Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Mark Mothersbaugh

Transcript

Mark Mothersbaugh · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin, the lead singer and keyboardist for Devo, Mark Mothersbaw
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: is an avant garde new wave pioneer. Although critics often
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: classified Devo as a joke band, the akron Ohio art
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: punk's ethos was created in response to a very serious event,
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: the nineteen seventy massacre at their college, Kent State. Following
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: the shooting, the band took on the name Divo, short
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: for what they felt was organized society's de evolution. Throughout
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: the seventies and eighties, Devo helped lay the groundwork for
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: diy anti establishment bands by releasing bizarre and left of
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: center music and conceptual films that helped usher in the
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: music video revolution. In addition to his work with Devo,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Mark Mother's Law also had a long and successful career
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: scoring for film and TV. His credits include Pee Wee's
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: play House, The Rugrats TV Show, and movies, and he
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: scored several classic Wes Anderson directed films, including The Royal,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: Tenenbaumbs and Rushmore. On today's episode, I talked to Mark
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Mother's Bop about how he developed his quirky sensibility as
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: one of five kids growing up in a chaotic household
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: that included exotic animals. Mark also tells a story about
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: the time Richard Branson suggested that Johnny Rotten joined Devo
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: right after the Sex Pistols had broken up. This is
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: broken record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Mitchman.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Here's my conversation with Mark mothers VA. How you doing,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: I'm good.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: How are you?
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: I'm good, Man, I'm really good. Thanks for doing this
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: broken record? That's right? Was that like a radio drop
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: for us?
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: Sure, yo are listening to broken record? You know what
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: I used to when I was seventeen or eighteen, I
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: used to take my sister's be Gie records and also
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: my brother's one of his Pink Floyd records. So I
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: apologize to both of them now, but I took and
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: I damaged the disc on purpose, so that I mean,
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: there was no I didn't have a synthesizer or anything
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: in these days. These are like. There was a piano
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: and a little portable organ and a guitar in the
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: room where I was doing this in the basement. But
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: it would go there's a time, there's a time, there's
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: a time, there's a tie, and I would jam with that.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: And I didn't have enough technology that I recorded any
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: of them, which I really regret. But I used to
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: like break my records on my sister's records on purpose.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: How did you discover that as a means of making music?
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: Nobody was respectful of the discs in our house. Everybody
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: treated them, you know, because there were kids of all age.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: So little kids would go ah, and they'd take my
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: record that I liked and they'd scratch it or by accident.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: Then I'd go to play it, and then I go
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: little little lip bath, I go fu amy and h
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: It made me interested in these other kinds of rhythms
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: and sounds and deconstruction of music when I was a kid,
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: and it was innocent. I didn't have any school connection
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: to it. I had, you know, nobody at school talked
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: about that stuff. I just experimenting on my own actually.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: Before you just sort of discovered that and and sort
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: of that kind of naturally led you into deconstruction of
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: music and these weird, quirky kind of rhythms and things.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: Was your taste more conventional? Were you also into the
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: early Beacheese records?
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, I hated music when I was a
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: kid because I had to take piano lessons when I
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: was seven, and I'd be sitting there on the piano
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: plane the stupid thing that I had to learn, like
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: Autumn leaves, you know, which you know, like Roger Miller
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: is singing it or something. But i was playing, ah
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: the leaves, and I'd look out out the window of
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: my friends were like, ha haha, They're out there playing
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: and they're they're having fun, and I'm like, hey, little shirks.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: And that started when I was seven, and I hated it,
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: and then five years later after I've been doing it
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: for five years. My parents too. We had five kids,
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: and the only way to keep it from total chaos
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: at dinner time is my dad had this little black
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: and white portable television and he'd set it on the
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: end of the kitchen table or whatever we and we'd
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: all like just we just watched TV. And dinner time
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: was after dad got home from work, so it would
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: be like, uh, you know, we'd be watching Ed Sullivan,
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: you know, so it'd be like football, gig O, you know,
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: the Little Puppet Mouse and stuff like that, and you know,
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: it was it was just something to watch that kept
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: us from like hitting each other or like putting our
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: fingers in each other's food, and then mom Bob put
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: his finger in my food, you know, like that kind
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: of stuff. And but one day he goes all right
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: and from Liverpool the Beatles, and I saw the Beatles
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: Do I want to hold your hand? And I lost
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: my mind. I just went, yeah, what is that? That's
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: incredible because to me, I didn't listen to the radio.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: Radio and AKRON at that time was like a lot
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: of country Western and then and then novelty music, you know,
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: so there'd be like gee Wore and it's eve bitsy
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: teeny weeny yelloop. So that's the kind So that's what
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: pop music was like. To me, it was like novelty
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: songs like that and witch Doctor and Purple People Lead
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: and stuff like that. But then when I saw the Beatles,
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: I went, that's what I've been tortured my whole life
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: learning music for so I could do that. I knew
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: when I was twelve I was going to be in
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: a band, and that was before I got interested in
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: like writing stuff. And then I wasn't sure what that
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: meant or what I was doing. When I was trying
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: to do it, I started write trying to write music
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: pretty early on. But I never tried to write something
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: like a Beatles song or anything. I didn't really, you know,
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: the truth of the matter was, I didn't really. I
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: thought a lot of their lyrics were sappy and silly.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: But I was twelve, so I was still growing up.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: I thought the Rolling Stones had great lyrics. I thought
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: they had the best looks. I thought Satisfaction was like
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: this cool hipster beatnik proclamation and the music, the instruments,
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: you know, we're like, we're like genius. I just I
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: think they never talk about it, which is but I
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: think Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were both incredible lyricists
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: and songwriters.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: So yeah, it's funny. I was thinking about Satisfaction. It's
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: funny brought up. I mean, I guess it's not strange.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: You got Divo also, you know, did a great cover
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: of Satisfaction. But I was thinking about Satisfaction of the
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: day because one of my streaming services that I watched
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: TV on somehow switched over to the version, the lower
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: grade version with commercials, and so I was sitting through
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: a movie and it kept popping. I was sitting through
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: a Charles Bronson movie from the eighties, some random Charles
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: Bronson movie. It kept going to commercials, and I realized
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: about halfway through the movie I kind of missed commercials.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: And then I was thinking about how Satisfaction was sort
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: of this screed against consumerism and people selling to you
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: and advertisers. But I've gotten to the point in twenty
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: twenty three where I kind of miss any level of communal,
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: like you know, yeah, and it gives you.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: A relief from whatever the mediocre movie you're watching.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: It was the most random Charles Bronson that's kind of funny,
