Mark Mothersbaugh interview: DEVO tour, where to buy tickets

DEVO‘s upcoming ‘Cosmic De-Evolution Tour’ with The B-52s came together by pure chance this past February.

As you may recall, both new wave legends performed at the star-studded “SNL50” concert — DEVO delivered a blistering rendition of “Uncontrollable Urge” while The B-52s unveiled their timeless party-starter “Love Shack” — but what you might not know is that the groups were paired together in a dressing room backstage.

“My wife, who works with us, got into a conversation with their manager about doing shows together and everybody seemed to like that idea,” DEVO frontman Mark Mothersbaugh told The New York Post in an exclusive interview. “I like the idea.”

Now, seven short months later, the ’80s pioneers are finally teaming up for an 11-concert run (which is surprising considering they’ve both “retired” from touring in some capacity) that includes gigs at Holmdel, NJ’s PNC Bank Arts Center on Saturday, Oct. 4 and Long Island’s Jones Beach Theater on Sunday, Oct. 5. They’ll be joined by special guest Lene Lovich at all shows.

“I like [The B-52s’] energy,” Mothersbaugh, 75, said. “‘Rock Lobster’ had me at the beginning. I was always a fan.

There’s nothing about us that conflicted. They’re this great party dance band and DEVO’s wringing their hands, worried about what’s happening on the planet. Somehow, we complement each other.”

While on the co-headlining jaunt, DEVO devotees cans can expect to hear the group’s most essential tracks like “Gut Feeling,” “Satisfaction,” “Gates of Steel,” “Girl U Want,” “Whip It” and a handful of deep cuts.

“We’ll have some things in there that we haven’t done for 20, 30 years,” the 2022 Oscar nominee noted. “We saw a concert we did in Paris from 1978 that had some songs we thought we should do again.”

Speaking of 1978, the group has been doing quite a bit of looking back lately; along with “American Movie” director Chris Smith, the group just released the brainy documentary “DEVO,” which is now streaming on Netflix. In an era where most rock docs are more visual Wikipedia than film, this 93-minute feature is an artistic tour-de-force looking back at the offbeat ensemble’s anti-authoritarian streak and obsession with mankind, while matching the quintet’s uniquely avant-garde 20th century aesthetic.

“Our group had a different story than most bands. That’s kind of the reason why people still have any interest at all about what we did back then,” the Akron native mused.

For more on their different story, read on.

We have DEVO’s tour schedule, set list, a comprehensive interview with Mothersbaugh (including a few stories he’s never told before) and a few other surprises below.

(Note: We didn’t have the chutzpah to ask Mothersbaugh “Are you not man?” If you know, you know).

DEVO tour schedule 2025

A complete calendar including all tour dates, venues, shows that include The B-52s and links to buy tickets can be found below.

DEVO 2025 festival appearances

On top of the tour, DEVO is bringing their off-kilter brainy bops and monochromatic look to a pair of festivals this September.

For a closer look, here’s who Mothersbaugh, Gerald Casale and the gang will be performing with at the multi-day musical extravaganzas they’ve booked this summer and fall.

DEVO set list

On May 6, DEVO headlined at Brooklyn’s Paramount Theatre. Based on our findings at Set List FM, these are the songs that made the cut that evening.

01.) “Don’t Shoot (I’m a Man)”

02.) “Peek-A-Boo!”

03.) “Going Under”

04.) “That’s Good”

05.) “Girl U Want”

06.) “Whip It”

07.) “Planet Earth”

08.) “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” (The Rolling Stones cover)

09.) “Secret Agent Man” (P.F. Sloan cover)

10.) “Uncontrollable Urge”

11.) “Mongoloid”

12.) “Jocko Homo”

13.) “Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA”

14.) “Gates of Steel”

15.) “Freedom of Choice”

16.) “Gut Feeling (Slap Your Mammy)”

17.) “Beautiful World”

The B-52s set list

The B-52s have been headlining in Las Vegas post-tour “retirement.” According to Set List FM, here’s what they performed at a recent Sin City gig on April 19.

01.) “Planet Claire”

02.) “Mesopotamia”

03.) “Lava”

04.) “Is That You Mo-Dean?”

05.) “Queen of Las Vegas”

06.) “Roam”

07.) “Party Out Of Bounds”

08.) “Dance This Mess Around”

09.) “Pump”

10.) “Strobe Light”

11.) “6060-842”

12.) “Private Idaho”

13.) “Love Shack”

Encore

14.) “Cosmic Thing”

15.) “Rock Lobster”

Lene Lovich

At all co-headlining gigs, DEVO and The B-52s will be joined by fellow new wave icon Lene Lovich, whose most well-known for her hit single “Lucky Number.”

Other notable tracks of hers include “New Toy” and “Bird Song.”

Not familiar? You can comb through her extensive discography here.

