The banned horror movie that inspired Devo’s defining anthem
While England played a crucial role in shaping the sounds of new wave, Devo emerged as one of the genre’s early success stories in America. Mark Mothersbaugh, with a look reminiscent of rock and roll robots, crafted songs that dismantled traditional elements of the genre. The band infused deadpan surrealist humour and satirical social commentary into their music, which contributed to influencing many artists across various genres.
Blending a countercultural philosophy with a truly artistic perspective, undoubtedly influenced by his experiences at the visionary Kent State University, without Mothersbaugh, Devo would lack some of the potency that makes them so significant. He notably introduced materials like the Jocko Homo Heavenbound pamphlet, featuring a drawing of a winged devil labeled ‘D-EVOLUTION’. This creation would later inspire their iconic track, ‘Jocko Homo’.
As the b-side to the band’s first single, ‘Jocko Homo’ was first demoed in 1974, and was one of Mothersbaugh’s first solo songs for the group. Although they re-released a seven-minute version of the song, the musician once stated they used to overdo it slightly when playing it live. He said: “We’d play ‘Jocko Homo’ for 30 minutes, and we wouldn’t stop until people were actually fighting with us, trying to make us stop playing the song.”
The song is taken from Bertram Henry Shadduck’s original track and tackles notions of “de-volution”, incorporating the repeated chant, “Are we not men?/We are Devo!” In an attempt to aptly introduce their band name, the chant is intended to allude to the 1932 film Island of Lost Souls, which is based on the 1896 H. G. Wells novel Island of Doctor Moreau.
The movie Island of Lost Souls, depicting a deranged scientist conducting strange experiments that tamper with evolution in unsettling ways, appeared to be a fitting source of inspiration for humanity’s regressions. “The chorus that keeps repeating the ‘Are we not men’ is directly from the very first Island Of Lost Souls,” Mothersbaugh said. “There were two remakes that were both tepid and not nearly as compelling as the original,” adding, “There were like, watered down, wussy versions of it in the later Islands Of Dr. Moreau stuff, but that was a really intense movie.”
Island of Lost Souls was once deemed so controversial it was banned in the UK, Germany, Italy, India, and New Zealand. This was largely due to the film’s exploration of themes like vivisection, evolution, and the boundaries of humanity. The graphic depiction of surgical procedures and the perceived moral and ethical issues raised by the narrative led to objections from censors and moral authorities.
“We moved the debate sideways,” Jerry Casale told Songfacts, explaining the song’s positive statement. “You believe what you want, but we like this guy that said we’re all descendants of cannibalistic apes that ate the brains of other apes and went crazy and lost their tails. That explained what we were looking at in the world better than Darwinism or Creationism.”
