WE ARE DEVO: THE BAND THAT MADE WEIRD SPECIAL
Rock and roll is more than just a stamp.
Image: DEVO. Source: Britannica
We use the words as though they describe one particular kind of music, but they don't. Rock and roll is more like an enormous building filled with departments, floors, rooms, hallways and probably a questionable basement or two nobody remembers authorizing.
There's glam. Punk. Metal. New wave. Progressive rock. Hard rock. Art rock. Alternative. Electronic. And then there are all the little rooms inside those rooms, the offshoots, subgenres and arguments over exactly where one sound ends and another begins.
We'll wander through a lot of those rooms eventually.
But every once in a while, you run into a band that refuses to wiggle neatly into any particular hole.
You can point toward punk.
You can point toward new wave.
You can call it electronic, art rock, post-punk or performance art with a rhythm section.
And somehow an arm or a leg is still sticking out of the box.
For me, Devo is one of those bands.
Because Devo didn't simply make weird music.
Devo made weird special.
MY BROTHER KNEW THINGS
I was the youngest of seven children.
There were what we called the Big Four, my four oldest brothers and sister, and then there was a significant break before the last three of us came along. My brother, then my other sister, then me.
The three of us had a little connection of our own. We were the younger ones, dipping out of the Boomer years and slipping toward the generation that would eventually be called Gen X.
And I worshiped my older brothers and sisters like gods.
They each brought something different into my world.
This particular brother was cool.
Tall. Athletic. Older than me by enough that I probably took everything he said a little too seriously. But he was also interesting. He collected comic books. He loved animation. He had these things that fascinated him, and because I was his little sister, they fascinated me too.
He also had a habit of discovering things.
This is the brother who once started going on and on about some science-fiction movie my mother, sister and I hadn't seen.
He had the soundtrack.
He played it.
And played it.
And played it.
Finally my mother surrendered.
Okay, okay. We'll go tonight.
So we packed up the family, drove into San Francisco, bought our tickets, stood in the still-forming lines and went inside to see this little movie that had been out for about a month.
It was called Star Wars.
But that's another story.
The point is, perhaps I should have learned by then:
When this particular brother gets really excited about something, pay attention.
THEN HE FOUND DEVO
One day my brother came home talking about this band.
Devo.
He loved them.
I hadn't heard much about them yet. “Whip It” was still early enough in its run that it hadn't become the enormous cultural thing it would eventually become.
He played it for me.
I listened.
Huh.
Interesting.
That was pretty much it.
My brother, meanwhile, was completely sold.
And I was here for his excitement even if I wasn't quite there with the music yet.
His birthday was coming, and my sister and I decided we were going to do something cool for him. Devo was coming to town, so we pulled our money together and bought him two tickets.
But apparently just handing our brother an envelope would have been far too easy.
We got a giant cardboard box.
We put the card with the tickets at the very bottom, filled the box with paper and wrapped the whole thing.
It looked like we had bought the man a piece of furniture.
I will never forget watching him wrestle with that ridiculous box, digging through all that paper until he finally reached the bottom.
He found the card.
Opened it.
Devo tickets.
He was so excited.
And somewhere inside that giant box full of paper, without realizing it yet, my own journey with Devo had started.
AND THEN I STARTED DIGGING
If you've been hanging around Rock 'n' Roll Angel for a while, you know how this works.
I dig.
Back then, of course, digging actually required digging.
There was no streaming service waiting to serve up an artist's entire catalog. No algorithm saying, If you enjoyed this, perhaps you'd like these seventeen other songs.
You hunted.
Records. Radio. Record stores. Soundtracks. Television appearances. Friends. Brothers and sisters. Somebody who knew something you didn't know yet.
And once I started digging into Devo, I discovered that “Whip It” wasn't the weird song.
It was practically the welcome mat.
Look at the album titles.
Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!
Image: Album cover. Q: Are We Not Men? We Are Devo. Source: Wikipedia
Duty Now for the Future. Freedom of Choice. New Traditionalists. Oh, No! It's Devo.
What the hell was going on over there?