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: hunting down like a Mormon serial killer or something curtzy.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: It was wild to greetd Movies have becoming of equal
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: interest to you to music early on.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: But it wasn't just movies. It was commercials. It was
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: random music you'd hear anywhere, just sounds that you heard
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: out in the world. When I went to public school
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: in Akron, there wasn't really a very robust music or
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: or art or anything cultural in the schools because basically
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: they were teaching kids how to be farmers. At my
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: high school there was like a ninety five kids, you know,
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: graduating class, and their parents were farmers. And my dad
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: was like a we had like a green acres farm.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: It was like wasn't really a farm. It was like
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: this little tiny place. It had had a barn and
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: it had a house, and it had like five acres.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: And but he was a salesman and he but he
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: always wanted to, you know, to live out in the
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: country and he so we were kind of so we
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: moved out to to you know, like a suburb outside
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: of Akron, and it was a total different world there.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: You know, the people inside Akron were all you know,
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: they were gonna end up working on the conveyor belt line,
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: you know, they were going to the assembly line at
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: Tires because we had like we were the tire capital
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: of the world when I was in high school. Still
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: and then it smelled when you got near downtown, but
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: you knew that was the smell of everybody's paycheck, you know.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: So you know, whether you were actually on the on
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: the factory line, or if you were just working at
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: the hot Hamburg store right out, you know, or the
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: hot dog stand you know, just outside of Goodyear, you know,
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: where people came to eat on the way out of work.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: You know, It's like it was all rubber did everything
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: with everything did.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: You spend much time because I guess you know your
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: your Akron. The closest cities would have been like Columbus, Cincinnati,
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: of course still within Ohio, Cleveland, Cleveland.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we were a Cleveland wannabee. We wished we could
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: have been like they have a cooler art scene in Cleveland.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: They have bands come to play there. You know, you
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: had to go up to Cleveland to go see David Bowie.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: He didn't come down to Akron.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: Did you get any shows in Akron when you were.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, occasionally. I I had to miss it for I
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: don't remember what reason. But my my younger brothers saw
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: Cream at the Akron Civic Theater. And I remember my
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: little brother who was in junior high and was a drummer.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: He charged the stage after the show was over and
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: before Ginger Baker. He said, Ginger Baker had his drumsticks
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: taped to his hands with because because otherwise he would
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: have lost him because he was so you know, probably high,
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: you know. But he ran up on stage and he said,
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: good drumming man, and Ginger Baker just went anxious, you know,
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: like that, and that was and he was so excited
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: that he exchanged a communication with Ginger Baker and he
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: did become a drummer my brother Jim Man.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, Ginger Baker is an exciting guy. You know,
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: even if he's not enough.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: Probably probably would have been dangerous if he would have
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: ended up, you know, backstage or something with him. But
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: who knows.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: That's a bummer he missed that. I'm sure that must
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: have been incredible.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: There were a lot of well shows, you know, because
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: if nothing else, they were on their way to Chicago
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: or they were you know, Detroit was like the shit though,
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: you know, It's like Detroit had amazing bands that came
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: from him, you know, and and that's where you had
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: to go if you wanted to see like Iggy Pop
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: or and.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: Seeing Iggy in Detroit. But I mean before he left Detroit,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: that must have been wild.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: You know where I saw him actually, I saw him
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: in Cleveland. I saw him in Cleveland at the Cleveland Tourium.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: He opened up for David Bowie for his Spiders to
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: Mars show, and I was like, wow, look at that guy,
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: because he was like, he didn't have a shirt and
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: he would like throw himself off the stage and people
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: would get out of the way and he'd just smash
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: on the floor and he'd just bounce up and keep singing,
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: and he'd be bloody by the end of his set,
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: and I was like, that's pretty hardcore. That was amazing.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: Well was that, you know? And then then Bowie came
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: out and that was such an incredible show. The Spider
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: Some Mars show was so amazing, and and like Mick
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: Ronson had like a blonde page boy poudy, you know, lipstick,
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: and he had like on silk blue pants that like,
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: you know, went just below the knee with white knee
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: socks that came up, you know, like like he had
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: like white pantyhose on. And he had like lifted shoes,
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: you know, big shoes with a big buckle, and he
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: just looked so badass, like a out of a Renaissance painting.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: And they were so amazing. And I remember at one
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: point during one of his solos, Bowie gets you know,
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: he's dressed like a lizard alien and and he gets
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: down in front of Mick and I remember being in
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: the Audiens going, oh gosh, I wonder if David knows
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: that looks like he's blowing Mick Ronson. He should someone
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: should tell him not to do that, because it looks
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: like he's blowing him. I you know, I know he's
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: just worshiping his guitar playing, but the way he's doing it,
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: it looks like he's blowing it. I remember thinking that
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: when I was a little.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Kid, oh Man, to be naive Akron.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, you know, an Akron if anybody, if
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: there was anybody there that was gay, it got beat
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: out of them. You know, That's the kind of it was.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: It was a rough place to be even, you know,
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: anywhere deviant of right down the middle it was. And
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: so Devo was so far off to you know, out
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: of out of it that we were just we just
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: felt like space aliens, you know, like observing the planet
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: the whole time.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: I mean that show that you saw with Bowie and
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: Iggy and Brox, I mean that must have been maybe
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: just before DEVA started. You guys might have even been
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: been playing.
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: It was probably we might have already been jamming, because
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: I don't remember what year it was now now you're right,
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: I don't know the exact year that that that album
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: came ound though, right around the same time, and you know,
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: Bowie was somebody we we really respected as an artist.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: You know. It's like there were people that we kept
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: our eye on and it was like, uh, like Eno
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: for instance, you know, but even like a much more
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: eccentric things like uh, Captain Beefheart. I was a really
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: big fan of his.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: I think the first Captain Beefheart record is probably the
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: only Captain b Fart record that I have been on
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: the wrap my mind around still. I mean it only
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: because it only got more and more bizarre from from there.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: You know, that was kind of a conventional record in hindsight,
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: save as Milk and.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for me, it was trout Mask Replica was the
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: one that I thought was his uh masterpiece. Matter of fact,
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: there's a song on it called the Blimp and the
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: line and it goes did it? Did it? Did it?
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: Did it?
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: Did it? And anyhow So, when we did our remake
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: of Secret Agent Man and played a solo for it,
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: I finished the solo at the beginning of the song.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: It has an homage to that goes did it did It?
