Neil Young News: Neil Young's Influence on DEVO & DEVO's Influence on Neil Young

Wednesday, May 16, 2018

Neil Young's Influence on DEVO & DEVO's Influence on Neil Young

DEVO and Neil Young - Frame via Human Highway Film
Directors Bernard Shakey & Dean Stockwell (1982)
Ever wondered about Neil Young's influence on DEVO? Or DEVO's influence on Neil Young?

If so, check this interview with DEVO's Gerald Casale from Gerald Casale Takes Devo Very Seriously – And So Should You | Real Clear Life by Tim Sommer:

You worked with Neil Young before you were actually even signed, is that correct?

Gerald Casale: You’re right. It was our summer of independent, do-it-yourself gigging out here in Los Angeles that exposed us to a whole new stratum of people, in the music business and art and dance. I met Toni Basil and we immediately bonded, and Toni and her boyfriend – the actor Dean Stockwell – gave Neil Young a cassette of Devo, and a single, and a VHS video copy of our first film. We met him in the fall of 1977. That’s when he decided we had to be in his movie that he was just starting to hatch the plan for, Human Highway, which morphed many, many times over, so we didn’t actually shoot any scenes for that movie until early 1978. Neil Young, who would have guessed? My idea of Neil Young was some granola hippie guy. Meeting him was an eye-opener. He’s punk, by the way.

Would it be fair to say that you influenced him?

Gerald Casale: At some point we did, and he would say so. For five minutes we did. We gave him a ‘Rust Never Sleeps’ t-shirt. Mark and I had our little stand, back in Akron, a little shop in the Quaker Square Shopping Mall – a shopping Mall and a hotel created out of old grain elevators – and we had a shop there where we did silk screening and rubber stamps and decals, and we did an image based on Rust-Oleum! So we gave it to him and he used it as a title. Rust Never Sleeps. And Trans – he said we made him want to do that album.