The songs could be even stranger.
“Jocko Homo.”
“Uncontrollable Urge.”
“Girl U Want.”
“Gates of Steel.”
“Jerkin' Back 'N' Forth.”
“Through Being Cool.”
“Peek-a-Boo!”
“That's Good.”
“Big Mess.”
Some of it sounded almost...
wrong.
Not bad.
Wrong.
The rhythms didn't always behave the way my rock-and-roll-trained brain expected them to behave. The vocals were strange. Beats seemed to land where they weren't supposed to land. Structures could feel fractured and mechanical.
And then there was their version of the Rolling Stones' “(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction.”
Good Lord.
The Stones gave us swagger.
Devo took the swagger outside, killed it and apparently brought back some of the parts.
Their version twitches.
It jerks.
It feels nervous.
You know the song, so your brain keeps waiting for it to behave like “Satisfaction.”
It refuses.
Devo's version appeared on their 1978 debut, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!, produced by Brian Eno. Even their record label's retrospective description calls the interpretation “herky-jerky,” which may be one of the more polite ways to describe what they did to that song.
And I love it.
Because I've always believed something:
You can't break the rules until you learn the rules.
Anybody can make a mess.
It takes understanding to know exactly which wall to knock down.
Devo knew the rules.
They knew rhythm. They knew melody. They knew structure. They knew performance. They understood what audiences expected a rock band to sound like, look like and behave like.
And then they started removing pieces.
What was left sometimes sounded wrong.
Until it didn't.
It sounded like Devo.
WE ARE DEVO. D-E-V-O.
Of course, eventually I discovered that the weirdness wasn't accidental.
There was an idea underneath all of it.
De-evolution.
Devo formed in Akron, Ohio, out of an artistic partnership that began when Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale were students at Kent State. The band's own history ties its development to the Vietnam era, political unrest and the 1970 Kent State shootings. Their concept of “de-evolution” challenged the comforting assumption that humanity was inevitably progressing. Maybe, they suggested, we were moving in the other direction.
Suddenly the weird wasn't just weird.
The music, the movement, the clothes, the videos, the language, the logo, the characters, the matching outfits, the famous red Energy Domes...
It was all part of Devo.
Gerald Casale would later describe Devo as something much larger than a band, encompassing art, music, politics and fashion inside their alternate worldview of de-evolution.
They weren't just making songs.
They were building a world.
And the nerdy, geeky look wasn't something they seemed particularly interested in escaping.
This was an era filled with rock gods.
Long hair.
Leather.
Swagger.
Guitar heroes standing with one boot on an amplifier looking as though they had personally invented testosterone.
And here comes Devo looking like the engineering department has been asked to provide entertainment for the company picnic.
I loved it.
MY ROCK-AND-ROLL STARPORT
Then there is Heavy Metal.
I've started to realize that movie may have been one of the great starports of my rock-and-roll life.
I came for the animation.
The fantasy.
The science fiction.
The Loc-Nar.
Taarna.
All that glorious animated insanity.
I didn't know I was also walking into a musical transportation hub filled with artists whose music would weave in and out of my life.
And Devo was there too.
Both “Working in the Coal Mine” and “Through Being Cool” appear in the film.
Apparently half my musical future had checked into the same damn movie before I understood what any of it meant.
And “Through Being Cool” feels particularly appropriate when talking about Devo.
Because they were.
Through being cool.
At least the kind of cool rock and roll had already defined for them.
They made their own.
WHIP IT IS THE DOOR, NOT THE ROOM
Of course we remember “Whip It.”
Everybody remembers “Whip It.”
Released on Freedom of Choice, the song was the breakthrough that pushed Devo from cult fascination into mainstream recognition. Their own history describes the album as the point when the band became a worldwide phenomenon.
And if you're one of what I'm going to start calling the Gen X Explorers, “Whip It” is probably where you'll encounter them.
Yes.
Gen X Explorers.
That's what I'm calling those of us digging around in all this wonderful old stuff now.
And apparently I'm old enough for things from my youth to qualify as vintage.