Mark Mothersbaugh interview

We spoke with Mothersbaugh at length about the tour, “SNL 50,” missed opportunities, his prolific composing career, run-ins with John Lennon and Rolling Stones and his bucket list aspirations among other topics.

Enjoy.

You mentioned that DEVO and The B-52s concocted the co-headlining tour at “SNL50.” Where there any other interesting stories from that one-of-a-kind Radio City show?

I liked seeing DEVO get introduced by Backstreet Boys but my favorite moment was finding out we were in the ancient category. Early on, some young girl walks into our dressing room with a clipboard and goes “okay, the Devo’s go over there and the B-five two’s go over there” and I thought “she never even saw the early episodes of SNL. She doesn’t know how it started off.”

You’ve joked in past interviews about the farewell tour going forever. How long do you guys think you’ll keep going?

The welfare tour?

The farewell tour.

It’s already turned into a welfare tour (chuckles).

This could be the last year. Next year we go into phase two, which is us saying “hey, everybody, humans might be the unnatural species on the planet” to “next year, here we are. Don’t get frozen by technology and everything that’s on a dark path.” The younger generation needs to mutate, not stagnate. That’s our message for them.

Is there a a favorite song of yours that DEVO has been playing recently on the road?

I like doing “Jocko Homo” because we added something to it that we’ve never included that is the source of of a lot of our inspiration for DEVO. And it’s from a couple films, one’s called “Isle of Lost Souls.”

It has this mad scientist that gets his subhuman creations to chant “are we not men?” So, you’ll see footage during the middle of the song while we’re changing outfits. Also, there’s footage from a movie called “Inherit the Wind,” which was based on the Scopes Monkey trial.

That one shows a carnival atmosphere in front of a courthouse where there’s a chimpanzee playing with a cigarette and a barker going “is this your grandparents, people?”

When they come in for a close-up, the monkey is blocking part of the word “de-evolution.” So, on one side of the chimp, you see “Devo.” And, on the other side, you see, “man.”

I love all the subliminal messages that you’ve worked into your incredible body of work over the past 60 years. Do you have anything hidden planned at these upcoming shows?

They’re probably over the top because everybody knows who we are. If you’re there, you’re going to get what you’re looking for.

Would you say DEVO’s message is more relevant today than when the band formed?

I was hoping back in the early seventies that what we were talking about and pointing out was a little bit on the cynical and paranoid side.

In the last 50 years, unfortunately, we’ve been proven that humans are a species that is out of touch with nature. I remember reading a book back in ’69 called “The Population Bomb” and sociologists said “there’s going to be so many humans on the planet that by the year 2050, nature will create a virus that will kill off humans and save planet Earth.”

He said if that doesn’t happen, it’ll end up being a nuclear war and then nature dies, too.

That’s heavy.

Yeah.

Changing subjects, my favorite part of an AV Club interview of yours from 1997 was when writer Joe Garden realized he was mispronouncing DEVO and you explained how different pronunciations of the band’s name mean different things.

We were saying “Devo” at first when we first were trying to figure out what we were and what we were doing. That had a lot of influence from art movements from the 1920s in Europe. If I could have lived in another time it would have been somewhere in Europe between the twenties and thirties with Bauhaus, the Futurists, the Dadaist and the Surrealists.

We were thinking, well, it’s not art nouveau. It’s not art deco. It’s “art de-vo.” So we were calling it “art de-vo” at first. Then “Jocko Homo” changed that because it became “are we not men, we are Devo” (pronounced Dee-vo).

Another one of my favorite parts of the doc and the band’s lore is how you guys antagonize audiences intentionally. It’s incredibly funny. But that’s common knowledge. Is there a favorite lesser-known story from the road that you have?

I’ve seen guys in the band take off their yellow Hazmat suits and throw their plastic pants into the audience. A couple times their shorts and underwear and go into the audience along with it.

One of the most incredible parts of the doc was DEVO’s connection to Bowie and Neil Young. But the fact that John Lennon sang “Uncontrollable Urge” in your face rocked my world. How did he end up at your show?

That was our second show in New York City. We were playing Max’s Kansas City. Back in those days, the stage was way at the back of the building and you had to wait for everybody that was in the bar, restaurant and Max’s Kansas City to leave before you could go in and get your equipment.

So, we were sitting in an Econoline van out front and, all of a sudden, John Lennon comes out of the building with his arm around Ian Hunter from Mott the Hoople. John looked over at us and I’m sitting in the passenger seat going “oh, my gosh, that’s John Lennon.”

He walks right up to my face and gets two inches away. And he went, “yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!” Blowing spit on me. I pulled back, Ian was laughing. Then, they both wobbled down the street. I was like “well, that’s as good as it gets on planet Earth.”

What’s the average DEVO fan like these days?