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: I put it in the solo and nobody has ever
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: come up to me and say, hey, you you referenced
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: a cap'n Beefheart song in Secret As it was too
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: obscure for everybody in the world.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: I guess there's too much information on drop masks. I've
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: going to synthesize it and be able to recognize it
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: else where. I think, you know, it's just two.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's yeah, that's it's a pretty amazing you know,
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: it's pretty dense.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: So anyhow, that was that was my early influences and
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: just but also at the same time of that, when
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: I was a little kid, twelve and going up, it
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: was the British invasion for me. I loved all that stuff.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: And I remember going walking past the drug store on
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: the way home from school because they and they had
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: a magazine called Tiger Beat and I never bought one
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: because I didn't have a quarter or whatever it was,
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: but I would go in and I just look at
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: them to see pictures of these and I remember being
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: really upset once because it said Dave Clark five versus
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: the Beatles, you know, like they like had these like
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: their concepts of Battle of the Band, and you know,
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: they would then go through and say, whoa, here's what's
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: good about them, and here's what and here's what's not
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: as good, but it's better by them, and I remember
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: in my little twelve or thirteen year old brain, I'm
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: going like, well, that's not fair. There's five of them.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: In the day of Clark five, there's only four Beetles.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: I just remember being like, that's my takeaway. When I
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: left the drug store that day, I was like really
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: concerned about the Beatles, you know, being outnumbered. I thought
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: I was the fifth Beatle. When I was a little kid,
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: I would go down in the basement. Is the only
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: way I could get away from like five kids. We
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: had monkeys, flying, squirrels, dogs, cats, every kind of animal. Seriously, yeah,
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: we had all sorts of animals. My dad was kind
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: of odd in that way, in a great way. But
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: I could go down in the basement. I could turn
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: my Beatle record up loud, and I would pretend I
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: was the fifth Beatle and I and in my mind,
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: I'd be watching the Beatles at Shay Stadium on stage
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: and I'd be off stage, and then one of them
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: would look over, like maybe John would look over and
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: he go come on, and so I'd come out and
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: he'd they'd be playing in the middle of a song
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: and he'd lift his guitar away from his body. So
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: this is this is creepy for a twelve year old
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: kid to be having this fantasy. But you know, I
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: would get in between him and his guitar and then
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: I'd take over playing, and then he would slip his
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: guitar strap off of his neck out round mine and
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: I'd be this little twelve year old kid playing with
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: the Beatles and they had their outfits. I couldn't be that.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: I wasn't allowed to have that in my fantasy. I
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: just was like in my school clothes and I'm playing,
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: and then i'd keep an eye on him, and John
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: would like be smoking a cigarette and then he'd put
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: it out and you'd go okay, and then he'd come
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: back out, and then we'd do that thing again, and
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: he'd get in between me and he'd take over playe
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: and I'd duck out, and then you know, maybe the
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: next maybe next it would be Ringo would look over,
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: he'd have to pee or something, you know, and I'd
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: i'd I'd like to come out, and I'd be sitting
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: there in between him and the and the drums. Then
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: then next thing you know, I'm playing and he's gone.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: He's going to the restroom or something or getting a
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: glass of milk or whatever Ringo had to do in
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: the middle of a song. But it was but it
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: was always like in the middle of a song too.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: That was the amazing part of it. It was like
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: never like they would finish a song and then I'd
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: come out and do it. It was like it was
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: better than that.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: That's a way cooler way of doing it though, just
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: slipping in the beat never stops, you never, you know,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: just picking right up where one of them left off.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: That's the that's the smooth way of doing it.
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: That was my British Invasion fantasy from twelve or thirteen
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: somewhere in there.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: Do you still appreciate the British invasion of that music?
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, I mean, you know, it's like I got
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: kids and a wife that are into Sono's and every
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: all the different you know, Spotify's and everything, and I
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: just I just work on music all the time, so
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: I don't I rarely go back and listen to music.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: But a couple of weeks ago, we were sending Sono's
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: system up in our dining room or something, and my
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: wife is getting frustrated and she left, and so I
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: was like figuring it out and as I was figuring
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: it out. Somehow, I started tripping into all these sixties
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: era brit songs, and I started listening to him again,
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: and I was going like, Oh, the Kinks, that guitar sound,
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: nobody's ever gotten that, that guitar sound from Girl, you
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: know you really got the car or all the Day
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: or all the night. I decided, how did he get those? Yeah,
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: they got these sounds that nobody else ever really totally got.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: And and I started listening to all these other songs
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: and and I spent a couple hours listening to a
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: British Invasion again a couple of weeks ago. Maybe that's
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: why I'm talking about it now, because I stumbled on
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: it again and then and I found it equally wonderful.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: We have to pause real quick break, and then we'll
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: come back with more of my conversation with Mark Mothers BA.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: We're back with more from Mark mothers By. So many
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: people have a similar story of, you know, the Beatles
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: sort of opening their mind to music and what it
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: can be. And I feel like the British Invasion sort
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: of became by default the gold standard of music, and
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: it's the thing that was always referenced to but if
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: you actually go back and listen to it, I think
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: there's things are worth going back to, like the guitar
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: sound from the Kinks, like to have that distortion sound.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: It's just it's not like overdriven, it's not overpower and everything,
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: but it's still just it's so fucking awesome. It's still
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: this great raw sound, like you know.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: Okay. So years later, Neil Young was kind of curious
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: about Devo, and so we ended up in one of
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: his films. But before that, I'd worked with a with
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: a director that directed the film Human Highway it's called,
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: and I had written off Broadway music nineteen seventy nine.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: I'd written this music that he he made. He did
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: an off Broadway ian Esco play. I don't know. He's
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: a writer from the I don't know what year that
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: was forties or fifties or ian Esco. But Russ Tamblin
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: did a one man play and Dean Stockwell directed it
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: and he needed music, so I wrote music for him.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: And then when he worked on the Neil Young movie,
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: they asked Devo to be in their film and we were.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: And then when Neil was scoring it, Dean Stockwell gave
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: Neil all this music I'd written for him for this
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: off Broadway Plane, And so half of the score in
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: Human Highway's Electronics stuff I did, and the other half
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: is stuff that Neil did and Neil was And you
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: can tell the difference because Neil wrote stuff that sounded
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: a little more like Gary Newman.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: And the stuff intef It did.
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: It was interesting, and then the stuff I wrote it
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: sounds a little more like like eight years earlier than
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: pee Wee's Playhouse. When I started scoring Peewa's playoff, it
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: sounded more like it was gonna like what pee Wee's
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: Playhouse became.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: You guys in Neil A my my is mind blowing.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: Oh the footage is good, you know, It's like, well.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: It's the fucking coolest thing ever.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: When we did the film, we were kind of like
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: we were kind of like assholes, you know, and we
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: were like it was like the same week or one
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: week after the sex Pistols had broke up, who were
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: my favorite band at the time, and uh, and we
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: hung out the night that the sex Pistols broke up.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: They came over to this house where Devo was staying
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: because we were playing at mabuh guards a little punk
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: club the night after they played their last show, and yeah,
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: I remember I didn't know they were breaking up then
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: maybe they didn't even.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: Were you friends with them, or they just happened to
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: come over that and.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: We just they knew that we liked them, and they
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: liked us as a matter of fact, a really crazy thing.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: About a year or so later, we signed with Warner
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: Brothers in the US and Richard Branson for Europe because
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: I thought he was cool because he had signed the
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: sex Pistols, I thought, and he was our age. We
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: were all twenty five, you know, in seventy seven. Then,
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: you know, we knew we were gonna sign with Branson,
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: and we had like one of the worst snowstorms in
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: Akron ever. And at this point, nobody in Devo has
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: an apartment anymore because we don't have jobs. We only
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: were like now we're just driving to New York to
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: play at Maxis Kansas City or CBGB's or we would
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: get in our Occonno line and we'd drive out to
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: the West coast and we play La San Francisco, San Diego,
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: and that was it. That was all, you know. There
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: was nowhere in between for us to play except a
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: club in Cleveland that we shared with Dead Boys and
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: per Ubu. So it's like Bob Caselli and I are
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: sleeping in this girls living room. He's kind of in
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: this room that's like a off of the living room,
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: like it's like like a greenhouse room or something, because
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: it had windows all around. But it was cold in there.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: And I remember the morning that we got a call
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: from Richard Branson. The window had blown open, and Bob
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: Gosally was on this couch out in that room and
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: he was covered with snow underneath, and he was trying
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: to huddle underneath a blanket. And I was in a
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: sofa that was like, you know, twenty feet away, and
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: I'm looking and I go, oh my god. And Branson
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: called and said, hey, how would you like to come
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: down to Jamaica. You know that sounds pretty good? He goes, yeah,
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: just come on down for the front of it.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: So did you have passports?
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: Yes, we had because we had already recorded the album.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: Branson became interested in us because while we were in
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: Germany recording our first album, we had let Stiff Records
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: put out three singles and they all charted. They all
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: went number one in a different country was crazy, like uncontrollable.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: Urge was number one in Yugoslavia at the same time,
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: Mongoloid was number one in France at the same time.
