The aftermath
After May 4, the campus shut down until the next school year. Casale was set to graduate and attend a university in Ann Arbor, Mich., for graduate school. But instead he had to receive his diploma by mail and stayed in Kent.
Casale says the graduate school pulled his scholarship because of his involvement with the anti-war movement. With few financial resources, Casale remained at Kent State and completed his graduate work in studio art.
Even after May 4, the Devo we know today was still years away. Casale had the vision but didn’t yet know how it would become reality.
In 1972, Casale hooked up with a local group called the Numbers Band. Robert Kidney, the singer and guitarist, met Casale while hanging around Kent State in the late ’60s. When the Numbers Band was out a drummer with a gig coming up, Kidney called Casale, whose preferred instrument was bass. But Casale had been practicing drums in his apartment, and he prepared for a week with the band. Kidney says he remembers his new drummer becoming frustrated with the experience, but Kidney thought he did fine. “It had a dark-earthy power. I thought it was a great thing,” he says.
At the same time, Casale was playing with ideas that would eventually become part of Devo. He began collaborating with Mark and his brothers, Jim and Bob Mothersbaugh.
“It was just the beginning of what really was to become the Devo sound and the Devo mentality,” Casale says. “That probably got my creative juices going, so on the nights I played with the Numbers Band, I probably started straying from traditional blues.”
Casale suggested to Kidney that the band should wear costumes on stage. “What he wanted to do was in line with Dada art,” Kidney says. “It was a little surreal.”
After a little coaxing, Kidney decided to try the idea. During the middle of a Bo Diddley cover one night, Kidney donned welder’s goggles, and Casale threw on a chimpanzee mask. It didn’t take Kidney long to decide it wasn’t for him.
“It seemed kind of theatrical and phony,” Kidney says. “I didn’t want to be involved in theatrical bullshit.”
And that was the end of Casale’s tenure in the Numbers Band. “After the set was over, (Kidney) kicked me out of the band because he thought I was making fun of the blues,” Casale says.
So how does someone go from a blues-playing hippie to a purveyor of de-evolutionary electropop? Once again, the answer goes back to May 4.
Casale says he had “an epiphany” on that day. He likens his moment of enlightenment to the climatic sequence in The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy and company reach Oz only to discover the almighty wizard is just a little old man behind a curtain. “I felt like I got to see behind the curtain and through the illusion,” he says. “After that, I developed a real healthy disrespect for all illegitimate authority forever.”
The Burr is produced by students at Kent State University twice per academic year.No part of The Burr may be reprinted without permission.