So it’s been 20 years since the last album. What took you guys so long?

Well it’s been an interesting process. The two Bob’s [Motherbaugh and Casale] have worked with me at Mutato [Mark Mothersbaugh’s film and music company] and we see Jerry pretty often – after all it’s two sets of brothers. So we see each other all the time and we never felt like we’d broken up. But when our second record company, Enigma, went bankrupt in 1991, it was like a plane crashing into the ground. And we were on the plane with 20 other bands. After that we definitely didn’t feel the need to be dealing with releasing records. But I’ve found the general confusion and chaos that’s going on in the music industry right now quite heartening. It just seems there are windows of opportunity to try different things. It seems a lot more exciting than the old model, which we’d already experienced and definitely didn’t need to experience again. It feels like the right time for Devo to do it again – we wanted to give it at least one more try.

So the current panicky madness of the music industry is a good opportunity for Devo?

Absolutely. It’s a great time to be making music. It’s not a great time to be a rock star, because the era of the rock star might be over. But my feeling to that is good riddance. The internet has made it so there is another world of art and music available – you can go on the internet and type: “I want to hear some Mongolian cowboy waltz ski jumping music.” And somebody has made it. The downside is of the thousands of people selling albums on the internet, you probably don’t need to hear 90% of them. I learned that when I went to SXSW last year. At the festival there are 2,000 official bands and another 1,000 bands just playing. It’s impressive in number. But then I walked down the street at night and every alleyway, every porch, had a band playing in it. And, within one hour of walking, I’d heard every musical cliché ever written. I was like: ‘Holy shit! There are a lot of people doing stuff I’ve already heard.” So there’s a lot of shit out there, The internet’s a big septic tank and you have to search around to find the pearls. 

There certainly is plenty of guff floating around – but I suppose the possibilities must outweigh the negatives if you’re sitting in front of me now talking about the new Devo record.

Yeah, the important thing is the internet has changed how we create and perceive art. It’s almost stupid to say, it’s so obvious, but it’s crazy how it’s opened everything up. When I was a kid, the idea of recording an album or having a record deal seemed such an abstract, mysterious thing. Even being in a record studio was so exclusionary – only certain people get to go in a record studio. But nowadays kids on their laptops have recording equipment more powerful than what The Beatles or The Rolling Stones were using back in the day. And you don’t have to wait for a record company to discover you. That’s great – the caveat, once again, is if you’re getting into it to be a rock star or get filthy rich then you’ll be disappointed. But if that’s your prime reason to be artist then I’m OK with your disappointment.

Yet despite all these possibilities, Devo have resigned to a major label, Warner Bros, to release Something For Everybody. Why the left turn back into the old model?

We wanted to sign with Warner Bros because they were really trying to figure out what it meant to be a record company in 2010. Because if it’s just selling CD’s, they are in big trouble – they’d have to fire ten people every year until they’re down to just one guy. So we talked to them, and decided we wanted to help them figure it out. We agreed to sign with them if they let us hire someone to come in and do the marketing.

And this is how the peculiar marketing strategy of Devo Inc., a fake company, came about. What is Devo Inc.?

We hired an ad agency to partner with us in the marketing of Something For Everybody. And they suggested using focus groups. Because I’ve scored a lot of feature films, I’m familiar with how focus groups are used. So I understood the concept – they were suggesting it both as a joke and a real idea. I thought it was really great. So we set up focus groups to decide on the track list, the album title and our new energy dome colour, with the groups monitored by the company Devo Inc.

It’s interesting, though, because you didn’t entirely go with what the focus groups suggested. The final album track listing is different from what the focus group voted for…

Yeah, Warner Bros. freaked out because they wanted a couple of songs on the record that the focus groups didn’t choose. So we used focus groups quite authentically, because focus groups never get to have the whole decision. I guess it’s like democracy – everybody’s votes count but some people’s votes count more than others. It’s like the electoral college in the US, it doesn’t totally let the people choose the president! Big business will have its say.

How did the writing of Something For Everybody compare with previous Devo albums?

In some ways it was similar to our first album – we put as much time and effort into this record as we did our first. It took a couple of years to write and then we had some people come in and remix things. The producers and re-mixers really made it sound how we wanted. They brought something to the party that was really great and made me wish we’d collaborated a bit more when we were younger.

You guys have a bit of a reputation for being, ahem, controlling the studio. Have you mellowed enough to allow others to play with your music?

Yeah I think we’ve learned something. And it took us a long time to learn the lesson.  I’m sure any producer who ever worked with us would say Devo were really difficult. We had Roy Thomas Baker produce our fourth album and he just gave up after two weeks of working with us. He realised we were stubborn and that we weren’t really asking him to produce our record – we were just letting him come in, work with us and have no fun! So he just stopped showing up at the studio. And we were like ‘That’s OK, we didn’t need him anyhow…’

But, hey look, I’m not going to completely blame us – in the early days we had to become insular in order to protect ourselves. Because people didn’t understand us. When we started playing gigs we had to lie and tell promoters we were a Top 40 band, just so they would book us. And just by doing that we made so many people mad. When introducing a song we’d mischieviously say: “Here’s another tune by Bachman-Turner Overdrive…It’s called Mongoloid!” And then people would come on stage, and we’d be in a fistfight again. Or the owner would just pay us and tell us not to come back because he didn’t want his bar broken up.

