The strange partnership of Devo and Disney
There are subversive groups, and then there’s Devo. Not only do they espouse a satirical theory of social commentary, but they live it. Reflecting this notion, Devo take their name from the concept of ‘de-evolution’ and the band’s ensuing idea that instead of evolving, mankind has regressed, as reflected by the perceived dysfunction and herd mentality of modern American society. Accordingly, Devo takes a forensic look at the world and imbue their findings with comedic and musical panache.
Always on hand when given the opportunity to highlight modern flaws, one of Devo’s most interesting moments came in the mid-2000s when they teamed up with Disney – one of America’s most prominent companies – to create Devo 2.0, a quintet of children performing reworked versions of some of the group’s best-loved songs for a younger audience. The band was formed at the request of Walt Disney Records, with the help of Devo, and comprised child actors who could sing, dance and mime playing instruments in their music videos to songs re-recorded by the original band. Notably, Jacqueline Emerson, who later appeared in The Hunger Games franchise, was a member of the miniature version. Devo’s very own Jerry Casale also directed all nine music videos released by Devo 2.0.
The young group released a self-titled DVD and CD combo on March 14th, 2006, with a duo of original pieces ‘Cyclops’ and ‘The Winner’ written by Devo for the album. After the band played a limited number of live performances in 2006, they split up a year later when lead singer Nicole Stoehr and lead guitarist Nathan Norman quit due to the project flopping.
Asked whether the consumer-based art conflicted with Devo’s longstanding battle against consumer culture, frontman Mark Mothersbaugh told the Fecal Face in 2008: “Not at all. In fact, we used to get criticised back in the early days of Devo because, to us, what we were about, back before it was very cool to be into merchandise, we thought of our album cover as a place where we could do the inner-liner sleeves… as a matter of fact, if you look at any of the old Devo records, our inner-liner sleeves were always a merchandise page.”
He continued: “We thought of it like the back page of a comic book where you’d see all the things you could order. Smith-Johnson novelties, stink bombs, baking powder-propelled rockets and X-Ray specks and all that kind of stuff. I loved that page of a comic book every time, and I always looked at that stuff and sometimes would order it, and the Devo albums, we wanted them to be like a Cracker Jack box where you’d have a prize in there.”
Reflecting on their early days and the critique that they received from Neil Young, Mothersbaugh said: “I remember in 1978 when we put out our first album, and somehow our manager also managed Neil Young, and I remember Neil Young going, ‘You guys, I don’t know what you’re doing bringing merchandise into rock n’ roll that’s so uncool!’ Of course, now, all these years later, he sells a ton of t-shirts and DVDs and things. But at the time, he thought it was kind of sacrilegious, and we’re like, ‘You don’t understand! This is all fun! Rock and roll is better than that!’ It’s like, everything that turned you on when you were a kid, you should still be able to be part of it. So for us, we thought the merchandise just had to be smart instead of stupid. So we tried to do smart merchandise, and I’m still trying to do smart merchandise.”
Speaking to The AV Club in 2010, Gerald Casale shed light on the strange partnership Devo formed with Disney and how they reworked songs such as ‘Girl U Want’ into ‘Boy U Want’, with the sexual undercurrent of the original changed for the tween setting. Despite the reworks, though, Devo had the last laugh, and in the end, they had the proof of the de-evolution they’d been discussing for so long.
Casale said: “That’s the best story. The Disney people, in the beginning, go, ‘Hey, how would you like to repurpose your material for a 4-to-8-year-old audience?’ And we went, ‘Really?’ They said, ‘Yeah. We want you to do a whole DVD. What would you do?’ They gave us about a week to think about it. And I said, ‘Well, what if we did it like The Monkees? What if we cast a bunch of kids that can actually sing and play, and they will play Devo songs, and I’ll shoot videos with them, and we’ll tour them at middle schools.’ ‘Yeah, that’d be great. But we want to pick the songs.’ And we said okay. So they picked 12 songs. What’s fantastic is, they must never have actually listened to those songs.”
He continued: “Because deep into the picture, at the phase where we’ve recorded everything, and we’re shooting the videos, and I’m turning in a video budget — it’s at that point that somebody upstairs in the Disney Taliban would like to see all the lyrics printed out. I don’t think I’m hiding anything, so I send the lyrics. Oh my God. Unbelievable, the next thing that happened — the firestorm that started. They’re poring over these lyrics, executives in their 30s and 40s, suits at Disney poring over these lyrics and, for the first time paying attention to the songs they loved and picked. So it was like, ‘So listen, um, ‘Beautiful World.’ We’d really like that on the DVD, but you can’t say, ‘It’s a beautiful world, but not for me.’ And it was like, ‘Oh really? Gee, that was kind of the whole point. What can we say?’ The guy goes, ‘How about ‘for me too?’ And it just got better from there.”
Revisiting his favourite example of the changes, Casale said: “My favourite of all was—there’s a verse in ‘That’s Good’ that I wrote the lyrics to in 1982. And the verse goes, ‘Life’s a bee without a buzz / It’s going great ’til you get stung.’ Meaning, basically, you can get surprised. You can get ambushed, and that’s the point. They go, ‘You gotta take that whole verse out of there, or replace it with another verse, or edit the song.’ And I’m going, ‘What do you mean?’ They go, ‘We know what you’re talking about, Casale.’ And I go, ‘What do you mean? What am I talking about?’ They go, “Life’s a bee’ means ‘Life’s a bitch.’ ‘Without a buzz’ means unless you’re getting high. And ‘It’s going great until you get stung,’ meaning as long as you get away with it unless the cops pop you.’ And it was like, ‘Who was I talking to here? P. Diddy?'”
He added: “Their sensibility had been so formed by hip-hop and current music that they were reinventing meanings in my words to go along with urban street culture now. The words were written 30 years ago, basically. You went beyond getting mad to just like going, ‘This is proof of devolution. This is it.’ We thought it was really funny.”
Watch a clip of Devo 2.0 in action below.
