Mark Mothersbaugh’s favourite Devo song
Musician Mark Mothersbaugh is certainly best known for being the co-founder, lead singer and keyboard player of the classic new wave band Devo, who rose to prominence in the mid-1970s. However, one ought not to disregard Mothersbaugh’s contributions to the world of cinema, given that he has worked tirelessly on providing several impressive scores to acclaimed films and TV shows too.
When it comes to Mothersbaugh’s favourite Devo song, though, there looks to be only one winner. It’s ‘Jocko Homo’, the B-side to the band’s first ever single ‘Mongoloid’, released in 1977. Devo re-recorded the track for inclusion on their debut album Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!.
During an interview with Vulture, Mothersbaugh once explained his reasons for picking ‘Jocko Homo’ as his favourite Devo tune, although he admitted that he might have a different answer depending on which day you were to ask him.
“It was both a theme song and a rallying cry,” he said of the track. “It was hard-core what Devo was about. We took in a lot of central influences that were not from the world of music necessarily and brought them together.” So there’s a deep theory beneath the musical elements of the song.
Mothersbaugh sees ‘Jocko Homo’ as “visual”: “When I wrote the song, some of the theory and thought came out of reactionary Christian, anti-evolution propaganda,” he said before noting a religious pamphlet written in the 1930s that criticised the theory of evolution.
There are other influences on the track, too, though. Around the time of writing ‘Jocko Homo’, Mothersbaugh had become interested in “deconstructing what was considered rock and roll,” which he viewed as typically being the Rolling Stones’ classic tune ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’.
“I was looking for non–rock and roll with ‘Jocko Homo’,” he noted. “I put these four blasts that were like clown horns in the verses. The one person in pop music I felt a camaraderie with was Brian Eno.” So clearly, the Devo singer wanted to subvert the notions of rock music, and certainly, he achieved his goal.
Concluding his thoughts on why ‘Jocko Homo’ is his favourite Devo track, Mothersbaugh said, “It was a sound that was more like an aggressive noise that was keeping a rhythm. I feel that’s Devo at its purest when we were just pure art.”
Listen to the original version of ‘Jocko Homo’, Mark Mothersbaugh’s favourite Devo song, below.