There’s no average DEVO fan anymore. For all the things that you moan about like wishing the record business is like it was in the seventies, the reality is that kids have more information in their phone than ever before. They’re smarter than us. I remember in high school when I was trying to find something out, I’d go to the library’s Encyclopedia Britannica and that was already dated since it was sitting in the library on a shelf.

Now, they can pull out a phone and find out who their favorite bands were into. “Oh, Nirvana? Who was Nirvana into? Oh, they cover DEVO.” So, they come to shows, already knowing what they’re going to see.

We played Soldier Field a couple weeks ago. There were people my age, which is old, we’re septuagenarians now. The next show could always be the last. One of these shows is going to be a farewell tour, but we don’t know which one.

There are also people that are of the age of where they go “I grew up on Rugrats,” or “Pee wee’s Playhouse” and now “Yo Gabba Gabba.”

And they all knew the lyrics! There were between 35 and 45,000 fans singing along with me.

What is your favorite score of yours?

Depends on what day you’re asking me. I love the scores I did with Wes Anderson.

“Rugrats” was important to me because that’s how I got into scoring with an orchestra. I was learning on the job because I didn’t go to school for music. I always thought I was going to be in a band and when you’re in a band, you don’t read music.

You never see pictures of the Beatles or Rolling Stones reading music.

I like some of the lighter weight things I’ve done like “Cocaine Bear.” Right now I’m working on a Pixar movie that I’m enjoying. I was writing it while on the road. It gave me something to do during the day. When you’re touring, you’re on stage for 90 minutes. Most of the time, you’re waiting to get to the next place with a bunch of crabby, old men.

How did the music come to you for the “Rugrats” theme?

With DEVO, we had picked up a Fairlight, which was an early sampling and sequencing device that nowadays would look like an antique World War II piece of gear. Gabor Csupo, who was one of the creators of the show, came to me and he collected eccentric and esoteric music and found an album I had recorded for Tokyo Radical Artists because I used to fly to Japan, write songs and produce Japanese art bands in the ’80s.

Gabor saw this album and asked “can I use one of those songs from that record for the theme song?” It was called “Music for Insomniacs.” It was all electronic music.

I told him “I score films and TV now. Why don’t you let me write you a song using that same instrumentation?” Then, we ended up getting along really well. For bass and a lot of different instruments within the songs I recorded for the show, I used my voice through the sampler.

These days, my brother Bob has written more “Rugrats” music than me. He took over the TV series and must have written “about a million episodes” according to him. They finished this year.

What was a project you almost worked on but didn’t pan out?

Klaus Nomi got sick after he asked me to do an album with him, and I would have loved to have scored a film with him. Then, he died. He was one of the first people I knew that had AIDS.

Probably the most embarrassing was when the Rolling Stones were recording at the same time as us at the Power Station. We were upstairs in the inexpensive room, they were downstairs in the fancy room and some little, old guy came up.

This old man goes “would one of you guys play synths on my song?” Turns out that was Charlie Watts. So, I went downstairs and I’m thinking, “they love the way we did ‘Satisfaction.’” They told us that.

So, I thought, “well, it’s got to be something like that. They’re going to want something wild.” And they weren’t looking for something wild. They were looking for something more like the synth part of “Muskrat Love.” I’m exaggerating now, but I played a few things with Mick, Charlie and their engineer but didn’t make it onto the record.

I never told anybody that because I was always a little bit embarrassed.

Do you catch any live shows these days?

I get out a lot less than you’d think in the last year or so because I’ve been working so much. I’m always juggling two things.

But I want to go see Sphere. From what I’ve heard, it doesn’t sound like they’ve figured out the full potential for it yet. My wife went and she took a picture of the venue from her hotel room looking down, and it changes the whole landscape of Las Vegas. It looks so beautiful sitting out there. This crazy alien shape sitting on a street.

My new dream is a DEVO residency at Sphere.

Well, put that as a subliminal message in all your articles from now on and we’ll see if we can talk anybody into it.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

“SNL50” performances

As noted above, both DEVO and The B-52s participated in the “SNL50: Homecoming Concert’ at Radio City Music Hall this past February. Mothersbaugh’s boys took “Uncontrollable Urge” to the stage with an assist from Fred Armisen on drums while Pierson, Schneider and co. rocked out to “Love Shack” (also with Armisen as well as The Roots and cast members Sarah Sherman and Bowen Yang).

If you’d like to see the whole star-studded affair — including a rousing performance of Robyn’s “Dancing On My Own” with David Byrne — you can catch the whole bloody affair on Peacock.

Unique acts on tour in 2025

Hoping to catch a few one-of-a-kind concerts featuring groundbreaking iconoclastic artists these next few months?

Here are just five huge acts with singular sensibilities — and street cred — hitting the road in the near future.

• David Byrne

• Tame Impala

• Patti Smith

• Pixies

• Oingo Boingo Former Members

Who else is on the road? Take a look at our list all the biggest classic rockers in 2025 to find the show for you.