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: Satisfaction was in the top ten in England and Social
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: Fools was in the top ten in Germany and I
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: loved it. Jockohomo was in the top twenty in Scotland
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: and I just thought, Chockohomo, that's a perfect country for it.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: For Scotland's a perfect country for Chockoholmo. Anyhow so he
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: flew to you know, to Germany where we're recording, and
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: talked to us into signing with him, and created this
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: whole big problem because Warner Brothers didn't want to give
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: us up for Europe. And it doesn't matter now. But
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: so Bob Casselli and I fly down to Jamaica and
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: you know, we get off the plane and it's it's
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: a it's kind of rough. You know, the road between
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: the airport and Kingston there was like a I remember
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: a dead great Dane that was in rigamortis on the
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: side of the road. Nobody had bothered to move it. It
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: was just in a riga mortis pose with its legs
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: up and we got to this hotel and Richard Branson
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: and a bunch of guys Simon and other people that
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: you know, South Africans that he'd started virgin with were
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: all sitting on the sofa and they were rolling these
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: gigantic joints, which you know, I'd never seen that much
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: marijuana before. You know, it's like an akron akron. It
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: was always like about three fourths oregano. Anyhow, by the
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: time it got to you, So he rolled these joints
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: and they're passing them around. Everybody's taking hits off of
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: these giant joints. And I never was a smoker, but
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: I gave it a try. I took a couple of puffs.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: And then Bob Casally was a smoker, so he's just
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: doing big hits. And then they'd come back to us
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: and we were smoking this stuff, and you know, we're
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: talking about nothing, and finally Richard goes, hey, the sex
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: Pistols broke up, and you know, now I'm starting to
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: get high. I'm like getting talking about Yeah, we hung
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: out with them the night that they broke up. You know,
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: I Saidancy and Steve Jones, everybody was over at this
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: house where we were in the apartment where they made
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: the magazine Search and Destroy, this really cool punk magazine
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: in San Francisco. If you don't know it, you should
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: check it out. And we were sleeping on piles of
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: Search and Destroy magazines because they let us stay there
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: for freeze because we didn't make enough playing a show
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: at a punk club to get a hotel room. So
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: we're talking. He goes, we go, yeah, it's really a
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: shame they broke up. They were so great. They were
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: our favorite band. And I'm like at this point, I'm
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: just like blabbing away, and he goes, well, I'll tell
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: you why you're here. I've got Reporters, some Melody Maker,
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: Sounds and New Music Express, the three English papers, they're
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: all in the hotel right now, and Johnny Rotten is here.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: Johnny Rotten wants to join Devo. If you want, we
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: can go down to the beach right now and make
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: an announcement, uh and signed something on the beach and
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: Johnny Rotten can join Devo. And I remember at that point,
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden, like I hit this brake and
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: I'm like and I'm like, oh, and I'm looking at
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: Richard and he's like staring intently at me with this
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: crazy look on his face, because even to him it
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: must have sounded kind of crazy in a way to
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: say that, you know, And he's smiling really wide, and
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: I'm like, oh my god, his teeth are protruding like
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: a brain eating ape. And I just remember, like I
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: started stuttering and sputtering, and Bob is like totally smashed.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: He doesn't even have anything to say about anything. He's
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: just so high. He's like whatever, I don't know what
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: we're talking about. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa whoao. No, No,
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: we love we love the band, and I love Johnny Rotten.
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: He's so amating. But but you know, Devo, we're something.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: You know, we're different, and we're we have our own
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: thing and we but we love them and we think
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: that's and that's that's actually really uh, you know, complimentary,
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: that he would even think that, or that you guys
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: think that's a good idea. I bet you know. We
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: we've worked so hard on what we do and we
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: have something that we really know what it is. And
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: then they're all looking at me like, oh, they thought
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: they were going to do this big crazy stunt. You
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: know it was going to be like like the stunts
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: that they'd done with, you know, like Sue Catwoman and
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: Vivian Westwood and Malcolm and these people. They always had
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: these outrageous ideas on how to how to like freak
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: everybody out or get their attention. You know. I was
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: not up for that at all, and I just remember thinking,
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: oh shit, are we Does that mean we don't have
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: any place to stay now? Because I don't have any money.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: I can't even afford to take it back.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: But what did happen?
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: Did you?
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: Did you just crash that? Like they were cool? Like
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: what okay? Find Well, we.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: Hung out for a week and they took us to
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: these places. They took us to this place called the
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: Headonist Club, and I'd never been to anything. I'd never
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: been anywhere out of a high out of Ohio except
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: for Germany. And then we played three shows in England
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: on the way back to the US. But that's all
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: all we'd ever done. Nobody had ever been to anything
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: like on a Like when we went to the head
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: In this club that was for people with money, you know,
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: that was more middle class and upper class people. There
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: weren't any blue collar workers there except the ones that
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: were working.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: Was Johnny Rotten around for all that stuff? No, he
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: left once.
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: What he thought? I think it was like once we
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: didn't say, hey, let's get together. It's like he was like,
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: fucking Richard, what a jacket?
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: It's like he couldn't he couldn't believe that Richard did that.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: I think what was the vibe in the in the
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: apartment of Search and Destroy then I that they broke up?
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: Was it weird? Was it cool?
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: I mean what it was like there was all sorts
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: of people in there, all hipsters, you know, it was
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: all the hipsters from San Francisco. Yeah, there was every
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: kind of craziness that you could think of was happening
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: in that. And luckily I had this one room with newspapers,
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: and it was small enough I could just go in
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: there and lay on a stack of newspapers. And finally
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: about four five in the morning, I got a few
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: hours sleep and before we had to play later the
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: next night.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: And Man and Sid and Nancy were there, and that
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: must have been yeah, yeah.
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: They were Sid. Sid was like he'd walk up to
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: a table or a countertop that had like a beer
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: bottle or a glass with liquid in it, you know,
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: like half a glass of beer or something or and
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: he'd just slowly start moving it on purpose so that
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: everybody could see that he was slowly with his finger
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: going like this, pushing it closer to the edge of
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: the table, and then it would fall him break and
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: then he'd look around to see if anybody was going
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: to get excited about it, and nobody cared, you know,
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: nobody cared that he was doing it, and he just
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: kind of was like bummed out. It was. I guess
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: that was his idea of a h of icebreaker or
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: like like like let's start talking now or something. But yeah,
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: it was interesting.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: Wow. Man. You were managed also by Neil's manager, Elliott Robertson.
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. After that, however, it was kind of wild. You know.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: He had stories, you know about the Rainbow, which was
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: right down the street to his office, which is what
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: the room I'm in right now is like not that
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: far away from where we're talking about, because I'm on
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: a sunset strip. I've been here for about thirty years.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, I just assumed in my mind because Nickelodeon's
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: I didn't know if that was like when I started
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: scoring Rugrat, I mean, I don't know why that would
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: be the reason you moved there, but succurred. Uh.