So how does Something For Everybody stack up against previous albums?

It’s up there with our first album [

Are We Not Men?

We Are Devo!] I think. Our first album is what defined who we were as angry young men. It was our big statement. It’s a flawed record, and there are better songs on later albums, but it has a lot of meaning for me. It was crafted with very specific important meanings. For instance the opening song, ‘Uncontrollable Urge’, I start it with the opening riff from ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ because it was the first Beatles song I heard. I saw it on the Ed Sullivan show when I was 12 and I remember saying to myself: “Oh man! That’s why I’ve been tortured with music lessons all my life.” I was taught music by Mrs.Fox and she was the worst singer in the world but she would sing along to whatever we played. It was terrible. But after seeing The Beatles I bought the music to ‘A Hard Day’s Night and I played it on the organ. But after a week I got bummed out because I felt like the organ was the stupidest instrument in the world. Then, a week or two later, the Beatles are back on and – I can hardly believe it – John is playing the coolest organ in the world, a Vox Continental. And he’s going crazy on it, playing the solo with his elbow, and since I was a kid, and had never heard of Jerry Lee Lewis or Little Richard, it was new to me. I was like: “Mrs.Fox never told me you could use your elbow!” So then I bugged the shit out of my dad to pay 0 for a farfisa organ.

Recently Devo guest-starred on the new series of Futurama. How did that come about?

I’ve known Matt for a long time. We did art shows together back before The Simpsons. But one of the writers, Dan Weber, is a fan of Devo so he wrote us into an episode. I can’t remember the name of the girl who’s a Cyclops mutant…

Leela.

Yeah her. In the episode she’s being discriminated against so all the mutant’s come out of the sewers to support her publicly. And Devo show up in our extra-mutated forms, slithering onto the stage.

Working in art, and scoring animation, means you must hang out with animators a lot…

Oh yeah. I know a bunch of animators from through the years. Funnily enough on the album there’s a song called ‘Cameo’ – I wrote the music and Jerry wrote the lyrics – and Cameo is a cartoon character. But a cartoon character through the eyes of Quentin Tarantino or someone, he's a bit crazed. And recently I was talking to John Kricfalusi [creator of Ren And Stimpy], and he asked if he could make a video for us. And I told him we don’t have any money but if he would do one, it should be for ‘Cameo.’ So he’s going to listen to it and we’ll see what happens.

He’s an interesting guy actually. I had this weird meeting with him years ago. I’d always wanted to work with him, so he invited me to his studio Spumco. He was showing me around and it was going great when he got a phone call. He went outside to take it. Then he came back in to his office. And he had this really old hi-fi in the office, with a vinyl deck. So he comes back in, turns it on and cranks the speakers up really loud. And we’re sitting about two feet apart from each other but I’m having to yell in order to talk to him, shouting: “I REALLY LOVE YOUR STUFF, I’D REALLY LIKE TO WORK WITH YOU.” And he was like, yeah, whatever man. And then he cranked the hi-fi even louder so, at this point, they were distorting and the speakers were actually being destroyed. So I just left. Recently I was talking to him and he told me he always felt bad about that day. Turns out the phone call he took that day told him Ren & Stimpy was being taken off the air. I told him he should have said something, we could have gone over to Nickolodeon and kicked somebody’s ass – or let down some tyres or something.

On the theme of animation – I’m too young to have caught Devo first time round…

Yeah you’re just a kid! I could be your granddad, crying out loud…

Exactly. But that’s why the name Mark Mothersbaugh has a special resonance for those my age - we seen it every day on the Rugrats credits. Your music became a soundtrack to childhood for many. How’d that come about?

It started with Pee Wee’s Playhouse. It was a successful show so people kept calling me to do music, and it was so much easier than working with a record company that had gone bankrupt. And everybody in Devo had been browbeaten by the business and we were sick and tired of it. So these gigs were simply a good release – and I actually got paid. Which was fun. So I just kept going in that direction.

You also have a close working relationship with Wes Anderson. How did you get to know him?

Basically I got a call from Sony. They told me there was a movie and they didn’t know what to do with it. They were freaking out because they didn’t like the film and it needed a composer. And I was the only composer the director - Wes Anderson - would meet. So I saw the movie - all these people were walking out writing stuff on the focus group cards like: ‘Hey man, how come there was no tits? I wanted to see her tits.’ But I thought Wes had an original voice and it went from there.

Finishing off with Devo – do you think there’s something about now that is right for Devo? So many artists, like LCD Soundsystem, have something of that Devo sound. It seems very current…

Yeah we’re more of our time now than when we started. I like James Murphy [LCD Soundsystem], his new record sounds good. And I like so many bands that are out now. I love playing festivals because I get to hear things I wouldn’t hear otherwise. Like Justice – I wanted Justice to do a remix for us, but they were so busy touring it didn’t match up. Fatboy Slim wanted to do something, but maybe we’ll get to do one for him instead. Although we’re not good at remixes. I’m not good at doing other people’s music. I think it’s better if somebody does mine.

It’s the 4th decade of De-evolution. Will you guys keep it going well into the future?

I hope so. It’s hard to say. I’m not the oldest guy in the band and I’m 60. But we’ll keep going until somebody dies on stage. Could be soon – but hopefully not too soon.

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