Don't Shoot, We're Devo: Pt. 3

Scrunchies. Jazzercise. The Gremlin car, in all its hatchback deformity. Cone-shaped bras. Jell-o fruit salad. Members Only jackets. Hammer pants. Over the course of a decade, countless trends have lit the pop-culture landscape and receded into obsolescence. What is it, then, that endures about Devo? Why does their 1978 album, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo, still sound timely nearly 40 years later? Why do their energy-dome hats still look awesome? We met with Devo’s Jerry Casale to find out. In this, the third installment of our exclusive Devo interview series, Sara Jayne Crow delves into the origins of “energy-dome” hats, explores the the recent McDonald’s pending lawsuit, and encounters ghosts of lawsuits past.

Flavorpill: Let’s talk about the beginnings of Devo, back when people lobbed beer bottles onstage while you performed. Before Saturday Night Live, before Warner Brothers records, before the lawsuits…

Jerry Casale: In a slightly different scenario, it could’ve been that the real beginning of Devo was also the end. It could’ve been over, and nothing else would have happened. We would never have had a body of work, or a history. And that’s how narrow the difference is. It’s like the whole story of Tesla.

FP: I love that you brought up Tesla right now.

JC: Why?

FP: It’s just poetic.

JC: That’s a great story. He was an amazing artist, and his legacy was besmirched. He was erased from history. Except for people like us, who know about him. That’s how it can go. That’s the difference… just that much.

FP: That’s sort of the human condition, isn’t it?

JC: That’s right. There are plenty of people today in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like the massive rape in Africa, and the People’s Democratic Republic of the Congo, or whatever the fuck it is. It’s horrifying. Where’s the great United States justice there?

FP: America is normally so obtrusive in foreign affairs. But in the case of the Congo, it’s not financially solvent, and the pain and suffering continues.

JC: The pain and suffering is unbelievable.

FP: So where do you think this is all going? All the pain, suffering, strife, pollution, devolution?

JC: There’s just going to be more and more of it. There aren’t enough powerful, good people in the world to stop the freight train of history into the black hole. There are too many evil people and subhuman victims that aren’t equipped to resist any more. The saddest thing of all is in American politics, where blue-collar people are the worst in terms of being affected by heinous policies of the Federal government that penalizes them and drives them further and further into the dirt. They are the most tricked by the very people that perpetrate their victimization. These are the people that voted twice for Bush and probably voted for McCain and Palin.

FP: Time for another tea party? Back to the beginnings of Devo question… let’s talk about something devoid of politics and pain. How about where the idea for the “energy dome” hats come about?

JC: The idea originally came from a comic book about a cancellator helmet. The character in the comic book wore the helmet so she couldn’t hear, and it made her happy because it blocked out babble from the outside world. It looked a little bit like a ceiling fixture I used to fixate on in my [Catholic] grade school. Because I hated the nuns so much, I would stare at the ceiling so I wouldn’t have to look at them. If you could imagine the energy domes turned upside down in white milk glass, they looked exactly the same. I used to love the design. And I thought, “We should make a vacuum-formed plastic hat that looks like that for Devo.” And so I set about trying to make it.

At some point, a worker in the production factory we were using asked if we were making flower pots, and I spontaneously said we were making energy domes because he pissed me off. If we gave interviews, we talked about Wilhelm Reich’s orgone box, and added that to the story after the fact. To begin with, it was more about visual design and a ridiculous idea for a hat.

FP: So what’s up with the Devo lawsuit with McDonald’s over the “New Wave Nigel” happy meal toy whose hat looks mysteriously like those hats?

JC: You know, it’s very funny. You know… McDonald’s is so frightening with the legal process that I realized how power works, true power, all over again. Even I was surprised by how avaricious it was. I’m not allowed to tell you a thing about this, or they can sue me. But there was no lawsuit.

FP: Can you at least talk about why you filed the suit?

JC: They had a promotion for Happy Meals where each decade of was represented by different characters, the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s and now. Oddly enough, the ’80s character, which was the “New Wave Nigel” doll, did appear to us to be Devo. I can’t talk about it. I like how the victim becomes the victim, again.

FP: That’s been a theme, hasn’t it?

JC: Absolutely. It never stops. Whatever happened with McDonald’s… McDonald’s is a powerful corporation, and it creates reality, like Karl Rove. What they say goes. Even though we felt we were the victims, we were being treated like perpetrators and troublemakers. The fact that we’re not allowed to talk about it… you needn’t say more than that. By saying what I’m saying, I’m talking about it. That’s the problem.