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was in my house. I had a bedroom
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: in my house that was my scoring room. It was
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: an extra bedroom, and I started doing more and more music,
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: and then I did a couple I did my first
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: Wes Anderson A movie in that house, and I was
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: doing commercials and why I ended up moving out of
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: the house because I liked working in the house. But
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: one day I was doing a Pepsi commercial and the
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: Chili Peppers were playing for me and I only had
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: him for like three hours, and my neighbors had called
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: the police, and the police came over and I go, please,
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: let me just do one more take. I need one
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: more take. Let me just do one more pass. And
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: they wouldn't let me. So I had to like use
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: an older take and it worked out in the end.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: But it was like I thought, well, that's you know. Now,
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: I know everybody hates me. So I started So I
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: started looking for a new place to move to. And
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: while I was doing that, I just the neighbors that
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: lived closest to me. I bought them bouquets of flower
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: once a week. I bought them each a bouquet, and
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: you know, it's all like about half dozen houses. And
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: then finally I got out of there after about four
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: or five months because I found this building that I'm
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: sitting in right now, thirty years ago.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: Amazing. How did you end up in La to begin with?
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: How did La sort of become your home base?
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: Well? We did this film. Chuck Statler directed it. It
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: was the first Devo film. It had two songs on it,
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: Chock a Home and Secret Agent Man. And the reason
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: he made the film, you know, he thought, well, what
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: if this band isn't together next year? What if they
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: don't stay together? Because Jerry had his concerns about well
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: this I don't know, Mark likes this really weird shit,
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: you know, so there was something like that going on.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: So he said, well, I'm going to make a film.
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: So we did. And then but what do you do
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: with a film in nineteen seventy five? Nothing, So but
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: he entered it in the ann Arbor Film Festival and
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: at one first place for short film, so that put
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: it on a tech traveling tour before seventy six was out.
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: It was on a tour of cities and somebody who
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: had just signed Tubes saw that film with us in it,
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: and they went, oh, wait a minute, is this another Tubes?
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: And so he gave us two thousand dollars to drive
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: out there in our occonoline ban and he put us
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: up for a month and we rehearsed. Then we at
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: a showcase and we decided, you know, since we were
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: in the film, that maybe, I mean, I thought we
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: were going to go to New York because to me,
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: I felt really a kindred spirit with New York.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: But I assume if you're an art student and you
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: know you're into sort of experimental thing, you're just gonna
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: go to New York and skip l A.
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: Why.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: Well what happened was is just just the film industry
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: was out here, and we thought, well, maybe they'd do
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: a film with us, you know, because we had ideas
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: for films, and Jerry wanted to direct films. He really
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: wanted that, and so that's how we ended up here.
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: It was and it was cheaper. It was cheaper.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: You know, it'd be interesting to view an alternate timeline
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: where you did.
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: Stay and we went to New York, yeah, yeah, or
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: one where we stayed in Akron and we were just
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: like there wasn't like a receptive atmosphere in Ohio. Let
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: me put it that way. It's like like there were
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: very few places that we could perform, and nobody wanted
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: to hear original music and Akron at that time. They
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: wanted They came to clubs to hear their favorites. And
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: so what we even started doing is we would like
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: call clubs up and ask them if they need a band.
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: They go, well, what are you guys doing. We'd lie
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: and we'd say we were a cover band. Then we
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: come out and we'd be in like Janitor outfits, and
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: then we'd play like, all right, here's another one by
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: fog At it's called Uncontrollable Urge. And then you know,
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: after the first set, you know, oftentimes more often than not,
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: we never got to finish our second set or third set.
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: And at a place they would tell us we had
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: to leave, or they would pay us to leave. They say, well,
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: here's your money. Now, you can have your fifty dollars,
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: and we go, no, but we've got more. Two more
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: hours were the music for you, and they go, that's okay,
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: that was enough.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: It's cooler to be doing that in an environment like that, though,
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: there an environment with everyone is just trying to out
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: weird with another. You know, I like that. You know
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: that you guys were truly the just complete odd boss
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: of the area. You know clearly wasn't to be popular.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: You guys weren't.
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: There wasn't much of a music scene back then, and
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: there was no camaraderie. I was in before I was
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: in Devo. I was in a band with Chrissy Hine.
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: It wasn't our band, so we were in it for
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: like we I think we played one or two shows
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: at the most and then it split up. Is But
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: other than that, I experimented with a lot of different
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: musicians and I kept looking for the sound that I
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: wanted to do. And then I had already known Jerry
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: from school. We had collaborated on visual art projects before,
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: and then we started talking about music together. And then
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: he and this friend of his who was like this
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: guy Bob Lewis. To me, bob Lewis was like, I
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: felt like it was Peabody and Sherman when we were together,
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: because he seemed like a human encyclopedia. I like that guy.
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: But Jerry and Bob found this book called The Beginning
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: was the End? How man came into being through cannibalism,
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: and it was this crazy book that was basically preaching
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: the evolution and saying that humans were the unnatural species.
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: And it was kind of like how we already felt
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: because we'd been through Kent State where we thought, yeah,
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: we shouldn't be over there. I can't think of one
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: Vietnamese person I want to kill, so why are we
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: doing this? Let's stop it, you know, and and then
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: you know, you find out when the government gets irritated
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: with you enough, they just kill you. So we had
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: this kind of we were kind of pissed off about
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: humans on planet Earth and our felt like we weren't
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: like a natural species at all, that we were the
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: one species at odds with nature in general, you know,
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: and we were destroying the planet. You know. It's like
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: it wasn't like we wanted to sit there and beat
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: a book and you know, say that, and it's like
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: that to be part of our esthetic and that people
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: would know that that was our you know, our thoughts
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: about things that humans were unnatural and humans needed to change.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: Is that where the performing with masks and just the
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: different looks came from. Was that a way to sort of.
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: I'll tell you what happened with masks is none of
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: us had any money. You know, we all had crappy jobs.
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: I worked in an apartment building as a maintenance man.
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: It was a one hundred year old building, so it's
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: like somebody's drain had be stopped up and I'd take
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: off the U joint down underneath the you know, the sink.
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: My brother and Jerry delivered meat for some meat company,
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: and then Jerry had a job at as a janitorial
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: supply place for a while, which was actually really beneficial
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: because he found in one of the catalogs these hazardous
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: waste material outfits that we went, oh my god, that's
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: perfect for us. You know. They were like they were
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: like our anti superhero out fit, you know, these yellow suits.
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: And once we put an elastic waistband around the waist
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: and cinched it in, it turned us into who we were,
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: which looked like, looked like we could be cleaning up
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: you know, nuclear slop where we could be you know,
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: like picking through body parts at a plane crash, you know.
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: And they were inexpensive. They were like four bucks or
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: something at the time to buy one of these plastic
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: suits and one of the masks I found at this
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: Novely shop in Canton, Ohio, which is close to Akron,
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: was this rubber baby face mask, and so I became
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: Boogie Boy, who we referred to him as the infantile
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: spirit of de Evolution, and that stuck with us, and
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: Boogie Boy ended up coming out and still does. He
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: still comes out on stage every night.
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: And your dad used to come out as part of
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: this stuff. General Boy, Oh.
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he was totally obsessed with it. He had this
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: I think he had this hidden desire to be an artist,
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: you know. I think he really wanted to be creative
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: in some way. He played clarinet and it even got
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: a little overboard at our first when we on our
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: first tour, he wanted to go on tour with us.
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: He wanted to manage the band, and I'm like, you know,
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: mid twenties, I'm thinking my dad go on tour with
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: the That's the last thing I want. Yeah, I'm thinking,
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: you never want my dad on tour with the band.
