by Jeff Elbel
( Photo : Courtesy of Devo )
36 illinoisentertainer . com june 2024
3740 N . CLARK • CHICAGO
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rt rockers and New Wave pioneers Devo have chronicled the backward steps of humanity for more than half a century . Songs including “ Peek-A-Boo !” and “ Beautiful World ” are slices of energetic synthpop with wicked twists below the surface . De facto theme song “ Jocko Homo ” caps its manifesto for a devolved society with the H . G . Wells-quoting call-and-response chorus , “ Are we not men ? We are Devo .” The band ’ s Celebrating 50 Years of De-Evolution Tour visited the Riviera Theatre last month .
Illinois Entertainer ’ s Jeff Elbel spoke to Devo co-leaders Gerald Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh in back-to-back phone interviews , posing many of the same questions to both men . Both members spoke from home while preparing for travel with the band .
IE : Devo ’ s introductory singles perfectly established the band musically and thematically . Can you describe what “ Jocko Homo ” is , and why that was prime subject matter for one of Devo ’ s first singles ? GC : “ Jocko Homo ” became our namecheck song , right ? This idea of de-evolution started as a literary and visual concept at Kent State University with myself and my colleague Bob Lewis . It kind of spilled over into the musical application . I started saying , “ What would deevolutionary music sound like ?” That ’ s about the time I met Mark . He was younger than me , and he was taking classes at Kent State from professors that I had already had as an undergraduate . I was a graduate student at that point . I had been talking to one of my professors for about a year , bending his ear about deevolution , found this pamphlet called Jocko Homo Heavenbound : King of the Apes . It was basically a fundamentalist , kind of Calvinist , right-wing repudiation of evolution and man ’ s being a sinner . There was a drawing of a stairway up to the devil , and each stair had a different sin on it , like the road perdition . [ The professor ] knew that Mark and I were starting to play songs together . So , the pamphlet inspired the song “ Jocko Homo .” Mark had
50 years of Devo
this kind of odd , progressive rock riff that wasn ’ t in two-four time and started laying the lyrics over it from the pamphlet . He then started changing them and added , “ Are we , not men ?” from the film Island of Lost Souls , which was a ‘ 30s horror movie that Bob and I had been big fans of , and then Mark saw it . It all came together . We worked on it for three or four weeks , honing it and playing it in a basement of a house that [ Devo guitarist ] Bob Mothersbaugh and I rented in Akron , Ohio . Mark came over , and we were working on it there over and over until we liked how it was sounding . That ’ s how “ Jocko Homo ,” the namecheck song , happened .
MM : It was at ground zero of what we were calling Devo , and it was the first lineup of the band that was Devo when we did our single on Boogie Boy records . It was Jim Mothersbaugh and drums , Bob Mothersbaugh on guitar , Gerry Casale on bass , and I was playing synth . It was a little more radical than what we ended up doing when we went to Warner Brothers and Virgin Records . We kind of pulled it back one notch . If you look at the first video with those four people and listen to that , Jim was an early pioneer in electronic rhythm instruments . He built that drum kit . He had a day job at , I think , Midas Muffler , and he welded together the frame that held the practice pads that he hit . They had acoustic guitar pickups attached to them , and then they went into fuzz tones and Echoplexes and ring modulators and things like that . So , if you listen to the sound on “ Jocko Homo ” and “ Secret Agent Man ” on that first film , it ' s different than what we sounded like later . That was a little more radical electronic . When Alan [ Myers ] joined the band and Bob Casale started playing , we had five of us in the band . At that point , we ' d paid attention to what was going on in New York and London . We loved the Ramones . We started playing our songs faster because of them . Before that , we sounded sort of like Captain Beefheart meets Sun Ra meets an Italian sci-fi