‘Tin soldiers and Nixon’s coming’
The way Casale describes Kent State during the late 1960s, you’d think he was talking about a dream world.
He consistently uses the word “incredible” to describe his experiences as a Kent State student. He raves about how top-notch poets, filmmakers and artists would bring their art to the university. Meanwhile, the level of knowledge from both his peers and professors was unmatched. Culture was alive and thriving all over campus.
“When I tell stories to people that I know in Los Angeles, they don’t believe me,” says Casale, who now directs commercials. “It sounded like some man telling apocryphal stories. But I happened to go to Kent State at a point in history when some strange events happened. It was a hotbed of creative energy and talent and political radicalism.
“Believe me, it does sound like a fantasy because you can’t imagine it if you know the university today that there could have been this university then,” Casale says. “Berkeley and Columbia had nothing on Kent State.”
Just as Kent State will be forever tied to the tragic deaths of those four students on May 4, 1970, Casale cannot forget that day. To some degree, May 4 was a catalyst for Devo.
Casale, who was a member of an activist group called Students for a Democratic Society, was a senior at the time of May 4. Casale spent the day protesting along with friends Miller and Krause. It wasn’t long before he found himself in the middle of the shooting scene.
Thirty-five years after the shootings, Casale still recalls the event in graphic detail. “I still remember when the gun shots started. It’s become clichéd now, but it was like Raging Bull where it went into slow motion, and all the sound went into an echoplex,” he says. “I still remember the slow motion, the distorted sound, the wind and the trees that didn’t have leaves yet. And then everything, suddenly in an instant, snapped back to real time, where you just heard screaming and crying.”
When the gunshots stopped, Casale looked up and saw Krause lying on the ground about 30 feet from him. “I see this big exit wound and blood rolling down the sidewalk in the noon day sun,” he says. “I almost vomited from just human reaction to real violence and death. I fell down in the grass like I was going to pass out.”
At that time, Mothersbaugh, who now composes music for film and television, was setting up his new art studio at the Davey Tree warehouse, an off-campus art facility on Water Street. Then he heard sirens and megaphones.
“I was decorating (the studio) when there were police cars going down the street with megaphones going, ‘The school is shut down. The city is shut down. Please go to your homes,’” Mothersbaugh says.
From that day on, Casale became a determined man. Mothersbaugh, Casale and fellow Kent State student Bob Lewis had previously played with ideas of de-evolution (see sidebar). But now things had changed. Casale had witnessed first-hand what he considered to be mankind moving backward instead of forward, and he felt compelled to find a creative outlet to spread the message.
“We had all these theories of de-evolution, and then it became, ‘Well, what would de-evolutionary music sound like?’ That’s how we started making Devo music.”
“We had all these theories of de-evolution, and then it became, ‘Well, what would de-evolutionary music sound like?’ That’s how we started making Devo music,” he says. “I think if I hadn’t found a creative way to respond to it through Devo, which addressed this new dystopia that I found myself in, I think I would have turned homicidal. That radicalized me.”
The fruits of their labor were still several years from ripening, but Devo was effectively born on May 4, 1970.
The Burr is produced by students at Kent State University twice per academic year.No part of The Burr may be reprinted without permission.