It’s like the first time we were ever sued. We were sued less than every band, I think. The biggest and most furious one was where former friend and associate at Kent [State University], Bob Lewis, trumped up a suit about Devo about theft of intellectual property, which was ludicrous. Really, it was about a kid from Akron University’s college paper who tricked Mark into saying Bob Lewis was our manager, which was totally not true. Two years later, when we were getting ready to tour, and had a real manager — Elliot Roberts, who managed Neil Young, The Cars, Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan. This guy pulls out this tape and tries to injunct our tour, so we were forced to settle. He tried to claim that was proof his case of theft of intellectual property was real, which was totally ridiculous. It would make a great movie in and of itself, because then everyone starts arguing about the reference points for de-evolution and where it came from…

FP: Isn’t that the most devolved argument you can have?

JC: I know! Did it come from the comic book, did it come from The Island of Lost Souls, who said what first, and we were all acknowledging that we got this idea from pre-existing sources: even the song title “Jocko Homo” came from a religious pamphlet. The point is that these are influences of artistic people, and the ideas don’t belong to anyone, on that level. What may be Devo is the fact that Mark and I wrote songs with certain lyrics and played songs a certain way. That’s what made Devo, Devo. Not who read what book first.

FP: In some ways, the “New Wave Nigel” character, McDonald’s was homage to Devo.

JC: They were using a copyrighted icon that I created without asking permission. The point is, we don’t approve of what McDonald’s represents. If we had, maybe the homage would have been a compliment to us.

FP: Wasn’t there a band you were in called 15-60-75?

JC: Yes, I played both bass and drums at different times in that band.

FP: You were quoted at one point as saying that you wanted to write McDonald’s jingles with the band, because that’s what was familiar to people and was part of the mental landscape of the general populous whether they knew it or not.

JC: We were inspired by early McDonald’s advertising, because we were so horrified by it. We wanted to subvert what people liked. We wanted to take it and misappropriate it, or be transgressive about it. In our early videos, we would watch McDonald’s commercials and see what they did-we learned how to do our shot selection and edit from McDonald’s commercials. But then we mixed it with German expressionism and horrific twists to screw with people. It’s like in the “Beautiful World” video, where we show some really ridiculous, humorous image and then a starving child in Africa right after it.

FP: It’s taking the familiar editing precepts and making it into something subversive and appealing via shock, which has far more of an impact.

JC: It’s alienation by the familiar.

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Don’t Shoot, We’re Devo: Pt. 2

Even today, some 30 years after the band’s debut, there are legions of Devo-tees. Perhaps it’s due to the philosophy of De-evolution and the precocious employ of musical, visual and philosophical elements before it was in vogue. Perhaps it’s an inevitable outcome of years spent releasing daring records bound to off-the-wall antics, to court popularity and success while simultaneously shunning it. Perhaps it’s just the magnetism of the yellow-jumpsuit-”energy-dome” combination.

Whatever the allure, for every fan of the MTV-happy “Whip It” there’s another cataloging Devo t-shirts in cellophane wrap organized by concert year and sub-categorized by month and color. Earplug’s Sara Jayne Crow met with Jerry Casale of Devo over the course of several months. The following is the second installment (you can find the first here and below) in a series covering the De-evolution philosophy, Brian Eno’s “Oblique Strategies,” and the “rogue’s gallery” of Devo history.

Earplug: How’s Los Angeles?

Jerry Casale: Everybody’s doing meaningless shit, and they just do it in this endless procession of consumption. It’s like taking a shit. Out here [in LA], it’s just sadistic. The girls are really entitled, aggressive and mean. They’ve turned into the ways guys used to be… callow and womanizing. The girls are laughing at the guys who care about them. It’s just mind-boggling.

EP: Isn’t that just in keeping with the patterns of history, though? The pendulum swings?

JC: Yeah, but none of it’s good.

EP: Has it ever been?

JC: Maybe not. I guess I’ve never seen the volume of bad be so high and up-front, that’s all. I’ve never seen so many stupid people.

EP: De-evolution at work?

JC: Yes. So many stupid people who are kind of proud of being stupid. Shameless. They don’t even feel stupid at all. It’s like how we got to a point in America where you can be put down as a politician if you were able to speak as if you knew more than the crowd you were talking to.

EP: Let’s talk about the beginnings of Devo and philosophy, which was couched in the concept of de-evolution. You have spoken of the band forming as a reaction to the brute military force at the Kent State University antiwar protest in 1970 in an older Vermont Review interview.

