A recent showing of Mark Mothersbaugh’s art work, at Bambi Gallery in Philadelphia, along with the rumors that DEVO is back on tour lead The Vulture to question whether Mark Mothersbaugh’s life ever had any dull moments. We all know he went to Kent State, witnessed the student massacre there (May 4th marks the 37th “anniversary” of this occasion), and started the band DEVO during the University’s subsequent closing with Jerry Casale, Bob Casale, Bob Mothersbaugh and Alan Meyers, but was there ever a time when Mark dreamt of an “ordinary” life?

We talked to Mark over the phone (he was in LA, sitting somewhere in his lime-green colored studio, Mutato Muzika, on The Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles) about what his life is and used to be, finding out what devolution really means, and chatting about the days before people really “got” ironic humor. We meant to question Mothersbaugh about his more-recent musical career, creating the soundtracks for movies, notably Wes Anderson’s, but were unable to quench our curiosity because of a strange horde of killer bees. . .

DAYS OF SHOVELING POOP

The Vulture: Hey, this is Mark Mothersbaugh?

Mark Mothersbaugh: Yeah.

V: Thanks for doing this interview, so I’m in Philadelphia, you just had an art show there at Bambi?

MM: Yeah. I hope it went well.

V: I think it did, I was there and it looked like it was well attended.

MM: Oh, good.

V: It seems like you’ve always been able to do whatever you wanted, you were in DEVO and now you have your own music company (Mutato Musika), I was wondering if you have ever done something you weren’t so proud of?

MM: (laughs) Of course, everybody has regrets.

V: Okay. But have you ever had to work a regular job?

MM: Yeah.

V: Like what?

MM: Let’s see. . . I worked at a hardware store before, when I first got out of High School. . . and in school lots of rotten stuff happened. I had kids hold me down and actually cut off my hair because I had my hair longer then and I wasn’t combing it back like a greaser would, which was what you were supposed to do. . .

V: Oh, wait. I know you went to school at Kent State, but where are you from?

MM: Akron, Ohio. When I was a little kid, during high school I used to shovel manure, the neighbors. . . When I was in High School we moved to this kind-of farm area of Akron, on the outskirts of the city part, and our neighbors had a barn with horses in it. So I used to shovel poop.

Jobs I had after high School. . . I worked at Chess King, which was a chain of really cheesy clothes that were kind of loosely based on Carnaby Street and Haute Asbury, you know 1968 or something, when this was going on. I found out that I didn’t like working in retail.

Then I worked for this mom and pop company before I went to college, where I designed neckties. They silk-screened things on neckties, so I did drawings that ended up on neckties when I was a kid.

AND HE WORE A HAT, AND HE HAD A JOB, AND HE BROUGHT HOME THE BACON.

V: I read somewhere that you had a dream that you would grow up to be a famous artist. . . but. . .

MM: Yeah, second grade. That’s a true story.

V: . . . but did you ever think about doing something else then going to art school and becoming an artist?

I. . . I just remember being dumbfounded about the whole process of how you grow up. When I was a kid it was overwhelming. When I was a young kid I remember thinking “There’s no way I could be a husband and a father and a bread winner. How in the hell am I going to do that?” I couldn’t imagine it. I looked at what adults did and I thought “How do they do that?”

I dunno. Part of it was just. . . well, it’s probably not good for a blog, or I’d tell you a darker story.

V: I’m sure that would be great for a blog.

MM: But that’s what I mean. I just stopped myself. I just censored myself.

DEVOLUTION 101

V: We’re you prepared for becoming a famous person? When DEVO made it big?

MM: We thought we had a really good idea. We were naive enough not to know what we were up against, we didn’t know what the odds were that we would be successful.

I didn’t know what a recording contract was, I didn’t know what being in a band meant. I had no idea about going to a real recording studio, the records we were pressing down in Cincinnati, were recorded in a garage in Akron. We were doing it on a four-track and I just had fantasies about what a recording studio was.

I actually thought it was a lot cooler than it was when I actually got to one.

V: Did you think a lot about being famous before it happened?

MM: We thought about it a lot. For us, we knew what we wanted to do somewhere around the time they shot those kids at Kent State, because they shut down the campus at that time. We couldn’t go to school that spring or that summer, so Jerry (Casale) and I, he just came to my house and we talked about music we wanted to make.

We wanted to be like an art clearing house. We wanted to be an Akron, Ohio version of Andy Warhol’s factory. Except smarter. We wanted to be musical reporters, reporting things in a creative way. Reporting the good news of devolution.

V: What exactly is devolution?

MM: It was a term we coined to define what we saw happening around us.

V: What did you see happening around you?

MM: We saw Three Mile Island, and nuclear power plants melting down and people having more and better technology than ever but using it in stupider and dumber ways and we felt like we were in a cultural wasteland to begin with, being in Akron. We felt like we were in this weird island where we could see things, or hear things that were going on in London or New York or in San Francisco or on the Sunset Strip and we thought, well, we want to be a part of all of that.

But it wasn’t happening in Akron. There was no Summer of Love in Akron, Ohio, ever.

