Are We Not Men We Are Devo!

Production and recording

In 1977, David Bowie and Iggy Pop received a tape of Devo demonstration songs from the wife of Michael Aylward, guitarist in another Akron, Ohio band, Tin Huey. Both Pop and Bowie, as well as Brian Eno and Robert Fripp, expressed interest in producing Devo's first release. At Devo's New York debut show in 1977, Bowie proclaimed that "this is the band of the future, I'm going to produce them in Tokyo this winter." Eventually, Eno was chosen to produce the album at Conny Plank's studio located near Cologne, Germany. Bowie was busy with filming Just a Gigolo but helped Eno produce the record during weekends. Two tracks, "Come Back Jonee" and "Shrivel-Up", were recorded at Different Fur in San Francisco, California. All tracks were mixed at Conny Plank's studio named Conny's Studio. Since Devo was without a record deal, Eno paid for the flights and studio cost for the band, confident that the band would be signed to a record contract. In return for his work on the album, Eno asked for a share of any subsequent deals.

The recording sessions were a source of frustration for Eno and Devo. Eno found the band unwilling to experiment or deviate from their early demonstrations of recorded songs. Devo later admitted that "we were overtly resistant to Eno's ideas. He made up synth parts and really cool sounds for almost every part of the album, but we used them on three or four songs." A majority of the tracks were later remixed by David Bowie; excluding "Space Junk", and "Shrivel Up", which had Eno's production still intact.

Album cover

The cover art was illustrated by Joe Heiner. According to an essay by Devo co-founder and bass guitarist Gerald Casale included on the Complete Truth About De-evolution DVD, the cover of their debut album is based on an image of the famous professional golfer Juan "Chi-Chi" Rodríguez that they had found on a golf strap. According to Casale, David Burnam, the manager of business affairs at their recording company Warner Bros., decided that the image could not be used because "he was a golf fan and felt we were making fun of Chi Chi." The band offered to contact Rodriguez personally but had time constraints, due to the forthcoming production of their album. The manager of the company's art department, Rick Serini, recommended an artist who could airbrush and alter the face of the picture, while lead singer Mark Mothersbaugh offered a picture he'd procured from a local newspaper that morphed the faces of U.S. presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. These ideas were later morphed with the original "Chi Chi" Rodriguez image to create the cover art of the album.

The band did eventually get Rodriguez's permission to use the original photograph. Since the "morphed" album sleeves were already in production by that time, Serini claimed it would cost the band $2,500 to halt production and reinstate the image intended originally by the band, which forced the band to keep the morphed version. According to Casale, "we were able to come out with something that by the corporate interference and misunderstanding of the business side of Warner Bros. Records, actually unwittingly produced something far more Devo than the original [image]."

The original cover illustration, with Rodriguez's face intact, turned up on the picture sleeve for the band's third single "Be Stiff".

"Are we not Men?"

The phrase "Are we not men?" is from The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), by H. G. Wells. It is part of the litany of the Law, spoken by the Speaker of the Law to the Beast Folk, creatures surgically force-evolved by the mad doctor.

The song "Jocko Homo" makes fun of the concept, claiming that mankind is devolving into bestial idiots rather than teleologically evolving towards perfection. The call-and-response section of the song mimics the litany, as the audience is swept up into obeying the band by repeating the response.

Release

Devo received offers to release Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! from Warner Bros., Island, Virgin and David Bowie's production company Bewlay Brothers. Virgin obtained rights to release the album in the United Kingdom, while Warner Bros. held the rights for North America. The album was released in the United States on August 28, 1978 and in the United Kingdom on September 1, 1978. Virgin also released a picture disc version of the album, illustrated with a still from the band's 1976 music film The Truth About De-Evolution.

In North America, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! peaked at No. 78 on the Billboard charts, while in the United Kingdom it entered the charts on September 16, 1978 and remained there for seven weeks, peaking at No. 12. Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! was also successful in Japan. The album went "gold" in the United States on July 27, 2007 (2007-07-27) and "silver" in the United Kingdom on January 15, 1979.

Critical reception

Initial critical reaction to Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! was somewhat mixed. Tom Carson, writing in Rolling Stone, claimed that "There's not an ounce of feeling anywhere, and the only commitment is to the distancing aesthetic of the put-on", and opined that "Devo lacks most of Eno's warmth and much of Bowie's flair for mechanized melodrama. For all its idiosyncrasies, the music here is utterly impersonal." Critic Robert Christgau of The Village Voice gave the album a positive rating of a B+, but noted, "In small doses it's as good as novelty music ever gets, and there isn't a really bad cut on this album. But it leads nowhere." Nonetheless, it was voted one of the best albums of the year in the Village Voice's Pazz & Jop critics poll for 1978. In January 1980, Trouser Press also named it one of the best albums of 1978.

Later reception of the album has been more uniformly positive. Steve Huey of the online music database AllMusic scored the album four and a half "stars" terming it "arguably Devo's strongest set of material, though several brilliant peaks can overshadow the remainder", and "a seminal touchstone in the development of American new wave." Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! has scored on several "best of" lists, including Spin's 50 Most Essential Punk Records, Pitchfork Media's top 100 albums of the 1970s and Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. It is also listed in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

Personnel

Covers

The song "Uncontrollable Urge" has been covered by numerous bands, among them "SNFU" for the tribute compilation We Are Not Devo and the Brooklyn-based comedy/alternative band "Kenny Young and the Eggplants," from their first album Even One is Quite a Few.

Indie rock band Claw Hammer covered the album in its entirety on their 1991 release Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are NOT Devo!