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: That sounds and it's too bad we didn't. He had
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: much better business acumen than any of us.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: There'll be more of my interview with Mark Mothersbaugh after
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: one last quick Break, We're back with Mark Mothersbaugh. Is
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: it true you guys, Verson of Jockohoma performed Jockohoma opening
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: for son Raw.
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we opened for son Raw. That was amazing. That
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: was like seventy five I think it was in Cleveland,
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: and I remember we'd never been around a band that
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: a record dealer that was this prestigious as son Raw.
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: And so I remember like before we went on stage,
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: I was listening to these guys talk that were in
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: the band, you know, and they're like saying, yeah, that's
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: son Raw. He's like getting a big head, you know,
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: he's got such a big head. And he's like, it's
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: not cool, man. It's like, you know, he took a
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: taxi here from the hotel. Then he says, yeah, the
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: rest of the rest of the band all had to
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: take the RTD from downtown to wherever this auditorium was
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: we were playing at. And I'm like, Wow, that's what
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: it's going to be like when I get when our
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: band gets a record deal, We're going to take the
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: RTD to get to the to get to the show.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: I remember thinking that. I thought I thought, oh, I
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: thought it was all like David Bowie I thought it
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: was all glamorous, but Son Raw was so amazing because
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: he played his keyboard like it wasn't like he was
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: like playing notes or anything. He was playing clusters of sounds.
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: And I was so impressed. Yeah, because it was more
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: percussive than it was melody. The songs were just incredible.
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: And but when he played like that, I started doing it.
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: Boogie Boy started copying him. I started I started playing
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: my synthesizer like this. There were songs that I could
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: do that on. Yeah, it was interesting. We got in
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: a we got in a fight with the with the
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: audience at night. They were they were DJs from w
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: MMS I think it was, and yeah, we were dressed
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: like janitors and then they were all dressed like Dracula
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: and vampires and mummies and Frankenstein and where we look
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: like the total opposite of like Halloween. And uh, they're
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: all doing nitrous oxide and Margarita's and they're getting really
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: drunk and aggressive. And at one point, after about three
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: or four songs in like My Woman sub Human, she
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: can't walk, she can't talk, she just sits by a
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: sign that says I love you, and they were just
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: driving him crazy. They hated our music and at one
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: point some DJ jumped up on stage.
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: You're gonna let these people continue to prostitute music like this,
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: And they started throwing paper cups with Margarita's in it
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: at us and yeah, we ended up getting in fistfights
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: with with with them, with DJs.
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: You know, it's crazy. And then sun Rack came out.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you can be too abstract for sun rock,
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: like these guys are out to the lunch, let's get
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: some ron.
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: You know, like what. I found an audio cassette that
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: our sound man had put in them in a tape
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: recorder and he recorded that show and it's really good.
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: It's really good.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: You hear it, you hear it.
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe we should good, but it's but it devolves
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: into the fighting and uh, just the insane chaos of
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: our set.
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: And they were like, oh, you guys should put that out,
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: that'd be amazing.
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: But we were kind of like, uh, we were kind
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: of lightning rods for hostility. We loved it. We would like,
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: we think if we're pissing these people off or doing
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: something right, Yeah, that was It was kind of that
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: kind of approach. But I remember Jockohomo I would just
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: keep going up to people and going, are we not men?
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: You know we are? Do you are we not men?
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: Until they were like sick of it. It was like
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: if it took twenty minutes. I would just provoke people
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: until they would want to fight with us.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: And did you find like humor in this stuff? Like
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: did you were you a fan of comedy or humor
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: or anything like that?
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, we took and we took our humor seriously, okay,
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: And we were serious about our humor. You know. That's
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: why I was attracted to people like SubGenius because when
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: they first came out, the Church of the SubGenius, they're
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: early pamphlets. They didn't have enough stuff out to let
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: you know, oh if they were serious or not. And
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: I was just hoping they were serious. And and so
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: it was back in the days where like we would
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: like read a National Inquirer and we'd read a poem
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: by John Hinckley junior, uh for for Jodie Foster, and
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: they'd say he's says here he's in the Maryland, but
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: does the hospital? And Jerry and I would call it
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: Maryland be does the hospital and say we're in the
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: band Divo could we talk to John Hinckley And they go, well,
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: let me see, and then you'd wait a couple of
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: minutes and they go, yeah, he wants to talk to you,
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: and uh, we'd get on the phone with John Hinckley goes,
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: I have your first album. You know. I remember saying
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: to him. You know, we saw we read this poem
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: you wrote called I Desire, and uh, we were wondering
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: if you would mind if we use those as lyrics
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: for a devo song. He goes, let me hear it, okay,
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: and so we said, yeah, before we do itnthing, we'll
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: let you hear it. And so we wrote the song
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: called I Desire with John Hinckley junior lyrics. Of course,
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: if you're trying to impress your record company, don't do that.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: Don't do that. Don't don't write a song with the
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: would be presidential as sets.
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was not. He was not a favorite in
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: the country at the time, but the but the his
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: poems were so good. His poetry was so good.
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: I love it. I wanted to ask you something because
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: I got to take photos of you one time, maybe
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: ten years ago for something.
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: Oh, I was poll dancing at the time to make
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: some extra money.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, it was there. It was that time and
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: you were talking to somebody and I long felt I
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: overheard that Joni Mitchell attacked you in a stairwell one time.
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: I didn't know if I heard this right or well.
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: She didn't attack me, But what happened was was she
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: had the same manager as Neil Young and uh we
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: did our second album and I was up at his office.
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: It's just down the street here, but she's like, hey,
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: are you that guy from Divo? I go, I'm that
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: guy from Diva. And she goes, I'm going to be
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: in a movie and they want me to hold a
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: ghetto blaster on my shoulder and put a song on
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: on the ghetto blaster. And I was like okay, and
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: she goes, I want to put your song on it, Swelling,
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: Itching Brain. And I'm like, wow, great, Why would you
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: pick swelling? Because I'm thinking that's such a radical song,
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: you know, on that album, it's like the most radical
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: I go, why would you pick swelling sher brain? Because?
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: And she went because it's the most obnoxious, horrible, irritating
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: song I've ever heard in my whole life. I said, well,
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: be my guest blasted away.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: It was at the end of it that was it
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: meant she walked away.
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: The only other thing that happened after that is her
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: manager who was who was at NILS at that time.
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: He stayed managing with her years later after after Ron
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: and Elliott split ways, he was still working with her
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: and he called me up once and said, hey, this
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: is like in the last ten years even I don't
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: remember what year, maybe eight years ago, and he said, hey,
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: Jonie wants to get into a film scoring. He says,
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: do you have any do you know anything I should
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: tell Heim? I go, you know what you tell Joni?
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: If she wants to come over to my green building,
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: come over to this studio. I would love to show
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: her while I'm working on something. And if she has
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: a film she wants to work on, I will help
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: walk her through it. I'll show her you know how
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: to do it and make it easy for And she
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: was like, what the swelling and chein brain guy, No way,
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: I'm not doing that. It was like them, so we
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: never She never let go of disliking it.
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: She joking, do you know it? Maybe it's better not
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: to know. Maybe two notes.
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: She's a little bit e centric, you know, she was.