I have chosen not to discuss my feelings about this.
But if you're exploring Devo, don't stop at “Whip It.”
That's the door, not the room.
Dig.
Because there is gold in there.
“That's Good.”
“Big Mess.”
“Jerkin' Back 'N' Forth.”
“Peek-a-Boo!”
“Beautiful World.”
“Through Being Cool.”
“Gates of Steel.”
The synths.
The rhythms.
Those voices.
The messages.
The strange little musical turns.
Some songs grab you immediately. Some make you wonder what the hell you're listening to. Some sound like somebody assembled a rock song and somehow had three screws left over.
Play them again.
That's how weird gets you.
AND THEN THEY WERE EVERYWHERE
The funniest thing is that this band that seemed as though it should have been playing some wonderfully obscure science-fiction convention didn't remain obscure.
Devo got big.
They were on the radio.
Television.
Soundtracks.
Music videos.
Everywhere.
Their third album, Freedom of Choice, brought their major commercial breakthrough in 1980, and their already highly visual approach proved perfectly suited to the music-video culture that exploded around them in the early MTV era.
That's another thing I appreciate more looking backward.
Devo didn't suddenly invent a look because music became visual.
The look was already part of Devo.
The yellow suits.
The movements.
The glasses.
The red hats.
The graphics.
The entire presentation mattered.
They understood something that today we'd probably call branding.
But Devo wasn't merely branded.
Devo was Devo.
You could see that Energy Dome and know.
You could see those outfits and know.
You could hear a few seconds of that twitchy mechanical rhythm and know.
D-E-V-O.
THEY SOUNDED LIKE THEIR TIME
There are bands that are bands.
There are bands that are ridiculously, almost unfairly amazing.
And then there are bands that somehow become part of the time they came from.
Devo is that last one all day.
I don't mean the music simply sounds old.
I mean Devo feels like an era trying to figure out what the hell it was becoming.
Technology was moving into our lives. Synthesizers were changing music. Video was changing how we experienced musicians. Consumer culture was booming. Computers were creeping toward us. The future felt exciting, strange and maybe just a little threatening.
And here came these nerdy-looking guys making music that sometimes sounded like human beings being processed through machinery.
They didn't feel like rock stars arriving from the past.
They felt like our weird idea of the future had formed a band.
And somehow it worked.
More than fifty years after Devo formed, the band can look back on a career that went from Akron art experiments to a mainstream breakthrough, decades of music and visual experimentation, and a 50th-anniversary celebration of what they still proudly call “de-evolution.”
But I don't think that's why they stayed with me.
They stayed because they made weird interesting.
They made it smart.
They made it funny.
They made it challenging.
And somehow, they made it special.
All these years later, I can still trace my way back to that giant cardboard box.
My brother had found another strange thing he loved.
My sister and I wanted to make him happy.
So we bought him tickets.
He opened the envelope.
He was thrilled.
And I had no idea that somewhere along the way, his weird little band was going to become part of my story too.
Turns out my brother knew things.
Maybe I should have listened sooner.
Then again...
I got there eventually.
We are Devo.
D-E-V-O.
Resources I Tapped
For anyone who wants to go digging beyond my memories, Devo's official history tells the band's story from Kent State and the beginnings of de-evolution through its later career. Rhino's 50 Years of De-Evolution retrospective is useful for the recording chronology and mainstream breakthrough, while Rhino's look at Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! digs into that gloriously mangled “Satisfaction” and the making of the debut.
And if you're wondering whether I imagined Devo occupying my beloved Heavy Metal starport: nope. The soundtrack credits include both “Through Being Cool” and “Working in the Coal Mine.”
Now go dig. There is some weird gold in there. 🤘
Thanks for taking this trip back with me.
What do you remember? Were you there too, or did this story bring back a memory of your own? I’d love to hear it. Share your stories in the comments, and if this made you smile, laugh, cringe, or turn up an old favorite song, share it with someone who remembers too.
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Until next time...
Keep the memories alive. Keep the stories coming. And whatever you do... turn it up.
— Dr. AY Heath (Angel)
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