DEVO confirm current shows will be their last
DEVO have confirmed that their current world tour will be the band’s last.
The Ohio new wave group – who announced a farewell tour for 2023 earlier this year – confirmed in a new interview that the current run of shows will indeed be their last after 50 years together.
Speaking to The Guardian, the band’s lead singer, Mark Mothersbaugh, explained why the band had decided to wrap up the live portion of their career.
“Are you married?” he asked. “Imagine you had four wives and you worked together. It’s tricky being in a band.”
Bassist, Gerald Casale went on to explain that the band’s “fully formed” identity meant that they were not necessarily vulnerable to people who want to “grab you when you’re malleable and change you”, adding that “they couldn’t do that to Devo because the armour was too strong”.
He went on to explain that the seamless nature of the band’s concept could cause friction creatively. “You’ve got a body of work informed by a whole manifesto and philosophy,” Casale said. “Do you let go and move on to the next thing? You want change, otherwise you’re stale, but you don’t want to be contrived.”
Mothersbaugh also joked that he was “looking forward to 2073″. “We’ll play 100th anniversary Devo shows and then maybe retire,” he said.
Casale, however, said he was “in denial”, adding: “Because I love performing and I’ll hate to see it go. It was part of Devo’s DNA. But we did as well as we could, for as long as we could.”
The band has been praised by the likes of David Bowie and Iggy Pop throughout their career, while Nirvana‘s Kurt Cobain once said: “Of all the bands who came from the underground and made it in the mainstream, Devo were the most challenging and subversive of all”.
Reflecting on the high praise in an interview with NME last year, Mothersbaugh replied: “We understood that and we felt that way too, because college radio would play us and there were a few stations throughout the country that played us, but we didn’t really chart. We felt you had to be an artist or in college to even be aware of Devo.”
He also added that he hoped DEVO would originally “be more like an art movement”.
DEVO’s sold out show at London’s Eventim Apollo last weekend (August 19) marked the end of their European tour. They now have a string of upcoming US dates kicking off in November.
Reviewing the band’s Øya 2023 show, NME said that DEVO displayed “a spritely demonstration of the game-changing wonky post-punk that helped the geeks to inherit the earth, and they still know to whip it – and whip it good”.
Elsewhere, back in March a new full-length documentary about the band was announced. Titled Devo, the film will be helmed by American Movie (1999) and Fyre (2019) director Chris Smith.
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Hollie Geraghty
NME