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: People would tell you that in some situations she was
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: probably very hard to work with. Just super talented. I mean,
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: you know that goes without saying, but.
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, do you still talk to Neil ever or you
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: got like the band and Neil as any.
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: Actually, there's a chance he might get interviewed for a
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: Devo documentary to see what he thought about Devo, because
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: that could have because it could be funny, because because
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: I don't know if we were exactly what he thought
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: we were, but he was he was pretty interesting, you know.
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: I think back about it that he was doing hey hey,
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: my my, then he gets Devo to come do it,
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: and then but we're doing it in a recording studio
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: in San Francisco, and all the band has like oompa loompa,
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: pinhead hats on and boogie boys singing it sitting sitting
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: in a diaper with a minimog on my lap singing,
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: and I changed the words to instead of Johnny Rotten,
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: I said Johnny the Spud or something. But he crashed
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: my playpen. He destroyed my playpen that I used to
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: take on stage with me because he was playing and
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: he just smashed. He just started falling on it and
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: smashing it and I couldn't see very well because I
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: had a latex mask on, but I'm like looking at him, going, oh,
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: that's kind of crazy. He's like, he's kind of getting
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: pretty punk for a Grandpa Granola, which was what Jerry
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: used to call him.
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: Grafa Granola. Yeah, that's an intense performance of the song
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: in the movie. It's in Superno.
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: Well, what's funny, I'll tell you something funny about it.
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: To pay for our first film, Jerry and I started
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: a company called Unit Services in downtown Akron, and it
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: was a graphic design shop and mostly what we did
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: is we talked people and letting us do the signs
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: for their shops in this place because there were like
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: thirty other companies coming in and they we'd designed signs
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: for him. But we got this one job for a
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: muffler company, Midas Muffler, and we came up with the
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: logo rust Never Sleeps and they loved it and they
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: wanted T shirts. So so they wanted a hundred T
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: shirts and I bought like one hundred one just enough
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: so we'd have one that we could do a sample on.
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: And so I'm in the basement where I lived and
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: I'm I'm getting ready to print. I go, okay. I
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: tried it on the one extra shirt and it was
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: wrinkly looking. I went, oh no, So I changed the
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: ink a little bit and cleaned the screen, and then
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: I was looking for that. So I found a couple
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: of my T shirts and a towel and I started
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: printing on them. And then I printed. I had a
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: pair of underpants and I just printed it on the
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: seat of the underpants, rus never Sleeps. And so that
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: was the underpants boogie Boy was wearing in the playpen
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: when we were recording together. If Boogie Boy would have
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: flipped over, you would have read it. But he never
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: flipped over in the movie. But he called me up
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: a few weeks later and he said, hey, Mark, that
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: rust Never sleeps. Do you mind if I use that
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: for the title of my next film. I go, no, No,
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: that'd be great, And so that's how. So then he
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: made a film called Rus Never sleep based on a
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: Midas muffler gig that helped pay for the first debo film.
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the connections between you guys are interesting, between the
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: Kent State connection and him right in Ohio and and
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: then giving him Russ Never Sleeps as the title and
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: it's like that, you.
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: Know that funny Well he was. He was an interesting guy.
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: He was much more interesting guy than then we gave
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: him credit for. At the time we were kind of
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: punky assholes.
• 53:32
  Speaker 4: What can I say real quick, I wanted to ask
• 53:35
  Speaker 4: you about Robert Margolef, who, Yeah, as someone who is
• 53:40
  Speaker 4: vary into synthesizers, how was he as a person who
• 53:43
  Speaker 4: I mean it seems to be I mean the Tanto
• 53:46
  Speaker 4: machine and I mean, what a kind of bizarre, strange
• 53:50
  Speaker 4: guy and doing all this classic records of Stevie and
• 53:53
  Speaker 4: then work with you guys.
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: To me, he was the most of all the of
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: all the producers outside producers that we used to work
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: on debo records, he was the most successful and the
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: smartest and uh taught me more than any of the
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: other producers did. And yeah, the fact that he went
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: between like Stevie Wonder and the original Neotombril Orchestra Tonto.
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: You know, it's like, that's why we asked him to
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: work with us in the first place, because we were
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: don't laugh, but we thought freedom of choice was funky divo.
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: We thought that was We thought, okay, what if Devo
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: did funk, what would it sound like? And that's what
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: we came up with, which wasn't I mean, I can't
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: say it's a very funky album, but you know it was.
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: It was our attempt at it. And so we wanted
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: a guy who was familiar with funk but also familiar
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: with electronics. And he was the perfect guy. And I
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: still stay in touch with him. He's he's really smart.
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: He's really he's really articulate. Still and uh and uh,
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: somebody's looking for a great producer. He's a he's a
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: good guy to use.
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: Is he still experimenting with stuff and sounds.
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: And mostly yeah, And lately it's been head phones where
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: you feel like you're an Atmost. It's like it's like
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: an alternate to the Utmost system, but a headphone version
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: of it. And and he can spread sounds all, you know,
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: really wide when you're in these headphones. That's the last
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: thing stuff. Yeah, spatial audio. Yeah, I guess that's what
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: it's called. And that's the last thing I remember him
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: calling me about being really enthusiastic about.
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: I was listening because Robbie Robertson died recently, and so
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: I listened to the first couple of band records, fun
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: to back for the first time in a long time,
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: and the narrative on the band was that like they
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: made everyone want to go back to like roots music essentially,
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: you know, like stupid all back. But because of Garth Hudson,
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: the organist, there was always really weird sounds you would
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: never hear in like a country record or like an
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: Americana record. And I just never picked up on that
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: when I used to listen to him, I didn't know
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: if you listened to them, and you know, that.
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: Was the part that I picked up on. I liked
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: all the eccentricity. I was not into country. Country when
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: I was in high school was the music I got
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: my ass. That was a soundtrack to me getting my
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: ass kicked by by kids that wanted me to be
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: more like them or something or like or to be
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: less of a weirdo. So I never was a fan
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: of country and but I liked those albums, and I
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: loved some of the lyrics like take a load off, Crainy,
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: that's to me that was just kind of absurdly hilarious,
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: you know, some of that stuff. And I liked Big Pink.
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: I thought that was a good big pink that's cool
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: right there. Yeah, any other like early like keyboard or
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: synth inspirations.
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: I loved Walter Carlos's Clockworkgorns soundtrack. I thought that was
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: incredibly genius and that probably helped make me even more
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: aware of soundtracks then, you know, because that was that
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: music was uh it was Beethoven mostly, but it was
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: like it sounded so good and nobody's ever used a
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: vocorder again the way he did it, and in that movie,
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: I would defy you to find something that sounds like that.
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: It's so incredible. And then, uh, I think for me,
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: I remember listening to a Roxy music album the first
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: I think it was the first one, and the lyrics
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: were good on everything back then. Uh, I'm less of
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: a fan of when it turned into avelon. I loved
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: all the I loved all the early stuff like Inflatable Dolly,
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: you know, stuff like that was to me, it was
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: like it was like creepy and cool. But uh, I
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: was listening to the song. It was like a throwaway
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: song on Roxy music album called Editions of You and
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: and so there's a saxophone takes a solo and goes
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: d and then then the guitar player gets a solo,
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: and then Eno gets a solo, and I didn't know
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: who Eno was, and I hear this Moulton montm motum motum. Yeah,
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: he did the solo that I went, that's the best
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: electronic music since solo I've ever heard in a rock
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: and roll song or a pop song. I thought that
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: was incredible. It made me want to meet him. It
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: made me want to see see what he used, and
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: made me want to talk to him. And that's when
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: I just was.