JC: Yes. I think I was kind of a hippie until that point. I believed naively that there was justice, that good deeds mattered, and that there really was a democracy enforcing the Constitution, and that bigotry and segregation were aberrations, not the norm. And I was wrong. The evil far outweighs the good, and you would have to be a constant warrior vigilante, day and night, to make a dent in it. One of the things I could do was to have an artistic aesthetic that was a sort of gun in your face, giving some back to ‘em, but in a way that you’re allowed to operate. Because if I’d done what I really felt like doing, I’d be in jail for homicide.

EP: What did you really feel like doing, or who did you really feel should be killed?

JC: Oh, there were so many people that should have died.

EP: Nixon?

JC: Sure, sure absolutely. There were so many, locally and nationally. But it’s like the Medusa. It seems to work when the right wing kills off a visionary leader because somebody trying to give people hope and a sense of direction and lift them up really is important. But there is always another evil guy. There’s an endless supply of those guys. Evil is easy; it’s based on fear and hopelessness. But the opposite isn’t easy. You change history by killing a visionary. The evil goes from the top to the bottom and right down from the largest kind of implications for masses of people on a political level to interpersonal relationships, love and business relationships. I have not been able to put what I know into practice, in terms of me becoming cynical enough to act differently. I always act as if things could turn out well, or as if what you put into something matters.

EP: So what are you working on right now, aside from the new album?

JC: I’m working on a first draft of the early days of Devo movie with Matt Diehl, a writer for Rolling Stone. It’s about Devo in the sad, sad Akron days beginning in 1974. It shows the truth, which is stranger than fiction, where, against all odds, and totally whacked-out, this art band goes from being this hopeless joke everyone laughs.. to synching up with the new wave and punk movements… It goes all the way through to where we get signed and try to start our first tour and get the deal to go on Saturday Night Live. The movie ends there, although there’s a coda or postscript that takes place in 1980 when “Whip It” is a hit, and everyone wants us to write another hit and meet with producers. There’s also a prequel including the killings at Kent State. It’s the probable journey and struggle to success, but the success is a question mark.

EP: How did you choose that particular time period?

JC: Because that’s where the important formation of the whole concept turning into a productive reality took place, against all odds and with a lot of conflict and dark humor, and where all the revolutionary aesthetic that we had got created, including our first 10-minute film, The Truth About De-evolution. You’re seeing this rogue’s gallery of people, the record company executives and New York promoters, and Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Brian Eno, Dean Stockwell, Neil Young and Toni Basil, Richard Branson, Ron Blakely… and it’s insane, how it all works.

EP: How did you treat the Brian Eno part?

JC: Just truthfully. It was pretty strange. Brian Eno and Devo were on two different dimensional planes that kind of intersected, but not really.

EP: Did you talk about the “Oblique Strategies” [Eno's approach to finding a new formula for the Devo sound]?

JC: Oh, yeah.

EP: What did you make of that?

JC: Devo being the smartass intellectuals that we were, we thought the Oblique Strategies were pretty wanky. They were too Zen for us. We thought that precious, pseudo-mystical, elliptical stuff was too groovy. We were into brute, nasty realism and industrial-strength sounds and beats. We didn’t want pretty. Brian was trying to add beauty to our music.

EP: He probably wanted something spontaneous for your sound.

JC: We knew so much what we wanted. What his ideas were usually were antithetical to what we needed to do. The songs we brought into that studio we had played and played and played. We were married to what they were. We were driven by anger.

EP: Yes, and that anger seems to have drove you through three decades. What you were doing thirty years ago is more timely now than it ever has been.

JC: Yeah, but we knew then we were doing something that had nothing to do with trends. We were just trying to perfect what we did, and people made fun of us, saying, “Why the fuck are you doing this? Who wants to hear this, and why are you trying so hard?” It was because we had an idea. And now our music sounds contemporary.

EP: Now people are trying to re-make that punk, retro synth sound Devo mastered.

JC: There was a generation of kids that never heard us and finally found us and got inspired. And they don’t want grunge. They don’t want to hear about some whining bastard’s personal pain. They want something that unifies a group of people, inspires them, and lifts them up. And that is exactly what is new about new wave. That’s exactly what new wave did. When you heard God Save the Queen, and you were me at my age, and you heard The Clash’s London Calling, it was incredible. It made you feel like you could move, like you could go forward. It brought people together, and lifted them up. I think people need that now.

Photo credit: Moishe Brakha

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