Mark Mothersbaugh explains why Brian Eno was “unprepared” to work with Devo
Mark Mothersbaugh has opened up about working with musical mastermind Brian Eno on the first Devo album, 1978’s Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!, revealing that it wasn’t all smooth sailing.
Eno produced Devo’s very first album, which was a critical and commercial breakthrough. A year after it was released, it went Silver in the UK.
Recently appearing on the Bob Lefsetz podcast, the co-founder, lead singer, and keyboardist of Devo shared that Eno was “unprepared for us, and we were kind of unprepared for him,” noting that Eno wanted “bigger aesthetic input than he got.”
He went on, “When we were mixing [the album], he was trying to put other things into the songs. You know, synth parts, and we did use some of it. I mean, we did use David [Bowie’s] and Brian’s backup vocals on ‘Uncontrollable Urge,’ for instance. And he put like monkey chants in ‘Jocko Homo.’”
However, Mothersbaugh was reluctant to let Eno completely overhaul the band’s creative vision. He recalled, “I was doing things like, we’d hit record for recording from the twenty-four track over to the two-track stereo master, and everybody’d be looking straight ahead at the speakers, but I’d be standing next to Brian and I’d just reach up and pull down the tracks that said Brian guitar and David vocals.”
He added, “And I just keep looking straight ahead, and out of my peripheral vision, I could see [Eno’s] head snap and look at me. But he never said anything. He never challenged me about it, and so that was odd.”
Meanwhile, in an exclusive interview with Far Out, Mothersbaugh revealed that, despite the last tour they did being billed as a farewell tour, Devo still has plenty more ways to say goodbye. “It takes a long time to say goodbye,” he added.
The singer continued, “We still haven’t played about 50% of the markets that want us. So we keep moving through those. Who knows? Maybe we got another 50 years. We’ll see how far we can go.”
In November, Devo and The B-52s announced two huge co-headline shows, set to take place in the UK this summer.
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