If you’re talking to a member of legendary new-wave outsiders Devo in the year 2026 (and indeed we are) there’s only one question you can open with. And it surely isn’t, “Do you ever get tired of playing ‘Whip It’ nightly?” We’re way past that.
First, some quick backstory to explain our gambit. In 1970, art students Gerald Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh witnessed the National Guard open fire on anti-Vietnam War student protesters, unprovoked, on the Kent State Campus in their native Ohio. Four died, including two of Casale’s friends, in what became known as the Kent State Massacre. It shook Mothersbaugh and Casale to the core.
This trauma and disillusionment became the catalyst for the unorthodox music, methodology and philosophies of what would become Devo. They were convinced that “de-evolution” was the inevitable fate of the human race, and it became their guiding principle. Clad in matching yellow hazmat suits with red “energy dome” helmets, they sneered and snarled their way through angular, slyly subversive electro-punk treatises on American conformity, the empty promises of capitalism, the military-industrial borg and the coming surveillance state. No less than David Bowie effused that they were “the band of the future” by the late 1970s. But here’s the rub: Despite throwing all the horrors of the late 20th century right back in our collective faces disguised with a sly grin and a beat you can dance to, what if they undersold the catastrophes awaiting us in the 21st century?
So there’s really only one question to ask Devo founding member and bassist/synthesist Gerald Casale when Orlando Weekly gets him on the horn: How does it feel to have predicted (if not underestimated the pace of) the collapse of Western civilization that we’re currently experiencing?
“We’re not happy that we were right,” answers Casale. “Let’s put it that way.”
“It was partly a pose, a type of artistic positioning, but we really meant it, and we really were sincere about what we were seeing, and it really did influence the way we wrote music and what we were saying,” Casale adds. “So it’s disheartening to have actually been accurate rather than it being kind of funny. You know, it was supposed to be a canary in a coal mine warning. And now here we are.”
Devo, unlike your faithful correspondent, have elected to not stop, drop and go fetal in frozen horror. Casale himself has of late released solo single “Just Do It,” a spiky, angular DAF homage that he calls “my little celebration of the fact that we have a homegrown tyrant.” And the collective Devo — currently Casale, singer Mark Mothersbaugh, guitarist Bob Mothersbaugh, keyboardist/guitarist Josh Hager and drummer Jeff Friedl — are currently out on the road for one of their most intensive years of touring in recent memory.
“It’s important as an artist to keep doing what you’re doing when the circumstances are so dire,” says Casale.
This touring cycle Devo are reaching beyond their own audiences to connect with oddballs and outsiders outside of their usual aesthetic “comfort” zones. The twin poles of tourmates B-52s and Billy Idol make for strange alliances indeed.
“I’ve often made the joke that Devo is the new wave Grateful Dead. Because we get three generations. We get the people that loved us when we were new. Those people that are still alive and coming to our concerts. We get their children, and we get their children’s children,” muses Casale. “And they’re down front dancing and singing along.”
The title of the tour (“Mutate Don’t Stagnate”) seems to be a rallying cry. This is a band who have elected to go down swinging.
“You have to remain flexible and alive. You have to react to circumstances that keep changing in the culture and in your life with new tactics and new responses,” explains Casale of this manifesto. “Otherwise, you get rigid and you get left behind. You stop being alive, stop being viable. So it’s important to mutate, but you’ve got to choose your mutations carefully.”
Devo circa 2026 live is an unmissable proposition. Footage of full sets is all over YouTube, which show the band possibly going harder than ever visually — costume changes and vintage/new video projections — and dream setlists that veer from the hits (“Whip It,” “Girl U Want”) to deep cuts (“Planet Earth,” “Mongoloid”). It’s a set that gloriously encapsulates all the contradictions and urgency in the Devo body politic. And they play through their catalog with the vigor of angry young me … not men, of course, but Devo.
No song exemplifies that glorious contradiction in Devo’s intent than nightly set-closer “Beautiful World,” from 1981. It’s an unabashedly catchy synth-pop ballad for the ages, with hope and despair waltzing together into the void as we stripmine every inch of the planet.
“It’s emotional because it is kind of ironic. We realize it is a really beautiful world. This planet is amazing, life is amazing, and there’s so much beyond comprehension and so much wonder when you really stop and look at where we are and how we’re this little grain of sand in the universe,” says Casale. “It’s overpowering. It’s the dark side of human nature that ruins the beauty.”
Herein lies the secret of Devo: They’re not cynical at all, there’s no pose. They’ve been through being cool since day one, and deep down their motives are open-hearted love and solidarity with the fringes and outsiders.
“When we started out in Ohio, we were the people that were willing to do and say things that nobody cool would touch, right? We were outsiders. We were disenfranchised. I mean, people either snickered at us, or felt sorry for us, or wanted to kill us. We were very polarizing, not because we set out to be, but just were,” concludes Casale. “I think that’s why a lot of people that are marginalized in society found something valuable in Devo. Devo spoke to them. Lady Gaga had her beautiful monsters, we have the beautiful mutants.”
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