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: I was.
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: You know, when people asked me who I wanted to
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: produce Divo, I said Brian ENO's first choice, and so
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: that's how that happened. But his I just thought he
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: was like the early pioneer that did it. I think
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: that song is like if you were looking for for
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: electronic pop, new wave punk or whatever that music was.
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know how to classify it.
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: I know his solo it was like very It was
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: just totally abstract, that's what was and that was so
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: great about it. And it was abstract with electronics. And
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: as much as I thought Satisfaction was the episode center
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: of rock and roll, is the best song ever, matter
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: of fact, that's why we we did our version of it,
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: because it was ten years later, and I thought, well,
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: it's about time to reinterpret and update that song, you know,
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: to match what's going on now. And I mean Bob
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: Casally actually was the started playing that riff out of nowhere,
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: and within an hour we'd put the song together, and
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: then I was singing on it, Satisfaction. But I had
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: always I thought Satisfaction was perfect because I thought, well,
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: it's ten years it's time to reinterpret what pop music is.
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: Was Jerry into your you know, because early on, I
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: mean Jerry listening to the sounds can be very bluesy
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: and very I mean if I had like almost like
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: a garage rocky thing. Was he into your experiment doing sounds?
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: And I think maybe less than I was into the
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: blue thing. I loved having a blues a blues progression
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: underneath things I was writing because it gave me a
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: chance to do really distract things with great rhythms to it,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: you know. And and I could take really abstract sounds
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: and you know, mortar blasts, ray guns. I could put
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: like ray gun sounds, you know, like in uh Space
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: Girls for instance, and these warbly sounds moll and you know,
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: so what he was doing kind of worked with that
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: pretty good.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: Like automodown, you know, it would be and then.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: The synth was like that's automodown. Is a good example
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: of like that's the sun raw approach because that was
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: he oh, don't boot bo't. It was like it was
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: like playing it like so that they were so that
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: they were noises and they were like more percussive with
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: a little bit of with a little bit of you know,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: like uh melody, and you know in the sound, you know,
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: because you'd hear notes in it, but they'd be you know,
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: like in to mow Down, they were kind of like
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: car horns. They sounded like three or four It sounded
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: like three or four car horns hitting at the same
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: time in different pitches.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: That's a song I've returned to you a lot. That's
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: such a question.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: That's a good song and that has and that has
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: Jerry's rhythm, his bas rhythm going on in it. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: I love that song. I love that song too.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's an incredible one. Do you have an opinion
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: on the sort of progression of electronics in music the
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: way it's evolved over time.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, uh, pop music is on some levels stupid.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: You know, no matter what era you're talking about, even
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: the stuff I liked, there was a stupid side to
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: a lot of it. But the thing about pop music
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: is pop music. It's important to kids that are that
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: are like just coming of an age, whatever age that is,
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: if it's eleven or if it's nineteen or anything, where
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: they go the world is insane, nothing makes sense to me.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: Who am I? Where am I? And then you find
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: something like and for some people it's Taylor Swift, you know,
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: they find it in Taylor Swift, some people with the Beatles,
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: and some people it's Neil Young or it's Jimi Hendrix.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: But this music is like where you go and you go, Ah.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: I feel this reminds me of when I needed a refuge.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: You know, It's like for Devo, it's like, you know,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: there was a time where I was kind of like, well,
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: I don't like playing the same songs. You know, these
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: are songs I wrote when I was twenty five. That's
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: like years almost fifty years ago. Now, why don't people
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: want to hear the new stuff? But you know the
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: reality is if the ghost of David Bowie came up
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: to me tonight and went, ooo, Mark, I'm going to
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: do a concert for you and you only. It's going
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: to be a brand new album. Nobody's ever heard these songs.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: It's all about everything that's going on in the world now,
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump, you know, Joe Biden, Ukraine, or it's going
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: to be Spiders and Mars, the live show that blew
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: your mind. You're going to see that exact, absolute, exact
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: same show and you can sit anywhere in the audience
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: you want. I go. I'll take Spiders some Mars and
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: you can save your brand news stuff for somebody else,
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: you know. And and so I understand it when kids
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: come up and go you know, people picked on me
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: and they called me devo when I was in high school.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: But I loved your music and I love that stuff now.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: And what does you know?
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: What does a.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: Blockhead mean to you or something like that you know?
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: Or or what does gut feeling mean? And you instead
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: of going I wrote that when I was twenty five.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: I don't fucking remember, you know. It's like you know,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: it's like you go, well, you know.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: You talk to him about it, and then in some
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: instances do you also just hate to try to remember
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: what your access twenty five year old mark emotions like.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: It seems like a lot of work to try to
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: go back and rehash shit and pinpoint then.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: Well, you know what we did, choose a weird life
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: for ourselves, you know, because because that's what I'm going
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: to be doing, you know, until we end up stop touring.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: You know, it's like we're gonna the part we will
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: play new songs and people will be polite and sit
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: through them, and then uh, and then they'll get to
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: the stuff that they wanted to hear. You know, You'll
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: you'll play uncontrollablege or you'll play Satisfaction and there they'll
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: lose their minds, you know, And I like that, that's
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: what you know. And so for me, it's like I
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: write a lot of music for myself that nobody ever hears.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: Sometimes I put it out, like I put out one
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: set of six forty five's called Mutant Flora, and that
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: was music that I'd written for Taikawatiti what was the
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: name of that movie, thor Ragnarok, you know, stuff like that.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: Or then I did a box I did a set
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: called the Most Powerful Healing Music in the entire world.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: And it was like I'd be working on a Wes
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: Anderson film or something Lego or something, and I my
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: head would start, you know, getting tighten, and I just
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: go into the lunch room here. It's over over there,
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: about thirty feet and I had a home organ from
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: the eighties set up there and I would just do
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: stream of consciousness, easy listening home organ music, and I
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: did a six album set of it. I might re
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: release that.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: You got to put out like a library of just stuff,
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: like a online library accessible whatever, you know.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: You know, I'm thinking, I'm totally thinking that I'm putting
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: out a set of books. And the first one's coming
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: out in December, and the next one though, it's going
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: to be about sixteen hundred pages. It's gonna be super fat,
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: and it's going to be big pages, and it's all
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: art and I'm gonna put QR codes in it and
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: where I could put music you could listen to while
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: you're looking through the book and videos and stuff like that.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: Well, look forward to seeing the books. That's cool, man. December. Well,
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: I can't wait to see that. And it's a pleasure
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: talking to you. Thank you so much, Thank you you too,
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Mark Mothers Bob for sharing some of those
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: incredible stories. You can hear our favorite songs from Devo
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: and Mark's solo career on a playlist at broken record
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: podcast dot com. Subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: dot com slash broken record Podcast, where you can find
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: all of our new episodes. You can follow us on
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced with help
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: from Lea Rose and Eric Sandler. Our show is engineered
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: by Echo Mountainer. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: that offers bonus content and adfly listening for four ninety
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: And if you like this show, please remember to share, rate,
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: and review us on your podcast app. Our theme musics
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: by Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Rischman.