a stupid side to
Speaker 2: a lot of it. But the thing about pop music
Speaker 2: is pop music. It's important to kids that are that
Speaker 2: are like just coming of an age, whatever age that is,
Speaker 2: if it's eleven or if it's nineteen or anything, where
Speaker 2: they go the world is insane, nothing makes sense to me.
Speaker 2: Who am I? Where am I? And then you find
Speaker 2: something like and for some people it's Taylor Swift, you know,
Speaker 2: they find it in Taylor Swift, some people with the Beatles,
Speaker 2: and some people it's Neil Young or it's Jimi Hendrix.
Speaker 2: But this music is like where you go and you go, Ah.
Speaker 2: I feel this reminds me of when I needed a refuge.
Speaker 2: You know, It's like for Devo, it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: there was a time where I was kind of like, well,
Speaker 2: I don't like playing the same songs. You know, these
Speaker 2: are songs I wrote when I was twenty five. That's
Speaker 2: like years almost fifty years ago. Now, why don't people
Speaker 2: want to hear the new stuff? But you know the
Speaker 2: reality is if the ghost of David Bowie came up
Speaker 2: to me tonight and went, ooo, Mark, I'm going to
Speaker 2: do a concert for you and you only. It's going
Speaker 2: to be a brand new album. Nobody's ever heard these songs.
Speaker 2: It's all about everything that's going on in the world now,
Speaker 2: Donald Trump, you know, Joe Biden, Ukraine, or it's going
Speaker 2: to be Spiders and Mars, the live show that blew
Speaker 2: your mind. You're going to see that exact, absolute, exact
Speaker 2: same show and you can sit anywhere in the audience
Speaker 2: you want. I go. I'll take Spiders some Mars and
Speaker 2: you can save your brand news stuff for somebody else,
Speaker 2: you know. And and so I understand it when kids
Speaker 2: come up and go you know, people picked on me
Speaker 2: and they called me devo when I was in high school.
Speaker 2: But I loved your music and I love that stuff now.
Speaker 2: And what does you know?
Speaker 1: What does a.
Speaker 2: Blockhead mean to you or something like that you know?
Speaker 2: Or or what does gut feeling mean? And you instead
Speaker 2: of going I wrote that when I was twenty five.
Speaker 2: I don't fucking remember, you know. It's like you know,
Speaker 2: it's like you go, well, you know.
Speaker 1: You talk to him about it, and then in some
Speaker 1: instances do you also just hate to try to remember
Speaker 1: what your access twenty five year old mark emotions like.
Speaker 1: It seems like a lot of work to try to
Speaker 1: go back and rehash shit and pinpoint then.
Speaker 2: Well, you know what we did, choose a weird life
Speaker 2: for ourselves, you know, because because that's what I'm going
Speaker 2: to be doing, you know, until we end up stop touring.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like we're gonna the part we will
Speaker 2: play new songs and people will be polite and sit
Speaker 2: through them, and then uh, and then they'll get to
Speaker 2: the stuff that they wanted to hear. You know, You'll
Speaker 2: you'll play uncontrollablege or you'll play Satisfaction and there they'll
Speaker 2: lose their minds, you know, And I like that, that's
Speaker 2: what you know. And so for me, it's like I
Speaker 2: write a lot of music for myself that nobody ever hears.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I put it out, like I put out one
Speaker 2: set of six forty five's called Mutant Flora, and that
Speaker 2: was music that I'd written for Taikawatiti what was the
Speaker 2: name of that movie, thor Ragnarok, you know, stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Or then I did a box I did a set
Speaker 2: called the Most Powerful Healing Music in the entire world.
Speaker 2: And it was like I'd be working on a Wes
Speaker 2: Anderson film or something Lego or something, and I my
Speaker 2: head would start, you know, getting tighten, and I just
Speaker 2: go into the lunch room here. It's over over there,
Speaker 2: about thirty feet and I had a home organ from
Speaker 2: the eighties set up there and I would just do
Speaker 2: stream of consciousness, easy listening home organ music, and I
Speaker 2: did a six album set of it. I might re
Speaker 2: release that.
Speaker 1: You got to put out like a library of just stuff,
Speaker 1: like a online library accessible whatever, you know.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm thinking, I'm totally thinking that I'm putting
Speaker 2: out a set of books. And the first one's coming
Speaker 2: out in December, and the next one though, it's going
Speaker 2: to be about sixteen hundred pages. It's gonna be super fat,
Speaker 2: and it's going to be big pages, and it's all
Speaker 2: art and I'm gonna put QR codes in it and
Speaker 2: where I could put music you could listen to while
Speaker 2: you're looking through the book and videos and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Well, look forward to seeing the books. That's cool, man. December. Well,
Speaker 1: I can't wait to see that. And it's a pleasure
Speaker 1: talking to you. Thank you so much, Thank you you too,
Speaker 1: Thanks to Mark Mothers Bob for sharing some of those
Speaker 1: incredible stories. You can hear our favorite songs from Devo
Speaker 1: and Mark's solo career on a playlist at broken record
Speaker 1: podcast dot com. Subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube
Speaker 1: dot com slash broken record Podcast, where you can find
Speaker 1: all of our new episodes. You can follow us on
Speaker 1: Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced with help
Speaker 1: from Lea Rose and Eric Sandler. Our show is engineered
Speaker 1: by Echo Mountainer. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries.
Speaker 1: If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider
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Speaker 1: And if you like this show, please remember to share, rate,
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Speaker 1: by Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Rischman.