Devo never achieved the kind of music-biz-sanctioned glory enjoyed by many of their chart-topping, arena-packing contemporaries in the late ’70s and early ’80s. That’s not to say Devo suffered a lack of financial or critical accomplishment — in the bargain, they’ve been nominated three times so far for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. But the group defines success on its own terms, emphasizing artistic expression as the mark of achievement. While their most commercially fruitful single, 1980’s “Whip It,” was their only track to crack the top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100, it’s not exaggerating to call the Ohio-born art rockers both beloved among fans and highly influential on subsequent generations of musicians.
That’s saying something for a band that champions a seethingly sardonic Dadaist approach, stitching together elements of music, film and performance art you’re more likely to find on the fringes of popular culture than at its center. Devo helped usher in the music-video age with their early short films. The electronically enhanced, off-kilter punk-sci-fi sonics and budget theatrics of both their videos and stage shows are just as inspirational to the outsider youth of 2024 as they were to late-night MTV watchers in the Reagan years.
The group is on a victory lap of a 50th anniversary tour — which stops at the Ryman on Sunday — before retiring from the road. While that’s something to celebrate, it’s important to remember that the band’s genesis is rooted in one of America’s most horrific moments.
The Kent State massacre on May 4, 1970, is among the most infamous protests of the Vietnam War. Students for a Democratic Society and Black United Students — organizations on campus at Kent State University about half an hour from Akron — held a rally denouncing President Nixon’s recently announced expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. The Ohio National Guard’s efforts to disperse the group of about 300 unarmed students escalated to firing live rounds. Some 67 shots in 13 seconds injured nine students and left four others dead: Allison Krause, William Knox Schroeder, Jeffrey Glenn Miller and Sandra Lee Scheuer.
One of the students choking on tear gas that afternoon was art major Gerald Casale. Known to his schoolmates as Jerry, Casale met Miller and Krause while guiding them through freshman orientation. Casale later said that when he saw holes left in the bodies of his friends by M1 rifles, he stopped being a hippie.
“For many others and myself, that moment changed the dynamic of civil disobedience forever,” Casale said in a speech delivered at KSU’s commons on the 40th anniversary of the tragedy. “It changed my worldview and, without question, set me on a path that I never would have traveled otherwise.”
Together with anthropology major Bob Lewis, Casale began to explore a satirical philosophy of “de-evolution” — the idea that, for all our pride in advancement, humans and our culture were regressing into something primitive and brutal. Along with other related art projects, they teamed up with Mark Mothersbaugh, another KSU student with a keyboard and a wacky sense of humor, and formed a band whose music reflected the downward spiral of the world around them; “de-evolution” became “Devo.” In 1973, what was then called “Sextet Devo” played its first show at a performance-art festival organized by professors at Kent State. Five years later, they released their debut LP Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! — produced by revered musician and producer Brian Eno and recorded with pioneering krautrock and electronic music producer-engineer Conny Plank.
Casale took on bass duties and wrote many of the lyrics; Mothersbaugh played synthesizers, wrote much of the music and moved into the role of frontman. While many musicians — including the pair’s brothers, both named Bob — have played roles large and small in the band over nine studio albums, they’re the two longest-running members. Other themes weave in and out of Devo’s work, and other influences have come to bear, but they still see the Kent State massacre as a catalyst. “I don’t think I would have started Devo had that not happened,” Casale told The Washington Post in 2018.
The parallels between the Kent State massacre and events making headlines now are unsettling. Throughout the spring, college students have been calling for their schools to cut financial ties to Israel as the death toll in Gaza climbs. Following in the footsteps of leaders from Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik testified before Congress about student protests on April 17; that day, Columbia students assembled roughly 50 tents on campus, calling it the Gaza Solidarity Encampment. Though it wasn’t the first of the sort — Scene staff reporter Eli Motycka was arrested in March while covering ongoing protests at Vanderbilt University — the Columbia demonstration got media attention that sparked a new wave of university protests across the country. The Guardian has called this “perhaps the most significant student movement since the anti-Vietnam campus protests.” But the ugly flipside is the return of violence and totalitarian methods from law enforcement, as once again universities have turned to tear gas and arrests instead of listening to the voices of protesters.
“It really stays with you,” Casale said in an interview about the Kent State shootings. Citing the Holocaust, the genocide of Indigenous people by white settlers and the Bosnian genocide of the 1990s, he expressed sorrow at how history is full of merciless killing and killers. “And sometimes when they are part of empires, and they win, they seem like heroes in the history books. And people either learn from history or they repeat it.”