V: But you got some of the violence.

MM: We did get some of the violence.

I BEEN DIPPED IN DOUBLE MEANING

V: Do you think the term devolution still describes the state of the world?

MM: Its freaky, how the acceleration of devolution has happened since we first started talking about it. It’s now. . .even the UN agrees!

V: Is that why you’re still touring with DEVO today?

MM: Well, I guess. I think whatever DEVO was. . . I think people understand it more or appreciate it more today. I think our music was probably ahead of it’s time. I hesitate to say this but I think it fits, because even albums near the end were too far out for most people. I think the songs are more enjoyable now and that they ft into this world more than they fit into the late 70s and early and mid 80s.

V: At the time were you aware that you were doing something that most people wouldn’t understand?

MM: I think one of our biggest miscalculations was not realizing how much people misunderstood ironic humor.

V: Yeah. That has come full circle.

MM: Even our record companies worked against us. You would think, because eventually they were going to make millions of dollars off of us, that they would have tried to understand what we were about and how to best represent or exploit it.

Instead, from the very beginning they referred to us as “wacky”, “quirky”, there were reviews in which we were called “fascist clowns”. I thought that was a weird contradiction, but it was just an attempt to negate anything that we were saying. The soup du jour of that day was Prince and Madonna, or if you wanted to go a little alternative it was Elvis Costello, which was basically retro music and not much substance. Basically, turn your brain off and party your butt off, was the order of the day.

There were DEVO fans who got what we were doing, but a lot of people only thought of us as the band who played “Whip It“, which was an awesome party song.

V: That’s still the only DEVO song most jukeboxes have.

MM: Yeah, of course. That’s the song that got the most radio play in the US.

V: Was it different in Europe?

MM: Slightly. I don’t know if Europe’s any different but the United States is like a big, dumb, giant. It was more-so before the internet was made available, so that people could find ways to circumvent the giant. It used to be that people would walk into the only record store in their town and they’d see a row of Van Halen life-size cutouts and then there’d be DEVO, Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa, and Wild Man Fischer, or anything that was slightly different, was crammed into one tiny corner.

ARE WE NOT MEN? WE ARE DEVO!

V: Is that positivity for the internet age?

MM: The technology itself is inherently benign or inherently benevolent if you let it be. It’s all the user. It’s not the internet we have to be afraid of, it’s the human mind, or lack of it.

What would it take to inspire a generation of humans? That’s what DEVO was attempting to find out, and we failed somewhat honorably.

V: I think you inspired a lot of people.

MM: Different people inspire different things. Some people may inspire kids to kill a cop, or quit school and smoke pot.

V: Do you think you’ve had positive influence over people?

MM: Some. I think some. People write me letters and tell me they became involved with DNA research or different things in school because they thought about the empowerment that knowledge has. Instead of just thinking “You Gotta Fight for Your Right to Party.”

I guess people do have to fight for their right to party, but in a way I think that’s kind of a waste. Make sure that gets to Barcelona because we’re playing with the Beastie Boys on June 14th or 15th in Barcelona. . .

THE INTERVIEW ENDS DUE TO A SURGE IN KILLER BEES (WHEN A PROBLEM COMES ALONG, WHIP IT)

V: What are you into today, what are your favorite things?

MM: If I told you it would sound pathetic. The thing I’d love to do most right now is sleep. . . I adopted a little girl last year, who’s almost. . . she’s two and three quarters right now. . . and she doesn’t know it yet, but I think she’s a boy. She has total tomboy energy, and she’s up long before I am pulling at my eye-lids and being like (imitates a high-pitched voice) “come-on daddy, daddy, get-up”.

Lately, well it was Sesame Street, and then it was Tele-Tubbies and now it’s DEVO. She’s like the most unashamed fan I have ever seen. She got into DEVO 2.0, and she went on stage with us last year. She saw dad standing out there and instead of being mortified she got excited and would run out onstage and then we’d have to take her backstage. She was cute.

Now she watches every video we make and I have to zoom past when Jerry has his conversations about sex. He gets a little too graphic for a two and a half year old. We were watching it the other day and someone came over with their kids and I realized that I found myself zooming past anytime Jerry started to talk because I knew he was eventually going to get slightly specific.

It was then that I realized that I was going to spend the rest of my life hiding things from my daughter. Either that, or I’m just going to say “here, your dad wasn’t always a father”. . .

Just to show you that we’re a glutton for punishment, we’re going to adopt another little girl. . . she said it’s what? She said it’s an emergency? Excuse me, I have to take the other line. . .

V: Okay. (”Making Time” by Creation plays, presumedly from the Rushmore soundtrack)

MM: Hey!

V: Whoa!

MM: It is an emergency! My house is full of bees right now!

V: You’re kidding!

MM: There was a window, an electric window, that of course didn’t close right last night and a swarm of bees went through the window, or through the neighborhood, I kind of live in the hills. . .

V: We’re they killer bees?

MM: You’d think so with the phone call I just got.

V: Do you need to go clear up the bees?

MM: Yes. I need to go do some bee extraction right now.